Merv Griffin- A Life in the Closet

by Darwin Porter

  For a combined total of two million dollars in renovation costs, CBS converted the 1912 Cort Theater, on West 48th Street in Manhattan, into Merv's television studio.

  As soon as his contract with Westinghouse expired, thanks to CBS, Merv returned to network TV, taking on the other talking heads, notably Johnny Carson. From August 18, 1969 to February 11, 1972 at 11:30pm on weeknights, he challenged the more popular Carson to a duel for viewers and market share.

  Carson's show was carried by two hundred and twelve stations, with Merv in second place with one hundred and fifty outlets. Merv scored best in his native San Francisco and also opened strong in Los Angeles, pulling thousands upon thousands of viewers away from Carson, whose appeal was the greatest in metropolitan New York.

  It was an uphill battle for Merv. After a few months, when Merv's style didn't catch on with their latenight audiences, many stations dropped him, some of them opting instead for a roster of old movies from the 1930s and 40s. “I found myself competing with everybody from Betty Grable to John Wayne,” Merv said.

  In his scrabbling for audiences, Merv faced other hurdles—and not just from Carson. “I was in a rat race with a lot of other rats, all of us vying for the same piece of cheese,” Merv said.

  CBS wanted Merv to slay Carson as well as a lineup of other “dragons,” especially an ABCaffiliated Rat Packer appearing nightly as host of “The Joey Bishop Show.” Some nights, Merv's audiences were slightly larger than Carson's, but “Johnny always bounced back like gangbusters. But at least I managed to stay ahead of Joey, holding in second place,” Merv said.

  Perpetually glum, the Bronxborn standup comedian, Joey Bishop, was best known at the time for being a member of Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack. Carson felt particularly betrayed when Bishop competed with him on air, since the comedian had guesthosted The Tonight Show more times than anyone else before breaking away for his own ninetyminute latenight talk show.

  The Joey Bishop Show ran from 1967 to 1969, with thennewcomer Regis Philbin percolating cheerfully as the show's cohost. Merv was always a bit contemptuous of Bishop, claiming that his face had the look of “an untipped waiter.” (The put-down may not have been original to Merv.) When Bishop told an interviewer that he'd never seen Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra drunk, and Merv heard about it, Merv mocked the claim openly among his friends and colleagues.

  In the battle for ratings, Bishop proved no match for Merv and Carson, and ABC eventually dropped the show from its listings. Dick Cavett was hired to fill the latenight talk show void at ABC.

  Talk Show King and Wannabe:

  Johnny Carson (left), Joey Bishop (right)

  When asked privately about Merv, Bishop said, “He's an asshole, and I don't fuck assholes. I'm a pussy man myself—and married to Sylvia Ruzga since 1941.” But despite what Merv and Bishop might have said privately, the two competitors seemed like the dearest of friends when Bishop, years later, in 1978, appeared on Merv's show.

  Even after the demise of Joey Bishop as a competitor, Merv still had to compete for guests with Mike Douglas, who was luring stars to Philadelphia for his afternoon show. “All these talk shows, fighting for guests, were eating up interesting people the way a dinosaur might devour an animal for lunch,” Merv claimed. “There were just so many times that I could bring on Eva Gabor.”

  As regards the décor of his latenight interviewing style, Merv preferred the old deskandsofa setup that Steve Allen, Dave Garroway, and Jack Paar had popularized years before. As Merv recited later, “Johnny Carson, Joey Bishop, and I sat there every night, playing a game with viewers called ‘Pick Your Host.’ Or more likely ‘Pick Your Guest.’”

  More than Bishop and Carson, Merv seemed to genuinely like surprising his viewers with the unexpected. Examples included Max Yasgur, the upstate New York dairy farmer who had rented his land to the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, or writer Billie Young, who, using the pseudonym Penelope Ashe, had contributed to the text of Naked Came the Stranger.

