by Wendy Walker
Today, when I think about our long and enduring friendship and business partnership, I believe that our diversity is the secret to our success. It’s been working for years and years, and Larry and I both acknowledge that we are each other’s longest relationship (without sex) to date.
Over the many years we’ve worked together, we’ve gone through a great many personal changes and we’ve always been there for each other. He was thrilled when my children came into my life, and I was there when Larry got engaged a couple of times and finally when he married his wonderful wife, Shawn Southwick, who gave him his two youngest boys. In fact, I was in the room with Shawn and Larry when they were born, which went way beyond my job description!
When Larry got interested in Shawn initially, he came on very strong in his usual fashion. He had known her a short time when he called me one day and said, “Wendy, I’m so crazy about this girl. Would you call and tell her that all the stories about my marriages are exaggerated? Tell her I was only married four times instead of seven.”
I knew Shawn, I liked her, I considered her an intelligent woman, and I had no interest in lying to her. At the same time, I needed to placate Larry, so I got her on the phone at 4 a.m., Pacific time. “Shawn,” I said, “I’m really sorry to be doing this, but I’m supposed to tell you that Larry has only been married four times.”
“Oh, my God,” she said with a laugh.
“Well,” I said, “I’m just the messenger.”
From the moment I met Shawn, I had a good feeling about her. I recall early on, when she and I were sitting in a limo together, facing each other. Shawn, an absolutely beautiful woman, was touching up her makeup with some blemish concealer. I was wearing a pair of sandals when she suddenly reached over without missing a beat in our conversation and applied some concealer to a scar I have on my second toe. A moment later, she stopped and said, “Oh, my God, I just did that without asking you or thinking.”
“I know,” I said as we both burst out laughing. She is a girl’s girl and it was instinctual in her to take care of me, too, while she was doing the finishing touches on her own makeup. We bonded over my toe and we laugh about it to this day.
Despite the number of his previous marriages, Shawn, thirty-seven, and Larry, sixty-three, were engaged in record time and the wedding was planned for September 4, 1997. It was going to be a lavish affair at a friend’s luxurious home, but while we were in Los Angeles preparing for the wedding, Larry woke up one morning and didn’t feel well.
Ever since his open-heart surgery about a decade prior, Larry had been in close touch with his body and he knew when something was wrong. That morning, I went to his LA doctor with him, who agreed that something was off with Larry’s heart. But when he suggested a second open-heart surgery, Larry was hoping for something less invasive. Since he had another set of doctors in New York who had performed his original open-heart surgery, he also called them.
His brilliant surgeon, Dr. Wayne Isom, a man missing a thumb, was a calming force in Larry’s life. I recall a great story that Larry tells in his biography about the night before his first surgery, in New York. When Dr. Isom showed up and began tapping his chest, Larry noticed that this man, who had operated on David Letterman and Walter Cronkite, had a stub for a right thumb.
Larry said, “Dr. Isom, I’ve had this peculiar habit all my life and I can’t explain it. But when I meet people, I count their fingers… and with you I get to nine.”
When the New York doctors heard Larry’s prognosis, they got so worried, they flew all night to see Larry for themselves. So while they examined him and reviewed his medical history, I had to cancel the wedding. The Beverly Wilshire Hotel gave me a banquet room which I dubbed Wedding Central. They filled the room with phones, and a few other people and I began to make the calls to let people know that the wedding was off for now. By the end of the day, when I was through with my calls, the doctors told me that the next day, they would medevac Larry to New York to perform an angioplasty, because open-heart surgery was not necessary. Needless to say, we were nervous about the upcoming operation, but we were also relieved that the surgery would be less invasive, which meant fewer things could go wrong. There had been another consideration, which was how long Larry would be off the show. Open-heart surgery would take a long stretch of recovery time. After an angioplasty, he could be back on the air in days, which meant a great deal to him.
