Merv Griffin- A Life in the Closet

by Darwin Porter

  The “gay illiterate,”

  gossip maven

  Louella Parsons

  Finally, the governor brought a quick end to his speech. By that time, Hearst had ordered two burly waiters to escort Marion from the Grove and into a waiting limousine to speed her on her way back to San Simeon.

  * * *

  Back in New York, Merv achieved one of his dreams by singing at the fabled Starlight Roof of the Waldorf-Astoria. He was still with Freddy Martin's band, but each day he thought of breaking away and doing solo gigs. He was getting tired of being referred to as “the boy singer” with Freddy Martin's orchestra. On his opening night, Margaret Truman, the president's daughter, attended the club and was impressed with Merv's singing.

  When she was invited to appear on “The Big Show,” NBC's top radio show in America, she mentioned to its hostess, Tallulah Bankhead, that she should have Merv on her show to sing.

  Perhaps as a favor to Margaret, Tallulah called Merv the next day. Back in those days, the diva actually made some of her own phone calls. When Merv came on the phone, she said to him, “I don't need to tell you who I am, dah-ling. The whole word knows my voice. Of course, I must admit that female impersonators do it better than your old Auntie Tallu.”

  He would later tell his friends, “Tallulah's voice had more timber than the Yellowstone National Park.”

  “It's an honor to talk to you, Miss Bankhead. I think I know why you're calling me, and I'm doubly honored.”

  “I'm calling to ask you a very specific question, and I don't want you to lie to me like all other men have done. I have a way of getting the truth out of men in such matters. Dah-ling, forgive me, but just how big is your cock?”

  He was completely flabbergasted and didn't know what to say. His embarrassment made her cackle into the phone. “Actually, dah-ling, I want you to sing on ‘The Big Show’ tomorrow. A lousy singer herself, Margaret Truman, told me you were divine.”

  With that introduction, Miss Tallulah Bankhead of Alabama became a permanent fixture in Merv's life.

  * * *

  The radio variety program, “The Big Show,” which began a two-year run on November 5, 1950, was NBC's attempt to save talk radio from the onslaught of television. With Tallulah as its hostess, it became a Sunday night feature across America. The show had superior scripting, but what gave it “a big bang” was Tallulah's notorious wit and ad-libbing.

  In immodestly assessing her own success, Tallulah proclaimed, “I snatched radio out of the grave. The autopsy was delayed.”

  Merv was honored to join all the big names she'd had on the show, including Gary Cooper, Bob Hope, Gloria Swanson, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, and Louis Armstrong.

  At the time of his first meeting with Tallulah, she was front-page news around the country. Not only was she the new “Queen of Radio,” she was involved in a sensational trial that generated as much press and interest as the O.J. Simpson murder trial would in years to come.

  Tallulah had sued her maid, Evelyn Cronin, a former burlesque dancer, for adding too many zeros to too many of her personal checks. The trial, before Harold Stevens, the first black man to sit on a General Sessions Bench, received more newspaper coverage than the ceasefire negotiations for the war in Korea.

  Cronin's lawyer, Brooklyn senator Fred G. Morritt, played dirty, turning the embezzlement case into a personal attack on Tallulah, claiming she'd bought “booze, drugs, and sex.”

  “I've never had to stoop that low,” Tallulah said. The charges against her were so vitriolic that she claimed, “The next thing you'll hear from the defense is that I have been vivisecting my fucking dogs!”

  In spite of the many personal smears on her character, Tallulah would win the case. Cronin was found guilty on three counts of grand larceny and was given a one- to two-year prison sentence. The sentence was later suspended.

  Fresh from court, where she'd been accused of being an excessive marijuana smoker, Tallulah was an hour late for rehearsals at NBC. Attired in a full-length mink coat for which she'd paid $2,000, she leisurely strolled into the rehearsal hall walking like Jeanette MacDonald in Naughty Marietta.

  Meredith Willson was there rehearsing the NBC Orchestra, with 97 musicians. The music stopped and all eyes turned to look at Tallulah who sized up each man one by one. “Any of you cocksuckers got a reefer?” she asked. The boys in the band burst into hysterical laughter as she suddenly changed her movements. Instead of a demure Jeanette, she shimmied off the stage like the burlesque dancer, Gypsy Rose Lee, doing a mock striptease with her mink.

