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Hear Merv Griffin speak about his friendship with Ronald Reagan ( Listen to the interview.); see photos from Merv Griffin's life, from childhood to the racetrack.
Merv is mountainous. At eighty years old, and after more diets than he can count -- Atkins, Scarsdale, water, Jenny Craig -- he's given up worrying about his weight. He is seated in his office in Beverly Hills on a morning in late September, his untucked salmon polo shirt draping his girth like a tent.
''Life,'' he says, ''is too short for fat-free brownies.'' He speaks in an awed whisper, as if sharing a semiscandalous secret, his voice a velvety purr made famous over twenty-three years of hosting the legendary Merv Griffin Show, the only talk show ever to present a serious challenge to Johnny Carson's long reign over late night. Through the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties -- during the course of 5,500 shows and 25,000 interviews -- Merv's show was defined by his amazing voice, which remains essentially unchanged (it's still a sly invitation to titillating disclosure), but it now carries a phlegmy rumble, legacy of the pack of Marlboro Lights he smokes daily. ''I may stop any day,'' Merv insists. ''Just cold-turkey it.'' He's done it before -- many times. ''But, oooooh,'' he says. ''That first cigarette after you go back! It's like your first time at Disneyland!''
To a degree rarely if ever acknowledged (except by Merv himself), for the past forty years Merv has helped shape the American pop-cultural landscape. First, with his talk show, which, in its unabashed celebrity worship and cozy intime atmosphere, offered the illusion of entering a living-room salon where a slightly risque cocktail party was in progress. As host, Merv used a cunning combination of obsequious fawning and probing interrogation to elicit disclosures more revealing than the stars would offer anywhere else. For the viewers, Merv's nightly party offered a thrilling proximity to stardom -- a sophisticated, grown-up atmosphere that retro-loving hipsters, like film director Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin), still find intoxicating. ''I could not be more excited about the release of highlights from The Merv Griffin Show,'' Apatow said recently.
A man of manic energies, Merv is also creator of two of the longest-running game shows in history: Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, both of them still ratings toppers and distinctly, even weirdly, American in their blend of hard-edged capitalist competition and shiny, Pepsodent-grinning entertainment -- a family-friendly, fun-lovin' superwholesome ethic that Merv would, later, bring even to the seedy, greedy world of gambling when, in the 1980s, he expanded his empire into Atlantic City casinos. Today, his Griffin Group conglomerate houses companies ranging from luxury real-estate development, investment banking, hotels, movie and TV production, horse racing and online gaming. The thread that links them all, Merv says, is that special brand of Merv magic, which he defines as ''everything for the audience.'' The other thing that links them is that peculiarly Merv-y quality of dazzling surface glitter that hides no depths at all, a distillation of fantasy and denial that is the living embodiment of the eternal sunniness that radiates from Merv the man.
Merv is as American as processed cheese. He sees no shadows, and he lives by the philosophy ''Turn the page.'' Asked if he ever has sleepless nights, he says, ''No, never,'' then spreads his arms and lifts his voice into smoothly crooned Cole Porter: ''The sleepless nights, the daily fights/The quick toboggan when you reach the heights/I miss the kisses and I miss the bites/I wish I were in love again!''
He disdains the braggadocio of fellow billionaire Donald Trump -- with whom he has famously clashed -- but Merv is second only to Trump in compulsively mentioning his firsts and biggests and bests, his ''discoveries,'' his ''one and only'' interviews, his one-of-a-kind innovations. Pat Sajak? ''He's my discovery.'' Ryan Seacrest? Ditto. (Merv hired him to host Click, a game show, when Seacrest was just twenty-two. What did Merv see in him? ''Energy. The look of him. Easy smile. He just could do it.'') Martin Luther King Jr? ''I don't think anyone else has a Martin Luther King interview.'' George Carlin? ''Made his first network TV appearance on my show.'' Likewise Jerry Seinfeld, Richard Pryor, Woody Allen, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Wheel of Fortune casino slot machine? ''The most-played slot machine in the world.'' The theme song to Jeopardy!, which Merv wrote? ''The most famous short tune in America,'' he says, ''even compared to 'Happy Birthday,' which is three seconds longer.'' Merv has timed it.