Early the next morning, as many as thirty people gathered in Larry’s hospital room in Los Angeles, including two sets of doctors and Larry’s and Shawn’s family and friends. Determined to get married anyway, Shawn showed up that morning in a gorgeous lavender Chanel dress to make her wedding vows with Larry in his hospital room. Before the minister started, Larry looked up at me and said, “How do I look?”
Everything happened so spontaneously that nothing was recorded as the minister stood beside Larry, who was lying in his bed, with Shawn standing beside him. This was before texting and phones with video capabilities. I had to record everything the old-fashioned way, so there I stood at the foot of the bed, with a yellow legal pad, writing everything down since I would have to put out some kind of press release after the marriage. I listed every person who was there, and I framed my notes and gave them to Larry and Shawn since there was no way they would ever have remembered who had attended their hospital-room wedding.
When the ceremony was over, Larry was flown to New York for his surgery. It was successful, and once he was back in Los Angeles, he and Shawn had a second wedding ceremony, a great celebration, with Ted Turner as best man. Ted’s wife, Jane Fonda, was a bridesmaid. Toward the end of the ceremony, Al Pacino read a passage for them, which elevated the cool factor that already was high as a kite.
While I am a constant participant in Larry’s personal life, for Larry and me, our focus is first and foremost on the show. Over the years we have learned to anticipate each other and understand how the other person ticks, but it took some time to get there, especially for me to get accustomed to the way Larry did things and how he viewed them. Little did I know that the following story, as bizarre as it seems, was and still is quintessential Larry.
When I had just begun working with him, Larry was living in an apartment that overlooked the Potomac River in Washington. I was having a hard time getting him to make certain phone calls that might bring in some of the bigger guests. He said he just didn’t feel like doing it, but I was determined that he would get over his reluctance. I called him one morning and said, “Larry, I’m picking up bagels and I’m coming over. You need to call Barbra Streisand and see if she’ll do the show. I’d do it, but it won’t work unless you make the call yourself.”
I arrived as promised, bagels in hand, and said, “You need to get this booking. When you get her on the phone, if she says no, you can’t just hang up immediately. See if you can talk her into it.” Larry has such a short attention span, he was capable of hanging up the phone in ten seconds if someone refused his offer.
I dialed the phone in one room and I yelled to Larry in the other room, “It’s ringing. Pick it up.”
He picked it up and I heard that amazing voice on the other end of the line, saying, “Hello?”
It was Barbra! I became mesmerized and kept listening. I just had to hear the conversation for history’s sake!! But after she said, “Hello?” it went downhill from there.
“Barbra,” Larry said, “good to talk to you. Hey, I need you to do the show. I’d really love you to do it.”
“I’d like to, Larry,” she said, “but I really can’t right now. Thanks for thinking of me.”
“Oh, Barbra,” Larry coaxed, “you can do half the show. Or how about ten minutes? I just want you on my show.”
“It doesn’t matter if I do ten minutes or an hour,” she said. “It takes the same kind of preparation. I love you madly, Larry, but I really can’t do the show. Thank you anyway.”
Larry persisted. “C’mon, Barbra. Jew to Jew. As a personal favah.”
<
br /> She sighed and repeated, “Once again, I love you, but I can’t do the show. I’m not ready to do the show right now. Luv you, Lar.”
“Well, just think about it,” he said.
They said good-bye and I walked back into the room. He had stayed on the phone and really tried, so maybe next time. I was ready to console him when he said, “Okay, she’ll do it. Call her agent!”
I was perplexed. But I learned that day that Larry is a glass half-full kind of guy. Needless to say, Ms. Streisand did not appear on our show at that particular point in time. When she did come on the show a few years later, in 1995, Larry took the opportunity to remind her that she had played hard to get. We learned during that interview that an icon like Barbra Streisand was also a normal human being with stage fright and fear of public speaking.
KING: We began this program with the standing ovation at Harvard [for Barbra] and your closing remarks. And let’s trace back a little bit. First, why did you agree to speak there [at Harvard]? How did that come about?
STREISAND: They asked me.
KING: But we asked you. How many times did we ask you? Twenty times.
