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10 Best Facts about Geraldo Rivera
Lights, cameras and action! I doubt there is a grown up individual in America who does not know Geraldo and his iconic moustache. Since 1970 Geraldo has gained public attention with his larger-than-life antics that have included tackling controversial topics of the day.
Geraldo Rivera is an American journalist, attorney, author, political commentator, and former television host. He gained popularity for hosting the tabloid talk show Geraldo from 1987 to 1998. This show featured controversial guests and theatricality, which led to the characterization of the show as “Trash TV” by Newsweek and two United States senators.
The biggest question surrounding Geraldo success is, is he a brilliant genius who knows how to trigger his audience, or is he just ignorant and all what he displaces is his foolishness? To help you answer this question, here are the 10 best facts about Geraldo Rivera;
1. Grew up in a bi-religious family
Religious symbols – Unsplash
Religion is known to play a very critical role in the day-to-day life of religious people. Your religious beliefs affect how you view the world, interact with other people, and the decisions you make. Now imagine how confusing it is for a person to grow up in a bi-religious family with two opposing beliefs.
Geraldo was born to a Jewish mother and Catholic father, who neither one of them converted religions when they got married. To understand how much of a big deal this was at the time, Geraldo revealed during an interview, “… they met. Got married, much to the chagrin of her parents, who sat Shiva. They went into mourning because she was marrying outside the Jewish religion and marrying a Puerto Rican.”
While growing up, Geraldo was raised “mostly Jewish” and had a bar mitzvah ceremony. In 1972, he got a Star of David tattoo on his left hand after the Maillot massacre. In an interview, he explained, “I got the tattoo because if the time ever came again when someone was asking for the Jews, I wanted to be the tough guy who brandished this clenched fist and said “here’s one.”
2. Combating racism as a growing child
Growing up, Geraldo and his family were subjected to prejudice and racism. Not only was Geraldo the son of an immigrant, but he was also Jewish. This resulted in him getting into fist fights where he was called both a spic, an ethnic slur used in the United States for people from Latin American countries and states, and a kike, an ethnic slur for Jewish people.
In an effort to cover up the ethnicity of her children to prevent them from experiencing racism, Lillian, the mother of Geraldo, took to misspelling their Surname “Rivera” by adding an extra “I” to be “Riviera”. During an interview, Geraldo says, “When I was born, my mother filled in my birth certificate with the name Gerald Riviera, adding an extra “i” to my father’s surname.”
He continues, “Whenever we asked about the inconsistencies, she would shrug shyly and joke her way out of it. “I just forgot how to spell it”, she would say, and leave it at that. Underneath, I came to realize, she was deeply embarrassed over what was a clumsy attempt at an ethnic cover-up.”
3. Geraldo worked very hard to get where he is today
Geraldo Rivera, 1970s – Wikipedia
Today’s society has forgotten the co-relation between hard work and success. The media focuses on the few successful people who made it without completing school or having to struggle to attain their success.
Geraldo’s from rags-to-riches stories is on the few realistic and inspiring story in the media today. He worked hard at school and graduated with a B.S. in business administration in 1965 from the University of Arizona. He then went on to pursue a law by enrolling at Brooklyn Law School in 1966.
His work as a lawyer attracted the attention of WABC-TV news director Al Primo, who offered Geraldo a job as a reporter. As Geraldo was not trained in media, he went to study introductory broadcast journalism under Fred Friendly in the Ford Foundation-funded Summer Program in Journalism for Members of Minority Groups at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1970.
After which, Geraldo become the renowned reporter we know today.
4. Dodging Vietnam War
Geraldo conducting interviews aboard USSS Carl Vinson – Wikimedia Commons
It is hard to imagine the man who has been at the war forefront reporting to us on different disasters’ progresses once avoided getting drafted to the military during the Vietnam War by enrolled at Brooklyn Law School in 1966.
Over the years, Geraldo has expressed his guilt for not enrolling; “I really felt for decades that my avoiding service was something that was a shame, that was a black mark on the way I saw myself. I didn’t want anyone to ever think that I didn’t go because I lacked the courage to be in combat.”
To compensate for this, Geraldo has actively put himself in high risk situations to bring his audience the actual, real story. As he puts it, “That’s the life that I chose, you know, to go and risk it all because that’s best way to tell the story.”
