When Merv opened the door, he was shocked to encounter a young boy who looked no more than ten years old.
“Hi, kid,” Merv said, “give me your autograph book.”
“I don't want your autograph, Mr. Griffin,” the boy said. “My mother sent me backstage. She wants you to join our table after your next show.”
“Sorry, kid, but no thanks. I'm tired tonight and want to get some shuteye. Tell your mama to give me a raincheck.”
“But, Mr. Griffin, she wants you to be her new leading man in her next big musical.”
“Just who is this mother of yours?” Merv asked. “Judy Garland?”
“Doris Day.”
Merv later told Freddy that he was so overwhelmed at the prospect of meeting Doris that his knees were knocking throughout that night's second act. Like himself, Doris had been a band singer. But now she was the newly crowned Queen of Warner Brothers and one of the biggest box office attractions in the country. Instead of concentrating on his singing, Merv's head was filled with dreams of becoming Doris's leading man, replacing Gordon MacRae.
“It was a crazy thing to do,” Marty Melcher, Doris's husband, later said. “I should have gone backstage and introduced myself to Griffin instead of sending Terry. For the life of me, I don't know why I sent the boy. He was just a kid. And besides, Doris knew that Warner's at the time was planning future musicals with her and MacRae. They'd already filmed Tea for Two together. Frankly, she didn't like him. His heavy drinking had led to several fights on the set, and she wasn't hot to work with him again.”
“At the time we heard Merv sing, I was scouting around for another boy singer,” Marty said. “We needed a goodlooking guy with a voice who could be a good second banana for Doris. Someone who would let Doris shine like the star she was without any interference from MacRae's colossal ego. Merv seemed like the ideal candidate, although I was considering a lot of other boy singers.”
Marty later admitted that Doris wanted unchallenged star billing. Gordon, with his great baritone voice, seemed to think he was a much bigger star than Doris. “Doris wanted to get a virtual unknown for her leading man,” Marty said. “That way, there could be no doubt as to who was the star of the picture.”
After the show, a nervous Merv walked up to Doris's table and extended his hand. “Doris Mary Ann Von Kappelhoff,” he said. “Why did you ever change it to Doris Day? Kappelhoff would fit better onto a marquee.”
“Doris burst into laughter,” Marty said. “Merv showed us that he could not only sing, but had a sense of humor.”
After both Merv and Doris exchanged compliments about each other's singing, Marty got down to business. A waiter had already escorted Terry upstairs to their suite, as it was long past his bedtime.
“I want a new face,” Doris said abruptly. “Jack Warner is planning to team me with the same actors again and again. Jack Carson has already taught me all the tricks he knows about how to be in front of a camera. Gordon MacRae and I are not compatible. I've got my own career to think about. It's not my job to keep all the contract boys at Warner's working full time. The films are coming at me fast and furious. Jack Warner doesn't even want to give me a week off to lie by my pool. His excuse? The sun would give me too many freckles.”
When she returned to Hollywood, Doris promised Merv that she'd arrange a screen test for him at Warner's. “You'll find out for yourself,” she said. “Appearing before a camera will be a lot more rewarding — and a lot more fun — than standing in front of a live audience every night singing ‘Sentimental Journey’ for the ten thousandth time. In your case, that ‘Coconuts’ ditty.”
The next morning, going down on the elevator for breakfast, Merv encountered Terry again. He was checking out of the hotel with his parents, who had already gone to the garage. “Isn't my mom a great lady?” he asked.
“My favorite singer,” Merv said. “What a bubbly personality.”
Mary Ann Von Kappelhoff
(Doris Day)
with Gordon MacRae.
“When you become her next leading man, you'll find that she's wonderful to work with.” As he stepped off the elevator, the boy turned to Merv, a frown crossing his brow. “Watch out for that Marty Melcher. He's a real son of a bitch and a crook. He'll steal you blind.”
With that parting remark, Terry raced across the lobby. Even though he'd been given Marty's last name, Terry was the biological son of Doris's first husband, a trombonist, Al Jorden, who had committed suicide years before.