STREISAND: Well, I was supposed to do the Harvard speech in April, before my tour started in London. I thought that was interesting, because I’ve always had strong feelings about the artist as citizen, the artist constantly getting denigrated in society. I heard an interesting story the other day about Molière. On his deathbed, they wouldn’t give him his last rites unless he denounced his profession. So this thing goes back a long way, you know?
KING: So, did you agree to speak, with trepidation, or with forthrightness?
STREISAND: With both. But I was so consumed with rehearsals for my show that I had to cancel it. I thought maybe they’d let me off the hook after the tour. But they said, “No, no, we still would like you to come and speak.” And so that’s why I did it this last February.
KING: Can you tell us why so public a person is so stage frightened or nervous?
STREISAND: First of all, I think I’m, like… 95 percent of the population who would have stage fright standing up to speak publicly. You know, I’m like everybody else.
When Larry asked her about an interview she had done with Mike Wallace, she said:
STREISAND: Well, as when I asked him afterwards, “Why were you so cruel to me?” He said, “Well, you wouldn’t want me to do another show like Barbara Walters did, you know, where she was so nice to you and everything.” Probably thinks you’re too nice to me, too.
KING: I just ask questions. I don’t know about nice or not nice. I’m just curious.
STREISAND: You’re a nice person.
We have never been at a loss for interesting people and topics. For example, it was thrilling to find myself on a ferry to Ellis Island with Larry and Governor Mario Cuomo, who were both being honored as sons of immigrants. Cuomo gave an extraordinary speech in which he asked us to look at the walls around us and remember the history, since everyone had their start right there.
Then he said something like, “Imagine Mrs. Zeiger, Larry’s mother, and Mrs. Cuomo, my mother, sitting here on this bench a long time ago. Mrs. Cuomo says, ‘Someday, my son is going to be the governor of New York.’ And Mrs. Zeiger says, ‘Someday, my son is going to become an international communicator, and he will be famous all over the world. The most famous interviewer in the world.’ ”
It was one of those moments when I realized how amazing it was that these men had made so much of themselves. Their parents had arrived at Ellis Island, and they truly were living the dream. Now, with my current position, I was helping to bring those images to the American public and the world at large.
Today, I find it a bit ironic that as much as Larry prefers interviewing sports figures, his favorite interview of all times, he says, was with Frank Sinatra. I met Sinatra once at the 1984 Republican National Convention in Texas, where Reagan was nominated. I remember running around the convention, busy as usual, when a beautiful-looking man walked up to me. His face was familiar: It was Old Blue Eyes himself, and he was with a gorgeous blonde woman, Barbara, his wife.
“Where is the main event?” he asked me. He knew I was working there because I had a press pass hanging around my neck.
Omigod! It’s Frank Sinatra, I thought. “Let me take you there,” I said as the three of us walked in silence to the main event. Too bad I couldn’t have said to him, “In nine years, I’m going to become the executive producer of your friend Larry King’s show.”
The following excerpt is from Larry’s favorite show in 1988, on the eve of Mr. Sinatra’s eighty-fourth birthday:
KING: Is it still a kick when the man says, and now, ladies and gentlemen—
SINATRA: Oh, it’s a kick. Absolutely. And I swear on my mother’s soul, the first four or five seconds I tremble every time I take the step and I walk out of the wing onto the stage. Because I keep thinking to myself, I wonder if it will be there? When I go for the first sounds that I have to make, will it be there? I was talking about it just the other night at Carnegie Hall at the Irving Berlin thing. I said, even just going out and looking at the audience, I was terrified for about four seconds and then it goes away.
KING: How do you explain that?
SINATRA: I don’t know. I can’t explain it. I always had it. Will you remember the lyrics? Is your tie right? Will you use your hands right? Will you look pleasant to the audience? You have to be on the ball from the minute you step out into that spotlight. You have to know exactly what you’re doing every second on that stage. Otherwise, the act goes right into the bathroom. It’s all over. Good night.
