An earlier version of this essay on Morty Matz was co-written a few years ago by Jerry Schmetterer, a 23-year veteran of the Daily News as a reporter, bureau chief and metropolitan editor, and his dear friend of more than 60 years, Matz, whose existence you will soon learn. Jerry died three years ago while Morty still lives.
I will be 100 years old in two days, on July 23, and much of what I have accomplished in my 75 years in the media can be seen and heard every day, as journalists, politicians, sports heroes, movie stars, crooks and scumbags deliver their distinctive messages to their respective voters. You have to know where to look.
I’ve spent my career playing “Zelig,” that anonymous character who, off-camera or in the background, has had something to do with the day’s major events. I’m the guy a reporter calls at 4 a.m. when he hears that a member of the People’s Congress is going to be arrested at 8 a.m. Or, after an unassuming techie gets arrested for killing a teenager on the subway, he calls his lawyer first. Then he calls me.
I was there when the public officials and city leaders who sponsored a dull race in Central Park in the 1970s were looking for a way to make it a world-class event. When I suggested to Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton that the race be expanded to all five boroughs, the New York City Marathon was born.
When the real Godfather was walking around Greenwich Village in a bathrobe, feigning madness to avoid prosecution, I was the one the reporters called to find out what was going on.
You weren’t born to be Zelig. I graduated from Amherst College and served as a B-29 navigator in World War II. In my late 20s, I became the photo editor of the Daily News, New York’s illustrated newspaper, tasked with directing its photographers to the stories that made New York.
I thrived as a fast, savvy reporter. I earned a reputation for having that mysterious “nose for news.” I knew my city inside out. I knew which politicians deserved to be prosecuted, which ones were full of crap, and which ones would pose for any photo you needed so they could appear in the pages of the Daily News.
I have always loved learning secrets and hidden strategies and then sharing my knowledge selectively. Journalists became my family and I became adept at influencing them for the benefit of my clients. These relationships were built on trust.
I loved my role in the background, that of the right-hand man who knew where the bodies were buried (my clients buried some of them) and who used that knowledge as a bargaining chip to protect the image or help improve the image of the people I worked for by persuading journalists to give my clients the benefit of the doubt or, better yet, in some cases, to ignore them altogether.
New York journalists, politicians, billionaire businessmen, gangsters, lawyers, actors, fairground vendors, police officers and cooks affectionately called me Morty.
During my career as photo editor at The News, I had the opportunity to do public relations for WINS, one of New York’s radio stations that was at the forefront of the rock ‘n’ roll revolution with legendary disc jockeys like Alan Freed and Murray the K.
I was making $200 a week at The News and $250 a day working at WINS, which is something no one would be allowed to make in a newspaper business today. My closest friends urged me to go full-time into public relations. They told me I would have more influence and make more money. Then radio pioneer J. Elroy McCaw, who owned WINS and appreciated my work, made the decision easy for me.
He offered me a fully equipped office space at the station and said I could run my own business there.
I ended up representing 10 radio stations and once had to explain how Murray the K’s mother got credit and royalties for writing Bobby Darin’s breakthrough hit, “Splish Splash.”
My business grew quickly. I ended up as a communications advisor to Vinnie “the Chin” Gigante’s lawyer—the robe-wearing mobster—as well as Governor Mario Cuomo, Jimmy Carter, and Congressman Mario Biaggi, the most popular New York politician ever to go to prison.
Murderous racehorse trainer Buddy Jacobson, Hollywood superstar Mary Pickford, pin-up girl Bettie Page, the scandal-plagued Bronx Democratic Party, Brooklyn political honcho Meade Esposito and legendary prosecutor Charles “Joe” Hynes all came to me to get their names in the papers or to keep them out of the papers. Or, at the very least, to have their side of the story told.
Over the course of my life, I raised a family, two girls and a boy, and my former office assistant became a respected public relations professional. I became an expert on New York restaurants and neighborhood history. My work in real estate gave me insight into the shenanigans of the city’s real estate families.
I befriended and mentored many journalists: Jimmy Breslin, Jack Newfield, Sam Roberts, and Nick Pileggi were and still are my close friends. Journalists knew they would get the truth from me, although of course they would associate it with my point of view, which they could accept or reject.
I worked with Molly Picon in Yiddish theater in its final days in the 1960s. The Coney Island Chamber of Commerce was a client when Coney Island was still a vibrant place, a haven for New York workers.
I worked much of the Coney Island area with the great salesman Max Rosey. I also started the Loyal League of Yiddish Sons of Erin, which was a huge media success in the 1970s and 1980s. On quiet news days, reporters knew they could get something from me or Rosey at Coney Island.
As a client, we “managed” the legendary Nathan’s hot dog stand on Surf Ave. and invented the Fourth of July hot dog eating contest, which has now become the model for a whole league of food eating contests run by the Shea brothers who used to work for me and now run a large real estate PR firm.
I have worked for 10 political clients who have been indicted or convicted. I have developed a reputation for helping them control their image in the media.
I represented the Bronx politician who was caught up in the Parking Violations Bureau scandals of the mid-1980s.
That’s when one of my tips became famous.
Stanley Friedman, the Bronx Democratic Party leader, had to appear in court to hear the charges against him. The night before, I was on the strategic planning team. At the end of our meeting, Stanley asked me if I could give him some advice when he faced the public as a criminal suspect. “Bring a raincoat,” I told him.
“A raincoat, are you also a meteorologist now?” Friedman asked.
“No, it has nothing to do with the weather. Use your raincoat to cover your handcuffs when you leave the courthouse. Don’t let the cameramen see your handcuffs. Don’t let your constituents see you as a criminal.”
He took my advice, as many others have since done and as Breslin later immortalized in a column.
I have represented several municipal unions and have sometimes been accused of making a mountain out of a molehill in order to draw attention to clients like the Transit Police Benevolent Association.
But my method of leaking crime statistics and alerting police reporters to crimes committed on the subway in the middle of the night is now recognized as a way to shine a light on real problems that city officials would rather hide in the darkness beneath the streets. It has also prompted the city to hire more police officers — and the union to increase its dues-paying membership.
The biggest case I worked on was the Bernhard Goetz trial, through his lawyer. I portrayed Goetz, the subway vigilante, as an eccentric loner who shot four kids on the subway who were trying to rob him at gunpoint, and as a normal, hard-working technician who was just protecting himself in a life-threatening situation.
Doing my job also meant contacting Biaggi about a parent who was complaining about conditions at Willowbrook and Letchworth Village, state institutions for mentally ill children, and I was the man who invited Geraldo Rivera to tour the institutions and, as they say, the rest is history.
Today, I still work full time and am still in demand for political campaigns and real estate projects. I represented the New York State Judicial Officers Union for over 40 years. To this day, after no less than 59 years, the Durst organization is still a client.
I continue to charge a lot of money when they ask me for advice on many different projects and I continue to meet their expectations by shaping news stories, creating controversies in favor of my clients and learning new tricks. And, at 100 years old, I have no intention of stopping. You may not notice it, but I’m still here.
