Dear Mister Fantasy

He was born Mervyn Edward Griffin Jr. in 1925 in the San Francisco suburb of San Mateo, California. His childhood provided a mix of humiliations, aggrievements and failure, against which Merv would spend the rest of his life defining himself. His dad, Mervyn Sr., was a tennis star who lost the family home when the Depression hit. Merv was five, and the family (which included Merv's mom and his older sister, Barbara) was forced to move in with Merv's grandmother and two aunts. Merv retreated early into a world of fantasy and performance.

At four, he started playing piano; at seven, he produced his own neighborhood gossip newspaper, The Whispering Winds, and put on ''shows'' for neighborhood kids. At ten, he fell in love with Judy Garland and saw all her movies -- ''crying when she cried, laughing when she laughed,'' he once said.

By high school, Merv was clinically obese at five-nine and 240 pounds. He was teased but didn't let it get him down. ''I was the fat fun guy,'' he says. After high school, Merv took a job in a naval shipyard. Then he had a premonition of fame. While trudging home from his job, he heard a disembodied voice intone, ''You will never again be a private person.'' A year later, Merv auditioned for, and landed, a singing gig on a local radio show called San Francisco Sketchbook and was such a hit that the station boss renamed it The Merv Griffin Show and billed Merv as ''America's New Romantic Singing Star.'' He was twenty years old and soon making $1,100 a week. Three years into his run at KFRC, he was hired away by Freddy Martin and His Orchestra, a popular jazz outfit. During a monthlong stand at the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles, Merv played to all the top movie stars and celebrities and became a particular favorite of Howard Hughes. It was Merv's entree into that special zone where power, glamour and celebrity all converge -- a zone Merv has happily inhabited ever since.

In 1950, Merv recorded a novelty tune with Freddy Martin called ''I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts'' -- a throwaway that he sang in a campy Cockney accent. The song went to Number One and sold 3 million copies. Warner Bros. signed him to a three-year movie contract and made him the romantic lead in a movie called So This Is Love. The movie bombed, but the studio kept his stardom alive by sending him out on manufactured ''dates'' with starlets to walk the red carpets. But his movie career was effectively over. He moved to New York, did some Broadway, then scuffled around trying to get work in the new medium of television, as a broadcaster. ''But no network would hire a singer to talk,'' he says. ''They thought we were all idiots.'' Offered a job as co-host on Look Up and Live, a religious show, he jumped at it. A job co-hosting a CBS morning show followed, then a gig as MC of a Miami-based variety show that was canceled after eight months. Then: nothing.

At age thirty-two, Merv was an ex-big-band singer in the era of Elvis Presley and rock & roll. With a failed movie career and a string of dead TV shows behind him, he found himself subletting Marlon Brando's apartment on West Fifty-seventh Street, waiting in vain for the phone to ring. A year passed. Then, in 1958, Merv got a break when he was asked to host a new game show, Play Your Hunch. A string of game shows followed. Merv wasn't choosy. ''I did anything that was offered to me,'' he says. ''I just loved the feeling of audiences!''

Meanwhile, Merv had already begun to diversify, buying radio stations: in Albany, Hartford, Providence -- eventually acquiring seven stations, the limit allowed by the FCC. He tinkered with programming, wrote jingles and lifted ratings (and ad profits). Merv also bought Teleview Racing Patrol, which ran grainy closed-circuit live coverage of horse races in Florida. He put in color cameras and expanded the network all over the country, via satellite. He still owns the company. ''Whenever you watch horse racing on TV, you're watching my cameras,'' Merv says. ''That's a great company, my God!'' -- which is Merv-speak for ''It has made me fucking millions.''

In early 1962, Merv filled in as a guest host one night on The Tonight Show, then hosted by Jack Paar. ''I realized it was the culmination of everything I'd done in my life,'' he says. ''I walked into this format, where it was my show and I could do anything I wanted.'' When Paar quit the show later that year, Merv served as one of several replacement hosts, warming the seat for Paar's scheduled replacement -- Johnny Carson. Dick Cavett, then a writer for The Tonight Show, says that Merv was indisputably the best of the guest hosts that summer. ''I think he thought, probably, that there was a shot at them giving him The Tonight Show,'' says Cavett. ''The talk was encouraging: 'Hey, this guy really knows how to do it.' ''

But Carson got the job. As a way to keep Merv at the network, NBC offered him his own daytime talk show. Prior to signing the deal, Merv was in a control booth at the network and saw a live feed of NBC's then-president addressing affiliate stations, to whom he announced that the network had already signed Merv. ''I knew I had them by the noogies,'' Merv chuckles. ''So I said to my lawyer, 'I want to go to the last negotiation.' '' NBC offered Merv $8,000 a week. Merv demanded $18,000. NBC met Merv's price. Ever since, Merv has been present during contract negotiations, and he routinely made people bleed. ''Ooooooh, I did love negotiation,'' he coos. ''Because it's a contest -- one mind-set against another, and you're talking about your own value. People who star in things don't go on negotiations, but I did.''

"Who's hungry?'' says Merv. It's one o'clock, and Merv has wrapped up the entertainment-group meeting. He heads out to lunch at Cafe Roma, an Italian joint popular among the aging rich and famous of Beverly Hills. Merv arrives at the restaurant in a black Mercedes SUV with an entourage that includes Merv's driver, his right-hand man, Ronnie Ward, and publicist Marcia Newberger. Merv swaggers through the entryway, and the owner rushes up and leads Merv's party to a prime table on the outdoor patio. Merv nods wordlessly to the many people who smile and wave at him. But once seated, he whispers to his lunch companions about all the face-lifts: ''Should rename this place Cafe Taut!'' Merv orders spaghetti Bolognese, which he eats with gusto. Then he plucks a strand from his plate and dangles it into the open jaws of his dog Charlie Chan, a Shar-Pei that he takes everywhere. He wipes his fingers on the napkin stuffed into his shirt collar, then fires up a Marlboro Light. ''There's a famous comedian,'' he says. ''Norm Crosby. Norman!'' he shouts across the patio.

Crosby, seated at a table of elderly women, jumps to his feet. A fixture on Seventies TV variety shows and Vegas stages, Crosby is now a little frail-looking, with hearing aids in both ears. He hustles over to Merv's table.

''Oh, my God,'' Crosby says. ''And when I say, 'Oh, my God,' I mean this is my god.'' He bows to Merv.

''No, no, no,'' says Merv. Then the two men naturally fall into shtick, as if playing to a bank of invisible TV cameras.

''They just had a poll of all high school students to find the most popular word that kids use in high school,'' says Merv.

''What was it?'' asks Crosby.

''You'll love this,'' Merv says. ''It was 'ear.' ''

Crosby looks genuinely puzzled. ''Ear?''

Merv mimes a kid taking a hit off a joint, then handing it off to a drug buddy and saying, with full lungs, '' 'Ere.'' Everyone laughs. Crosby actually doubles over, slapping his thigh. ''That is great!'' Crosby gasps.

''It's yours,'' Merv says.

''Oh, thanks,'' says Crosby. ''Wonderful.''

Crosby moves back to his table.

Lunch over, Merv lights up a fresh smoke, then leads his entourage toward the waiting car. En route, Merv's dog pokes his nose under the hem of an elegantly dressed elderly woman's trouser cuff and sniffs.

''He's checking you for drugs,'' Merv mumbles, for the benefit of his entourage. But the woman hears it.

''You haven't changed, Merv,'' she says, frostily. ''Still naughty.'' She stalks off.

''Oh, gee,'' Merv says, mortified. ''I didn't think she'd hear me.''