Boyer, moving along San Vicente Boulevard.
Just part of the Olympic marathon course which ends about 20 miles from here at the LA Coliseum.
And to get that far, you need stamina.
Tonight, we'll meet some athletes who make this 26-mile marathon look like a warm-up
exercise as we profile some real endurance athletes.
We'll introduce you to Wally George, an ultra-conservative who makes a carnival out of confrontation.
We'll profile some Southern Californians who truly went from rags to riches.
And finally, we'll see just what a little accessorizing can do for your wardrobe.
That's all coming up in the next half hour, or three miles, whichever comes first here
on Eye on Hollywood.
Southern California has always been fertile ground for trendsetters, for prophets, cult
leaders and fanatics.
Meet Wally George, king of the hot seat.
In the shadow of the Matterhorn lies Orange County's Channel 56, home of what some consider
to be the most obnoxious man on television.
Make up your own mind.
Here's radical right-wing talk show host, Wally George.
When I do my opening commentary, if you hear anything that I say that you like, feel free
to applaud.
And cheer.
Are you ready to get on the hot seat with Wally George?
It's reminiscent of the old Joe Pine Show, where the hot-tempered talk show host corners
the unsuspecting guest and goes in for the kill.
Wally gets one hour a week to attack everything he hates, like communists.
Wally really hates communists.
You can make all the threats you want, Andropov, but the missiles are staying in Europe.
And if you guys don't like it, you can take a hike.
And Wally also hates critics.
That moron in the LA Times.
And Wally also hates Senator Kennedy.
Open up your wallet, Teddy, instead of your big mouth.
And Wally really hates promiscuous teenagers.
To the girls who are watching, let me give you the best contraceptive I know.
Let me give it to you.
Say, no way, Charlie.
That's the biggest contraceptive.
Thank you very much.
I'll be right back.
Don't go away.
But most of all, Wally hates liberals.
And they're not too crazy about him either.
A recent shouting match over Grenada turned into a small-scale war when pacifist Blaise
Bonpain occupied the hot seat.
But he finally came up with a way to make even Wally speechless.
This is my show, and if you don't knock it up, I'm throwing you out personally.
Can you hear that, Marine buddy?
I think Wally is exactly what your mother and father told you not to do.
When you were two years old, they told you never to call people names.
And he calls them slime, scum, and that sort of thing, and he gets away with it.
We like to think that Wally George is the average viewer with a beer in his hand who
wants to speak out but never really gets the chance.
And Wally represents that to the average viewer.
America is still number one, Bonpain.
Now, let me explain about the audience.
I'm here to watch Wally.
I've never seen him before, but I love to see people get chopped.
He's the only guy I know that can embarrass anybody in their living room when they're
by their self.
And I'm tired of all these Republicans and conservatives, and I think Wally George is
completely insane.
They are a little rowdy, but that wasn't always the case.
Six months ago, the crowd looked more like this.
I think that Channel 56 chose the right person in their staging to hire you, the number one,
I think.
Well, thank you.
Anybody want to applaud that?
Wally's become a cult figure to college students, and their energy contributes a lot to the
show's noisy charm.
Because of nine death threats, they're searched for guns and knives on the way into the studio.
Have your tickets in your hand.
Are you saying that the Holocaust never happened?
The Holocaust never happened.
Oh, come on.
The show works best when the guests suppose Wally's conservative point of view, like Nazi
leader Stan Wittek and the father of LSD, Dr. Timothy Leary.
You're going to answer my question or I'm tossing you off the stage.
Oh, Wally, please don't make me go, Wally.
It turns into a free-for-all depending on how they react to Wally.
If they want to be bizarre, then he gets bizarre.
And all of a sudden, it gets out of hand.
When that happens, he throws them off.
Wally lives modestly in a small apartment complex in the Valley, surrounded by autographed
pictures of his heroes, beyond the opportunity to chat about life as a Hollywood conservative.
Wally, are you a clown?
You've been called a clown.
Come on.
Are you a clown?
Absolutely not.
I am a very sincere person.
What I say, I really mean.
I came very close to becoming a minister, and I think I would have been a damn good one,
if you'll pardon the expression.
I have been called evangelistic on my show.
What I say on my show, I mean right here.
You had a guy on the program named William Margold, a pornographer, and you asked him
if he would allow his daughter to appear in a movie like that, and he said, I certainly
would have no problem with that.
You called him a maniac, a scum or whatever, and got him off the show, threw him off the
stage.
And yet your daughter, Rebecca DeMornay, appeared in Risky Business in some very explicit sex
scenes, not nude, but leading little to the imagination.
How can you say that to that man?
Isn't that a little hypocritical of you?
My daughter never asked me if she could do Risky Business.
She's 21 years of age.
If Rebecca DeMornay had come to me and said, Daddy, do you think I should do this picture?
I would say no.
And I would tell her that right now in the camera.
She never asked me, but I will tell you this, that Rebecca is going to be a very big star.
I'm very proud of her.
I want that to be known out there.
But I would like to see her do things a little on a higher level.
What do you like when you're off?
All right, you're relaxed, the private life of Wally George.
How would you say it?
I don't have a lot of close personal friends.
I put everything I have into my career, into my work.
The friends that you have, you say you have a few good friends.
Are they really, truly, true good friends?
Hollywood to me, Paul, is a really rotten town.