After Doris flew out of Las Vegas to return to Hollywood, Merv could hardly wait to finish his final appearances with Freddy's orchestra. “I was the little fat boy back in San Mateo dreaming dreams that could never come true. Hollywood star. Doris Day's leading man. I just knew we'd become the new Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy of the screen. I couldn't wait to go back to Hollywood. I left it as a boy singer with a band. I was returning to become a bigtime star. Years later I looked back at how naïve I was. I did become a star but in another medium. The Hollywood I was about to enter in the early 1950s was dying on the vine, as television rose to challenge it. It was to become my baptism of fire. I don't want to get too melodramatic, but it became my season in hell. Even so, I had a lot of fun along the way and an occasional heartbreak.”
Merv on the road to bigger things
Chapter Four
Back in Hollywood, and back in Tom Drake's bed, Merv's daydreams almost overpowered him. Stardom seemed only months away.
Tom warned that he'd felt the same way in 1945, only to be bitterly disillusioned. “I was hailed as the next Van Johnson, but Van is still going strong. You're hailed as the next Gordon MacRae even though he hasn't departed from the scene either. In fact, his career seems stronger than ever.”
“Maybe,” Merv said, not wanting the actor's pessimism to spoil his usually sunny outlook. “So maybe I won't replace MacRae. Yesterday, one of the trade papers predicted that I'd be the next Dennis Morgan. I hear Warners isn't going to renew his contract. Besides, I sing better than Dennis.”
“I don't think you and I are going to replace anybody,” Tom predicted. “Better that you find your own voice. Be yourself.”
“Okay, okay,” Merv said, slightly dismissive. Merv was already growing bored with Tom, finding him “too clinging,” as he relayed in a phone call to Johnny Riley in San Francisco.
“When you get tired of Tom, ship him north to me,” Johnny had said.
But on the way to his first meeting at Warner Brothers, Merv began to fear that Tom Drake and his pessimism might be right. He read a story about Warner Brothers in Variety that suggested the studio might be on the way down. In 1947, it seemed, Warners had earned more than $22 million. But in 1951 its earnings had plummeted to $9.4 million.. Dozens of personnel, Merv had learned, had been fired, including one quarter of the publicity staff.
Merv had grown up on movies made by Warner Brothers, seeing the entire output of such big stars as Bette Davis, James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, John Garfield, Humphrey Bogart, and his special favorite, Errol Flynn.
For Warner's, 1952 was a crucial year. In 1946, a Federal court had ordered that the studio, and others, divest themselves of their theater holdings. That meant that Warners could no longer be guaranteed block bookings of its films, especially the duds. In the future, each movie would have to be sold on its individual merits.
Merv was confident, however, that he and Doris would produce an ongoing roster of musical box office hits. He was delighted that his name was recognized at Warners' security gate. The security guard there had even called him “Mr. Griffin.” He was escorted to a rehearsal hall with a piano where he was told to wait for Bill Orr, the casting director. Bill was married to Jack Warner's stepdaughter, Joy Page.
At the time of Merv's acting debut at Warners, many of the stars that he had hoped to meet there had already told the studio good-bye, or vice versa. Bogart and Lauren Bacall had departed, as had flatchested Ann Sheridan and “ballsy” Ida Lupino. The tough, cyn
ical and edgy John Garfield was on his last legs and would die of a heart attack that May, reportedly nude and between the sheets with a starlet. He was only 39 years old.
Two of Merv's alltime favorites, Joan Crawford and Errol Flynn, were still on the lot, and Merv planned to look them up. He wasn't sure if Joan would remember him, but he was certain that Errol would. Joan was finishing This Woman Is Dangerous, and Errol was trying to launch The Adventures of Captain Fabian, which he had written himself.
The woman whom Merv referred to as “the demented screen goddess,” Bette Davis, was long gone, following the disastrous release of Beyond the Forest in 1949. His encounters with Bette lay in his future.
Ronald Reagan and his former wife, Jane Wyman, were still on the lot, although they avoided each other after their divorce. Freelancers such as Burt Lancaster came and went, appearing in such adventure epics as The Crimson Pirate. Patricia Neal had gained good notices after appearing with Ronald in The Hasty Heart. Much to Patricia's brokenhearted regret, her former costar and lover, Gary Cooper, was appearing with that sexy ice blonde, Grace Kelly, in High Noon.
