Merv (24 page)

I think my favorite marketing task had to be creating new shows for the 1,500-seat Superstar Theater at Resorts. I wrote the story lines, picked the music, brought in the choreographers, and even came up with a crazy name for each revue—my favorite being “Wahoo Baby.” In five years, we only got one bad newspaper review. More to the point, there was never an empty seat in the house.

All the other owners came over to see what we were doing at Resorts, because they’d never seen anything like it. And, of course, they copied us like crazy.

The events most people still associate with my time in Atlantic City were the live TV shows that I hosted from Resorts every New Year’s Eve. Much of the country got its first look at Atlantic City through a television lens that showcased the excitement of an entire city ringing in the new year. During those shows, I did something that flabbergasted the other casino owners. I brought David Spatz, the top columnist for
The Press
of Atlantic City up on the roof of Resorts with me and I’d have the camera shoot the casino marquees up and down the Boardwalk. We’d show what was happening that night at Caesars, the Tropicana, and even at Trump Plaza. The newspapers were constantly editorializing about how I was promoting the entire city, not just Resorts. It just seemed like good sense to me. If more people were attracted to Atlantic City, we’d all do well. What’s the old saying? “A rising tide lifts all boats.”

It was for that very reason that I accepted Donald’s invitation to participate in the grand opening of Resorts’s spectacular new next-door neighbor, the Trump Taj Mahal. Donald had finally completed his Xanadu in the spring of 1990. The opening ceremony had been heavily promoted and was expected to attract top celebrities from Tom Cruise to Michael Jackson. In the end, Evander Holyfield, Michael Spinks, and I were the biggest names to show up.

The opening also took place shortly after Donald and Ivana had begun their highly public separation. Almost every day, Donald was pictured in the New York papers with a different beautiful woman on his arm.

As the program commenced, the MC made what was clearly a shocking announcement to the thousands of people in attendance: “And now, here to officially open the Trump Taj Mahal and introduce Mr. Trump, is his good friend Merv Griffin!”

There was a tremendous cheer from the throng when I stepped to the podium. Everyone knew what had occurred between us over the previous two years.

“Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the opening of the Taj Mahal, which I used to own, before I sold it to Donald.”

I paused and looked over at Donald, who was smiling broadly.

“We’ve all gathered here tonight to see who Donald was going to bring with him.” (That night it was fashion model Carol Alt, who looked stunning.)

The crowd erupted with laughter. Out of the corner of my eye, it appeared that Donald was still smiling, although perhaps not quite so broadly.

I then proceeded to praise Donald’s vision as a developer and to welcome the Taj Mahal into the neighborhood.
A rising tide lifts all boats
.

Several years later I celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of Resorts as the first hotel-casino in Atlantic City. I invited Donald, but he must have had a conflict that day.

Even without Donald, it was a great event. For months, my marketing group had been stymied in trying to design a special attraction to mark the anniversary. They’d asked me to mull it over and I did. The following day, I called a meeting in the Resorts conference room and told the entire staff what I’d come up with: “We’re going to give away money.”

They looked at me blankly. A few registered expressions that indicated they thought I’d finally lost it.

“Hear me out,” I said, knowing they had to (sometimes it’s fun to be “Da Boss”). “From noon till ten P.M., we’re going to give away a hundred fifty thousand dollars. Thousand-dollar bags to fifteen people every hour. They’re going to be required to come into the casino two weeks in advance, write their name and address on a card, and throw it into a drum. Then we’ll have a big party and fly in a lot of Hollywood celebrities to pick the winners.”

On the day of the event, in the elevator going down to the casino floor, I said to my head of marketing, John Belisle, “Do you think this is going to work?”

Based on the number of people who’d filled out cards, he already knew the answer. Just before the doors opened, he looked at me and said, “You’ll see.”

Then the elevator opened to reveal an absolute mob scene. The place was so crowded, you couldn’t see the slot machines or the gaming tables.

