Merv Griffin- A Life in the Closet

by Darwin Porter

  Merv's list also included an armada of actors and singers, ranging from British imports Richard Burton and Sean Connery to singers Frank Sinatra and Mario Lanza, with whom she'd costarred in For the First Time in 1959. The most intriguing man on Zsa Zsa's list was President John F. Kennedy. “When Jackie found out,” Zsa Zsa told Merv, “she refused to speak to me after that.” Reportedly, Zsa Zsa also sampled the wares of Jackie's second husband, Aristotle Onassis.

  After Zsa Zsa's final marriage to the German socalled nobleman, Frederick von Anhalt, Merv with his tongue in his cheek introduced her as Princess von Anhalt, the Duchess of Saxony.

  He could spend hours listening to Zsa Zsa's stories of her conquests, and he was equally enthralled with the men who didn't hit it lucky. “I turned down Howard Hughes because Lana Turner told me he gave her syphilis. When I was dancing close to Errol Flynn, he put my hand inside his zipper. ‘As you can clearly feel,’ he told me, ‘I have something in common with the stallions on my property.’”

  Zsa Zsa laughed when she told Merv that Wayne Hays, a Democratic senator from Ohio, on the Senate floor had referred to her as “the most expensive courtesan since Madame de Pompadour.”

  She also confided in Merv that her older sister, Magda, had married her discarded exhusband, George Sanders. During the heat of passion on their wedding night, George had telephoned Zsa Zsa for comfort and advice. “The marriage went downhill after that,” Zsa Zsa said.

  In another gossipy tidbit, Zsa Zsa revealed that she had known Princess Grace—whom she referred to as “a bricklayer's daughter from Philadelphia”—for years. Both of them had been stars—or starlets in Zsa Zsa's case—at MGM. “She had more boyfriends in a month than I had in a lifetime,” Zsa Zsa rather inaccurately claimed.

  She also asserted, utterly without satire, that Prince Rainier had wanted to marry her instead of Grace. “Actually, he really wanted to marry Marilyn Monroe.”

  Merv's Mad Europeans:

  Left: Catalán surrealist Salvador Dalí. Center: Merv with Zsa Zsa Gabor

  Right: Zsa Zsa predicted that her sister Eva, if Merv would marry her, would become a 21st-

  century version of Madame de Pompadour (mistress to French king Louis XV)

  At any dinner party, Zsa Zsa tended to be more outrageous than she ever was on Merv's television show. “Both Mike Todd and Richard Burton told me that I was far better in bed than Elizabeth Taylor. Of course, Nicky Hilton, my soninlaw and Liz's first husband, preferred my lovemaking to hers. But she was young and inexperienced when my darling Nicky took this poor girl to bed.”

  Merv wanted to know which man was the better lover—Sean Connery or Richard Burton. “I've never been to bed with either of them,” Merv confided to Zsa Zsa, “and I'm curious.”

  “Oh, Richard, most definitely,” Zsa Zsa said, “although Sean certainly had the more impressive equipment.”

  Merv was once asked which was the most outrageous story that Zsa Zsa ever told him. “She claimed that she introduced The Beatles at a charity event in London called Night of a Thousand Stars. Later she invited them all back to her hotel suite. Naturally, it was the London Hilton.”

  According to Merv, Zsa Zsa told him, “I loved the humor of those boys, their irreverence about institutions which most of the Western world viewed as sacred. They seduced me one at a time. Ringo Starr went first, then Paul McCartney, then John Lennon. George Harrison was last, and he was the best of the lot.”

  In her memoirs, One Lifetime Is Not Enough, Zsa Zsa claimed that “I wasn't involved with any of them romantically,” which in a sense was the truth.

  Her other most outrageous claim, according to Merv, involved the way Elvis Presley had seduced her during one of his gigs at The Flamingo in Las Vegas. She'd received a message that Elvis wanted to meet her in his dressing room.

  “In her book, Zsa Zsa said she and Elvis didn't make it that night,” Merv said. “But facetoface, she told me a different story…namely, that she actually learned firsthand what ‘Love Me Tender’ meant. In her memoirs, however, all she said was that she found Elvis ‘gorgeous and sexy, a cross between a gentleman and a big black sexy snake. He radiated sexuality’”

  As time when by, she grew increasingly confidential with Merv, yet he often suspected that she was holding back, not revealing the most shocking indiscretions of her private life. He knew that Zsa Zsa confided everything to Eva, so one night Merv asked Eva for details about the most shocking affair her older sister had ever had.

