Between the Bylines

by Doug Krikorian

  Sports Illustrated swimsuit model and entrepreneur Kathy Ireland shares a moment with Doug at KMPC.

  If, as a kid growing up amid grape vineyards and fruit trees in a joyless agricultural area of appalling tedium, someone had told me one day I would be fired from a Hollywood radio station because I was burdened by a role in a Hollywood movie, I would have reacted to such a ridiculous prophesy with sustained howls of laughter.

  But that’s precisely what occurred on March 3, 1994. I had taken a day off from my program to fulfill a small role I had in Cobb—I was typecast as a sportswriter— and the shooting took place at an old Hollywood tavern called Boardner’s. At about 3:00 p.m., during a break, I received a phone call from KMPC’s program director, Scotty O’Neil, who informed me he was firing me because I had failed to show up at an event that day in Willow Springs—about an hour’s drive north of Los Angeles in Kern County—to test drive a corporate sponsor’s car.

  “You gave me permission to miss it,” I reminded O’Neil.

  “Yes, I did,” he replied sheepishly. “But your partner [Brian Golden] didn’t show up, and the general manager [Bill Ward] decided both of you had to go.”

  The rest of the afternoon I was subjected to the taunts of Bozo Caplan, who also was appearing in Cobb. “You traded a radio career for a movie career,” he kept chiding, expressing no empathy for my having lost my radio gig. Leave it to ol’ Bozo to inject humor at such an inappropriate time, although my latest firing was perfect fodder for his rakish humor.

  Shockingly, my movie career didn’t exactly take off, although I would go on to make nonspeaking appearances in Ron Shelton’s Play It to the Bone with Woody Harrelson and Antonio Banderas and Dollar for the Dead with Howie Long and Emilio Estevez. The latter was filmed in the same location in Spain where Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood made their famous cowboy flicks and where The Magnificent Seven, El Cid, Lawrence of Arabia and many other movies had been shot.

  I thought now, for sure, I was finished with radio—oh, was I wrong! Suddenly I had a lot more leisure time, since the L.A. Football Company TV gig also had come to an end when CBS lost its NFL contract and, shockingly, I wasn’t being bombarded with film offers as Bozo Caplan had so blithely predicted would be the case.

  At the end of the year, as always in those days, I headed off to the south of France—I usually stayed a week at the Noga Hilton in Cannes before going on to other European destinations—but before I did, I called Gillian and extended her an invitation to join me. “No, I don’t think that would be good,” she said. “I just can’t forget what you did to me.”

  But at least she no longer was hanging up on me. We actually spoke for twenty minutes on that occasion, and I felt her softening toward me. “We’ll get together in the south of France next year,” I said before hanging up.

  And I did visit Cannes the following year, and I did once again ask Gillian to join me. Once again, she declined, and I decided at that point not to call her again.

  And I never would have had Gillian herself not prompted it.

  Chapter 10

  In March 1995, McDonnell-Douglas rose again, out of the radio ashes. This time, Joe and I landed on an FM station called KMAX located in Sierra Madre, near Pasadena, and it was a small-time operation with a small-time management with, as it turned out, a small-time bankroll.

  I never was overjoyed by the lengthy drive—it was an eighty-mile round trip from Long Beach—and the fact that I didn’t receive a paycheck for my final three weeks of employment inspired my departure in July. Joe got mad at me for leaving, although he, too, later got stiffed, prompting his departure.

  The KMAX venture didn’t last long, but there were some memorable stunts we pulled like the day we contacted an English-speaking fellow at Saddam Hussein’s government office in Baghdad and vainly attempted to speak to Mr. Hussein, or the time we attempted to get the televangelist healer of ailing people Benny Hinn to come on with us and exorcise the many sins committed by our radio program, or the time we got O.J. Simpson’s confidant/freeway chauffeur Al Cowlings on the air live and asked him if his pal O.J. was guilty of murder.

