Dear Mister Fantasy

Merv's daytime talk program The Merv Griffin Show debuted on October 1st, 1962 -- the precise day that Johnny Carson, taping in the same studio in NBC's midtown Manhattan headquarters, made his start on The Tonight Show. Despite his later mastery of the form, Carson got off to a famously shaky start with audiences not yet comfortable with his edged, sardonic approach; Merv, meanwhile, had perfected the celebrity interview as hot-oil ego massage. ''I was tender and nice with guests,'' Merv says. ''But I tried to do what a psychoanalyst does. They go around all the back doors to get the answers.'' Merv's soft-soap approach made for hypnotizing entertainment -- his encounter with a drunken, furious Richard Burton is riveting television -- and the critics took notice. One newspaper wrote, ''The Tonight Show looks better in the afternoon.'' Another claimed, ''They just may have given The Tonight Show to the wrong person.'' To this day, Merv can't resist a little gloating. ''Carson had no history of interviewing stars,'' he says. ''In those days they trusted me because their lives had been made up by publicity departments and they didn't want some bum in an interview knocking off their popularity. He couldn't get anybody to go on! And I was having on everybody. I had Joan Crawford, Montgomery Clift -- and Carson had no one!''

But Merv didn't get long to savor his dominance. Johnny's performance, and ratings, swiftly improved. Merv (stranded in a lousy daytime slot) saw his ratings slide. After six months, his show was axed. But Merv, never one to wallow in defeatism, instantly got to work on what would be one of his most lucrative side projects. As part of his deal with NBC, Merv had demanded his own production company for pitching shows to the network, and he now had the idea for a new kind of quiz show. Merv's had a gimmick, a twist: Contestants get the answer and have to come up with the question.

''So I had the idea,'' Merv says, ''but then starts the process of making a game show.'' Jeopardy! took a year for Merv to shape and hone. He ran practice games in his Central Park West apartment. He introduced the idea of penalizing players for wrong answers. ''No other show ever took money away,'' says Merv. ''We did.''

Merv also wrote the song. ''Back then,'' he says, ''all these game-show themes were very ominous -- this mysterioso music. I thought I better not revert to anything that was done in the past. So I went to the piano and fiddled around. I went'' -- he rocks his head back and forth and sings the familiar melody -- '' 'lah-de-dah-dah, lah-de dah.' It couldn't have taken a half-hour.'' Merv estimates that he has made in the neighborhood of $80 million on the song's royalties over the years -- and that was before the advent of a new technology that has only made the song more profitable. Recently, Merv opened a piece of mail containing a ''huge'' check. ''I couldn't think what it was for,'' Merv says. ''I had to ask the young people in my office, 'What does this ''ring tone'' mean?' ''

It's late January 2006, and the skies over the desert east of Palm Springs, California, are purest blue -- except for a dark speck that appears among the jagged peaks of the Santa Rosa Mountains. It's Merv in a converted black military helicopter -- his favored way to travel the traffic-clogged 130 miles between Los Angeles and his 240-acre ranch in La Quinta. The La Quinta spread is just one of Merv's homes, which include a house in Beverly Hills, a mountain lodge in Carmel, a home in Ireland; he also spends several months each summer on his 142-foot yacht, Griff. But La Quinta, with its airy Moroccan-themed main house modeled on Yves St. Laurent's mansion in Marrakech, its man-made lake (dubbed ''Lac Merveilleux''), its horse barns holding some fifty thoroughbreds, its private racetrack, its 3,000 cultivated roses distributed among the sweet-smelling bougainvillea -- is perhaps the ultimate outward manifestation of all that is Merv.

The chopper sets down softly on the lawn behind the house, and Merv climbs, carefully, to earth. Dressed in a gunmetal-blue leather jacket with whipstitched collar and loose-fitting linen pants, he is looking hip and youthful. It might partly be the presence of Andrew Yani, the newly hired thirty-one-year-old head of television for Merv's company. Shortly before Christmas, Merv fired Matt Gaven. Just wasn't working out. The presence of Yani -- a model-handsome kid churning with new TV ideas -- has acted on Merv like a galvanic drug. ''He loves having young guys around,'' says Merv's publicist, Marcia Newberger. ''It makes him feel young.''

