Merv Griffin- A Life in the Closet

by Darwin Porter

  After an hour, Desi disappeared into the bedroom while Cesar and Merv kept talking. About thirty minutes later, Merv was startled to look up at the doorway to the bedroom. Desi stood completely nude with an erection.

  “Griffin, it's time to say good night,” Desi called out. “I need that cocksucker to give me a blow-job so I can get some sleep.”

  ***

  Merv fell in love with the Pebble Beach area, and years later when he became rich and famous, he often took handsome young men here for his own off-the-record weekends.

  Three decades would go by before Merv purchased his own vacation home in the area. He invited Janet to meet several of his famous friends, but one hour before the housewarming party was to begin, he received a call that she'd suffered a heart attack and had died in an ambulance rushing her to the hospital.

  There was another ironic twist to those Pebble Beach days. Years later when the gay talent agent, Henry Willson, showed up at Merv's door, he spotted a fellow house guest, George Montgomery, sprawled nude out by the pool.

  Merv explained George's presence to Willson, claiming that he had commissioned the actor to make some elegant cabinets for him.

  While appearing in action movies, George, an excellent craftsman, ran a cabinet shop for four decades, making furnishings for the stars. He also designed and constructed a dozen beautiful homes for friends and family.

  Henry and the handsome actor bonded, and Merv noted that they left Pebble Beach together that weekend. The agent had promised the hunk that he could revitalize his career, which he never did. At that point in their lives, both Montgomery's and Willson's sun had already sunk in the West.

  But the question remains: Years after his gig as the entertainment maestro at the Pebble Beach Lodge, did Merv ever manage to seduce George Montgomery, the then-newlywed who had previously accompanied Dinah Shore to her suite?

  ***

  Even though he didn't win first place in the singing contest, Merv did not give up on the radio station, KFRC. One afternoon when he was in San Francisco with Cal Tjader, Merv was urged to apply for a job as a staff musician. Tjader had heard that there was an opening.

  Affiliated with the Mutual Network, KFRC would “birth” such famous TV personalities as Art Linkletter and Mark Goodson, the game show producer. Both Goodson and Linkletter would become powerful role models for Merv.

  Alan Lisser, the program director, agreed to see Merv and Tjader. “Your friend here has told you wrong,” Lisser said. “We don't need a piano player. What we need is a singer. You sing?”

  At first Merv started to say no because, in spite of all his public appearances, he still did not think of himself as a singer. “Merv's the best singer in San Francisco,” Tjader told Lisser. Urged on by his pal, Merv sang for the director in a voice that was no longer the school soprano but had developed into a melodious baritone.

  That morning he'd been listening to the smooth sounds of Dick Haymes singing “IWas Taken for a Sleighride in July.” He chose that song for his audition. Lisser was so impressed he brought out Bill Pabst, the station owner.

  Merv went through the number again and was hired on the spot to appear every Thursday on The San Francisco Sketchbook, a fifteen-minute morning program. His salary would be one hundred dollars per show.

  After signing the deal, Merv was told that he'd be backed up by a twenty- two man orchestra. That flabbergasted him. He felt he was on his way up the long ladder of show business.

  At this point in his career, Merv had not found his own distinctive voice and was heavily influenced by other popular singers of his day. When he was hired for his first professional show, he'd focused on Dick Haymes as a role model.

  Later, Merv attended many of Dick's nightclub shows and got to know him more or less well. Merv told bandleader Freddy Martin, “Never meet your singing idols. Regardless of how smooth they appear on stage, they will always disappoint you in private.”

  Argentine-born Dick burst into prominence during the Big Band Era of the 1940s, appearing with such bandleaders as Tommy Dorsey and Harry James (who was married to Betty Grable).

  “I admired his singing voice,” Merv later said. “When I got to know him personally, I thought he was a bastard. He was a hopeless alcoholic but that was only part of his problems. He was also reckless with money. I heard he squandered four-million dollars in just a few years.”

