Merv (15 page)

I got up to leave. “No problem. I’ll just stop taping
Wheel of Fortune
until Pat Sajak is the host.”

One down, one to go.

When Susan Stafford left the show, the production staff brought me in a big stack of 8 x 10 glossies representing dozens of candidates to take her place. They were all beautiful girls—models, actresses, beauty contest winners. There was no way for me to go through that many photos without having the faces blur together.

So I said, “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. You guys narrow it down to ten and spread their glossies out on top of my desk. I’ll come back into the room and point to the one I want.”

After about an hour, they were ready for me. I went back in to the office and walked over to my desk. Then—and I
swear
this is true—I looked at the ten photographs for no more than ten seconds, before pointing to the picture of a young blonde. I picked up the photo and turned it over. She had an unusual name.

“Vanna White. She’s the one. Call her in.”

Many months later, when the nation was in the fevered grip of “Vannamania,” the press wanted to know how I’d discovered her. I gave them two answers. The first was a toss-off line designed only to garner a quick laugh:

To those reporters not satisfied with my flip response, I gave an honest answer—and it
sounded
like a joke:

The truth is that what made me choose her photo over all the others is that, relative to the size of her body, Vanna has a large head. Don’t laugh. Many of the great Hollywood stars—Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, even Marilyn Monroe—had outsize heads. For some reason the camera compensates for the disparity by making their features stand out, thus causing them to appear more attractive onscreen.

About a week after an article containing my “head theory” appeared in print, Vanna called me.

“Merv, can I come in and see you?” She sounded a little strange.

I said, “Of course. Is anything wrong?”

“No, I just have something I want to talk to you about.” She often asked me for personal advice, so I told her to come on over.

As soon as she came into my office, I could tell that something
was
wrong. Vanna is exactly the same person off camera as she is on. Sweet, upbeat, always smiling. But not today.

“What’s the matter, Vanna?” I asked, as she shifted uncomfortably on the couch in my office. I came around from behind my desk and sat down in a chair opposite her.

“It’s hard for me to put into words.” She was looking down at her shoes (for the record, size 71/2 pumps that were part of her new line of Vanna footwear), rather than directly at me.

I was beginning to worry that this was really serious.

“Whatever it is, you can tell me. What’s bothering you?”

She looked up at me with the beautiful brown eyes that had recently graced the cover of
Newsweek
. “Is my head too big for my body?”

I was so relieved that she was okay that I started to smile. Then I quickly caught myself, realizing that if she was genuinely concerned about this, she could probably find some doctor who would shrink her head.
“A little off the top, please.”

Reaching over and taking her hand, I gently explained to her about Marilyn, Bette, and Joan. And if that wasn’t enough to convince her, I told her that
my
hat size was 77/8.

She left my office smiling—like I said, in real life she’s exactly the same wonderful girl you see on the show. Well, maybe there’s one difference. Off camera, she talks a lot more…

Finding good hosts was a never-ending challenge for me. When the syndicated nighttime version of
Wheel
debuted in 1983, I needed a substitute for Pat on the daytime show since he couldn’t do both. Being a big tennis fan, I had what I thought was an inspired idea. I taped an audition with Jimmy Connors, who, at the time, was the number one tennis player in the world. He was terrific, but the network wouldn’t let me use him because NBC Sports wanted him as a commentator. Every news organization in the world tried to get their hands on that audition tape, but I refused to release it because it wouldn’t have been fair to Jimmy.

If you’ve noticed anything about me by now, it’s that I don’t like to be told that something can’t be done. When I have an idea that I’m passionate about, I’m like a dog with a bone—I won’t let go.

I still had an old bone to pick with NBC about its shabby treatment of
Jeopardy!
In 1978, I used the leverage of
Wheel of Fortune
to get
Jeopardy!
another shot on the network. I brought back Art Fleming (take that, Lin), moved the show to Los Angeles, and redesigned the format, adding a fourth round called “Super Jeopardy!”

That version of the show lasted only five months. This time it wasn’t the network’s fault. It was mine. The original
Jeopardy!
had a far more loyal audience than even I realized, and they didn’t like anyone messing with its basic structure. It took me six more years, but with a lot of help from a nonsinging family named King, I eventually got
Jeopardy!
back on the air.

Roger King is the greatest salesman I’ve ever met. He could sell sand in the Sahara, ice in Antarctica, coal in Newcastle. He’s so good, he could open a kosher delicatessen in Baghdad and get Saddam to cut the ribbon.

Roger and his brother Michael are the benevolent despots who rule King World, the most powerful television syndication company in the known universe. Big, brawling Irishmen, the King brothers are to New Jersey what the Kennedys are to Massachusetts. But unlike Joe Kennedy’s clan, their field of battle is electronic, not electoral.

The family patriarch, the late Charlie King, started his broadcasting career in radio in the thirties and forties, not as a performer, but as a producer and advertising salesman. The elder King was successful enough to buy a good house in Hunterdon County, which is in the horse country of western New Jersey.

It was there that he and his wife, Lucille, began raising their large brood, which eventually numbered six—four boys and two girls.

In 1952, the same year that I left the safety of the Freddy Martin Orchestra to explore the uncharted waters of Hollywood, Charlie King set sail on his own venture into the unknown. Unfortunately for King and his young family, their trip had been forced on them by the rapidly declining fortunes of the radio business.

