Merv Griffin- A Life in the Closet

by Darwin Porter

  “They say you're the hot new rebel in Hollywood,” Bogie said. “I remember when they said the same thing about me. Welcome to the Rebel Club.” Bogie shook James' hand, but the young actor did not look him in the eye. Still the gentleman, Bogie complimented James on his acting technique. That brought no response from James at all and he continued to stare at his own feet.

  “They say you're great, kid,” Bogie said.

  “Yeah,” James said. “So they say, whoever in the fuck they are. As if I give a good God damn rooster's asshole what people think of me.”

  That was too much for Bogie. He grabbed James by his jacket and yanked him around. “Look me in the eyes, you little cocksucker! When I talk to you, show some respect. I was wrong about you. You're just another stupid little punk with skid marks on your underwear. Another Brando clone. Just what Hollywood doesn't need. In two fucking years from now, no one will ever have heard of you.” He shoved James back, nearly knocking him down.

  Merv stood with Solly, as both of them looked perplexed as Bogie in a rage stormed off the set. James watched him go with a stunned expression on his face. “I never saw Casablanca,” he said, “and I don't intend to. But I hear that Mr. Bogart plays a queer who ends up with Claude Rains and not Ingrid Bergman.” He turned and walked away. That was the last time Merv ever saw him.

  ***

  Even though his contract had less than three months to go, Merv wanted out. From out of nowhere, he'd received a surprise call with the offer of a gig, but was told “to keep your mouth shut until I announce the damn thing myself.” To deal with his hurt pride, Merv had mentioned the gig only once to Gordon Douglas, but hadn't filled him in on any of the details.

  Since his days in Hollywood were obviously numbered, Merv, along with Hadley and his other friends, began to throw a number of farewell parties. In many cases he invited men (and often their wives) with whom he'd enjoyed brief affairs.

  One Sunday afternoon Jack Warner arrived on his doorstep without an invitation. Merv was astonished to see him. “Griffin, you've been to at least two dozen parties at my house, and you've never invited me once to one of your parties. Can I come in?”

  When Jack was ushered into Merv's living room, the other guests, including Peter Lawford, Aldo Ray, Rock Hudson, and Janet Leigh were stunned. They became subdued in the presence of such a powerful studio mogul. After all, each of them might be up for a Warner Brothers movie in the future. But Jack put everybody at ease and became the life of the party, playing “Tea for Two” on Merv's old piano or else tapdancing like Ann Miller on the blackandwhite tiles of the kitchen floor.

  At one point Merv and Jack sat by his pool devouring barbecue. The studio chief spotted Merv's Uncle Elmer across the way. “Who's the fatso?” Jack asked.

  “That's my Uncle Elmer,” Merv said. “The best tennis player in Los Angeles.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Jack said. “What am I? Chopped liver? I'll challenge him to a game next Sunday at my place. I'll give him Bill Orr—he's a really good partner—and I'll take Solly Biano. You can call Bill and Solly and make the arrangements,” Jack said. “I'm too busy turning down script proposals from Joan Crawford. I hear even that old broad, Bette Davis, wants me to take her back.”

  Before the tennis match that Sunday, Jack called two dozen of his friends, inviting them to “watch me beat the fat ass off Merv Griffin's uncle. He's Jackie Gleason plus two. I'll clobber him.”

  At the actual game, Merv sat under the shade of a giant peppermintstriped umbrella with Doris Day and Judy Garland, sipping sweet ice tea. Judy spiked hers from a flask in her purse. Doris complimented Judy for her performance in A Star Is Born, and then concentrated on the game and seemed genuinely interested. Merv later claimed that “Judy looked as amused as she would have been at a lecture on the mating habits of caterpillars.”

  The aging Uncle Elmer defeated the studio chief six love. No one did that and still drew a paycheck at Warners. Upon losing the game, Jack was in a steaming rage, so angry in fact that he threw his tennis racket across the court at Merv, narrowly missing his head.

  The next day Merv showed up at Jack's office and told him he wanted out of his contract. “I mean, all your stars are gone. Who have you got left under contract these days? Doris and me? You need her. You don't need me.”

  “Five thousand and you're free as a bird,” Jack said.