All this might make you think that Merv is a little competitive. You and everyone who has ever met him. ''He's a fierce competitor,'' says his friend, actor Robert Loggia. ''Under that Irish-eyes-are-smiling is a killer instinct to win.'' Repeat this to Merv and he looks dumbstruck. ''I don't think there's a killer,'' he says, aghast. ''I just do my job -- and automatically kill.'' Merv pinches the tippy-most part of his tongue between his upper and lower teeth in an impish grin -- a signal that he's just kidding. Or is he?
Merv has always understood the need for maintaining some mystery, some secrets. His sexuality has long been an open question (''I'm a quatre-sexual,'' he quipped to The New York Times. ''I will do anything with anybody for a quarter.'') And for decades he kept private his personal politics. He's a conservative right-wing Republican and a fan of our current president. ''Oooooh, I love him, yes,'' says Merv. ''He's funny, bright, intelligent and loves to have a good time. I wish everybody could know him personally. I walk into the White House for a party for Camilla and Prince Charles, and he yells across the room: 'M-e-e-e-e-rv is here!' It just makes it comfortable for everybody.'' And the invasions and domestic spying and stuff? ''He's protecting the nation,'' says Merv, who also knows Donald Rumsfeld. ''I love that guy!'' Merv cries. ''I love Condoleezza; we have the best time together!'' Merv kept his politics to himself when he was on television. ''I felt it would hurt the interview. I never revealed it until my friend became the president of the United States.''
Merv means Ronald Reagan, whom he first met when both were young actors at Warner Bros. Nancy Reagan remains one of his best friends. They share a birthday (July 6th) and talk every day. Indeed, you're not long into a visit with Merv when his desk phone rings, he picks it up and coos, ''Naaaancy.'' He listens as she tells him of the death of a mutual friend. ''Oooooh, they want me at the service?'' Merv jots down the details, then says, ''Would you mind calling me with some happy news?'' He bites the tip of his tongue. They make plans for lunch at Chez Mimi on Saturday. He hangs up. ''Poor woman,'' he says. ''She was practically under house arrest for ten years when Ronnie was sick.'' Merv kept the first lady laughing in those dark days. She remains grateful. ''Merv's a real, real upper,'' says Nancy Reagan. ''He will not let himself be depressed or low. He cheers you right up.'' She recalls how Merv came to her aid after Reagan was shot. ''I was scared every time Ronnie left the White House,'' she says. ''So Merv said, 'I know this woman, why don't you call her? She might be able to help you, give you a little guidance.' '' The woman was Joan Quigley, a San Francisco psychic. Merv has always been drawn to the supernatural. Quigley became White House astrologer, a woman who advised the first lady on matters personal and political -- which caused a worldwide scandal when her influence emerged in Reagan's last term. Merv makes no apologies about Quigley. ''She was very good,'' he says.
Merv rises from his desk -- a five-inch-thick, twelve-foot-long single slab of polished California redwood polyurethaned to a mirror-bright sheen, an environmentalist's worst nightmare -- and walks with a ponderous gait, in white loafers, to an adjoining wood-paneled chamber. Seated around a large, square boardroom table are members of the Griffin Group, including Larry Cohen (president), Matt Gaven (vice president of TV development), Ronnie Ward (Merv's right-hand man for the past twenty-four years) and Merv's forty-seven-year-old son, Tony, sole offspring from Merv's marriage to Julann Wright of Michigan -- a marriage that ended in divorce in the mid-1970s. Merv never remarried.
Merv takes a seat. He asks about the status of the just-released DVD box set of The Merv Griffin Show.