  She walked into a room where Merv sat with the upcoming guests on “The Big Show.” The cast included Ethel Merman, Phil Silvers, and Loretta Young. Rising to his feet, Merv attempted to introduce himself and shake Tallulah's hand.

  Instead of a handshake, Tallulah gave Merv a big, sloppy wet kiss with tongue before seating herself at the head of the table. She didn't speak to the other guests slated to be on her show, but eyed each of them skeptically. It was obvious to Merv that she knew all of them very well, even their darkest secrets.

  After surveying the table, she said, “What a motley crew. Not a virgin here.” She cackled at her own appraisal.

  She reached for Phil's hand and fondled it gingerly before kissing it as if it were the Pope's ring. “I love Phil dearly even though he's a manic-depressive and a compulsive gambler,” she said. “We were once together in Las Vegas, and he told me he was broke and had no money to pay his bills. But to pay for our drinks, he pulled out a large wad of bills that would have choked the most sword-swallowing of cocksuckers. I said, ‘Why don't you use that money to pay your fucking bills?’ He told me he couldn't because that wad was his gambling money.”

  She abruptly dropped his hand as a harsh frown came across her face. “Why should I have all my sins published on every front page in America? I'm sure all of you do ghastlier things than my drunken brain could conjure up. Take Phil for example. Everybody in show business knows he gets off by going to men's rooms to watch guys urinate.”

  “Tallulah,” he said, “you've got my number.” He said that with a smile and didn't seem offended at her revelation, which had shocked Merv. “I may indulge here and there but I never invited three actors back to my suite where I stripped nude, got into a bathtub, and invited them to piss on me,” he said, staring at Tallulah.

  “Touché, darling,” Tallulah said before turning to Ethel. “Ethel here licks more pussy from Broadway chorus gals than Flo Ziegfeld himself. George and Ira Gershwin sure knew what they were doing when they cast you in Girl Crazy. Dah-ling, you were never big on brains, but Judy Garland told me you give great head.”

  Without missing a beat, Ethel shot back, “Hattie McDaniel told me you were awful at it.”

  “Mammy was right. I almost suffocated when she locked those fat, black legs around me. A real death grip.”

  The final days

  of the Golden Age of Radio:

  Alabama spitfire Miss Tallulah Bankhand

  emcees The Big Show

  Throughout the exchange, Ethel, a voracious eater of peanut brittle, chewed away at her favorite snack. “Just for all that, I'm going to sing ‘I Got Rhythm’ on your show with a mouth full of peanut brittle.” She lived up to her threat. Later on the show, even with a mouth full, she managed to hold the high C note for a full sixteen bars.

  At last Tallulah's attention focused on Merv. “Merv is too much an innocent for me to turn on him and tell you good folks what I learned that he does with his mouth when he's not warbling ‘Coconuts.’” He flushed red with embarrassment.

  Tallulah instinctively knew that such tough show business pros as Ethel and Phil could easily handle her provocative banter. She saved her final victim for last, knowing Loretta would be the tastiest morsel to be devoured at the table. She moved toward Loretta like a Tyrannosaurus rex returned to Earth to devour a juicy water buffalo.

  “Now take Gretchen here,” Tallulah said. Between 1917 and 1928, Loretta h
ere appeared in pictures as Gretchen Young. “This WAMPAS Baby Star eloped when she turned thirteen. She was broken in earlier than any of us.”

  “I was seventeen,” Loretta protested.

  “All I know is that you appeared with your young husband, Grant Withers, in a movie ironically called Too Young to Marry. My sins are paraded in front of the press. But you cover up your dark deeds, like getting impregnated by Clark Gable when you two lovebirds made The Call of the Wild, and then later pretending to adopt the kid with the big ears she inherited from Gable.”

  “Oh, please,” Loretta protested. “That was a mortal sin. Don't mock me for what I did. In an entire lifetime, I made one mistake. Otherwise, I've never betrayed any of my husbands, unlike you who could never be faithful to anybody. You should be ashamed of yourself. I read the newspapers. I know what you've been doing.”