  Merv wrote him a check on the spot. In front of Merv, Jack tore up the check after extracting a promise from Merv that he would not work for another studio for the next two years.

  “I'm heading for New York and a live audience once again,” Merv said.

  Later that night he told Hadley that he'd counted on Jack tearing up that check. “Let's face it. We don't have five thousand dollars in the bank.”

  That same night Merv also told Hadley, “We're going to Vegas.” Only a few nights before, he'd received a drunken phone call from Tallulah Bankhead, who remembered him from his appearance on The Big Show, her NBC radio program back in 1951. She didn't request but demanded that he be her opening act for her upcoming debut at the Sands Hotel.

  Jack Warner would appear one final time in Merv's life when he gave his only television interview on December 14, 1972, on The Merv Griffin Show. He and Merv talked about the good old days in the heyday of Hollywood. Merv's former boss told anecdotes about Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, and even Al Jolson. As one of the prime players in Golden Age Hollywood, he embarrassed Merv by launching into what Merv later called a “Queegian rant” (a phrase inspired by the tyrannical Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny) about the new standards of Hollywood.

  Jack attacked the new permissiveness and even defended the honor of the American flag against “pinko Communists.” The studio audience applauded his John Wayne politics and Jack's stand for the American way of life, motherhood, and apple pie. Even though the audience cheered the patriotic comments, the old showman seemed to realize belatedly that his remarks would be condemned by much of young America. The appearance was his last and only television interview.

  In the few years that remained, Merv heard that Jack was slowly fading, the oncemocking, buoyant “Prince of Hollywood” ending up sitting lifeless in a wheelchair, his eyes vacant, no longer knowing the old stars who came to call. Eventually he was shut off from even those visitors.

  At the Cedars-Sinai Hospital, he died on September 9, 1978, at the age of eightysix. “I'll miss the old fart,” Merv said upon hearing the news. “In some hidden place in my heart, I sorta loved the monster. At least he gave the most fabulous parties in Hollywood. People don't know how to give parties like that any more. The party's over.”

  ***

  Merv left Hadley behind in Hollywood to pack up their possessions and close down the house, perhaps sprucing it up for the next rental. No one wanted the owner to assess damages to the property in the wake of the residency of Merv, his friends, and their many wild parties.

  “While I'm doing the gig in Vegas, I don't want you to be the Slut of Hollywood,” Merv warned Hadley. “Don't pick up something you can't get rid of, and, if you do, don't pass it on to me.”

  Hadley promised to be a good boy, although Merv heard that on only the second night of his stint in Vegas, Hadley was already in bed with Henry Willson, who was promising to make him a bigger movie star than Rock Hudson.

  Henry had tactfully asked Paul Schone to move on. “Stardom isn't in the cards for you, kid,” Henry had told the terribly disappointed young man.

  “I noticed you waited to tell me this until after you'd sucked me dry,” Paul said in protest.

  “Nature has a marvelous way of replenishing the leche I drained,” Henry assured him.

  Disgusted with Hollywood agents and their promises, Paul took a job as a waiter in West Hollywood to earn enough money to resettle in New York along with Merv.

  Bill Robbins was also disappointed that his career as an impersonator wasn't taking off. On the final night of his previous gig, he'd worked for no s
alary—only tips—netting only ten dollars. He'd promised Merv that he too would be joining him in New York as soon as he got some money together. “It's a known fact,” Bill said, “that New Yorkers appreciate female impersonators more than the idiots who inhabit the hills of Hollywood.”

  In a goodbye call to Johnny Riley in San Francisco, Merv learned that his longtime friend was fed up with “going nowhere day after day.” He wanted Merv to rent an apartment in New York “with a spare room for me.” He promised that he'd be joining Merv and Hadley in New York in just a few weeks. “I should have been a star by now,” Johnny said.

  “Tell me about it!” Merv said.

  “In New York, I bet all of us will hit it big,” Johnny said.

  “Something like that!” a more skeptical Merv replied.

