Merv Griffin- A Life in the Closet

by Darwin Porter

  “As always, generous to a fault,” Trump said. “I can't accept the money because I plan to drop out of the race. There are too many hands to shake. Germs, you know. In Atlantic City, I was in the men's room and this guy comes out of a booth after taking this big crap and wants to shake my hand.”

  During the recession of the early 90s, Merv had been secretly delighted when Trump's most prized investments, including the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City and the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, racked up a total of more than $1 billion in debt. In an interview with host Jim Palmer on WBAL Radio, Merv was promoting his second autobiography. “You wrote about Donald Trump in your book, Chapter 7 isn't it?” Palmer asked.

  “Actually,” Merv said with a grin and a wink, “he's in Chapter 11 now.”

  ***

  In 1982, when Liberace's livein boyfriend of five years, Scott Thorson, sued his longtime companion for $113 million in palimony charges after an acrimonious splitup, it sent chills through Merv. He was terrified that someone might file either a palimony suit or a sexual harassment suit against him, although there wasn't enough fear there to get Merv to change his old habits. He still actively and aggressively pursued young men.

  Double jeopardy came for Merv in 1991 when, at the age of sixtyfive, he was slapped with both a palimony suit and a sexual harassment suit. Filing the complaint was a handsome thirtysevenyearold former employee, Brent Plott. He had previously been Merv's “secretary/driver/horse trainer/and bodyguard.” In his complaint, Brent stated that in addition to the duties cited, he'd been Merv's lover.

  He also charged that he'd been Merv's business consultant and was entitled to a share of the Griffin fortune. As an example, Brent maintained that he'd played a big role in the creation of Wheel of Fortune, and he also took credit for personally selecting Vanna White as hostess of the show.

  The law-suit sought in excess of $200 million, according to Miami attorney Ellis Rubin, who filed the claim with Los Angeles attorney Stephen Kolodny.

  Brent had left Merv's employment in 1985, moving to Florida. It is not known why he waited until 1991 to file the law-suit.

  “We lived together, shared the same bed, the same house,” Brent told NBC news. “Merv told me he loved me, and he promised to take care of me for the rest of my life, to provide solace and emotional support.”

  Through his attorneys, Merv issued a statement, denying Brent's claims, maintaining that the relationship was strictly professional, not sexual.

  “This is a shameless attempt to extort money from me,” the statement said. “This former bodyguard and horse trainer was paid $250 a week, lived in one of two apartments underneath my former house as part of his security function, and left my payroll six or seven years ago. His charges are ridiculous and untrue.”

  Merv filed a countersuit against Brent. “I said, ‘Well, I'm not going to pay him off.’ That's an admission of guilt. We go to court. I'm not going to pay hush money. I forget what it was—five million that he wanted? Five million, my ass!” Merv was later reminded that it wasn't just five million, but $200 million.

  Brent claimed that he'd suffered emotional distress and illness at the end of a nineyear relationship because “of the wrongful and malicious acts of the defendant, Merv Griffin.”

  The $200 million man:

  Brent Plott

  In his affidavit, Brent stated that he had met Merv in Monte Carlo in 1976, the year of Merv's divorce, and that Merv had been instantly attracted him. The handsome young man had been stationed in Germany as part of a threeyear stint in the U.S. Army. During one of his leaves, he'd taken a train to Monte Carlo.

  Brent claimed that from the beginning, Merv had urged him to come back to America and live with him. Brent said that even before the end of his tour of duty, he'd received constant calls from Merv, urging him to come to California and “to enter into a cohabitation agreement on a fulltime basis.”

  In 1981 Merv finally convinced Brent to give up his job and to “move in with me in return for financial support.” In December of that year Brent flew from Paris to Los Angeles to become Merv's lover.

  Then-President George Herbert Walker Bush offered Merv his sympathy at a party at the home of Jerry Weintraub. Merv told the President that the law-suit was “a lot of garbage.”

  “Garbage or not,” the president said, “it can get you in a lot of dodo.” He wisely advised Merv to settle out of court.

