Go back to front pageHOLLYWOOD, Nov. 5, 1994 -- Let us hope that my recent appearance on the "Geraldo" show in Los Angeles will put to an end, once and for all, to the Burt Reynolds vs. the journalist contretemps.
Here's the story:
I get this call from the "Geraldo" booker: Will you come down to Los Angeles and be on our Celebrity News show? They do one of these gossipy little tabloid numbers once a week. I ask: Is Burt gonna be on? I want no surprises -- which these so-called infotainment, talk-tabs are famous for. Nope. They couldn't get Reynolds (sound of small female journalist sighing with relief). Guests for this cattle call include Shirley Jones and Marty Ingels, a bunch of gossip reporters and that media maven who is famous for being famous, Zsa Zsa Gabor.
They fly me down to El Lay on the United Shuttle, pick me up at the airport in a leather-upholstered towncar with a uniformed driver and deliver me unharmed to the Green Room at CBS Television City where two gorgeous makeup women -- one a California blonde, the other a hyperthyroid New York transplant with huge breasts and bee-stung lips -- take me in hand. They buff and pull and fluff and make me feel love and wanted and fairly presentable.
Meanwhile, I can hear Zsa Zsa's incomprehensible voice down the hall. She does not wait with the wilting turkey sandwiches and the rest of us rabble.
The guests in my Green Room are ushered onto the set where the stage manager is warming up the audience. An audience which is definitely down market. They laugh at terrible jokes right on cue; they applaud like trained seals.
Three of us are seated on leatherette camp chair together: it will be us (reporters) and them (celebrities). Three empty chairs await Shirley, Marty and Z-squared. Two gossip reporters from New York are plugged in by satellite. The buff-and-puff brigade gives us a final swipe of a powder puff on noses already shiny under studio lights and we're ready.
Geraldo Rivera, sleek and slight in a black suit and that huge tuberous nose, glides down to the stage through the audience to tumultuously insincere applause. He reads our intros off the TelePrompTer: Tony Frost, the heat gossipteer at Star Magazine, Heather Somebody, hostess of the Gossip Show on E! and me, Miss I Stared Burt in the Face and Lived.
Frost is a Brit who looks more like one of those wayward peers on some PBS thriller. Heather is 5-feet-8, slender, in black Armani, with the kind of tick blonde hair us Mediterranean types would kill for. I am wearing turquoise with a newly-cropped Olivier-as-Caesar hair-do. Not the best thing for TV.
Geraldo opens the show with me and I have been instructed by the producer to talk, talk, talk. Which for me is nooooo problem.
In describing Mr. Reynolds, I use a $100 word. Geraldo asks me to explain what I mean. I wind up doing a fashion commentary on Mr. Reynolds including how his face moved but his hairhat didn't. We are on live and get a call from some irate woman in Jupiter, Fla., Mr. Reynolds' stomping grounds, excoriating me for being so mean. They do like their Burt Boy down there.
Meanwhile, after Marty and Shirl are introduced, they launch into their own Burt Reynolds story. Marty doesn't like him; Shirley likes everybody. Zsa Zsa, meanwhile, thinks Burt is dah-ling. She comes on in a long black velvet tunic with frog closings, a shot black lace skirt and diamonds by the pound. She resembles a jewel-encrusted pillow. As she blathers away, Ingels pulls up printed signs from a folder at his side and holds them up in front of both of our faces. They get more and more insulting. On a commercial break, Ingels, who is sitting next to me, shows a sign that says "Bull Shit." We agree he should not use it.
Meanwhile, he has truly rattled Zsa Zsa by upstaging her with these meanspirited signs. She flys off in a small huff and minces off the set. Geraldo realizes some damage control is called for. He holds out his arms and settles her down, on camera. Ingels apologizes. It's great trash TV. I feel like I've witnessed a car wreck. Heather from E! says she's gonna lead off her show with that item.
Shirley hates the tab gossip reporters of which there are a plethora from which to choose. (Why, then, did she even agree to do this dog and pony show?) She smiles at me and says, "I hate these guys. Not you. You're legitimate."
Yeah? Then what and I doing here?
Geraldo, meanwhile, who orchestrates this chaos with all the manufactured zeal of a Ringmaster from Hell, sits down between Shirl and me and says: "This has nothing to do with our topic. . . " and then launches into full support for our union and our strike. It is a great plug. I raise my hand in a power fist and say, "Go Union!" On national TV, no less. The audience applauds.
Fade to black.
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