5. Taking advantage of his race
Geraldo Rivera, 2011 – Wikimedia Commons
Earlier, we had highlighted on how Geraldo’s mother had attempted to cover up their ethnicity in an attempt to secure a better future for her children. Geraldo was actually born Gerald Riviera, which does not sound Spanish and is sort of ambiguous.
Ironically, Geraldo was able to take advantage of his heritage and secure a better future for himself. Geraldo himself has confessed, “ First of all it’s why I got the job. I mean, we have to be honest about why am even a newsman. I would not be a newsman but for affirmative action. I was a newsman because I was selected by my first boss, Al Primo, at Eyewitness News because I was Hispanic and because I spoke Spanish.
Geraldo also ended up using the pronunciation used by the Puerto Rican side of Rivera’s family because Al Primo wanted his name to be identifiably Latino.
6. Geraldo garnered the Peabody Awards
Geraldo Rivera, 2008 – Wikipedia
In 1972, Geraldo was awarded the Peabody Award for his report on the neglect and abuse of patients with intellectual disabilities at Staten Island’s Willowbrook State School and Rockland County’s Letchworth Village.
The George Foster Peabody Awards, or simply the Peabody Awards, honours the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and online media. It is the oldest major electronic media award in the United States’s.
This resulted in Geraldo’s media career growing as he had gained national attention, thus he appeared on ABC national programs such as 20/20 and Nightline upon their launches in 1978 and 1979 respectively.
In addition, this reporting also inspired John Lennon, singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles, to put on a benefit concert, One to One, on August 30, 1972, at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
7. Geraldo’s highest rating TV special
Al Capone by Miami Police Department from Wikimedia Commons
On April 21, 1986 Geraldo hosted the two-hour TV special The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults. The show centred on the live opening of a walled-off underground room in the Lexington Hotel in Chicago, once owned Al Capone.
Prior to its airing, the show had been greatly hyped as potentially revealing great riches or dead bodies on live television. Unfortunately, when the vault was opened, it was empty apart from dirt and several empty bottles. Disappointed, Geraldo apologized to his audience, and the show became infamous for its disappointing ending.
Despite the criticism the programme received, it ended up becoming the most-watched syndicated television special that year because an estimated audience of 30 million viewed the TV special.
In his 1991 autobiography Exposing Myself, Geraldo wrote, regarding the event, “My career was not over, I knew, but had just begun. And all because of a silly, high-concept stunt that failed to deliver on its titillating promise.”
8. Geraldo has his nose broken while airing a programme
Geraldo Rivera, 2004 – Wikimedia Commons
Between 1987 and 1998 Geraldo started a television show hosting a daytime talk show, Geraldo, that was known for its controversial guests. One of its episodes featured racist skinheads, white supremacists and a black activist, surprise! Surprise! An on-air brawl occurred.
The brawl occurred when one of the white supremacist uttered racist remarks, prompting black civil rights leader Roy Innis to grab him by the neck. This was followed a full-blown out fight with chairs and punches flying left, right and center. In the process, Geraldo was hit in the nose by a chair.
According to Geraldo, his hard-earned lesson through this experience was: ″Throw the first punch next time.″
9. Geraldo’s political aspirations
It is no secret that Geraldo is a Republican who is vocal about his political stand and views. But did you know that Geraldo has on various occasions thought about including his name on the ballot papers?
In the 2013 United States Senate special election in New Jersey, to fill the Senate seat left vacant by the death of Frank Lautenberg, Geraldo considered running as a Republic but eventually decided not to.
He also considered standing for the 2022 United States Senate election in Ohio after incumbent Senator Rob Portman announced he would not seek re-election for his seat in the Senate. Again, he eventually decided not to.
He has also joked during interviews that he will make a great mayor for New York City due to his Jewish and Puerto Rican ancestry. This is because of the great number of New Yorkers who are Hispanic and Jewish.
Now the question is will Geraldo ever make the final leap and have his name on the ballot paper? And you, as the reader of this article, will you vote for him?
10. Botched surgery
Geraldo Rivera on May 2, 2011 – Wikipedia
With age comes different health complications. In recent years, some questions about Geraldo’s health are being raised, especially in connection to him using a cane.
Geraldo has never spoken specially about the issue, but it is speculated he started to experience back pains after a botched medical procedure he underwent in New York in 2010. After the surgery, his right leg was severally affected, and he needed to use a cane to move.