  Incidentally, I wrote a lot of columns that year on the O.J. Simpson trial for the Long Beach paper. I reacted to his farcical acquittal with outrage and sarcasm, warning the good burghers of Brentwood to keep off the streets at night and be on the lookout for a serial killer since, after all, Simpson was found not guilty of murdering his former wife and Ronald Goldman (the Los Angeles Police Department closed its investigation of the case shortly after the Simpson verdict was announced, since it and almost everyone except the numskulls on the Simpson jury came to the conclusion that Simpson had committed the homicides).

  At that time, I once again reverted to being a dedicated participant on the dating scene. The heavy workload had slowed me down a bit in this area for a few years, but now that I was down to just my newspaper job, I resumed what had been a salient part of my existence for a good part of two decades.

  Indeed, after my departure from M in June 1981, I became like one of those wrongly convicted guys who suddenly gains his freedom after years of incarceration—only my incarceration was the prison of marriage.

  In looking back, I think I became a little crazed, manically determined to make up for the years the marriage had taken from me. I routinely went up to women I was attracted to and struck up impromptu conversations in every place imaginable—taverns, nightclubs, restaurants, shopping malls, dry cleaning outlets, grocery stores, drugstores, liquor stores, hotel lobbies, arenas, stadiums, parking lots, airplanes, trains, buses, elevators and public sidewalks.

  It was a hit-and-miss numbers game, and I was like a high-pressure salesman. I found the more women I pitched, the greater likelihood it was for me to make a connection.

  A person who enlightened me in this area was Johnny Ortiz, whom I met shortly after I had joined the Herald Examiner. Johnny later would become a high-profile Los Angeles fight figure, but at that time, he and his brother Ray owned a popular saloon in Downey called the Stardust Lounge. And at that time, Johnny already had established a widespread reputation for his seduction of women.

  In fact, the first time I ever heard Johnny’s name mentioned came in the spring of 1968 when I still was a wide-eyed sportswriter just a couple years removed from college. I happened to be riding in a car one afternoon with Bud Furillo, my boss at the Herald Examiner.

  Elvis Presley, a friend of Furillo, had called the Herald Examiner the previous day seeking information on some sporting event—Marlon Brando was another frequent caller to the newspaper—and I off-handedly said to Furillo, “Can you imagine all the women Elvis goes to bed with?” And Bud responded, “There’s a guy in Downey named Johnny Ortiz who fucks more women than anyone in the world. More than Elvis Presley. More than Frank Sinatra. More than Warren Beatty. More than Porfirio Rubirosa ever did. You can only can fuck so many women in a twenty-four-hour period, and Johnny averages at least two or three every day. And his record I hear is six.”

  Johnny “The Downey Flash” Ortiz (left) and Doug flank “The Greatest,” Muhammad Ali.

  I soon got to know Ortiz well—my first beat for the Herald Examiner was boxing—and began prying out of him the techniques he employed for his astonishing success with the ladies.

  “I found the key with women is to keep everything light and be a fun guy,” he said. “And don’t ever say anything of a negative nature. I found if you can get ladies to relax and to laugh, you can get them into bed. And you also have to show them a good time and never get uptight about anything. And don’t be fearful of poking fun at yourself. Self-deprecating humor can be very disarming to women. A lot of good-looking guys with great bodies can’t score on women because they have no idea what to say to them or how to act around them.”

  It took me a few years to embrace all of Ortiz’s theories, but I found out that they did work.

  I even wound up borrowing many of the inveigling spiels with which Ortiz charmed women.<
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  “We found each other at last—and now all that’s left for us to do is to start dating and prove it,” was one that always inspired a laugh from the ladies.

  “Pardon me, madame, I’m looking to find someone who will love me as much as I love myself, and I just know you’re that person,” was another one that inevitably drew a giggle.

  So did, “A person who is conceited is foolishly in love with himself. With me, it’s the real thing.”

  As did, “We’ve known each other for ten minutes now, and when do I get to meet mom?”

  One that I came up with was insufferably trite without a hint of humor until I added a desperately needed punch line.

  “My name is Doug Krikorian, I’m a sportswriter at the Herald Examiner and I’d love to take you out,” was the original bromide I dispensed to mostly head-shaking recipients.

