THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 6, 1995 TAG: 9510060072
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Larry Bonko
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
OF THE SIX new daytime talk shows, I like ``Danny!'' best because the host, Danny Bonaduce, is far more interesting than any of his guests. (WVBT carries ``Danny!'' locally Monday through Friday at 11 a.m.)
You could watch Sally Jessy Raphael for years and not know much about her. Same deal with Phil Donahue, Jerry Springer and Jenny Jones. Bonaduce, on the other hand, tells viewers everything about himself, working in revealing vignettes while interviewing his guests.
When the subject of a recent show was ``I want to marry a virgin,'' Bonaduce spilled the news that he and his wife, Grechen, didn't sleep together until their wedding night in 1990.
The other morning, Bonaduce did a show about people who are addicted to watching talk shows and soap operas. One woman is so hooked that the only time she has for cooking, cleaning and sewing is during commercials.
Yet she denied her addiction.
``I understand,'' said Bonaduce. ``That's the exact same reaction I had when I was in rehabilitation.''
Yes, Bonaduce, the kid from ``The Partridge Family,'' has walked on the wild side. He's been busted for possessing cocaine, brawled with a transvestite in Hollywood and popped up in a goodly number of tabloid headlines such as, ``Danny Partridge dead broke and starving!''
``There was a time when I thought I'd never work again,'' Bonaduce admitted to members of the Television Critics Association in Los Angeles not long ago. He also has shared that fact with his TV audience, telling viewers recently that ``I was incredibly unemployed for years. I was an adorable kid who became a hideously fat, drunk adolescent.''
In was in that period that the dead-broke-and-starving story got out. Bonaduce tells of disc jockeys around the country who raised money for him. He was swamped with cans of Spam. ``Although I was completely broke at that time, I gave the food and money that was raised to charities in Chicago,'' said Bonaduce.
In 1988, when it appeared that his career in show business was over - Bonaduce tells of working as an assistant restaurant manager for $17,900 a year - he tried a radio talk show in Chicago and has been successful ever since.
At 36, he's been sober for five years.
Bonaduce recently gave up smoking. He looks trim, with hair as red as ever.
This guy is so clean and pure, he wouldn't qualify as a guest on his show, which has done nothing to bring down the readings on the daytime talk show sleaze-o-meter. What separates Bonaduce from the other sleazemeisters, including Gabrielle Carteris of ``Beverly Hills 90210,'' is that if he doesn't like somebody or something being discussed, Bonaduce shows it.
I've seen him slap guests with his script, loudly disagree with other guests, tell members of the panel to ``get your priorities straight'' and admit that he's asked stupid questions.
It's a hoot.
As for Carteris, let me say that I am disappointed to see that nice Andrea of ``Beverly Hills 90210'' immersed in talk-show muck with subjects such as ``I want my women older and bolder,'' and ``Hookin' in Hollywood.'' What happened to her promise to uplift daytime TV?
Bonaduce admitted that there are talk shows and talk-show hosts who offend even him, a man who once lived the low life.
Jenny Jones is such a host, said Bonaduce.
If a segment of his show is bombing, Bonaduce will rescue it, he said, by interviewing himself. His life makes great television.
Haven't we heard it all by now?
``You know, I really don't have any skeletons in the closet that people don't know about. I have no secrets left,'' he said.
How could he? Bonaduce never stops talking about himself on ``Danny!'' by CNB