KING: Fame—let’s say we’re in Washington, you and I. We go into Duke Zeibert’s restaurant, popular restaurant. You’re aware when you walk in at lunch, let’s say everybody recognizes you. Everybody knows you. Everybody is looking at you. What’s that like to feel that? Very few people have felt that in their lives.
SINATRA: I think it’s an honor… but I have imaginary blinders in a sense. I look around and if somebody smiles at me I smile, hello, how are you whatever, talk to me. But it’s not unlike anybody else in our world. They walk into restaurants or a theater. The only time I felt like I was causing a problem was, if I go to the theater in New York. As you come down to go to your seat, people get up and look around and they buzz—it’s sweet. It’s wonderful. But you want to run and hide a little bit and between acts, you go out and get a smoke or get a drink next door in the bar. It happens again. Then you got to walk down there again is what takes place. But it’s a nice thing, though, the recognition is really quite nice.
KING: We’re out of time, Francis. Thank you so much.
SINATRA: I had a good time. I enjoyed it. Anytime, just call me and I’ll come running.
Larry has never really understood what a big deal it is for people to be around him. I guess in his own mind, he’s still little Larry Zeiger, the son of Jewish immigrants with no patience whatsoever. Changing his last name to King didn’t change him on the inside, which is one of his greatest charms. But it is also one of his greatest challenges. And mine!
For example, Larry and I were scheduled to have lunch with Nancy Reagan in Beverly Hills one day, years after she had left the White House. As we entered the restaurant and I saw Mrs. Reagan flanked by her Secret Service detail, I became a little nervous. I knew what Larry was capable of and I admonished him, “You have to stay for the whole lunch. Do not leave early. Mrs. Reagan doesn’t want to have lunch with me. She wants to have lunch with you.”
Larry was on his best behavior for at least thirty minutes while we ate a lovely meal and chatted. But the minute he finished his chopped salad with tomatoes and no dressing, he stood and said, “I have to go to the dentist now.” He kissed both Mrs. Reagan and me and he was gone. As I watched him disappear out the door, I realized that we could have been with anyone (with the exception of Jackie Robinson), and he would have done exactly the same thing.
Mrs. Reagan was surprised to
say the least, but I was accustomed to his behavior by now. I looked at her calmly, smiled a little, and said, “Would you like some coffee, Mrs. Reagan?” At least she knew me, since I had covered her husband’s presidency for years.
In the final analysis, a wonderful and whimsical story comes to mind that defines Larry’s and my complicated relationship, to a tee. I have what I can only call a fabulous handbag collection, which was photographed for Vogue magazine. A fashion enthusiast for most of my life and obsessed with all kinds of purses, I was thrilled when the Vogue crew actually came to my house to photograph my handbags with several Chanel and Valentino outfits for me to wear. Of course, my daughter always bursts my bubble when I say I was in Vogue. Amaya reminds me, “Mom, it was only for your purses, not for your clothes.”
To this day, I see this Vogue shoot as one of the biggest and most surprising events that ever happened to me. And as usual, Larry was a part of it. It all began when one day, he asked me to make a particularly awkward phone call to get him out of an event he had agreed to attend. “Please make the call for me, Wendy. This is so damned uncomfortable,” he practically begged. “Please do me this favor.”
“Okay,” I agreed, “I’ll make the call, but it’ll cost you.”
“What will it cost me?” he asked.
“My first authentic Chanel handbag,” I said.
When I was traveling the world as White House producer, I visited a shopping area in South Korea where I got a number of knockoff bags such as Gucci and Prada. They were gorgeous and looked authentic, but now I wanted the real thing.
“Done,” Larry said, “it’s a deal.”
I made the call, got Larry out of his dreaded commitment, and he took me to Chanel on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. I chose a gorgeous classic black bouclé handbag that cost him a lot. He feigned upset at the price tag and teased me like crazy. But now that he knew how much I love them, for each special occasion, Larry buys me a gorgeous handbag and he always includes a note that says, “Dear Wendy, F—you. Larry.”