Father and son

Father and son study the boats from the Hudson River Promenade. 4:00 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Thursday, June 13, 2013. Yesterday was another beautiful day in New York with temps in the low 70s, all sunshine and even the traffic in midtown was (mainly) moving.

I went down to Michael’s for the Wednesday mass-lunch. Star Jones was at the table just inside the door, lunching with Dr. Holly Philips; next door Deb Shriver of Hearst was lunching with writer Pamela Keogh (news hadn’t got out yet about the window washers getting stuck on the 44th floor of the Hearst Tower when their scaffolding collapsed — rescued by the NYFD — everyone was reportedly very calm throughout).

Window washers stuck on the 44th floor of the Hearst Tower.

I was lunching with Laura Slatkin, founder and CEO of the fabulously successful Nest Fragrances (100% increase in sales, five years in a row). NEST’s client list includes more than 50 world class brands such as Ralph Lauren, Christian Dior, Restoration Hardware, Estee Lauder, Anthropologie, Tory Burch, D. Porthault, Jonathan Adler, Vera Wang, Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus.


	Laura and Harry Slatkin.

In the bay at Table One Diane Clehane was lunching and interviewing Kelly Lynch and Mitch Glazer who are in town promoting Magic City, the STARZ hit show created by Glazer and starring his wife (Ms. Lynch). Next door: Gerry Byrne of Penske Media. Next to them Terry Allen Kramer with Alana Stewart, and just beyond Nikki Haskell and Catherine Saxton. Next to them: Charles Grodin and Sandi Mendelson, literary publicist (Hilsinger-Mendelson).

Moving on:Alice Mayhew of Simon & Schuster with political pundit Joe Conason who must be writing a book; super-agent Boaty Boatright with Jay Cantor; Cindi Berger of PMK (representing Mariah Carey, Shakira) with Jill Fitzo (PR); Chuck Pfeifer; Dr. Mitch Rosenthal, founder of Phoenix House, celebrating a birthday; attorney Michael Kassan; Simone Levinson with Jennifer Keil of the NY Post; Wednesday Martin and agent Miriam Altshuler;Beverly Camhe with Adriana Shaw; political commentator and consultant Robert Zimmerman; Michael Kempner with Michael Neuman; Nina Griscom and Robert Rufino who recently joined Elle Décor as its interiors editor, with Michael Boodro the magazine’s E-I-C who hired him away from AD; Tom Goodman with Bettina Zilkha; Areyeh Bourkoff of Lion Tree; WSJ’s David SanfordandLewis Stein; Martin Bandler, Chair and CEO of Sony Music; Larry Hackett, Exec Editor of People; Paige Peterson with her son Peter Carey Peterson; Bill Siegel; Dave Dyer VP at Warner Brothers; Jason Oliver Nixon; Katia Mead; Peter Gregory; Peter Price with Robert Frye, docu filmmaker. You get the picture: business as usual, bigtime.

Last Wednesday, a week ago, Peggy Siegal held one of her famous screenings. This one, hosted by Dick Cavett, Katie Couric and Regis Philbin, a Magnolia Pictures’ “Évocateur; the Morton Downey Jr. Movie,” a film by Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller and Jeremy Newberger at the Paley Center for Media.

The press release that Peggy sent out described the film thusly:

Before entire networks were built on populist personalities; before reality morphed into a TV genre; the masses fixated on a single, sociopathic star: controversial talk-show host Morton Downey, Jr. In the late ‘80s, Downey tore apart the traditional talk format by turning debate of current issues into a gladiator pit. His blow-smoke-in-your-face style drew a rabid cult following, but also the title “Father of Trash Television.” Was his show a platform for the working man or an incubator for Snooki and The Situation? Ironbound Films’ ÉVOCATEUR: THE MORTON DOWNEY JR. MOVIE dissects the mind and motivation of television’s most notorious agitator.

This media situation was more than 25 years ago and so there is a whole audience of talk show fans, junkies, aficionados out there now who may never have heard of him.

I had heard of him long before, because in the early 1960s when I first came to New York out of college, I had a friend whose stepfather was Morton Downey, the father of Morton Jr.

Actually Morton Jr. was not known by that name but by the name Sean. Sean Morton Downey. Sean was one of four or five children of Morton Sr.