''How's the retro thing?'' Merv asks, referring to a proposed VH1 show that pairs young stars with their older mentors. Merv is told that VH1 is dragging its feet. Merv scowls. ''Just tell VH1, 'The people on the retro show that we plan to have on are dying. It's a retro show!' '' Everyone laughs.
Talk turns to Merv's foray into online video games.
''As the creator of Jeopardy! and Wheel, Merv is the perfect guy to be associated with this,'' says Cohen. ''You promote it as 'The Ultimate Game for the Ultimate Gamer.' ''
''I hate it,'' Merv deadpans. Then he laughs. Everyone else does, too.
Merv's son, Tony, pitches a reality show about a man in the witness-protection program. Merv has always run his empire on snap judgments and gut instincts (he knows a Merv-y idea when he hears one: that winning combination of fun, fantasy and cutthroat competition), and he shoots this one down instantly. Tony, however, can't let it drop. ''Put this all on eBay,'' Merv growls, with a wave of his cigarette, ''and sell it.'' Tony, pouting, finally gives up.
Not that Merv is against reality TV. He just hasn't seen an idea he likes. For instance, a show along the lines of The Osbournes -- except about Merv. He's pitched it, but the networks won't bite. They kiss up to him because of his track record with Jeopardy! and Wheel. But then they don't listen to him because he might skew to an older demographic. Drives him crazy. ''All they want to know is 'How did that skew?' '' says Merv. He catches himself sounding bitter. ''When they say you skew too old, you just say, 'Skew you.' '' He throws back his leonine head and roars with laughter.
Merv is right to laugh. He doesn't skew old. Even at eighty. ''Most people become more conservative as they age,'' says Merv's discovery Pat Sajak. ''Not Merv. Spend time with him, and you realize that there is still a little boy in there, playing with marbles.''
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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.''
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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.
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By the mid-1960s, Johnny Carson had turned his 11:30 p.m. time slot into the hottest ninety minutes in television. The other two networks could not cede all those advertising dollars to NBC and had to come up with challengers. And in 1969, CBS turned to Merv, who had relaunched his talk show as a syndicated program. Sensing CBS' desperation, Merv demanded double Carson's $40,000-a-week salary. CBS agreed. Newsweek put Merv on the cover and asked, IS MERV GRIFFIN THE NEXT KING OF LATE NIGHT TELEVISION? Adding to the aura of gladiatorial blood sport was a stroke that Merv, mischievously, engineered. Catching wind of a falling-out between Johnny and his younger brother Dick -- who had just quit after six years of directing The Tonight Show -- Merv hired Dick to be the director of The Merv Griffin Show. Dick remained with the Griffin organization for almost thirty years, until his retirement in 1999. ''Merv made working fun,'' says Dick. ''I wouldn't say Johnny wasn't a 'people' person, but he's not like Merv, who was very comfortable in any situation. My brother's kind of famous for standing off.''
The initial burst of media hype brought Merv's ratings level with Carson. But within a week, Merv's show started to sag. To better compete for celebrity guests, Merv moved the show from New York to Los Angeles; ratings improved, but not enough. Merv soon recognized his flair for conducting big coffee-klatchy group-guest gossip-a-thons -- and soon he was pioneering a form of television that has become ubiquitous today: panel-discussion single-theme shows about hot-button subjects: incest, pedophilia, transsexuals. Oprah, Merv says, has never acknowledged her debt to him. ''She got the themes from my show,'' he growls. ''We were the first to do themes.''