  As his career headed to the graveyard, Dick met Rita Hayworth in 1953 when she was filming the W. Somerset Maugham story, Miss Sadie Thompson, at Columbia. “He didn't love her,” Merv later said. “At the time I knew Rita only casually but warned her not to marry the bastard. But she was too much in love to listen to me. The results were a disaster. To beef up his audience, Haymes insisted that Rita sit at the front table for all his nightclub appearances. The spotlight would often be turned on her. Even if the crowd didn't want to hear Haymes sing, everybody wanted to get a look at Rita. She was a goddess. Eddie Fisher pulled the same stunt when he married Elizabeth Taylor and hauled her out for public viewing at his nightclub appearances. It's amazing what fading crooners will do to hold onto their popularity—not me, boy. When fans no longer wanted to hear me sing, I switched professions. And how!”

  After just one appearance on The San Francisco Sketchbook, Merv was offered a bigger and better deal by Bill Pabst. Beginning that Monday, he was to be the star of his own The Merv Griffin Show, at a beginning salary of $1,100 per week, which was soon raised to $1,500 per week. The station billed him as “America's New Romantic Singing Star.”

  Rita Hayworth with husband #4,

  Argentinian crooner (and Merv's role model)

  Dick Haymes

  In just three weeks, Merv got his show picked up by the Mutual Network, of which KFRC was a member. He learned that his singing was being broadcast across wartime America, earning new fans for him in places like Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, and New York.

  “I became filthy rich,” Merv said, perhaps unknowingly predicting his own future. “I went out and bought two new cars, one a white convertible just like the one I'd seen Errol Flynn drive away in with those broads. I joined three country clubs, and I didn't even play golf. One membership would have been more than enough. My underpaid dad thought I'd opened a string of bordellos in San Francisco.”

  Even though his newly emerging fans liked his singing, Merv was smart enough to realize that he was no Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby. He arranged to study voice with Bill Stoker, a Mormon who once sang with the orchestra of Kay Kyser. It was while attending one of Bill Stoker's voice lessons that he met another aspirant star, Al Cernick.

  As Guy Mitchell, Al would become what Merv never became, a singing sensation across America.

  ***

  The same age as Merv, good-looking Guy Mitchell entered the world as Albert Cernick in 1925 in Detroit, the son of Croatian immigrant parents. After meeting his fellow pupil at Bill Stoker's vocal classes, Merv was immediately captivated by the young man's looks, charm, and personality. The first day they met, Guy was wearing his sailor's uniform, having been honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy.

  “There was something about his smile that made me tingle all over,” Merv later told Johnny Riley. “He also has the kind of hair you want to run your fingers through.” After their vocal lessons, Guy and Merv spent hours together talking about their dreams for stardom.

  In the 1930s Guy (or Al Cernick) had been signed by Warner Brothers to be groomed as a child star. He later became known as a singer on San Francisco radio, like Merv himself. Surprisingly, Merv did not feel threatened by Guy and didn't view him as a competitor. Instead they developed an unusual rapport with each other. Merv seemed thrilled when Guy, still billed as Al Cernick, got his big break when Carmen Cavallero signed him as the lead singer for his Big Band sounds in 1946.

  Before that break came, Guy had supplemented his income working as a saddlemaker, a trade he'd learned from his father. Rather athletic, he also rode horses, and invited Merv to accompany
him on trips into the wilds of northern California. Merv wasn't that much into horseback riding but gladly went along to be with the object of his desire.

  Somewhere along these trails, Merv fell hopelessly in love with Guy. It was hopeless because Guy was basically straight, although he admitted to “having fooled around a bit in the Navy.” At some point on these long horseback- riding weekends, the relationship between Guy and Merv turned sexual.

  One of Guy's closest friends at the time, Ralph Laven, later claimed that Guy told him that the relationship, in spite of his wishes, had become sexual. “I love Merv, but I don't love him,” Guy reportedly told Laven.

  Merv confided the details of his relationship with Guy to his gay friends, including, as always, Johnny Riley. “Al [meaning Guy] wasn't really into it from what I gathered,” Johnny said. “He let Merv blow him—and that was it. He did not reciprocate. Merv told me that Al wouldn't even let him kiss him except on the cheek. Poor Merv. He wanted deep French kissing and all the works, but Al just couldn't go that far.”