  “It was with Prince Philip,” Eva said casually, using a voice that she might have used to read from a grocery list. “She met him at Windsor outside London when he was playing polo. The Queen and the Queen Mother were also watching that day. When Philip met Zsa Zsa, he was smitten. They had an affair that lasted on and off for several years.”

  “Anything more shocking than that?” Merv asked.

  “Zsa Zsa knew Lord Mountbatten of Burma,” Eva said. “A great war hero as you know. He was also the favorite uncle of Prince Charles. Zsa Zsa told me that when Charles was a teenage boy, he was regularly sodomized by his uncle.”

  “Okay, okay, I'm saturated,” Merv said. “My head is spinning. To cap our lovely dinner, do you have a whopper that will keep me up all night?”

  “Yes, I do,” Eva said coyly, and “it happened right after Zsa Zsa appeared on your show, the one you taped with her at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. If I remember correctly, and I do, she told the audience that ‘Richard Nixon is one of the greatest presidents of modern times. He was the man who opened Russia and China for us. Why don't you give the guy a break?’”

  The audience booed her.

  The next day Nixon called Zsa Zsa and thanked her for his public display of support. One call led to another, and Zsa Zsa, at least according to Eva, found herself flying to Key Biscayne where she evolved into a guest of Nixon's best friend, Bebe Rebozo.

  “Nixon?” Merv said in astonishment. “I didn't believe he had it in him.”

  “Actually, dalink, I read in the paper that archconservatives and Republicans have better sex than liberal Democrats. You should do a show on that subject one day.”

  Once, when Zsa Zsa and Merv were dining alone, she asked him a provocative question. “Why don't you marry Eva and make an honest woman out of her? If not that, you could at least take her for your mistress. She could be Madame de Pompadour to your Louis XV.”

  Heeeeeere's Merv!

  Chapter Ten

  Eva Gabor, the youngest of the three Gabor Sisters—was known as the last great courtesan of the 20th century. At the age of sixteen, Eva was the first member of her colorful family to emigrate from her native Hungary to America. In time, her sisters, Zsa Zsa and Magda, and their mother, Jolie, followed. As they matured, and grew more glib in the ways of America's entertainment industry, Eva and her outspoken sister, Zsa Zsa, were hailed as the world's most beautiful, desirable, and glamorous women.

  Before Merv became more intimately linked with Eva, he often referred to Zsa Zsa and Eva as “my favorite and most amusing guests on TV,” the “Gorgeous Gabors” and “The World's Greatest Sister Act.”

  He later claimed that what especially attracted him to both Zsa Zsa and Eva was their keen ability to deliver oneline zingers. “Take marriage for instance,” Merv said. “Zsa Zsa told me, ‘I believe in large families—every woman should have at least three husbands.’” On another occasion, Eva instructed Merv that “marriage is too interesting an experiment to be tried only once or twice.”

  Before her association with Merv, Eva had followed her own advice, entering into five equally illfated marriages: Dr. Eric Drimmer, a psychologist who had served at one time as the inhouse shrink at MGM studios; realtor Charles Isaac; surgeon Dr. John E. Williams; stockbroker Richard Brown, and, finally, Frank Jamieson, vice president of the manufacturing and electronics giant, North American Rockwell. (North American Rockwell, after a complicated series of mergers, acquisitions, and spinoffs, later changed its name to Rockwell I
nternational.)

  Ultimately, her intention involved making Merv her sixth husband. In that, of course, she never succeeded.

  Eva may have had only onethird the lovers—her estimate—that her sister Zsa Zsa did, but Eva's beaux were strictly Alist: Glenn Ford, Tyrone Power, Frank Sinatra.

  Of the fabled Gabor sisters, Eva was labeled “the good Gabor.” She was also an acute businesswoman, founding a wig company. “A girl likes to look her best, even if she cheats a bit, or especially if she cheats a bit. All women have to deceive the world, especially about their age.”