But not even a parade of transsexuals and sex fiends could pull Merv out of his ratings dive. (Carson, meanwhile, would urge his viewers to ''make sure you watch Merv tonight. He's got one of his provocative themes -- six Lithuanian proctologists who want to be nuns.'') Affiliate stations began to dump Merv's show for reruns of old sitcoms. And on December 3rd, 1971, two years after the show launched, The Merv Griffin Show was canceled. For Merv, it was a mercy killing. The stress had become unbearable. His weight, always a struggle to keep down, had ballooned thirty pounds. He was having anxiety attacks and -- to Merv's dismay -- his marriage was coming unglued. Merv had met his wife, Julann, an actress-comedian, in 1957 on a variety show. Their marriage, at least outwardly, was solid. But in 1973, Julann startled Merv by demanding a divorce. ''It was the largest settlement ever done in Hollywood at that time,'' Merv says, with a hint of boastfulness. ''It didn't bother me,'' he adds blithely. ''I liked her a lot. I said, 'Listen, come on in, meet with the lawyers, you get half, so take whatever properties you want.' I never balked at anything.'' The two still talk. ''Up to my twenty-first birthday, they didn't miss a Christmas or birthday together,'' says Tony. ''They're still very good friends.''
After Merv's cancellation by CBS, a new syndication company put his show back on the air. This version of The Merv Griffin Show hit the airwaves in March 1972, and stayed on the air for fourteen years. But by the early 1980s, the program, shot on a Merv-designed set of turquoise pastel scrims and sequined curtains, had acquired an antique patina dangerously akin to reruns of The Lawrence Welk Show. Increasingly, Merv's interviews -- with legendary septuagenarians like Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier -- featured Merv, gray-headed, rotund but ever-twinkly, lamenting the demise of ''the old Hollywood glamour.'' One night in 1985 he innocently observed to insult comedian Don Rickles, ''Sometimes you say things that really surprise me,'' and Rickles shot back, ''Be surprised I'm here.''
Then, in 1986, Merv landed the perfect exit strategy from the TV show. He was approached by a Coca-Cola subsidiary, Columbia Pictures Entertainment, which wanted to buy Merv Griffin Enterprises with its cash-cow flagship shows, Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. Coke was offering Merv $250 million. Merv sold and saw his already comfy net worth of $25 million increase overnight by a quarter of a billion dollars. There was really no need anymore to do anything he didn't want to do. On September 5th, 1986, Merv taped the final episode of The Merv Griffin Show. But still only sixty-one years old, he was possessed of as much manic entrepreneurial and creative energy as ever. ''Now what do I do?'' he wondered. He got busy turning himself from a mere multimillionaire into a billionaire. His first move was to get into hotels -- or ''talk shows with beds,'' as he calls them. (''It's the same principle -- an exotic variety of people coming through the door, staying a short time, then departing.'') He bought the legendary Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles and spent $60 million restoring it. He rebuilt the restaurant and called it Griff's, flew in stone from Spain for the Olympic-size pool, installed cabana rooms with striped awnings and huge bouquets of bougainvillea. ''Ooooooh, I had more fun with that place!'' Merv cries. At his peak, Merv owned seventeen hotels across the country.
In 1988, Merv ventured into the casino business in Atlantic City. With gambling losing its sleazy, underworld aroma and becoming a form of mass entertainment of the type he'd been trafficking in since age nineteen, Merv set out to buy Resorts International, a sprawling company that owned Paradise Island, a hotel and casino in the Bahamas, and the massive, unfinished Taj Mahal. There was one obstacle: Donald Trump controlled eighty percent of Resorts and wanted to own all of it. Trump had bid twenty-two dollars a share for the remaining stock, believing that no one else was in the running. Merv snookered him with a thirty-five-dollar bid and seized control of the company. Merv and Trump met in Trump's glass-walled penthouse office overlooking his ''trophy'' hotel, the Plaza, in midtown Manhattan, to thrash out who got what of the spoils. ''We sat down; I said, 'Listen, Donald, I want to make this fast: What do you want?' '' Merv recalls. ''He said, 'What do you want?' I said, 'I want everything, but I don't want the Taj Mahal. Do you want the Taj?' He said, 'Well, I would like something of Paradise Island.' I said, 'No, that's out of the question.' We shook hands on it and that was the end of it. Took ten minutes.''