  Naked Came the Stranger, published in 1969, was a literary hoax perpetrated by a group of prominent journalists. The project was conceived by Mike McGrady of Newsday, who assembled a committee of two dozen journalists to write a deliberately terrible book with a lot of sex to illustrate their point that American literary culture had become brainlessly vulgar. The text was deliberately mediocre, a dysfunctional pseudoliterary hodgepodge, with heavy editing of any segment which was too well written. Fulfilling the committee's cynical expectations, the book was wildly successful, even appearing briefly on The New York Times Bestseller List, perhaps a result of the intensive sales and marketing campaign associated with its release. As sales increased, some of the co-authors felt guilty about the money they were earning, and went public. At least some of the fallout from the hoax was explored on The Merv Griffin Show.

  ***

  David Frost, an articulate, breezy import from London, was perceived as another talk-show dragon for Merv to slay—and doing so became a formidable challenge.

  During its heyday, The David Frost Show presented serious competition for every other talk show host in the world. Frost's weekly routine involved taping his show in America during the week, and then flying to England every weekend for an appearance on London Weekend Television. Eventually, thanks to his ability to articulate complicated social, political, artistic, and intellectual trends, David Frost became known as “the Charlie Rose of his day.”

  Merv was usually furious when the press compared him unfavorably to Frost, whose shows were critiqued as “having more depth, with more intelligent conversation.” In time Frost would interview every living U.S. president, as well as every living British Prime Minister, with Margaret Thatcher scoring the highest ratings.

  As a counterpunch to Frost's string of VIPs, Merv brought on a controversial and deeply eccentric African American who had run for president, but not been elected. Dick Gregory had run for the nation's highest office in 1968 as a writein candidate for the Freedom of Peace Party.

  One amusing tale that Gregory related on Merv's show involved a publicity stunt his campaign had run, printing, as a satire on American presuppositions about power and wealth, U.S. $1 bills with Gregory's image on them. Some of these counterfeit bills were circulated within the money supply and used as currency in cash transactions. The Federal government moved in for punitive action, but Gregory wasn't charged. On the air, he joked with Merv that the bills “won't ever be accepted as legitimate cash because everyone knows a black man's image will never make it onto a U.S. dollar.”

  In later years, Gregory, like Harry Belafonte, became too provocative and too Left Wing for Merv, or at least for appearances on his show. The final straw, at least for Merv, came when Gregory angrily and publicly denounced the United States, referring to it as “the most dishonest, ungodly, unspiritual nation that ever existed in the history of the planet. As we talk now, America represents five percent of the world's population and consumes ninetysix percent of the world's hard drugs.”

  In reaction to the provocative nature of some of his guests, Merv received frequent memos, many of them addressed to “Mervin Griffith,” from corporate executives with-in CBS.

  “Merv's polar opposite”

  David Frost

  The suits would, for example, object to Zsa Zsa Gabor's plunging dècolletage and, predictably, her off-color chatter and gossip. Both on and off the air, she spared no one, especially former husbands such as George Sanders and Conrad Hilton. One memo from a CBS executive to Merv read, “The bitch is out of control. Expect a lawsuit filed for libel.”

  Merv received constant objections to guests who attacked the Vietnam War. Jane Fonda (“Hanoi Jane,” as her enemies called her), proved especially annoying to the suits.

  CBS had almost had it with Merv in March of 1970 when he booked the prominent antiwar activist Abbie Hoffman, cofounder of the Youth International Party (“Yippies”), onto his show. Abbie had been arrested and tried for conspiracy and inciting a riot as a result of h
is role in the violent confrontations with the police during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Along with Jerry Rubin and Tom Hayden, Hoffman, during his prosecution, was widely referred to by the press as a dangerous subversivea member of “The Chicago Seven.”

  Hoffman appeared on Merv's show wearing a red, white, and blue shirt whose pattern evoked the American flag. The censors at CBS interpreted this as objectionable, and blurred Hoffman's image electronically so that his voice emanated from “a jumble of lines.” When Merv saw this, he was furious and complained loudly to CBS, to no avail.

  “The way it appeared on screen, it looked like I was talking to an empty chair,” Merv said.