  Sometimes Zsa Zsa reacted badly to Eva's comments about her on Merv's show. One comment, in particular, infuriated Zsa Zsa. As the cameras rolled, Eva said, “I was the first actress in the family, and am still the only actress in the family. I shouldn't be saying it. It just slipped out.”

  Although Eva appeared in many lessthanmemorable movies and made a debut on Broadway in Rodger and Hammerstein's The Happy Times, it was a fluffy TV sitcom that's usually cited as her most memorable Hollywood achievement. She appeared as the glamorous female lead in Green Acres, a relentlessly cheerful sitcom which is still regularly broadcast worldwide. She played a “kind of dumb and kind of smart,” wellintentioned Park Avenue socialite who had humored her husband, as played by Eddie Albert, by moving to a rustic farm staffed by bewildered but amusing hicks. Loaded with innuendos about sophisticated urbanites coping with the realities of life in the middle of nowhere, the sitcom, with its canned laughs and pratfalls, ran for six consecutive years.

  Merv was often asked if Eva were like the character she played on Green Acres.

  “She was a smart business woman, but sometimes she could be just like her character,” Merv said. “I remember once when I invited Eddie Albert and her to stay at my ranch. That morning Eva came down the stairs in a feather boa. Eddie is a big animal rights guy, and he was outraged. ‘Eva, don't you know where those feathers come from?’ he yelled at her. She screwed up her face, very quizzical, and said, ‘Pillows?’”

  One of Merv's fondest memories of Eva as a guest on his talk show involved the episode when she appeared with Eddie Albert, her Green Acres co-star, alongside the then-most-powerful TV critic in the industry, Cleveland Amory. “He'd panned their show,” Merv said, “And on-camera, both Eddie and Eva attacked him. He might have been the nation's number one television critic, but he left that show really scathed. I learned from that broadcast that you never wanted to get on the bad side of Eva.”

  Life on the farm

  Eva Gabor with Eddie Albert

  Merv once claimed that “Eva was born to appear on TV talk shows.” In 1951 she'd been a guest of Steve Allen on his first talk show for CBS. Allen, in fact, did even more than Merv to introduce the Gabor Sisters to American television. “The glamour and humor of the Gabors came into family living rooms across the nation,” Merv said, “And Zsa Zsa was even better at the double entendre than Eva.”

  Sometimes, especially when Merv had been drinking, he privately asked Eva outrageous questions. “Is it true that when you worked on Artists and Models with Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, you slept with both men? And is it true that Jerry has three inches, Martin ten?”

  “No woman should ever reveal a man's most closely guarded secret, even to his enemies,” Eva diplomatically responded.

  Ultimately Zsa Zsa came up with funnier and more sophisticated answers to Merv's questions than Eva. Zsa Zsa was quick on the response. “How many husbands have I had?” she asked. “You mean apart from my own?”

  Eva would say things whimsical, gracious, and charming, such as “All any girl needs at any time in history is simple velvet and diamonds.” On the other hand, Zsa Zsa would utter something funnier. “I wasn't born, dahlink, I was ordered from room service.”

  Eva had humor, but she tended to be kinder than Zsa Zsa, who could at times be biting. As an example, Merv referred to Zsa Zsa's remark about her husband, actor George Sanders. “Ven I was married to George Sanders, we were both in love with him. I fell out of love with him, but he didn't.”

  After watching so many appearances by both Eva and Zsa Zsa “on the couch” on TV talk shows, author Anthony Turtu said, “Eva's turns were always glamorous, witty, and serene—unlike appearances by her unpredictable sister, who could always be counted on for her brand of fireworks.”

  Merv called Zsa Zsa, Magda, and Eva “Vonderful Vimmen. They conquered kings, princes, playboys, movie stars, and millionaires, broke hearts while amassing fortunes, and became adored by the world at the same time. Of course, all women held tightly on to their husbands when one of them walked into the room. They were the Budapest bombshells.”