Morton Downey with children, l. to r., Sean (Morton Downey, Jr.), 19, Tony, 15, and Michael, 21
(© Bettmann/CORBIS).

The father, Morton Downey, was one of the most famous singers in the early days of radio. A young Irish-American man from Wallingford, Connecticut whose father was the local fire chief. Morton started his career, singing-selling sandwiches on the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad on the route from Wallingford to Grand Central.

The sandwich-selling troubadour had a very high Irish tenor voice, so high that he once remarked he was just this side of being a castrato – the Italian term for a classical male singing voice within the range of a soprano, mezzo-soprano or contralto. There was a story in the family that the first time Morton’s mother heard him on a record, she said to her son: “a beautiful voice, who is she?”

By the time he was in his early 20s, he was working as a singer for the Paul Whiteman Orchestra (it was Whiteman who conducted the orchestra to George Gershwin’s debut of his “The Rhapsody in Blue” at the Aeolian Hall in New York in 1924).

The young Irish tenor was soon touring clubs in Paris, London, Berlin, New York and Hollywood, where he appeared in his first film produced by Jospeh P. Kennedy’s new RKO Radio Pictures.

In 1930, he was writing songs – including his signature hit “Wabash Moon” – and he opened his own club The Delmonico in New York. At that time he started appearing nightly on the Camel Quarter Hour broadcast for Camel Cigarettes.

In 1932, he was voted Radio Singer of the Year. This was a big deal as radio was sweeping the country and its performers were becoming nationally famous. By the late 1930s, Downey was an established star, a household name, earning $5000 a week (or 20 times or more that in today’s currency), one of the top three singing stars along with Kate Smith and Bing Crosby.

The three biggest stars in radio in the 1930s, Morton Downey, Kate Smith, and Bing Crosby.

His Coca-Cola Hour on the radio was bringing him 30,000 fan letters a week. It also brought him great fame as well as great friendships with the rich and the famous. Cultivating such friendships was a talent of his as great as his singing voice. Joseph P. Kennedy, by then also famous multi-millionaire tycoon (before his sons were old enough to run for political office), was one of his closest friends and would remain so for the rest of his life. So was Walter Winchell, and Sherman Billingsley who owned the Stork Club. Another great fan of his (and a well publicized fact at the time) and totally charmed by his Irish wit was the former King of England, the Duke of Windsor.


Morton Downey Sr., 1944.

His popularity came out of the growing Irish population in America that had a sentimental appreciation for tenors. It was a soft, sweet voice, gentle yet with decidedly powerful masculine tones to it. To hear him sing “Oh Danny Boy,” or “The Wearin’ of the Green” was to evoke real tears in both men and women.

Morton also had that famous Irish charm. When I met him I was already aware of his fame because my mother and father often referred to him, but I was unaware of his, what I would call, “world class” personality. It was more than a way with words, and more than the dulcet tones with which he could throw away a quip. To this young man, he seemed to know everybody in the world and his anecdotes about the famous and the rich (including the notorious) were spoken with an assurance that denied any falsehood.

As a kid who grew up on the New York tabloids, listening to Mr. Downey (as we young people called him) talk about the New Yorkers on the scene in those days, was the equivalent of seeing a movie star in person a dozen times over. He was witty, slightly but smoothly cynical, and frequently with a clever turn of phrase.


	Morton Downey with Barbara Bennett, 1932.

He was also by then a rich man. He and his second wife – a wealthy mining heiress – lived in an exotically splendid apartment that occupied an entire floor of a building on Park Avenue, filled with chinoiserie, French antiques, Impressionist paintings, and photographs of their famous or socially prominent friends. One which was most notable was an inscribed photograph of Mr. Kennedy whose son Jack had just been elected President. This was all heady stuff to a college boy starry-eyed in the big town.

All of his children from his first marriage were grown and none were living with him by then. His first wife Barbara, mother of his children, had become a forgotten woman, but born into a famous American theatrical family – the Bennetts. The patriarch was a matinee idol of the early 20th century American stage named Richard Bennett. Two of his three daughters were famous movie stars: Constance Bennett and Joan Bennett. Barbara was less successful with her stage career and was said to have been an alcoholic and, as it often was with families in those days, always referred to sotto voce (quiet shame) or not at all.