As television quickly eclipsed radio in the competition for advertising dollars, Charlie’s business had foundered. The programs he produced were canceled and the future for commercial sales in radio was bleak. The King family had to sell its home and move into a small apartment.

Not yet forty years old, Charlie King was forced to reinvent himself as an entrepreneur (which I’ve always said is the French word for “hustler”). Employing the salesmanship skills that he would later bequeath to his son, King tried his hand at a variety of new ventures, many of them outlandish.

He began selling everything from fire alarms to home freezers packed with a year’s worth of food. Seizing on the public’s newfound fascination with golf in the Eisenhower era, he even attempted to launch a chain of driving ranges, but was ultimately unsuccessful in that enterprise as well.

Still hoping to mount a comeback in broadcasting, Charlie took a job working for a company called Official Films, which owned the distribution rights to the once popular “Little Rascals” pictures of the thirties. By then dated (and filled with racial images that, even by fifties standards, were hard to watch), the “Little Rascals” series no longer had much commercial value. Official Films decided not to continue its distribution contract with the series owner, Clinton Pictures.

Charlie, whose net worth consisted of little more than the six dollars he had on him, met with the executives at Clinton Pictures and offered them $300,000 for the exclusive rights to the “Little Rascals.”

Before they signed an agreement, the Clinton people discovered that King had been bluffing about his “assets.” Making the sales pitch of his life, he persuaded them not to tear up the contract, but instead to give him the rights for one day in order to come up with at least part of the money.

That same day, Charlie talked his way into WPIX television in New York (a Westinghouse station, by the way) and made an agreement for them to air the “Little Rascals” series exclusively in the New York area. He left the station with a $50,000 check in his pocket. A new television syndication company, King World, was now up and running.

King World did a steady, if unspectacular, business through the fifties and mid-sixties. In addition to the “Rascals,” they distributed a number of cartoon programs and
The Joe Pyne Show
, an early forerunner to Jerry Springer.

By the end of the sixties, King World was in trouble. Pyne was dead and the “Little Rascals” had fallen victim to the emerging civil rights movement. Stations were not renewing their contracts because of the negative stereotypes contained in the films.

Before he could reinvent himself and his company again, Charlie King suffered a fatal heart attack in 1972. He was only fifty-nine.

A decade later, Murray Schwartz happened to be in New York on business. Running early for a dinner meeting, Murray stopped into the St. Regis Hotel to have a drink. Sitting at the bar was one of Charlie King’s sons, Bob, who was having an animated conversation with a friend. Bob and his brothers Roger and Michael were now running the family business.

Alone at the bar, Murray couldn’t help but overhear what Bob King was saying to his friend. He was bemoaning King World’s hard times.

“We know everybody in the goddamn television business and all we’ve got to sell is the ‘Little Rascals,’ ” said King. “If I had a show like
Wheel of Fortune
, then it would be a whole different ball game.”

Murray went over and introduced himself, giving Bob his business card. He said, “Show up next week in Merv’s office with a $50,000 check and the syndication rights are yours.”

Bob looked at Murray in disbelief. It was as if he’d just met Santa Claus on Christmas morning.

The following week, Bob King flew out to Los Angeles, pulled a crumpled $50,000 check out of his pocket, and, his hand shaking, gave it to me.

As all this was happening, the FCC regulations regarding local stations had also changed. A new rule now guaranteed prime-time access for all local stations. This meant that the seven to eight o’clock hour, immediately prior to the start of the network’s prime-time lineup, was now reserved for the local stations’ exclusive use. The networks could no longer program during that hour. The rule was designed to increase the production of original programs at the local level, but the practical effect was to open up a highly desirable time slot for the national syndicators.
Family Feud
was the first game show to successfully use the prime access rule.

Roger King, the family’s brilliant salesman, grabbed the
Wheel
and ran with it. In a short time, he’d sold it to fifty-nine stations. Within a year it was the number one show in syndication, reaching 99 percent of the national television audience.

With the phenomenal success of
Wheel of Fortune
in syndication, it was the perfect time for me to dig up that old
Jeopardy!
bone and try again.

I returned to the original format (I can take a hint), but I knew that it was finally time to look for another host. My friend Lucille Ball was a big fan of daytime television. Her favorite game show in the seventies had been a program called
High Rollers
. Lucy loved that show and its host, a Canadian fellow named Alex Trebek. When I told her that I was intending to bring back
Jeopardy!
with a new host, she suggested that I give Alex an audition.

Thanks, Lucy.

We did a new pilot for
Jeopardy!
in 1984 and I turned it over to Roger King, the P.T. Barnum of syndication. It quickly became the number two show in syndication, right behind the
Wheel
. The rest, as they say, is history.

While Roger King was out selling
Wheel
and
Jeopardy!
, I was celebrating my twentieth year behind the desk of
the Merv Griffin Show
. I still found myself looking forward to each new show with what a friend dubbed my “evergreen enthusiasm.”

“Who was the most interesting guest you ever interviewed?”

I’ve been asked that countless times and, frankly, I always thought it was a ridiculous question. By definition, the answer is entirely subjective. Not to mention that the very word “interesting” is the ultimate dodge. There’s no value judgment in it. The Pope can be described as an “interesting” man. So can Osama bin Laden. You see my point.