Crosseyed Virginia Mayo, who was playing a burlesque queen in She's Working Her Way Through College, was costarring with Ronald Reagan. Rumors spread around the lot that they were having an affair, even though Nancy Davis was hovering in the wings to throw ice on the fire.
Now that Errol was getting long in the tooth, and increasingly drunk, Merv felt that the sexiest man on the Warners lot was Steve Cochran, who had been Mae West's leading man on the stage in Diamond Lil and her offstage lover. Steve had become known for playing sleazy pretty boys. “When it comes to menacing sexuality, no one does it better than Steve boy,” Merv told Tom Drake
In the rehearsal hall at Warners, Merv was told to wait until Bill Orr appeared. The casting director had worked for Merv's Uncle Elmer at a nightclub he owned on Sunset Strip. It was called The Sports Circle, and Bill appeared there as an emcee doing impressions. At Merv's instigation, Uncle Elmer had called Bill asking for him to “give Merv special consideration.”
By the time the second hour rolled around, and Bill had not appeared, Merv mumbled “some consideration” to his agent, “Bullets” Durgom, who stood around with a pianist from Warners.
During this time, Merv at least got to know his agent a little better. Up to now, Bullets usually had less than fifteen minutes to devote to conferences or talks with Merv. He was one busy agent, hustling jobs for other clients who included one especially big one (in more ways than one), Jackie Gleason.
The agent's real name was George Durgom, but he preferred his nickname of Bullets. Long linked to Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra, Bullets at one time also represented Glenn Miller, who had died during the war.
His newer, sexier stars included Natalie Wood, and, for a time, even Marilyn Monroe. During their wait, Bullets told Merv he wanted him to meet another artist he represented, Sammy Davis Jr. “He's terrific. You guys will get along fabulously.”
Merv suspected Bullets was of some vague Arabic descent, perhaps Lebanese, but he didn't dare ask. A short, intense, railthin man, Bullets was balding and walked with a stoop. He always had a harassed look as if he were late for an appointment somewhere else. He'd earned the sobriquet Bullets in a Brooklyn schoolyard because he kept ricocheting his sentences from one subject to another without connecting them.
Finally, one of Bill Orr's assistants warned Merv and an increasingly impatient Bullets that “the boss man is on his way.” His temper flaring, Merv was furious at having to wait so long, even though Bullets warned him “to cool it.”
Merv knew it might blow his chances for a screen test, but he decided to get back at Bill.
Merv instructed the pianist to play the last notes of Cole Porter's “Night and Day.” Just as Bill entered the hall, Merv sang the last refrain of the song before bolting for the door.
Even though Bill introduced himself, and apologized for being late, Merv snubbed him. “I've just done my act. I'm not doing it again. Don't get too grand with me, Orr. If you want to hear me sing, catch my next solo gig in Las Vegas.”
Bill Orr could easily have walked away from Merv that day and never called upon him again. Merv was uncharacteristically rude and arrogant toward this major Hollywood player, and Bill himself told Jack Warner that “singers like Merv Griffin are a dime a dozen.”
Bill would go on to forge a big career as a TV producer, associated with a string of westerns and detective programs, including Maverick (1957), Cheyenne (1955), 77 Sunset Strip (1958), and F Troop (1965).
Before coming to Hollywood, Bill had served as an officer in the Army Air Force's First Motion Picture Unit, making training films with William Holden, Alan Ladd, and Ronald Reagan. After the war, and after his marriage to Joy Page. Bill became in his own words “a big enchilada” at Warners. Behind his back, his coworkers claimed “the soninlaw also rises.”
Elmer had arranged for hetero pornographic pictures of Bill to be snapped when the casting director worked for him at his burlesque club on Sunset Strip. Rumors still persist that Elmer threatened to present those pictures to Bill's fatherinlaw, Jack Warner, if Bill refused to arrange a screen test for Merv.
Somehow, and it isn't known how it happened, Jack Warner eventually saw those pictures, and got a rundown on the whole sordid blackmail attempt. In the wake of that, Warner allegedly told his confidants that, “Merv Griffin got his screen test and his Warners contract because that old fuck, Elmer, blackmailed Bill into granting them. What Merv didn't know was that I was planning to cast him as the lead in only one of our pictures — and nothing more. So, fine….. I'll give him a god damn contract to be in some pictures, but if I'm still here, I'll see that he's uncredited and with no more than 30 seconds of screen time in each of them. I'll show those fuckers they can't piss on Jack Warner and get away with it.”