  The law-suit launched a media feeding frenzy. The story was carried by the Associated Press and appeared in major newspapers and magazines across the country, including The New York Times and People. “It was the official outing of Merv Griffin,” claimed editor Dennis Holder. “All of us in media knew that Merv was gay, but this became a legal reason for us to expose this closeted old queen. I was a Mike Douglas man myself.”

  Many of Merv's neighbors in Carmel told the press that they always knew Merv was gay. “It's no big deal,” claimed Adam Kramer, a local art dealer.

  Suddenly, eyewitnesses to Merv's gayness began to emerge. One waiter at the swank Lodge at Pebble Beach said that he often served Merv an early breakfast. “He was always in his bathrobe, and he was always in the company of very handsome and virile looking young men. Each one I saw was different from the rest. I just assumed they were highpaid hustlers. Why else would these goodlooking guys want to go to bed with fat Merv?”

  One typical case was cited in the book, Queer in America, by Michelangelo Signorile. It involved “Hal,” who was described as a very pretty young boy, who had worked himself up from the mailroom to Merv's inner office staff. Hal claimed that one day at work, he was dressed in tightfitting jeans and also a tightfitting Tshirt. “Griffin placed his hand on my chest and said, ‘Oh, you're getting pecs.’” Hal claimed he brushed Merv's hand away. “After that, I was demoted back to the mailroom. I was told that Griffin thought I acted too gay. That wasn't the case at all. I got demoted because I didn't respond to his advances. Other guys in the company were much more willing to sleep with Griffin to advance their careers.”

  Signorile noted that “if you worked for Merv, and he found out you were ‘Out,’ you were out the door.”

  After Merv's death, other outrageous examples of his aggressive sexual behavior were cited. David Ehrenstein posted a column called “Mervgate!” in The Huffington Post. He recalled a dinner in the early 1980s for the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, attended by, among others, Peter O'Toole and Dustin Hoffman.

  The surprise of the evening, according to Ehrenstein, was “a gaggle of gorgeous muscle boys in multicolored Izod shirts running about hither thither and yon. They did all sorts of things: Showing us to our tables, delivering messages from the stars to an offstage Merv and such. There's no doubt Merv hired each and every one of them personally,” said Ehrenstein. “It was a male harem to rival Hef's Playboy bunnies in every way. And the message was clear from Merv. ‘Look at what I've got!’”

  In spite of the evening's blatant exhibitionism, Merv was still known for firing gays for being too open. Ehrenstein claimed that a “secretaryexecutioner would tell a hapless homo—‘We don't want your kind here.’”

  Rolling Stone, in a piece written about Merv in 2006, analyzed the issues associated with Brent's palimony suit and the subsequent sexual harassment suit.

  “Merv does not refute the underlying implication in both cases: that he is gay,” the magazine claimed. “Nor does he admit to it. Instead, he mentions the highprofile relationship that he began with actress Eva Gabor at the time of his legal troubles. They were photographed everywhere: Atlantic City, La Quinta, Hollywood premieres. Merv says that they discussed marriage, and he parries any direct questions about his sexual orientation. ‘You're asking an eightyyearold man about his sexuality right now!’ he cries. ‘Get a life!’”

  Brent had alleged that Merv's relationship with Eva Gabor was a coverup. “Every picture she's in, I am there too,” he claimed. “She went where Merv and I went. The editors crop me out.”

  ***<
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  The most insiderish look into Eva's relationship with both Merv and Brent was published by Camille (also known as Camyl) Sosa Belanger in her memoir, Eva Gabor: An Amazing Woman, in 2005. Camille had worked as a personal assistant to Eva for some twenty years.

  Eva on the town with Merv:

  Happy together?

  In February of 1991, Camille recalled that she had been at Eva's home when Merv and Eva returned together from a trip to Palm Springs.

  “Dahlink, can I tell Camille?” Eva asked.

  “Sure, why not?” Merv said.

  “Merv and I are getting married,” Eva told her friend.

  Camille had been urging the marriage for years—“a better catch, forget it.” Her book makes it obvious that Camille knew that it would be a marriage based on financial security, not romance. The next day Eva told her that Merv was insisting on a prenuptial agreement.