Merv gives a tour of the house, starting with the palatial living room whose domed skylight illuminates the oceanic sixty-foot-by-forty-foot Persian rug -- a rug originally woven for the Shah of Iran and which Merv says took twenty-five people ten years to make. The walls are covered with Leroy Neiman-ish ''neo-Impressionist'' paintings -- flowers, fruits -- in acidic yellows and flaring turquoises that Merv loves so much he had all the furniture reupholstered in matching shades. Beyond is the bedroom, which holds Merv's gargantuan four-poster bed veiled by gossamer white curtains; on the nearby vanity table is a framed photo of Nancy Reagan inscribed, ''Please don't let this take the place of the original.''

On the back patio overlooking placid Lac Merveilleux, Merv sits and eats a lunch of herb-roasted chicken and salad made by his personal live-in chef, Corey Patton. From hidden speakers, a Luis Miguel CD, pumped to deafening volume, provides music to eat by, as the sun's rays pour like honey over Merv, illuminating like a halo the cigarette smoke that wreathes his head. ''Ohhh,'' he says, puffing at his Marlboro and simultaneously chewing his lunch, ''you can't believe what it's like waking up here in the morning! Heavenly!''

It's a heavenly experience that Merv plans to share with many other lucky rich folks. Merv's house, grounds and outbuildings occupy forty acres; recently, he got the idea of developing his remaining 200 acres into a gated luxury housing development-cum-equestrian complex. The idea hinges on the notion that Merv, man and mogul, is no longer a mere human being but a brand. La Quinta is being designed for, and will be marketed to, people who aspire to ''the Merv style of life,'' as Newberger puts it. It's a life of luxury beyond care, a dulcet world of perfumed blossoms, ravishing sunsets and very big rugs. Precisely how to realize this vision has been giving Merv some trouble.

Recently, Merv met at his L.A. offices with the team that is designing the La Quinta development. Or trying to. Barry McComic, chairman and CEO of McComic Consolidated, a bald-headed man with a fierce sunburn, has come to understand that no one but Merv is ever truly in charge of a Merv-inspired idea. Before the meeting, McComic spreads on the boardroom table a set of elevations, plans and blueprints, which Merv scrutinizes with the intensity of a general planning a battle.

''We ought to put in a Trader Vic's,'' Merv says. ''I really love those. It's not just the food -- it's the decoration and the presentation.'' McComic nods.

''Isn't it mostly Jews out there?'' Merv suddenly says.

McComic glances quickly around the table. ''No, no,'' he says, clearly mystified by this question. ''The Coachella Valley is mostly rich people from Los Angeles.''

Merv considers this for a while. Then he says he doesn't like where the wine room is situated. ''It should be somewhere in the vicinity of the lounge bar and grill,'' he says.

McComic says he'll move the wine room.

McComic cautiously floats a new idea. ''What about three life-size equestrian statues placed in the artificial stream and waterfall that greets visitors who first pass through the gates?''

Merv stares at McComic.

''Actually,'' McComic says, ''there's a method to the madness.'' He explains that the state offers a tax deduction for ''artwork'' displayed on the premises. Merv is interested now -- but not in McComic's ''life-size'' horses.

''I would do a big, giant white horse,'' Merv says, a certain light coming into his sapphire-blue eyes. ''A giant statement. I'd do it white with colored lights to enhance it. Make it out of resin. Colored lights on his face, and a couple of gems to catch the lights. It would become a symbol.''

''How giant are you talking?'' McComic says, sitting up straighter. ''Twenty feet?''

''Giant,'' Merv repeats. Now his eyes have grown unfocused, he's having the kind of in-the-zone Merv moment that leads to the creation of a Jeopardy! or a Wheel. ''A giant horse,'' Merv declaims, ''all blue with a white head. Some bizarre thing! That the light will take to a new dimension!''

McComic nods, excitedly taking notes. Merv is in heaven.