Amazingly, Jack later became friends with Merv and invited him on several occasions for Sunday afternoons at his palatial home. But in spite of this outward friendliness, Jack was “stubborn as a horse,” according to Bill Orr, and stood by his original forecast about how he'd handle Merv. “Jack Warner and Bill Orr completely fucked my chances for a film career,” Merv would later claim.
As the months went by, Bill and Merv “mended fences” (in Merv's words) and became confidants of a sort, even though Bill — perhaps the result of the remembered grudge — did almost nothing for Merv's film career. “I hung out with Bill Orr on a Saturday night but come Monday morning he always put me at the bottom of the cast — that is if he listed my name at all.”
Merv told Roddy McDowall and Tom Drake that Elmer had showed him those pornographic pictures he had of Bill. “Orr is exceptionally well endowed. No wonder all the gals and closeted male stars went for him,” Merv said.
Bill liked to gossip about the stars, and so did Merv. Bill claimed that the very closeted Edward G. Robinson had come on to him, as had “shorty,” Alan Ladd. He also claimed that he'd had an onagain, offagain affair with Lucille Ball in the late 40s during her marriage to Desi Arnaz.
Because of the risks associated with his role as Jack Warner's soninlaw, Bill appears to have kept his bisexuality locked tightly in a closet. It seems that he did, however, have an occasional sexual involvement with a man, but mostly he pursued the ladies, with a rare exception every now and again.
“Bill's big mistake was in not recognizing what a big star I could have been at Warners,” Merv later said, only half kidding. “I could have stayed at Warners and presided over the death of the movie musical with Doris Day at my side. Even though Bill never realized my potential, he did have a nose for new talent. Armed with the power of granting a contract from Warner Brothers, he pursued James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Paul Newman. Not bad, not bad at all. He told me that he got to fuck Dean on several occasions.”
***
“I was shaking like a burlesque queen,” Merv recalled, “when I arrived at the Warners lot for my screen test.” A studio emplo
yee handed him a scene from John Patrick's play, The Hasty Heart. Merv had seen the 1949 film, starring Ronald Reagan, Patricia Neal, and Richard Todd.
Fully made up in a borrowed dressing room, Merv waited for two hours to be called to the set. “I just assumed that I'd make the test opposite Doris Day,” he later said. “After all, the whole point of the test was to see if Doris and I had onscreen chemistry.”
False harmonies:
Merv with Phyllis Kirk
To his disappointment, he learned that he'd be appearing on camera opposite Phyllis Kirk. A former model, brighteyed Phyllis was an attractive ingénue, not really beautiful and certainly not magnetic. Merv had not been impressed with her appearance in the 1950 Samuel Goldwyn movie, Our Very Own, starring Ann Blyth. In that film, instead of looking at Ann and Phyllis, he'd fallen for the good looks of Farley Granger, a homosexual actor who at the time was being groomed for big stardom.
As for Phyllis, Merv was dismissive, telling Bill Orr, “You can find dozens of Phyllis Kirks on any college campus in America.”
Life after Merv:
Cover girl Phyllis Kirk
“I had respect — not enchantment — for Phyllis,” Merv later told Roddy McDowall. “She was hard working and rather personable, but rather full of herself. To me, she represented a new breed of postwar woman appearing on the screens of the 1950s. Most of them would not survive that decade. These gals lacked the box office magic of the 1930s divas that lured us to movie houses — Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Greta Garbo. These bubbly new personalities with their meager talents pop up on the screen like a bad dream. But I think most of them will end up as suburban housewives. Could you imagine anyone buying a movie ticket just to see Phyllis Kirk emote? I was furious, not that I had anything against her personally. I felt betrayed by Doris for not agreeing to do the test herself.”
When Merv placed a call to Bill Orr to complain, he was told that Phyllis was going to become one of the studio's biggest stars. “Besides, Doris is too busy to make the test. Who knows? In the future, when you're not making a film opposite Doris, I might cast you in a picture with Phyllis. I think the two of you would make an ideal screen couple.”
Merv Griffin- A Life in the Closet Page 17