By: Diana McKeon Charkallis
George Gray is the first to admit he’s not your typical HGTV home show host.
“I didn’t get the show because I’m a designer. I got it because I’m a wiseass,” says the comedian, perhaps best-known for hosting the syndicated version of NBC’s “The Weakest Link.”
The show is question is “What’s With That House?” and in it, Gray roams the US looking for attention-getting homes in ordinary neighborhoods.
“It’s not a makeover show, it’s not a how-to, it’s not a Martha Stewart show. It’s a guilty pleasure, slam-on-the-brakes, train-wreck kind of show.”
At each house, Gray meets the homeowners and gets a tour, good naturedly cracking jokes along the way. Whether it’s a “Hansel and Gretel” house made of recycled materials, or a magician’s “palace” complete with trapdoors, he laughs with the owners, not at them.
“I look at these people like they’re wonderfully crazy. To me, if you do shag carpeting right, it’s so bad, it’s good. And velvet paintings? Oh yeah, baby.”
For Lisa Brown, whose East Valley home will be featured on the show June 7, the best part of the experience was goofing around with George. And during the 18-hour shoot, he had plenty to say about the life-size plastic cow and the oversize rooster planted in her yard.
“He was a riot,” she says. “He is really fun to play with. He’s very smart and very cute and has a great red Ferrari.”
“What’s With That House?” executive producer Bill Paolantonio calls Gray the “anti-host.”
“He’s everyman, and he says what everybody at home is thinking, but he does it with a twinkle in his eye. He just has a natural curiosity, and you never know what’s going to happen when he turns the corner.”
Gray’s empathy for the off beat is easily understood after a visit to his own home, perched in the Hollywood Hills.
Visitors enter the top floor of the three-story 1950’s structure, which is propped on a hillside. Inside, it’s a tribute to pop culture and kitsch, complete with pinball machines, a red-themed kitchen and even a nook dedicated, appropriately, to Curious George paraphernalia.
“I fought it my whole life, but then I just gave in. This is what people give you when your name it George.”
But the center piece of the home is “Stinky’s Bar and Cigar Lounge,” a downstairs hang out that would make the Rat Pack proud.
Named after the oversize tabby cat that he shares the house with, it’s a space with a retro boy’s club feeling, complete with a full bar, beer tap and neon. It’s where Gray, who’s also a drummer, hosts jam sessions as well as impromptu parties for the crew of whatever show he’s working on.
“If you put a gun to my head and said name one hip place in Hollywood, you’d have to shoot me. I wouldn’t know. I like jukeboxes and Harleys and hanging around here with my buddies.”
When he’s not at Stinky’s, Gray can often be found outside in the driveway, tinkering with one of his many cars, including a 1967 Firebird convertible Ram Air and a 1962 Studebaker Lark convertible. “If Imelda Marcos was a redneck, she’d be me.”
Always on the go, Gray uses this time to relax. “My friends call me MacGyver because I can get old cars running with a toothpick and a paper clip. I just go out there with a Diet Coke and a cigar.”
He applied the same can-do philosophy to renovating his home, where he tore down walls and added whole rooms, mostly on his own. Without any training or experience, it was a sometimes painful process. “I always say it’s not a project until you bleed.”
He found inspiration in a variety of places, including his neighbor’s trash, where he got permission to fish out a retro-style sink. “I love going to swap meets, junkyards, anything like that – dumpster diving. If it’s rusty and old and crappy looking, I’m in heaven.
He also built a spiral staircase by himself from a kit.
“I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”
Gray’s latest project is an elaborate backyard body of water, complete with a waterfall and rocky landscape in the center. “I didn’t want a pool. I wanted a lake.”
Although he didn’t construct the pool, he plans to build an outdoor bar for summer parties and to cover his backyard hillside with sand. “It’s gonna be a beach.”
Gray, who’s always had a flare for both drama and comedy, grew up in St. Louis and Arizona, and got his start in film and TV when he was in grade school. His mom, a casting director, found him jobs as an extra. He made $35 a day, enough to satisfy a burgeoning Atari video game habit. As a teen, he was cast in the role of “evil boyfriend” in a few Disney films and soon decided to move to L.A.
He worked as a stand-up comedian before hosting a slew of other programs, including the Emmy-nominated TLC program “Junkyard Wars, where contestants build machines from spare parts found in a scrap yard.
These days, he still has a few more unusual houses to visit for “What’s With That House?”
And he recently bought a special property for himself – his childhood home in St. Louis. His family was gathering on the lawn for a reunion portrait when a neighbor informed them that it was for sale. He snapped it up immediately.
“We’re all packrats, so we had kept all the furniture,” he says, “We’re trying to put the home back exactly the way it was, so it can be this bizarre 1970’s time warp.”
Although he makes jokes, Gray admits he and his family are sentimental and like having the house back in the family.
“I’m the only person I know who has a vacation place in
St. Louis. It turns out you can go home again.”