  CBS's legal department declared that broadcasting the image of Hoffman wearing an American flag might be illegal in some states. Ironically, that very night, TV commercials touting the Ford Motor Company starred “The King of the Cowboys,” archconservative Roy Rogers, and his wife, “The Queen of the Cowgirls,” Dale Evans. Both of them were nattily dressed in more or less the same shirt Hoffman wore onto Merv's show.

  CBS shot off harshly worded protests to Merv, denouncing his habit of bringing on guests who attacked the Vietnam War. “In the past six weeks, thirtyfour antiwar statements have been made on your show and only one prowar statement by John Wayne,” one memo read.

  Merv fired back. “Find me someone as famous as Mr. Wayne to speak out in favor of the war, and we'll book him.”

  ***

  Censored Red, White,

  and Blue:

  Abbie Hoffman

  Although Merv's selection of guests in the late 60s and early 70s sometimes infuriated CBS, it appealed to many critics. Merv's “awshucks” style was effective at both catalyzing and controlling controversy in a sometimes frantic effect to woo viewers away from Carson. In the words of one critic, “Griffin brought on more would-be makers of controversy than all the David Susskinds combined. Merv's parade of politically oriented comedians such as Dick Gregory was the most controversial in show business.”

  Merv also invited classic, relatively uncontroversial, comedians as well, including Bob Hope and Jack Benny. Benny was a great success when he first appeared on Merv's show, telling hilarious anecdotes about his early days making movies. After the show, Merv visited his dressing room to congratulate him. “Mr. Benny, forgive me, but I've always wanted to pop the big question to you.”

  “A marriage proposal,” Benny said. “I'm already taken.”

  “No, something else,” Merv hesitated. “Are you gay?”

  “Takes one to know one,” Benny said without missing a beat. “And shut the door on your way out, sweetie.”

  Peter Barsocchini functioned as the producer of The Merv Griffin Show between 1980 and 1986, during which he won two Emmys. He was also the coauthor of Merv's first autobiography, Merv, published by Simon and Schuster in 1980. In 2006, he once again attracted attention for his role as screenwriter of High School Musical, an Emmy Awardwinning television film that inspired at least four franchised spinoffs. Originally released in January of 2006, it became one of the most successful movies that the Disney Channel Original Movie organization ever produced.

  When Merv interviewed such guests as Sophia Loren, Henry Fonda, Bette Davis, or James Stewart, “the energized curiosity we all saw on the screen was real,” claimed Barsocchini. “He usually did not socialize in advance with guests who appeared on his show, because he felt it would dampen the freshness of his interviews. I think there was always part of Merv who saw himself as the kid on the other side of the fence, watching the rich and famous, wondering about them.”

  Like Merv's autobiography itself, Barsocchini's statement is only half true. Merv was extremely intimate with many of his guests prior to their arrival on his show. A good example is Rosemary Clooney. In some instances, as in the case of both Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, he'd even had sex with them.

  A few of his TV guests appeared on competing talk shows on the same night, as in the case of Senator Hubert Humphrey, who landed on The David Frost Show and then had to be hustled into a limousine to face Merv's cameraman. Jerry Lewis set the alltime record, appearing on the Carson show, the Cavett show, and Merv's lineup—all on the same night. “The double crosser didn't tell me what he was up to,” Merv said. “So if you tuned in that night you got Jerry Lewis, Jerry Lewis, and Jerry Lewis. How unappetizing! A little of Jerry goes a long way.”

  All this stress led to Merv undergoing a physical change right in front of the TV cameras. “I grew fat and then fatter and then more fat,” he said. As 1969 seguéd into 1970, he actually gained thirtyfive pounds, a development that became obvious to many of his viewers and fans. Simultaneously, he was smoking three packages of cigarettes a day. “A great way to give yourself cancer,” he later said.

  He smoked so much on the air that some viewers complained that he was obscuring the faces of his guests. “I'd rather look at Hedy Lamarr—at least what's left of her—than see Griffin go up in a cloud of smoke,” claimed one viewer from New Jersey.