  After Brent filed his palimony suit in April of that year, Camille said that “all hell broke loose.” Merv called Eva, because he wanted her to know what had happened before it appeared in the news media.

  After the call from Merv, Eva turned to Camille. “Remember Brent?”

  Camille said that, of course, she remembered Brent. “Is he back?”

  At one point Eva admitted to Camille that “the kid deserves all the money he's asking for. It is no peanuts. He wants millions. No wonder Merv asked me to marry him. He knew all along that Brent was planning to sue him.”

  Camille later asserted that news of the law-suit did not come as a shock to Eva because she knew about “the close relationship” between Brent and Merv right from the beginning.

  Eva called her friends, including Zsa Zsa, and Eva's voice was filled with remorse. “We've known for decades that Merv was a homosexual. Now the public will know. The whole world will know. The secret is finally out in the open.”

  Camille wrote about Eva's tolerance, about her acceptance of Merv's homosexuality, and specifically about his love affair with Brent. “Eva was at the time really annoyed and humiliated because, after all, Eva loved and respected her friend, and seeing him like a wounded soul was no joy to Eva. Eva knew it all along, and she lived with them, and they went out to places together and to long trips on the road and to Europe, so Eva was used to that kind of life and she did not care.”

  Camille wrote that Eva enjoyed “traveling like a queen and with expenses paid.”

  Many of Eva's friends later admitted that “she's one of the most gayfriendly women in Hollywood, where the competition for that title is keen.”

  Camille herself was saddened by the law-suit, because she too had seen the relationship between Merv and Brent first hand. “How can anyone destroy many years of happiness and drag each other in the ‘Mud’ when there was so much love during the young fresh years when one had eyes ‘only’ for each other? From what I had seen during the fresh years, it was love and equality and eating from the same table.”

  In the days and weeks ahead, Eva was hounded by the national media for an articulation of her reaction to the law-suit. The Star, the Globe, and the Enquirer were virtually harassing her day and night. Camille claimed that both men, Brent and Merv, had treated Eva with “love and kindness like a little sister, especially after her last divorce.” Camille claimed that Eva respected both Merv and Brent, and it was obvious to Eva's friends that her loyalties were tested. In the end, of course, she sided with Merv.

  Putting up a brave public front, Eva told the press, “I've been with Merv for nine years, and I can tell you, this is ridiculous.” Privately to her friends, Eva had maintained all along that Merv was gay and that her relationship with him was platonic.

  In an outrageous statement on The Joan Rivers Show, Zsa Zsa suggested that it was Eva who should be suing for palimony. “After all, she lived with Merv for nine years.”

  In November of 1991, Brent's case against Merv came before Judge Diane Wayne of the Los Angeles Superior Court. She dismissed it “with prejudice,” meaning that the case could not be refiled. The court also fined Brent two thousand dollars for bringing the case against Merv. A spokesman for Merv claimed, “This was a totally baseless suit from a guy trying to make a quick buck.”

  Many observers disagreed with that opinion, thinking the case “had a lot of legs.” Others were surprised at the quick dismissal.

  When news reached Camille and Eva that the law-suit against Merv had been dropped, Camille asked Eva about the status of Merv's marriage proposal.

  Eva's answer was somewhat enigmatic. “Come on, dahlink, don't play dumb. It is out in the air and that is all—and there is nothing to worry now.”

  ***

  Not intimidated by the failure of Brent's case, Deney Terrio filed a sexual harassment suit against Merv in December of 1991, a month after Brent's case was dismissed.

  Deney was seeking $11.3 million from his former boss, who he claimed had constantly propositioned him in 1978 when he was hosting Merv's Dance Fever.

  Deney was a choreographer and former film actor. He achieved fame when he coached John Travolta in his dance numbers for Saturday Night Fever. As an actor, he appeared in such films as The Idolmaker and Star Trek II.

  In his affidavit, Deney claimed, “beginning in 1978, and continuing through the parties' business relationship, the Defendant, Merv Griffin, made ongoing explicit homosexual advances toward me.”