  But when a few ladies responded by saying, “But I don’t even know you,” I instinctively began retorting, “That’s why I want to take you out. You have no idea of the cultural vacuum you’ve been enduring without me.”

  Laughter often would ensue, and so would many phone numbers and romantic adventures during those years that I squandered in a haze of alcohol, drugs and hangovers both in this country and Europe.

  Chapter 11

  I did enjoy many enchanting evenings during my dating heyday when I went from being a mere sensualist to such a knowledgeable connoisseur that I even wrote a small pamphlet on the subject with my then best friend, Tom Hodges, who went on to become a relationship advisor to men known now on the Internet as Doc Love.

  I suspect if I related all the compelling, if not in many cases implausible, tales, I would come off as an insufferable kiss-and-tell braggart or a laughable fabulist creating fiction à la Wilt Chamberlain and his claim of twenty thousand sexual conquests. I’m not proud one bit of my behavior—I’m actually now ashamed of it—since I didn’t gain anything tangible from it except a string of liaisons with ladies whose names long have faded in the mist of time.

  There are of course those I haven’t forgotten by the sheer dint of the feelings I had for them—two moved into my home after my divorce—or by the sheer dint of their unique sagas.

  I certainly never will forget the lady who linked me to, of all people, Howard Hughes, the famously reclusive billionaire Hollywood filmmaker, aerospace magnate, aviator pioneer and Las Vegas casino owner.

  It’s not exactly a startling revelation that Johnny Ortiz was responsible for such a bizarre quirk of nature.

  It happened in the spring of 1976, when David Mirisch, a well-known Beverly Hills public relations figure who was credited with discovering Farrah Fawcett, invited me to one of his charity celebrity tennis tournaments, which he was staging this time at the El Tapatio Hotel in Guadalajara, Mexico.

  While it’s verboten now for a newspaperman to accept gratuities, it was a common practice in those days when professional athletic teams and racetracks were generous with Christmas presents and when high-powered PR guys like Mirisch routinely tendered invitations to events in exotic locations.

  Indeed, many sports columnists in that era attended the American Airlines Celebrity Golf Tournament that was annually held in up-market places like Palm Springs and Scottsdale at the behest of the New York PR bigwig Nat Fields—and gifts included shoes, shirts, sports coats and various other items.

  There was no such largesse waiting for Johnny Ortiz and me in Guadalajara, although a five-day stay in a sprawling resort hotel certainly was enticing, since our airplane tickets, rooms, meals and beverages were taken care of by Mirisch’s company.

  When Johnny and I boarded the flight to Guadalajara at LAX, we found ourselves seated by two of the celebrities headed to the event, the actress Terry Moore, once married to Heisman Trophy winner Glenn Davis and one-time lover of Howard Hughes, and the singer Davy Jones, who had been a teenage heartthrob with The Monkees.

  We got to know each other well that day after a stop in Tijuana, where the flight was delayed for five hours. Ortiz, Moore and I started belting down drinks—Jones went off on his own for a while—and Johnny began dispensing his magical charm on Moore, who was reacting favorably to it.

  By the time we checked into the El Tapatio later that evening and ventured into its nightclub with its blaring disco music, Terry, Johnny and I were in a drunken state.

  It was apparent to me that Terry Moore was destined to be Johnny Ortiz’s latest conquest, but he whispered into my ear that he was sneaking away so I could be alone with Terry.

  He explained he was appreciative of my bringing him to Guadalajara instead of my wife, who, incidentally, was back home fuming that I had accepted Mirisch’s invitation (she’d have gone absolutely bonkers had she known I brought Johnny along with me, since she was quite aware of his libertine reputation).

  As he did so often behind the bar when he steered women who wanted him to male friends who wanted action, Johnny unselfishly sacrificed himself, and anyway, he knew there would be plenty of opportunities for lady companionship in the upcoming days, which there were (Johnny wound up spending most of his time at the El Tapatio with the beautiful wife of a wealthy Dallas heart surgeon who was vacationing alone).