  ***

  Although TV talk shows exploring a specific, predefined theme are relatively commonplace today, thanks partly to their later evolution by Oprah Winfrey, Merv pioneered a style of theme show wherein several guests discuss and debate the same (usually controversial) issue on a single show. He introduced programs devoted to onceunmentionable issues such as incest and child molestation. And at one point he brought on Christine Jorgensen, the most famous transsexual in America, who'd migrated to Copenhagen as George, a former G.I., and had returned as an elegant, articulate, and wellspoken lady.

  Merv later seemed jealous of the success of Oprah Winfrey. “The bitch has never acknowledged her debt to me.”

  Johnny Carson sometimes made fun of Merv's provocative shows. “Catch Merv on the tube tomorrow,” Carson said mockingly. “He's bringing on five women who left the nunnery and are now running a brothel in Las Vegas.” Despite that, during the closing years of the 1960s, Merv captured the ferment of the revolutionary era that changed American life for all time.

  He was never awed by celebrities, regardless of their fame and stature. He recalled that in the course of his career, he was intimidated by only one guest—“and that was Miss Rose Kennedy.”

  One observer noted Merv's “leanin closetalker style of interviewing. You were sure that at any moment he was going to end up in the lap of Jane Fonda or Roger Vadim.” Before bringing that notorious couple onto the show, Merv had spent time at their farmhouse outside Paris, presumably familiarizing himself with issues he'd raise (or not raise) on camera later.

  Merv's folksy style was remarkably different from that of the more aloof and sometimes chillier Johnny Carson. With his guests, Carson was a sardonic outside observer with a rapier wit. In distinct contrast, Merv appeared like a wellestablished friend at a gabfest, a style which translated into genuinely intimate interviews with such old acquaintances as Grace Kelly or Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

  Merv's talk show career will be forever compared to that of Carson, “the King of Late Night Talk” between 1962 and the late 1980s. Ironically, Merv began his first daytime talk show on NBC the same day as Carson began his reign on NBC's The Tonight Show.

  The two men were very different. Nebraskaborn Carson had emerged from the Hollywood of the mid1950s. For his inspiration, Merv looked elsewhere, especially to such liberal and edgy TV journals as David Susskind's Open End and Mike Wallace's Night Beat.

  For his celebrity lineup, Merv didn't just stick to movie stars, singers, and comedians. Among many others, he brought on such “high brow” guests as cellist Pablo Casals and Will and Ariel Durant, the brilliant and provocative Pulitzer Prizewinning historians.

  Critic John Colapinto in Rolling Stone best summed up Merv's appeal as a schmoozy talkshow host. “His talk show, with its unabashed celebrity worship and cozy intime atmosphere, offered the illusion of entering a livingroom salon where a slightly risqué cocktail party was in progress. As a host, M
erv used a cunning combination of obsequious fawning and probing interrogation to elicit disclosures more revealing than the stars would offer anywhere else.”

  When Merv heard that Carson had had a falling out with his younger brother, Dick Carson, and that Dick had quit after six years of directing The Tonight Show, Merv hired him. “That will show Johnny,” Merv claimed.

  Dick remained with the Griffin organization for nearly three decades, becoming director of The Merv Griffin Show, before eventually retiring in 1999. “My brother's kind of famous for standing off,” Dick later said. “But Merv made working fun. Johnny was not like Merv, who appears very comfortable in any situation.”

  ***

  In a call from his old friend, Harry Belafonte, Merv was told that Martin Luther King Jr. might agree to an interview. “But I thought his Excellency didn't do talk shows,” Merv said.

  “I think I can persuade him, especially if you'll let me introduce him,” Harry said.

  Merv agreed, pushing hard to finalize the arrangements. At this point in his career, Merv had drifted more and more toward the Republican Party, mainly because of the growing influence of his friend, Ronald Reagan. Merv had actually taken objection to some of Dr. King's previous remarks, although he personally opposed the war in Vietnam.

  The interview was widely publicized in advance, and millions tuned in. But despite the advance ballyhoo, Merv's “Dr. King” show bombed.

  On camera, Dr. King repeated his alreadyfamiliar opposition to the Vietnam War, claiming that the U.S. was in Southeast Asia with the intention of “occupying it as an American colony. The Vietnam War wastes money that should be spent on the War on Poverty…A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”