  In a final call to Merv before flying to Las Vegas, Tallulah had told him, “Bette Davis got to play me in All About Eve. But at least I got to play Margo Channing on radio, and everybody told me I was better than that Davis bitch. Patsy Kelly and I went to see Jane Wyman, another bitch, in Magnificent Obsession. Wyman, so I'm told, got to fuck Rock Hudson. I decided after watching that damn stinker that I too wanted to fuck ‘The Rock.’ During all those years in bed with Ronald Reagan, I'm sure Wyman didn't learn anything about sex. I decided the next time I head west, I'm going to hit the Rock pile. I'm sure he'll know how to get my rocks off. After all, the only reason I came to Hollywood in the first place in the early 1930s was to fuck that divine Gary Cooper.”

  Her chance to snare Rock occurred when she'd signed with The Sands in Las Vegas for An Evening with Tallulah Bankhead, for which she was to be paid $20,000 a week. That was far less than Marlene Dietrich or Liberace could pull in, but Tallulah welcomed the $60,000 for a threeweek stint. “I'm glad to see some hard cash flowing in,” she told Merv. “The wolf is always at my door, dah-ling.”

  According to her agreement with The Sands, she had to appear on stage for only 45 minutes. She'd liked Merv's singing when he'd appeared on The Big Show, and she told The Sands she wanted him to open her act. “He's harmless enough, dah-ling, and won't be so sensational as to take the attention away from the real star of the show,” Tallulah told Jack Entratter, the entertainment director. “He likes to suck cock, and I'm sure you can fix him up with some of your betterhung waiters.”

  Also appearing as warmup acts were the Clark Brothers and the singer Virginia Hall. These performers, along with Merv, would be backed up by the Ray Sinatra Orchestra.

  From Los Angeles, he migrated to Las Vegas, checking into a suite of his own at The Sands. He called Tallulah for a reunion, and she invited him to come up at once.

  He was ushered into her suite by Patsy Kelly, one of the screen's best lowbrow ladies of mirth, always good for a biting barb and a disgruntled look in any film in which she was cast. Merv had heard that Patsy and Tallulah were lesbian lovers when they couldn't find more enticing partners. The fading actress was hung over. “Go on into Tallulah's bedroom,” she told Merv. “She's expecting you. I'm going back to bed. I feel like shit.”

  In Tallulah's bedroom, Merv didn't see the fabled star. “Tallulah,” he called out. “It's Merv.”

  “Come on in, dah-ling,” she called from the bathroom.

  Figuring she was applying her makeup, he stepped into the bathroom only to discover her sitting stark naked on the toilet, taking a big, smelly dump. “Don't be afraid, dah-ling,” she called to him as he started to make a speedy exit. “Receiving you this way is a sign of affection. It's also a power play to show you who's boss. Lyndon Johnson has business conferences with his fellow senators while sitting on the can. I learned the trick from him. Don't tell Lady Bird, but Lyndon fucked me one night in Washington after a reception. He's got the biggest dick in Texas.”

  “Let's talk when you get dressed,” an embarrassed Merv said.

  She held up her not altogether fallen breasts for him to inspect. “These jugs in their day used to drive John Barrymore crazy. I just had them lifted, and I had to show someone. You're it, you lucky pervert. You're the first man who's seen them other than the surgeon.”

  “I'm honored…” he stammered.

  “Tell all your straight friends, if you have any, that Tallulah Bankhead's in town and ready to receive. Spread the word that my tits look like those of a sixteen-year-old virgin. That'll have the boys knocking on the door to my boudoir at all hours of the day and night.”

  For her opening night, some of the biggest stars in Hollywood showed up. The most honored guests were the most famous couple of television, Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Wearing a gold lamè dress and looking stunning, Marlene Dietrich sat beside the nation's most celebrated redhead and the Cuban bandleader. Friends of Merv's, Montgomery Clift and Jane Powell, were seated in the front row.

  Before the show, Monty had stopped by Merv's suite for a big kiss and a hello. “I couldn't miss the chance to see Tallulah fall on that well-worn ass of hers,” he said. “I met the bitch in the late 40s. No good memories there. She groped me frantically. ‘Where do you hide it, dah-ling?’ she asked me. ‘I can't feel a thing.’” He did a perfect imitation of Tallulah's voice. “A man doesn't forget a put-down like that.”

  With shaky knees, Merv got through his opening numbers. He felt rusty appearing again before a live audience.