  Thus Merv shared something in common with gay boys all over America who fall for straight men. It was a pattern he would continue throughout the rest of his life.

  Even after learning how Merv felt about him, Guy did not break off with his close friend, but continued in a relationship. Merv could not have been fulfilled by it, but he wanted to remain at Guy's side regardless of the price.

  Putting any jealousy aside, Merv felt pride when Mitch Miller, in charge of talent at Columbia Records, discovered “Al Cernick.” “The name's got to go,” Miller said. “How about Guy Mitchell?”

  Merv did a skip and jump of joy when Frank Sinatra turned down “My Heart Cries for You.” Mitch Miller then offered it to Guy, who scored his first million seller for Columbia. Even the B side of the record, “The Roving Kind,” was also a big hit. Guy quickly became a household name in the 1950s, with other hits to follow, including a 1956 biggie, “Singin’ the Blues.” His decade of the 1950s came to an end with yet another million seller, “Heartaches by the Number.”

  Merv's boyfriend, teen idol and

  singing sensation Guy Mitchell

  Like Merv, Guy also wanted to break into the movies, and he did in 1953 when he starred with Rhonda Fleming in Those Redheads from Seattle and a year later with Rosemary Clooney in Red Garters. Merv was even around in 1957 to toast Guy when he starred on television in The Guy Mitchell Show.

  Merv had dinner with Guy to console him when he was booted out of Columbia Records in 1961. “We talked about old times like two geezers, even though both of us had decades yet left to live.” Merv confessed to having a tear in his eye in 1965 when he heard the news over the phone that Guy was retiring from show business.

  Upon learning of Guy's death at the age of 72 on July 1, 1999, Merv fondly recalled his friend and long-time companion, a man he'd never stopped loving. “Like me, Guy in his music evoked the last years of America's innocence in the 1950s. The world of music, even life itself, would never be the same when that decade came to an end. The horrible Sixties were upon us. Watching Guy's decline only reminded me what would have happened had I not reinvented myself after my decline as a pop singer and a so-called movie star in the Fifties.”

  ***

  Even though he continued to sing in San Francisco during the mid-Forties, Merv as a romantic singer was also developing a fan base in Los Angeles. The beautiful Joan Fontaine, star of one of Merv's all-time favorite movies, Rebecca (1940), listened to him along with her husband, the producer William Dozier. The “son of Nebraska” had only recently married Fontaine and would go on to wed actress Ann Rutherford after his divorce from Fontaine in 1951.

  Joan and Bill became so enamored of Merv's singing that they called him and agreed to drive to San Francisco to meet with him at their suite at the Fairmont Hotel. Bill had hopes of turning Merv “into the next Dennis Morgan,” a singing star and fixture at Warner's during the 1940s.

  Based on Merv's singing voice, and in advance of their first meeting, Bill judged him to be handsome and romantic with a big future in movie musicals.

  It was Joan who answered the door of their suite. Merv recalled that she looked astonished. “You are Merv Griffin?” Quickly concealing her embarrassment, she invited him into her suite. “Bill, darling,” she called to her husband. “You've got to come out and meet Merv Griffin, the singing sensation.”

  Merv later recalled that Bill's face “just dropped when he saw me. I could tell how disappointed he was. He knew at once that I wasn't going to be Hollywood's next romantic leading singer in films. But Bill and Joan were terribly polite and recovered brilliantly like the pros they are and invited me in for a drink.”

  The only humor associated with that afternoon drink came when Joan said, “I really should introduce you to Olivia in case she ever does a musical. You'd be perfect as her leading man.” Joan, of course, was jokingly referring to her estranged sister, Olivia de Havilland.

  Since Bill and Joan obviously couldn't talk about promoting Merv as a romantic singing film star, the conversation quickly turned to Bill's early days in Hollywood.

  In 1935 he came to California as an agent for writers F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis, and he had many stories to tell about his misadventures trying to get serious writers launched. It made Merv sad to hear Bill tell about Fitzgerald's declining years.

  At the door telling Merv good-bye, Bill finally got to the point. “Take off eighty pounds, kid, and then we'll talk.”

