Easy for YOU to Say!

In his just-published memoir chronicling his half-century career in radio and television, Wally George calls Howard Stern an “animal,” whose morning radio show is a “filthy, rotten disgrace to broadcasting.”

There’s no love lost between the nation’s No. 1 shock jock and Orange County’s ultraconservative TV talk-show host. Still, George is slated to be on Stern’s program Tuesday to promote “Wally George: The Father of Combat TV.”

The last time George appeared on the show, Stern asked him about his 1994 surgery for prostate cancer. When George said he was doing perfectly fine, Stern disagreed: “I happen to know you’re still riddled with cancer and you aren’t going to last the rest of this year and when you die, nobody’s going to be at your funeral but me, and I’ll be dancing on your grave.”

So why do a telephone interview with Stern at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday?

“Whatever Howard says, it’s good publicity for the book,” the 67-year-old talk show host said with a laugh.

“Wally George: The Father of Combat TV” ($14.95), published by Clarendon House, an imprint of Santa Ana-based Seven Locks Press, tells the story of a man who overcame a severe stutter to host his first radio show at age 14. He spent the next 53 years talking for a living.

As the bombastic host of “Hot Seat,” his 17-year-old syndicated TV show that originates from KDOC-TV in Irvine, George has become a minor cult figure who can incite rabid fans in his studio audience to chant “Wal-ly, Wal-ly!”

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Critics have called the blond-maned guy--known for yelling, pounding his fist on his desk, pointing his finger and kicking guests out who disagree with him--everything from swinishly tasteless to a cartoon character who speaks in bumper-sticker slogans. But he remains popular.

“People for years now have stopped me on the street and said, ‘We love the show, but what are you really like? What did you used to do?’ ” he said. “I thought, gee, I want to write a book and tell my story because I think it’s an interesting story.”

The slim, 160-page trade paperback begins with George’s early years in radio in the 1940s when he hobnobbed with the likes of Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, for whom he progressed from passing out tickets to their radio broadcast to playing a bit part on “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.”

George also spent six years as producer and co-host of the “Sam Yorty Show” on KCOP-TV, Channel 13, in the 1970s. Along the way, George claims to have ridden in vice-presidential nominee Richard Nixon’s convertible in a 1952 ticker-tape parade through Los Angeles, and to have had lunch at the Brown Derby with Marilyn Monroe. In the early 1960s, he was the rhythm guitarist and lead singer for Wally George and His Hollywood Twisters at the Peppermint Lounge West.

George talks about some low points, such as the indifferent way Yorty treated him. After creating and selling the show--which got the former Los Angeles mayor a six-figure annual salary--and doing what he says was the bulk of the work, he never got so much as a thank you from Yorty. Even after George walked Yorty to his car one last time after their final broadcast, all Mayor Sam had to offer him when they shook hands was, “See ya, kid,” George wrote.

He said his estrangement from his oldest daughter, actress Rebecca DeMornay, continues. Messages left on her answering machine go unanswered.

And he writes of serious health problems over the last seven years, including prostate cancer, five broken ribs in a 1996 car accident and surgery the same year to remove two massive blood clots in his brain after falling down a stairway.

Still, the story of his broadcast beginnings in 1946 can inspire.

George, who started stuttering at age 6, suffered through laughs and taunts from his classmates at school. Even his mother, whom he calls a “possessive, overbearing and controlling” woman, would mimic him when he angered her, saying, “You can’t even talk right.”

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When the 14-year-old George announced his desire to be a disc jockey his mother told him he was crazy. But he stuttered and sweated his way through numerous interviews with Los Angeles radio program directors, finally landing a two-hour daily show on KIEV in Glendale after convincing Bob Wian, owner of Bob’s Big Boy, to sponsor his show.

No one, least of all his mother, thought he could pull it off when it came time to face the microphone for the first time.

“About a minute before air time, I closed my eyes and said, ‘Please, God, let me get through this,’ and I felt a warm wave waft across my entire body. . . . I talked for two solid hours and never stuttered once.”

George, who still stutters mildly off the air, said he did the show for four years “and the more I did the radio show without stuttering, the less I stuttered in everyday life.”

George said the “most delightful part” of doing his book--and he shed “happy tears” while doing it--was writing about Holly, his 10-year-old daughter who lives in the San Fernando Valley with George’s ex-wife.

“She’s my reason for living, really,” said George, who moved to Garden Grove three years ago after his third divorce. “The thing I look forward to more than anything in my life is spending time with [Holly].”

Today, he lives in a small apartment, drives an 8-year old Ford Thunderbird and has a wardrobe that consists of four sport coats, five pairs of slacks and three pairs of shoes.

“I got the fame but not the fortune,” George said, adding that many people have told him he shouldn’t have handled his career himself. “I always have kind of undersold myself and I stayed on smaller stations when I could have ventured out and got myself a high-powered agent, and I just never did that.”

Some might take exception to George’s book title “The Father of Combat TV,” a name some might say better applies to Joe Pine, the pugnacious ex-Marine known to tell callers to his L.A. radio show and guests on his syndicated TV program in the 1960s to “go gargle with razor blades.”

But George, who mentions Pine in his book, begs to differ.

“He didn’t do anything that you would say would be combat TV; he did it all verbally. He never left his desk [to confront a guest]; I do physical stuff. He just raised his voice and said, ‘Take a hike.’ ”

George, in fact, was a fan of Pine’s and would often stop by the KTTV studio where Pine did his show before a live audience.

“He actually had a loaded gun that he put in his desk on stage at every broadcast,” recalled George. “He told me, ‘If anyone starts coming toward me I’m going to level him.’ ”

That truly would have been combat TV.

* Wally George will sign “Wally George: The Father of Combat TV” at Paradies gift shop at John Wayne Airport, 18601 Airport Way, Santa Ana. 2 p.m. Thursday. (949) 252 6140.

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Dennis McLellan can be reached by e-mail at dennis.mclellan@latimes.com.