  ***

  On an impulse in 1979, Eva called Merv and asked him to join her vacation party on their upcoming tour of Asia. In dire need of a long holiday, Merv told Eva, “What the hell? You only live once.” So Merv arranged for several shows to be pretaped in advance of his time away, and agreed to join Eva and her thenhusband, Frank Jamieson, on the tour, with the understanding that it would include stops in South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

  They were guests of William Rockwell Jr., the CEO of Rockwell International (a manufacturer of advanced weapons systems), and his wife, Constance. For Rockwell, this was a major showcasing of the company's products. For others in the party, including Eva and Merv, it was just a bit of vacation fun. Rockwell and his entourage were flown aboard a converted 727.

  Preoccupied with the serious business of PR, corporate politics, and weapons sales, Frank “tolerated” Merv. Eva, however, adored him. It was the first time she'd ever spent a great deal of time with him.

  “You really know how to enliven a boring party,” Eva told Merv, looking directly at her husband as she said that.

  Rockwell's converted 727 had scheduled a stop on Midway Island, famed for a role during World War II as a battleground between the naval forces of the U.S. and the Empire of Japan.

  When Merv landed there, he discovered that several hundred Navy personnel and their wives followed a daily routine which involved watching The Merv Griffin Show on a communal wide screen TV. During the broadcast, business in the Midways virtually came to a halt. “It was an important ritual for them in those remote islands,” Merv wrote in his second autobiography. “It was one of the ways they maintained a connection to home.”

  When Merv, Eva, and members of the Rockwell contingent walked in, with fanfare, at the end of one of the broadcasts, it caused pandemonium.

  After Eva's divorce from Frank in 1983, she turned to Merv for comfort. “Despite the many husbands she'd had, Eva was crushed by the final divorce,” Merv claimed. “In her way, she really loved Frank and hated losing him.”

  He invited her to visit his ranch in the cool mountain air over the Carmel Valley. “She came to heal herself, and we grew close,” he said. He generously offered her longterm use of one of the half dozen guest cottages on site. “Stay here forever,” he told her. “You're most welcome.”

  Like the protagonist in the play, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Eva moved in, interpreting as a literal fact Merv's invitation to stay forever. It cemented the longenduring friendship that would last almost until her death.

  Merv recalled that at the ranch she'd get up early every day. “I'd get up an hour later and walk down to the stable. By then, every horse in the pasture would have red lipstick on it.”

  In the next few months, Eva became Merv's “arm candy,” going on trips with him and appearing with him at premieres and public events.

  “Eva had a love for Merv, but at his age and at his weight it was not sexual,” Jolie Gabor confided to friends. “Every day of my life I tried to get Merv to marry my daughter. I knew if she married Merv, she would be secure for life and never worry about having to sell wigs or appear in some dumb TV sitcom.”

  As Merv revealed in his second autobiography, he and Eva often passed the day together lying on sofas in his living room. “I'd get on one couch, Eva on the o
ther,” Merv said. “We'd lie there for days at a time—laughing, sleeping, laughing, watching television, laughing, eating, and laughing some more. We almost never argued except when we watched Wheel of Fortune. She'd get furious because I knew all the answers in advance.”

  Zsa Zsa knew the full details of the “arrangement” between Merv and Eva, but in her second autobiography, One Lifetime Is Not Enough, she chose to be discreet. “She is happily involved with Merv Griffin and has a marvelous life with him,” Zsa Zsa claimed. “I like Merv a great deal, did hundreds of shows with him, and am glad that Eva is now so happy.”

  Behind the scenes, Zsa Zsa, like her mother, was constantly urging Merv to marry Eva and “make an honest woman out of her. There are many marriages without sex. It's an old Hungarian custom. Men marry, have children with their wives, and then stash them away so they can spend the rest of their lives with various mistresses.”

  Merv got a taste of Zsa Zsa's famous temper after she'd been thrown in jail for slapping the policeman who stopped her for a traffic violation. “All my friends came to support me in court,” Zsa Zsa told Merv. “But not you—and not Eva.” She took particular exception to a quote by Eva that appeared in the press. The item quoted Eva as saying, “Mrs. Kirk Douglas and I just had lunch, and we agreed that if Zsa Zsa hadn't talked so much, this stupid thing would never have happened.”

  Before slamming down the phone, Zsa Zsa told Merv, “I'll never speak to the bitch ever again.”

  But in a few days, Merv succeeded as peacemaker, bringing the two warring sisters together for dinner. Over wine, with tears, both Eva and Zsa Zsa poured out their “undying love” for each other.