[From www.mortondowneyjr.com] In his heyday, Morton Downey Jr., the chain-smoking, combative talk-show host reined the TV talk show airwaves in the late 1980's. He was known as "Mort the Mouth," and mocked his sometimes bizarre guests, deliberately blowing smoke in their faces calling them "slime" or "scum bucket!" He reveled in shouting matches with members of his studio audience, as well, and often dismissed liberals as "pablum pukers." He commented, "Later I took things too far. It got out of control because the producers wanted me to top myself every night," he said in the early 1990s. "If I did something outlandish on Monday night, on Tuesday night, we'd have to think of something even more outlandish. And after awhile, you work yourself toward the edge of the trampoline and you fall off. I fell off a number of times and I found it very displeasing."That effort to top himself every night led to perhaps the biggest embarrassment of his career when he claimed neo-Nazi skinheads attacked him in San Francisco, cutting off his hair and painting a swastika on his head. Authorities could never verify the attack, and Downey's critics pounced, calling it a publicity stunt. Just days later his show was cancelled.Still, Downey was proud of many aspects of "The Morton Downey Jr. Show," and had every right to be. He took credit for creating the talk-show format embraced today by Jerry Springer and others like him, although he said he never went as far in his day as Springer does. "Everyone says, 'Well, Springer's doing your show now,"' Downey told an interviewer in 1998. "That's not true. I didn't do sleaze. There were times that I did things that were a little sleazy, but I didn't do shows on my neighbor's collie dog having sex with my neighbor's wife." And besides, there still hasn't been another talk show host who was as confrontational as Mort. He was the complete over the top showman. He would challenge guests, sometimes even physically. As opposed to someone like Springer who would just walk around making inane comments. To even compare the two is absurd. One has a demanding stage presence while the other just weasels around on the stage.And although Mort was sometimes outrageous, he defended his show as giving a forum to working-class Americans who were fed up with what politicians in Washington, D.C., were doing with their tax money."It isn't the rich people who come up and say, 'Oh Mort, you're just great,"' Downey one said. "It's the blacks and the ethnics and the blue collars, those guys with too much hair on their shoulder blades. They want some answers." Born Sean Morton Downey Jr. on Dec. 9, 1933, the son of singer Morton Downey and dancer Barbara Bennett grew up in privilege, attended military school and earned a marketing degree and a law degree.As a young man he held a number of jobs, including special assistant on Capitol Hill, businessman, author, radio host, singer and songwriter. Among his most successful songs were the 1960s surf hits "Wipeout" and "Pipeline." Morton later also released a must-hear 1989 album, 'Morton Downey, Jr. Sings!' Although currently out of print, the CD is available regularly on ebay, and shows a warm, understanding, yet tasteful/tuneful side of Mort few rarely experienced, as evidenced by such selections as "Old Man," "Mr. Yuppie's Birthday Party," and "Solution to Pollution." But don't dare cross Mort, or you'll pay the consequences, as evidenced by such defiant-yet-feelgood anthems as "Hey, Mr. Dealer," "Lawyer Named Sue," and especially, the fan favorite "Zip It." He also appeared as an actor in such TV shows and movies as "Tales from the Crypt," "Meet Wally Sparks," "Revenge of the Nerds III," "Predator II" and the new "Rockford Files.""I keep getting all these 'bad actor of the year' awards, but it's not really acting," he once said, adding he would just play himself. Mort lost a lung to cancer in 1996 and unfortunately left us on March 24th, 2001 after a serious bout with the same illness. He was 67.
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