  The crowd rose to its feet when Tallulah belatedly made her appearance. Heavily made up to cheat on time, she looked stunning in a sparkling white Hattie Carnegie gown. In her best baritone drawl, she sang “What Do I Care?” and “You Go to My Head.” At the end of those numbers, she tapped the microphone. “dah-lings,” she said, “it's the mike that's flat—not me.”

  Her singing was followed by dead accurate impressions, including a devastating one of her favorite actress, Ethel Barrymore. Tallulah brought screams of laughter, especially from her gay male fans, when she imitated Bette Davis in Beyond the Forest.

  “Tallulah's ‘What a dump!’ line was better than a thousand female impersonators,” Merv later said.

  “Bette impersonated me in All About Eve,” Tallulah told the firstnighters. “So it's okay for me to take my revenge.”

  Knowing that Marlene was in the front row, Tallulah performed a caricature of her slutty appearance in The Blue Angel. Later that evening, Lucille Ball told Merv, “Marlene wasn't impressed.”

  Tallulah was less caustic and more sympathetic quoting Dorothy Parker's “The Waltz.” She ended her performance with a tender and rather nostalgic “I'll Be Seeing You,” which brought the soldout room to its feet.

  For her curtain call, Tallulah stepped in front of the audience and delivered her favorite lines of poetry, which happened to be from Edna St. Vincent Millay.

  My candle burns at both ends;

  It will not last the night;

  But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends,

  It gives a lovely light.

  ***

  Backstage, Tallulah in a makeupsmeared white robe greeted her wellwishers. When Marlene came into the overcrowded room to kiss Tallulah, she opened her robe to expose her newly lifted breasts to her. In a loud voice Tallulah told Marlene, “dah-ling, I know you're ashamed of your breasts, and I don't want to make you jealous. But let's face it: Marilyn Monroe doesn't have knockers like this pair.”

  “Oh, Tallulah,” Marlene said. “It's true that in America no one with good taste ever succeeded in show business.”

  Privately smoking a cigarette with Desi Arnaz, Merv recalled their meeting in San Diego with Cesar Romero. “Just between us fellows, you look great tonight,” Merv said to Desi. “You look even better without your pants on.”

  “Maybe you'll get lucky one night when I don't have any other place to put it,” Desi said. “Perhaps I'll let you sample the goodies if I'm drunk enough. I like to throw you girly men a bone every now and then.”

  “I can't wait,” Merv said.

  On the second night, Merv could not appear because he'd lost his voice. “It's the God damn desert virus,�
� Jack Entratter told him. “I book acts into The Sands all the time. It's amazing how many performers—both men and women—come down with this sore throat.”

  Merv appraised Jack from head to toe, finding him the most physically rugged and the biggest man he'd ever seen in Vegas. “I bet before you became an entertainment director, you were a bouncer. Am I right?”

  “Cut the shit,” Jack said. “I've seen the way you've been checking me out. Cool it! I don't go that way. Just get your voice back by tomorrow night, and everything will be fine.”

  With his voice back the next night, Merv finished the engagement and later pronounced it, “the most exciting gig of my life.” He would talk privately for years with his friends about all the fun he had hanging out in Las Vegas with Tallulah, the tempestuous heroine of the Broadway stage, several bad films, and one good one—Lifeboat (1944) directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

  Three days went by before Tallulah invited Merv to her suite again. She had avoided him when he had laryngitis, because she said she always picked up the symptoms of anyone sick. “Not only that,” she said, “but if a person stutters around me, I stutter; if he's got a tick, I involuntarily pick up that tick, even though I don't mean to mimic. Just fifteen minutes with Louis Armstrong, and I'm speaking in foghorn.”

  Invited for morning coffee, Merv was ushered into Tallulah's suite, where he was greeted by Patsy, who was hung over once again. She directed him to the sofa in the living room. “Make yourself at home,” she said. “Jerk off. Do what you want. I'm hitting the sack again till mid-afternoon.”

  Staring at the walls, Merv heard sounds coming from the bedroom. The door opened. Instead of Tallulah, out emerged Rock Hudson with an impressive erection at half-mast.

  “Rock!” Merv said in total surprise. “You and Tallu?” I can't believe it. President Eisenhower in that bedroom I could believe, even Queen Elizabeth II. But Tallulah Bankhead!”