  The young actor also claimed that “Griffin persisted in said advances.” Deney alleged that Merv spoke of substantial financial gains if Deney would become his bed partner. Attorneys for Merv claimed that the allegations were “totally false.”

  Like the case that preceded it, this second law-suit was widely publicized by the media.

  Deney charged on A Current Affair that Merv attacked him in 1978. “Griffin fell on top of me and started grabbing me and tearing my shirt off,” he said. “It shocked me. I was terrified. I kept pushing him back, saying, ‘Merv, I'm not ready.’”

  Shock jock, trashtalking Howard Stern also booked Deney for two episodes of his show in 1991 and 1992 to air his sexual harassment charges against Merv.

  As in the case of Brent, Merv claimed that Deney's suit was motivated by greed. “It was after they started printing the money stuff,” he said. “After the sale of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!, I was a target.”

  Prompted by the case's media exposure, gay men in the discos of Los Angeles could be seen dancing in pink Tshirts with the slogan, I TOO SLEPT WITH MERV GRIFFIN.

  In June of 1992, a judge dismissed the second law-suit against Merv.

  In retaliation against Deney's law-suit, Merv threatened to destroy the young actor's career. He never carried through with this threat.

  Deney went on to appear as a guest star on such popular TV series as The Love Boat. In the 90s he toured night-clubs and judged dance contests. In July of 2005 he was hosting his own disco radio show for Sirius satellite radio network.

  Deney Terrio

  In 1993, after the two law-suits were dismissed, activist and journalist Michelangelo Signorile, who specializes in “outing,” cited Merv as one of the “closeted power brokers still keeping the homophobic machine going. It's highly unlikely that Merv Griffin, for instance, will ever publicly discuss his sexuality, even though it would probably do him a world of good and would have an effect on the way his own gay employees, as well as gay people throughout the industry, are treated.”

  “I've been in the public eye for more than fifty years as Merv Griffin — not as somebody else's creation,” Merv said. “I've never pretended to be someone I wasn't. If there was anything really important that people didn't know about me by now, then I would have to be the world's greatest actor. Forget Brando. Forget Hoffman. Forget De Niro. I would have to be the best.”

  “Since his entire life was based on concealing his true self from the public, Merv deserved an Oscar for deception,” said Marlon Brando, who was far more open than Merv (and virtually anybody else as well) about the various outlets of
his own sexual expression.

  Merv tried to deflect the issue whenever he was asked if he was gay. “I tell everybody that I'm a quartre-sexual. I will do anything for a quarter.”

  ***

  Marshall Blonsky, author of American Mythologies (Oxford University Press, 1992), crafted one of the most controversial interviews of Merv ever written. Their meeting took place over lunch at the Beverly Hilton.

  As Merv rose to “greet an exmovie queen,” Blonsky contemplated “his Beverly Hills image, far removed from the professorial tweeds or Wall Street subdued sharpness. He is the greedy, contemporary Sidney Greenstreet, dressed in an oversize, richly textured sweater braided with black leather. His pants are black, and I realize: This is Hollywood, Merv is entertainment royalty, and Merv is dressed in robes, then about to build his Versailles on a plateau in West L.A., a project that will collapse when, reaching for the Maltese Falcon in the form of Resorts International, he finds a nasty surprise inside it. Happily unclairvoyant, I had left the finance capital to enter the fantasy capital, two poles, flesh and fantasy, base and superstructure, content and form.”

  In his unflattering portrait of Merv, Blonsky described him as financially successful but artistically limited. He noted that the key to Merv was “a desperate drive to be accepted by the rich and powerful,” and he credited Murray Schwartz with much of Merv's financial success. The two partners separated in the 1980s. Blonsky did admit, however, that Merv had a genius for creating game shows on TV.

  When the interview was published, Merv claimed, about Blonsky, “He tricked me, seduced me.”

  In his article, Blonsky aptly summed up Merv's unique character as a phenomenon still anchored in the 1950s. “It's everything I love,” Merv said, speaking of the Beverly Hilton. “Ballrooms, bands, singing, entertaining.” At one point Merv leaned forward and began to sing, Dancing in the Daaark..”