  “Don't you dare lecture me on morality, you sickeningly sweet little phony. That's bullshit. You were unfaithful to all your husbands. Just ask George Brent, Louis Calhern, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Norman Foster, Richard Greene, Wayne Morris, David Niven, Tyrone Power, Gilbert Roland, James Stewart, Spencer Tracy, and Darryl Zanuck. Dare I mention my own beloved Jock Whitney? He personally told me that the reason he broke from you was your demand that he perform anilingus on you?”

  “I can't take this any more.” Loretta rose to her feet and rushed from the room.

  Tallulah got up and walked over to the chair vacated a moment ago by Loretta. “No one must sit here. It still has the mark of the cross on it.”

  She turned to Merv. “Better go and look after her before she jumps out of a building or something.”

  Unknown to Tallulah, Merv was relieved when she commanded him to go look after Loretta. It had already been agreed that after the rehearsal runthrough, he was to escort Loretta to Fulton Sheen's suite for a dinner engage- ment. He found her in the hall weeping and tried to console her. After she went to the women's room to make emergency repairs to her face, he took her downstairs and hailed a taxi.

  En route to the dinner with Sheen, neither Loretta nor Merv spoke of Tallulah but talked about their joint admiration for Sheen. At the bishop's apartment, Loretta requested that she meet privately in Sheen's study because she needed counseling after that attack from Tallulah.

  A servant ushered Merv into the living room where he introduced himself to Irene Dunne sitting on a sofa.

  “Miss Dunne,” he said. “I'm honored to meet you. I can't believe how the Academy hasn't given you an Oscar. Nominated five times and no award. You deserved all five Oscars. What a shame!”

  “It doesn't bother me a bit,” she said. “I do not have the terrifying ambition of other actresses—take Joan Crawford for instance. I drifted into acting and one day I'll just drift out. Acting is not everything. Living is.”

  For the next thirty minutes, Merv chatted with Irene, finding her one of the warmest persons he'd ever met in show business. She was the complete opposite of Tallulah. He learned that they shared some of the same background, as she too had taken piano and voice lessons and sang in local churches and high school plays.

  By the time Sheen emerged with Loretta, Merv felt he'd formed a warm bond with Irene. Sheen walked into the room and shook Merv's hand, avoiding his usual embrace.

  When he surveyed the finery worn by both Irene and Loretta, Sheen changed plans. Suddenly, he didn't think it appropriate that he be seen at Twenty-One, having dinner with such gorgeous and spectacularly dressed actresses. “People might get the wrong impression.” Sheen seemed to forget that he was also spectacularly dressed--right down to his red alligator shoes.

  At 7:50pm, Sheen arose from his seat at the table and announced that the party was over. He always did this with his guests to get his sleep before beginning another nineteen-hour day. On the way out, Sheen whispered something to Merv. After he'd taken Loretta and Irene back to their hotel, Merv returned at 8:45pm and was ushered into Sheen's apartment. What happened between them that night is not known.

  Merv was only mildly surprised when Loretta the following day showed up for her scheduled appearance on “The Big Show.” On air, she and Tallulah, being the pros they were, greeted each other like longtime friends. No mention was ever made of Tallulah's drunken episode.

  When Merv sang on the show, he was given another wet, sloppy kiss with tongue from Tallulah. “You were just divine, dah-ling,” Tallulah announced to millions of Americans. “Let's all give a big hand to the next major singing sensation of America. Merv Griffin. Remember that name, dah-lings.”

  When Merv encountered Irene in 1957, president Dwight Eisenhower had appointed her one of five alternative U.S. delegates to the United Nations, recognizing her charitable works and her interest in conservative Catholic and Republican causes. She spoken to him of how important “keeping up appearances” was to Sheen.

  She claimed that an angry husband had discovered a photograph of his wife, dressed only in a pair of shorts, getting into Sheen's car. The husband proclaimed to all who would listen that the monsignor was having an affair with his wife. “No one believed him,” Irene said, “but our dear friend never set foot in Beverly Hills again until the husband died.”