  During the years that followed, Bill and Merv encountered each other on occasions and laughed about their first meeting. “If I knew you were going to become the richest man on the planet, I would have signed you at once,” Bill told him. “Fat or not. I could have become Col. Tom Parker to your Elvis. A fifty-fifty split, of course.”

  Merv also followed Bill's career in television. He was amused as Bill demanded the insertion of phrases like “Pow!,” “Wham!,” and “Zowee!” as a means of infusing camp into the Batman TV series in the late 60s. Encountering Bill at Restaurant “21” in New York, Merv came up to him and extended his hand. “The King of Camp himself!”

  Later Merv recalled, “Believe it or not, Bill thought camp was a place you sent your kids every summer. I guess he hadn't read Susan Sontag's article defining a new kind of camp.”

  “As the Batman craze swept the country,” Bill said, “I learned what camp was. There are those who say I invented it.” Later Bill was accused of ushering in trash TV. But he told Merv, “I'm not ashamed. Were F.W. Woolworth and J.C. Penny ashamed because they weren't Tiffany and Cartier?”

  In time Bill became a TV reformer, teaching college courses on Network Television, in which he urged his students to “reshape the tube.” He admitted to having produced, in addition to Batman, the Green Hornet and The Tammy Grimes Show—“the most conspicuous failure ever on television.”

  But to his classes, whose members included U.C.L.A. undergraduates as well as Hollywood directors, producers, and press agents, he expressed admiration of Merv for bringing serious talk to television, citing interviews with everybody from the Kennedys to Martin Luther King Jr. “Of course,” Bill added, “he also had to bring on Burt Reynolds and Sophia Loren to keep the ratings high.”

  ***

  In San Francisco, with his new-found money from his successful singing career—“I was making the kind of money my old man could only dream about”—Merv established Panda Records in 1946 with Janet Folsom. With her help and professional advice, he recorded his first album of easy-to-listento melodies, including “Falling in Love with Love,” which remained his favorite on the road for many years to come. Even though the album, Songs by Merv Griffin, didn't sell well, it had its moment in music history.

  Fresh from the battlefields of Europe, the album's recording engineer had made great strides in experimental technology. Merv's album was recorded on magnetic tape, the first U.S. label to be recorded in such a way. As such, it is displayed today in museums
devoted to music history.

  It was not the experience with Bill Dozier and Joan Fontaine, but an encounter with another star named Joan—Joan Edwards—that finally convinced Merv he had to take off the pounds if he ever wanted to be a star in the movies or even in the newly emerging industry of television.

  Without ever knowing what he looked like, Joan Edwards had become a faithful fan of Merv's, listening to his romantic singing voice every chance she got. She was one of the most popular radio singers in America, and was regularly featured on the highly rated Your Hit Parade between 1941 and 1946.

  She'd also been a featured singer with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra between 1938 and 1940, at which time Merv had become an ardent fan.

  From her hotel room in San Francisco, Joan called Merv to tell him, “You sing like an angel.” Flattered at her attention, he invited her to appear the next morning on his show. “I'll be there with bells on,” she promised.

  Merv later claimed she was shocked when she encountered him for the first time. Unlike the socially graceful Joan Fontaine, Joan Edwards was a very blunt woman. “You sing a romantic ballad better than Sinatra, although I'm sure you don't fuck as well. I'm speaking from personal experience. But that blubber has to go. There aren't too many Moby Dick scripts being written for whales these days.”

  Merv later claimed that, “I almost cried when I heard her say that. But it was the truth. I just hadn't faced up to it. I knew my career could really get moving, but only when I shit and pissed away all that God damn fat.”

  No more visits to Blum's Soda Fountain for his beloved hot fudge sundaes—“ with extra fudge, please.” No more big bowls of puffed rice in which he dripped honey and added two bananas for breakfast. No more spaghetti dinners with three desserts.

  On a rigid diet for the first time in his life, Merv ate nothing but rare steak and salads without oil, only vinegar. Amazingly he managed to take off twenty pounds a month. Standing nude in front of a mirror, he admired his body for the first time in his life, at a fighting weight of 160 pounds.