They love you, Paul, when you're up and not with you when you're down.
And they love to see you fall.
Oh, let me tell you something.
When I was doing the Sam Jordy Show about 10 years ago, my phone here at the house and
at my office never stopped ringing.
Wally, let's have lunch.
I got someone great for your show, invited out.
I had more invitations, Paul, than I could handle.
The day after it was announced in the Los Angeles Times, the Sam Jordy Show had been
canceled.
I went to my office and my phone did not ring one time.
I came home and for one week nobody called me.
And that tells you something.
My friends never called me.
That hurts me even now that I'm saying it.
It's hurting me in my gut.
And then when I got my own show back on the air again, right now, when I am starting to
get hot on my own.
Now, Paul, my phone is ringing all the time again and I'm sitting back and saying, hey,
wait a minute.
Where were you when I needed you?
I've gotten really burned, hurt by this phony town called Hollywood.
They're only with you, Paul, when you're hot.
And Wally's hot right now.
He's just signed a syndication deal and Hot Seat could be a hot hit nationally by the
end of the year.
And how did he feel about tonight's show?
It turned out very exciting.
I think I won.
From pro-rassling for the mind to endurance athletes.
It's a tough transition.
That's why they invented commercials.
We'll be back in 124 seconds.
So stick around.
Hidden Valley Ranch in a bottle?
It is, after all these years.
Wow!
Look how thick it is.
I pronounce it uniquely delicious.
The unique Hidden Valley Ranch blend of buttermilk, herbs, and spices in a bottle.
They couldn't.
They did.
And my favorite.
At last, Hidden Valley Ranch in a bottle.
Don't you wish everything fit like Lee?
Fit like Lee jeans do.
Don't you wish everything fit as well as Lee jeans fit on you?
Don't you wish everything felt as good?
Don't you wish everything only could?
Don't you wish everything fit?
Lee, the brand that fits.
We asked the viewers in our area what they really wanted to see in their 6 o'clock news.
For local interest, for local news, that's what I like to see.
I like to see news that's of local interest.
83 was a good year and 84 has been even better.
And the hot's being done for youth.
It takes that to change as the summer grows longer and the days get hotter.
Mostly interested in everything else in the weather, especially in the weather.
Look at the satellite.
There's a low pressure system again.
Locally, all the things that are happening in town.
It's costing taxpayers thousands of dollars each day as the opening is delayed.
Local sports would happen, you know, to high school teams around the valley and then baseball
spheres.
You'll see the news that Bowie's looking for on News 35 at 6 and 11 where the news touches
your life every day.
If you're a weekend jogger like me, the people you're about to meet make those little aches
and pains seem relative.
I would not have been able to live with myself if I had dropped out of the race.
The heat while I was out there was 160 to 180 degrees.
It's been recorded over 200 degrees.
I think this is a tremendous challenge.
There are very few things left in this world that a person can be first at.
Ultra endurance athletes.
In the 70s, it was the marathon.
In the 80s, it's the triathlon.
But for a growing number of ultra athletes, the challenge of mind and body has taken on
mind boggling dimensions.
Let's meet three of these ultra athletes.
Ultimate bicyclist, John Howard of San Diego.
His goal, to compete in a bike race across America.
His challenge, to finish in 10 days.
Ultimate swimmer, Julie Ridge of New York.
Her goal, to swim around Manhattan Island.
Her challenge, to do it twice.
Ultimate triathlete, Craig Chambers of Encino.
His goal, a 200 mile bike, 10 mile swim, and 100 mile run triathlon.
His challenge, to complete it in the heat of a Death Valley summer.
Nobody really knows what the limits of human endurance are, and some people really enjoy
testing those limits.
Ultra athletes thrive on testing their mind and bodies.
For them, it's a challenge to reach new endurance levels.
But it can also become an obsession in both training and diet.
With some endurance athletes burning more than 12,000 calories per day, complex carbohydrates
become a dietary must.
35 year old John Howard, a three time Olympic cyclist and winner of the 1981 Ironman triathlon,
set out to tackle his ultimate challenge.
A race across America against three other cyclists.
We started the cross country race in Santa Monica on the pier.
From my point of view, it was a disaster.
It started bad and got worse.
Suffering from leg and stomach cramps, John Howard was in bad shape.
With his competitors pulling away, it looked as if John would be forced to withdraw.
Amazingly, he crawled back on his bike and continued his journey.
Averaging two hours of sleep per night, John pushed forward.
Finally, 10 days and 3,000 miles later, John Howard made it to New York.
Though he didn't win the race, the mere fact he finished was reward enough.
Plunging into the freezing water, 26 year old Julie Ridge sets off on her 57 mile journey
to swim around Manhattan Island twice.
With family and friends closely checking her condition and spirit, Julie presses on, mile
after mile.
As darkness merges into daylight, Julie's exposure to the cold becomes a major concern.
There was a period about a half an hour ago where Julie's skin color turned a little chalky.
She was doing breaststroke, her strokes slowed down.
There were signs of hypothermia.
Determined to achieve her goal, Julie puts her pain aside and continues.
She finally reaches the finish.
After 21 hours, she has become the only person to swim around Manhattan Island twice.
25 year old triathlete, Craig Chambers, his ultimate challenge, a Death Valley triathlon.
The event itself was too...