  I escorted Terry Moore, who appeared in such films as Mighty Joe Young, Peyton Place and Beneath the 12-Mile Reef, back to her room after we danced a bit and wound up spending the night with a woman who had once lived with Howard Hughes and later claimed to have married him, which resulted in her receiving a reported seven-figure settlement from his estate in 1984.

  I wound up writing a column on Moore in the Herald Examiner and listed her age as forty-two, a fact disputed by several letter-writers who claimed to have graduated with her from Glendale High in 1949 and insisted that Moore was forty-seven.

  I ran into Terry Moore on several occasions in later years—twice at the Buggy Whip Restaurant in Westchester—and we’d laugh about that evening we shared together in a Guadalajara hotel room, during which a portion of our bedsheets wound up being singed by a fumbled lit cigarette.

  Another woman I’ll always recall with fondness was Cookie, who lived next door to me in the Downey apartment I moved into after my separation from M. We met one late evening when I went over and complained about her loud stereo music that had been reverberating against my bedroom wall, keeping me awake.

  She had a lank figure—I later would find out she spread only 105 pounds over her five-foot-eight frame—and a pretty, youthful face. She was twenty-one but easily could have passed for being a high school senior.

  She had a radiant smile and gave the instant impression of being one of those vibrant people game for anything, which she was. After asking her politely to turn down the music, I introduced myself and said, with tongue lodged firmly against my cheek, that it was now my fervent desire in life to take her to a Lakers game.

  She responded that she had never been to one and that she’d gladly go with me. She did, and that resulted in us dating during the next few months.

  During that time in which we danced a lot and drank a lot and did a lot of other things a lot, I became aware for the first time—it wouldn’t be the last—of incest. I had never known anyone who had been a victim of it, and frankly, I had never even given it any thought.

  As a youngster, Cookie had been forced to have sexual relations with her natural father for many years, as was her sister. She related the ghoulish story to me one emotional night and started crying hysterically.

  “I have nightmares about it all the time even though I’m not around my father any longer,” she would say. “It’s had a terrible effect on me.”

  I never knew how terrible it was until I received a phone call a few years later at the Herald Examiner from her sister informing me that Cookie had died from cirrhosis of the liver that was caused from alcoholism.

  “Cookie couldn’t stop drinking because of what my perverted father did to her,” said the sister. “I learned to live with the terrible memory. Cookie never did.
And she was too thin to handle all the alcohol she consumed.”

  Cookie and I stopped seeing each other shortly after I got her a job as a chip girl at a Bell Gardens casino—The Bicycle Club—when she apparently got involved with a fast crowd that hastened her death.

  She was twenty-six.

  There were a couple women I went out with in those days who had similar experiences, including one whose stepfather had started violating her when she was five and continued until she ran away from home at fifteen and wound up living with foster parents.

  “My mom was always gone at night working as a waitress, and my younger sister, younger brother and I would be left alone with my stepfather,” she said. “There were times when he’d force me to drink with him, as my brother and sister were sleeping. And other times, before I was allowed to go to a high school football game, he’d force me to have sex with him. I was just a young girl totally intimidated by him.

  “When I told my foster parents about him, they went to the police, and he was arrested. But my mom refused to believe it even happened—she thought I was making it all up because I didn’t like him—and she even testified against me in court. She said I used to wear tight shorts that caused the creep to become sexually aroused. And he got off Scot-free. Can you believe that?”

  No, and her admission and Cookie’s and that of another lady I saw for a while—she told me her grandfather had often fondled her—enlightened me on a subject with which I had been totally unaware.

  It has made me more empathic to those who have been victimized by deviant sexual conduct—and its cruel aftereffects—and also made me even more grateful that I was fortunate to have grown up in a normal, pleasant, loving household.

  Chapter 12

  I found serial dating to be an exhausting regimen. While the thrills of newness were intoxicating, there was a lot of rejection, heartache and monetary stress involved in it. You have to have a thick epidermis—sensitive souls should remain safely on the sidelines!—and marriage is a pleasing alternative to those who can’t handle the instability of single life.