Below is an excerpt from the book Shooting the Breeze with Baby Boomer Stars by Torchy Smith. The book is an entertaining collection of first-person stories and histories about baby boomer celebrities, gleaned from interviews on his iHeartRadio talk show “Baby Boomers Talk Radio.”

Geraldo Rivera. Just saying his name conjures an image of controversy that harkens back to when network news became more than just watching Walter Cronkite sitting at his desk. This chapter is my pet as I have known Geraldo for over 15 years. Although your perception of the man may, or may not change, after reading this chapter. On the other hand… you may have a better understanding of what makes him tick. But keep in mind: like the other chapters in this book, this is not a biography. In
Geraldo’s case, he just published his memoir aptly titled, The Geraldo Show, which is a reference to his legendary TV talk show.

Either way, Geraldo is a national personality. He began his career as a young, brash, local street reporter in the 1970s but he looked more like the kind of stylish dude who taught disco.

In 1972, Geraldo was an investigative journalist for WABC-TV in New York City, and that’s where my conversation with him begins. Even though I knew the answer, I asked him how he made the leap from local personality to national known figure. “Willowbrook,” he replied. “Back then we called institutions like Willowbrook the places where we kept the mentally-retarded. Today, of course, we use the terms ‘mentally disabled’ or ‘severely autistic.’ It was the largest state-run institution of its kind which was totally over populated. Willowbrook was one of the worst U.S. hospitals ever in existence and was located on Staten Island right in the shadow of New York City.”

At this point, I should remind the reader that remote television cameras were large, bulky and not easy to bring along on remote shooting locations. There were no satellites back then and street reporters were usually not equipped for live television. News items were shot on tape and were later run back to the studio in order to be aired. Geraldo was the grandfather of concealing cameras and shooting on the run. He is partly responsible for pioneering what has become known as “the ambush interview,” which was in its infancy when Geraldo began his career:

He continues, “I was friends with some doctors who were considered activists and had met them when I was a street lawyer. These doctors offered to steal me a key to one of the buildings and I got in at night to film the conditions. The place was like a bad kennel with 6000 patients (built to hold 4000) with feces smeared all over the place and unattended patients everywhere. The expose when aired had such an explosive impact that even people like John Lennon called me to help alleviate the conditions that I documented.”

Geraldo won a Peabody Award for this news series. I continued with this story and then prodded him to address a young man named Bernard, who he discovered as a patient during his evening exploits into Willowbrook. Bernard has cerebral palsy and was discarded into a sector of the general population where severely mentally disabled were housed in horrid conditions. Bernard was not misdiagnosed with his uncontrollable body movement, instead he was just warehoused. There was no rehabilitation, no nothing. Geraldo rescued him from Willowbrook, supported him financially and helped him to become a working member of society. Bernard could function; his conscious brain had also been normal, and he became a patient advocate for the state of New York. “We have had each other’s back for the last 45 years,” Geraldo said. “In fact, I am throwing him a retirement party as he is now reaching age 65.”

I remember Bernard walking down the aisle as a groomsman for Geraldo’s wedding to his wife Erica in 2013, and told Geraldo, “People should know about what you did for him. Many people only know you from your past with the Al Capone’s Tomb TV fiasco.”

I reminded him about the time when we were at a hotel lounge following my daughter’s wedding rehearsal dinner; how some rowdy guys from another party were screaming, “Hey, Geraldo - that Al Capone show sucked big time.”

At which point, Geraldo turned to me and said, “Almost every day someone wants to remind me of that event. But the joke is on everybody who tuned in to see that show…which was the highest rated TV show that year…including the Super Bowl.”

That Capone dud restarted Geraldo’s career, and he’s never stopped going. Now, people raz him about his appearance on Dancing with the Stars or that time in the 1980s when his nose was broken during an on-air fight with Nazis on his talk show. I tell him he’s a rare news celebrity because both Baby Boomers and the Mellenials are equally aware of him. “I was on TV for 47 years,” he said, “and to have a career where Saturday Night Live makes fun of you for five decades is quite an accomplishment”

We then talked a little bit about the corrupt Judge James Barbuto who once lived in Akron, Ohio, and who has since died. Geraldo, then working for ABC’s TV news magazine, 20/20, did an excellent undercover job to expose this individual to a national audience. Barbuto had been trading sex for lighter sentences to a group of prostitutes. It was quite a saga that resulted in lawsuits against Geraldo and ABC. The case ended up in federal court in Cleveland where Geraldo had for one week fighting a challenging snowy winter in North Eastern Ohio. [To learn more about this very entertaining scandal, just Google: “James Barbuto.”]

Geraldo then went to address about his work at 20/20....

Be sure to purchase Shooting the Breeze with Baby Boomer Stars to continue reading!

About the author

Torchy Smith has interviewed well over 100 celebrities on his iHeartRadio talk show “Baby Boomers Talk Radio.” He attended Butler University and Kent State. May 4th, 1970 was Smith’s last day at Kent State, where he witnessed the shootings by the Ohio National Guard. He was a graphic design student and had worked doing advertising layouts for several employers. After gravitating to sales and building a successful career selling to large retailers, Smith began investing in real estate in the 80s. At the same time, he also started a ribbon business, which he sold in 2006 and went into semi-retirement. Smith always had an interest in seeking a way to combine his nostalgia obsession with communications through the internet. As a self-starter, he learned and kept up with the computer age that was surging in the 90's. Smith was then able to combine those skills with his graphic design background. What resulted was his accomplishments in creating videos and communications with celebrities from the past. Smith has been on numerous radio programs, commenting on the pulse of where baby boomers now fit into today's world.

Image: Justin Hoch [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)] (cropped)