I met Sean Downey at his father and stepmother’s apartment one Sunday morning when he had come by to visit Morton. I knew nothing about their relationship although it was easy to see that Sean (later Morton Jr.) was a young man both intimidated by his father as well as anxious to gain his favor.

He had been “working” as a songwriter (maybe following in his father’s footsteps?) and a few years before had recorded a standard called “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” which did not turn out to be a hit.

Although I knew nothing about the relationship between father and son except for what I saw in the room that morning, it was clear to me that the father’s stepchildren -- the children of his wealthy and beautiful young wife, were more likeable or considered more worthy of affection than the man’s own son.

Famous parents are often a burdensome conundrum for their children. Show business is rife with examples of screwed-up kids who are invariably referred to as “disappointments” to their celebrated parents. And famous parents are invariably angry about that “disappointment” and not very helpful in the situation. What often results is a child with an awkward, if overbearing desire to please, who usually fails to succeed in that quest. That was the impression I had of Sean Downey that Sunday morning in his father’s grand Park Avenue apartment.

Away from his father’s presence, Sean was a congenial, personable, kindly individual who just trying to make his way in the world of would-be fame and fortune, and no doubt hoping to gain the favor or approval of his famous father.

It was my feeling that he faced an impossible task. I happen to be one of those people who is sensitive to the relationships between parents and children. I also happen to believe that it all begins with the relationship of the parent to the child. People in Show Business, especially stars get a disproportionate amount of daily attention that even children don’t get after infancy. They are aware of it in some cases and often unaware of it in many cases. Children can easily become ciphers in a family situation where the effects of the limelight rules. It was my impression (and I eventually saw it with more than one of the Downey siblings) that the father’s perception of his children was related to his perception of his former wife. Not good news and even an insurmountable task to overcome for the children.

Morton Downey Jr. on camera.

I saw Sean (Morton Jr.) only a couple of times after that first meeting. I never got to know him although he was a personable young man (still in his 20s) and he never betrayed his outward awe, admiration and respect for his father.

So it came as a real shock to me when I first saw him on his famous television show as Morton Downey Jr. He was far-out, loud, boisterous and at times even bombastically nasty – yet always looking to get all the attention all the time. I could only think: Here I am Dad! Riding on the Starmaking Express! I’m famous now too!

At least for those on-camera moments.

Fast TV friends: Morton Downey Jr. and Al Sharpton.

I could only think that his father – who by that time in his life had settled into civilian non-show business life as a member of the social and financial establishment, living in New York and Palm Beach, would have been mortified at the sight of it. A very successful, retired celebrity – Morton had quit his singing career years before, and was strictly a businessman (owning Coca-Cola Bottling companies as well as consulting as a rainmaker/conduit for tycoons, politicians and other businessmen eager to mine his vast connections at the highest levels of government and business). He still maintained friendships in The Business but only among those who could be regarded as peers. He was, for example, a close friend of Frank Sinatra– who’d idolized him as a kid aspiring to a singing career, and later became a close friend.

Morton Jr. had been developing his career as a talk show host on radio by the early 1980s, where he acquired a reputation for an abrasive style at KFBK-AM in Sacramento. He was fired in 1984 (and replaced by Rush Limbaugh).

I don’t know what Morton Sr.’s opinion was of his son’s “developing” career but I would make a calculated guess that Father was not impressed. The elder Morton Downey died the following year, in 1985 at age 84, however, and so, now his son was free to be whomever and whatever he wished.

In 1987 he taped his first Morton Downey Jr. Show on WWOR-TV, and blew the roof off of daytime talk show television, becoming, however briefly, maybe more famous than his famous father had ever been.

His career suddenly went stratospheric, but like a comet, here, way up there, and gone. It was almost as if he’d got too far away from himself, like some kind of video maniac. The few times I saw him on television, he always seemed to be pushing the envelope too obviously. I was seeing a man, in my opinion, who wanted to prove something to his father. An impossible task, for starters. The cards had been stacked against him long before, and now the old man wasn’t even around, so who cared? Only Sean, maybe. He died of cancer in 2001 six months from his sixty-ninth birthday, now unknown to a new generation of talk shows and reality shows hyping sex and Kardashians, would-be and otherwise.