  Years later Merv was asked to comment on Tallulah and “The Big Show.” “It was big—the biggest thing on radio—but not big enough to kill TV. After all, TV had moving pictures and was free if you owned a set. I entered the Big Band era when it was dying. Tallulah entered radio in its dying gasps. Her Big Show was variety radio's last grand stand. Tallulah never had such a perfect forum to show her innate brightness and a razor-sharp wit that could make a Bob Hope sound like a dull carnival barker. If radio audiences wanted the best in grown-up entertainment in those days, they could always bank on Bankhead. I was honored to be a part of it.”

  * * *

  In December of 1950 Merv found himself back in San Francisco with family and friends. Once again he was the boy singer with Freddy's band at the St. Francis.

  As a special tribute to his increasing fame, Mayor Carrol M. Spears, along with 250 other citizens of San Mateo, drove to San Francisco and threw a gala in honor of Merv in the Mural Room of the hotel. Merv was given a gold key to the city, honoring the hometown boy who had made good.

  Right after Christmas, Merv was in San Mateo at the Mills Memorial Hospital having his tonsils removed. He feared the operation would forever damage his singing voice, but, of course, that never happened.

  As soon as he recovered, he drove to Los Angeles to make his motion picture debut in Music by Martin, a sixteen-minute short for Universal- International. Shot in only one day, the film did nothing to launch Merv into a movie career, centering mostly on Freddy and the boys in his band. Within the context of the short, Merv sang “Tenement Symphony,” not one of his best numbers.

  One night in Hollywood, as Merv returned to the Roosevelt Hotel, he was surprised to encounter Tom Drake, wearing sunglasses, waiting for him in the lobby. He looked as boyishly handsome as ever. He hadn't seen Tom since that night he first met him at the Cocoanut Grove with Judy Garland and Peter Lawford.

  Tom wanted to talk to Merv in private, so he invited him up to his small hotel suite.

  When they were alone in the elevator, Tom removed his sunglasses to reveal bloodshot eyes. He'd been up all night crying over Peter, who had broken off their relationship.

  In his suite, Merv offered Tom a drink, which he accepted as he poured out his undying love for the errant Peter, who liked to maintain many relationships simultaneously, including those with women.

  Merv tried to pass it off as a lover's quarrel, reminding Tom that Judy Garland had told him that Peter had kicked him out many times previously, but had then repeatedly taken him back.

  Tom admitted that was true, but claimed that what was different from before was that this time, a drunken Peter had turned violent, threatening to kill him if Tom didn't quit stalking him. He also claimed that Peter had been spending many of his nights with the troubled young a
ctor, Robert Walker.

  Merv, later relating details of the evening to Roddy McDowall and others, claimed that Peter was someone you had an affair with--not someone you fell in love with.

  As Merv later revealed to Roddy McDowall, he tried to assure Tom that he was still young and attractive and still loved by many people. Merv pointed out that Tom, like Merv himself, even had fan clubs.

  But Tom countered that his fan clubs had reached their peak at the end of World War II, and that the members of those clubs had tended to have gotten married and moved to the suburbs to raise children.

  Merv invited Tom to spend a few days with him at his hotel, where he would offer him comfort and friendship. He later claimed that he and Tom shared the same bed together, but Merv was doing so only as a means of offering comfort. He assured Roddy that no sex had ever taken place between them. Tom was just too depressed for that. “All we did was cuddle,” Merv told Roddy.

  Falling in love with

  the boy next door,

  Tom Drake

  Sometime during their discussions, Tom extracted a promise from Merv that he would go and see Peter the following morning, and beg him to take Tom back.

  * * *

  Keeping his promise to Tom, Merv called Peter Lawford. Peter had been staying at Robert Walker's house, and he invited Merv to come over. All of Hollywood was gossipping about Peter's relationship with Robert, an emotionally unstable actor, and Peter's simultaneous affair with Lana Turner.

  Robert had been married to Jennifer Jones, his costar in the 1944 Since You Went Away, until David O. Selznick stole her away. Robert later married Barbara Ford, daughter of director John Ford. When Peter was with Lana, Robert was said to be moving from bed to bed—Nancy Davis (Reagan), Ava Gardner, and Judy Garland herself, among his conquests.