But the two bickered over the deal for months, and years, afterward in the press. In fact, they're still at it. ''When I took over Resorts,'' Merv grumbles, ''it was all this screaming and yelling from Donald: 'I won! I won! I won!' He wrote books about it: 'I won! I won!' I couldn't care what was going on with Superman in New York with the orange hair going, 'I won!' ''
Trump, at first, sounds anything but combative. ''Merv is a very sophisticated businessman,'' he says. ''He's very affable, and at the same time he's a tough negotiator. Smart, congenial. Very different than your more typical type of successful businessman. I like Merv. But'' -- and here his voice takes on that tough-guy tone familiar from The Apprentice -- ''his only problem is that he has never been able to say that Donald Trump beat the shit out of him in business. And it was so easy for me. It's very simple. He paid too much for a company that I sold him. And he's never been able to live that down. Oh, it kills him. He goes around trying to justify what he did. He tells people that he did fine with Donald. But Donald kicked his ass! It was a great deal for me. I got the Taj Mahal -- he got shit.''
Merv now claims the last laugh is on Trump. ''From the day I bought,'' he says, ''Donald only had $16 million profits; and when I sold it, it was 70-something million.'' At which point, Merv sold Resorts to Sol Kerzner, a South African businessman who owns Sun International Hotels. ''I knew when to get out,'' Merv says. ''We sold at ex-act-ly the right time.''
It hasn't all been triumph in Merv's pastel paradise. In 1991, Brent Plott, a former employee described as a ''secretary/driver/horse-trainer/ bodyguard,'' leveled a $200 million palimony suit against Merv. Plott claimed to have been Merv's longtime live-in lover and instrumental to the creation and development of Wheel of Fortune. Merv is not happy when this topic comes up. ''Listen -- it was extortion,'' he says. Merv launched a countersuit against Plott. ''I said, Well, I'm not going to pay him off! That's admission of guilt. We go to court. I'm not going to pay hush money. I forget what it was -- $5 million that he wanted? Five million, my ass.''
Plott's case was ultimately dismissed with prejudice by the California Supreme Court. But Merv's legal problems were not over. That same year, Merv was sued by Denny Terrio, the host of Dance Fever, a disco show that Merv created in 1979. Terrio was charging sexual harassment, claiming that Merv propositioned him and then fired him when Terrio declined his offer. This case, too, was thrown out of court. Merv insists that any accusations against him were motivated by greed. ''It was after they started printing the money stuff!'' he says. ''After the sale of Wheel and Jeopardy! You're a target.''
Merv does not refute the underlying implication in both cases: that he is gay. Nor does he admit to it. Instead, he mentions the high-profile relationship that he began with actress Eva Gabor at the time of his legal troubles. They were photographed everywhere: Atlantic City, La Quinta, Hollywood premieres. Merv says that they discussed marriage, and he parries any direct questions about his sexual orientation. ''You're asking an eighty-year-old man about his sexuality right now!'' he cries. ''Get a life!''
For all his evasiveness, Merv's reaction is the most spontaneous, and thus genuine-sounding, utterance he offers over the course of four days of interviews. Every other anecdote, reflection, memory and comment is one that I recognize as recycled, often word for word, from his two autobiographies. That Merv, at eighty, has reduced his long, varied, richly eventful life into little more than a series of shticky sound bites is wholly in keeping with his devotion to showbiz pizazz and glitter, but it does conjure the philosophical conundrum about whether the unexamined life is worth living. Well, in Merv's case, it's certainly very comfortable. It is also, of course, finite.
''Do I think about death?'' he says. ''No. I kid about it. Like, someone will say to me, 'Merv, in five years this community is going to be incredible.' And I'll say, 'Uhh, how long?' I suppose it's dismissing it with a joke. But physically I feel good. There's a few constant bladder infections, but all old guys get it. There are little glitches. The hair grows in places where I'm shocked: ears, nose.'' He pauses for a moment. Then says, ''I look in the mirror and see the kid from high school.''