That day, the slot machines at Resorts had the largest one-day take recorded in the fifteen-year history of the casino. Ultimately we gave away less than half of the money originally set aside for the contest—only $72,000. That was because you had to be present to win and a lot of people simply didn’t want to stay all day. Amazingly enough, many of the lucky winners decided to test their luck on the slot machines and wound up giving back much of their winnings.

I know this may sound disingenuous, but I truly felt sorry for those people who were gambling with money they couldn’t afford to lose. The truth is that although I genuinely loved the marketing and entertainment aspects of gaming, it was that part of the business that always gnawed at me and I certainly don’t miss.

Don’t get me wrong, I think gaming is a terrific form of entertainment that most people can either take or leave alone. I’m proud of having been a part of the business. I’m also pleased to see that many of the casinos are now making an increased effort to identify problem gamblers and get them help. It’s no different than requiring a bartender to stop serving someone who’s obviously intoxicated. Okay, end of speech.

Since “He Forgot to Buy the Beach” and “Trenton, We Have a Problem” have all the elements of a two-act play, I thought you’d like to know what became of the principal actors after the curtain fell:

• Ernie Barbella pled guilty to insider trading in the Resorts stock.
  
• Michael Nigris remained with the Griffin Group through May of 1989. I’ve had no contact with him since he left my company. He was never charged with a crime, nor do I believe that he was guilty of one. He
  was
  guilty of horrible judgment in friends and of playing fast and loose with the facts. I felt sorry for his wife, Norma. She’s a sweet woman.
  
• Larry Cohen moved up quickly through the ranks and in 1997 he became CEO of the Griffin Group. Larry is a straight-shooter with solid judgment, whose character is beyond reproach. If he has one flaw, it’s that he’s a rabid and unapologetic Yankees fan.
  
• Tom Gallagher went on to become one of the most powerful people in gaming, when he was named president and CEO of Park Place Entertainment in 2000. Ironically, the man who never wanted to be in gaming found himself running the world’s largest casino gaming company with over $5 billion in annual revenues and assets that included Caesars Palace and the Flamingo in Las Vegas and Bally’s Wild Wild West and the Claridge in Atlantic City. I’ll never forget receiving the call from Tom, telling me that he’d been given the top job in gaming. I was on the dais of a banquet where I was the guest of honor when Ronnie brought me the cell phone with Tom on the line. I looked at him with an expression of “Can’t this wait?” But I knew that if Ronnie thought it was important enough to hand me the phone in the middle of the dinner, I’d probably want to take the call. When Tom told me his news, I burst out laughing. My reluctant warrior was now the general of the largest gaming empire on the planet.
  

As for me, when I took over Resorts Atlantic City in 1988, its annual cash flow was $16 million. Eight years later, it had quadrupled to $64 million. And that was all from the marketing. We brought innovative promotional ideas to gaming that made Resorts unlike any other casino in the world. It was a thrilling experience for me to take that hotel and turn it around.

As a result, I was able to sell my stock in Resorts (now known as Griffin Gaming and Entertainment), which had previously been trading at $12 per share, for over $20 a share to South African developer Sol Kerzner.

Kerzner was looking to establish a foothold in the North American gaming industry. Initially, Sol had only purchased Paradise Island, but I knew that he was also intrigued by the prospect of owning a hotel-casino in the United States. So in 1996, I merged Griffin Gaming into his Sun International Corporation, giving him control of Resorts Atlantic City.

Those bondholders who had maintained their holdings through the ups and downs, the snowy winters and the restructurings, got their money back. In the end, they even made a profit on their original investment. Not bad for a “band singer.”

Sol Kerzner was not as successful with Resorts Atlantic City and ended up selling it a few years later (ironically to a group that included a former associate of Trump’s) at a deep discount from the price that he’d paid for it.

I was more fortunate. I took my experience with Resorts and used it to become involved in Player’s International. You probably remember Player’s from its promotional spots with Telly “Who Loves Ya Baby” Savalas as its TV pitchman.

I invested money to help them launch riverboat casinos in Illinois, Missouri, and Louisiana. When I finally sold my Player’s International stock in 2000, it brought me a nearly twentyfold return on my original investment.

The best gamblers know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. Casino owners don’t always share that wisdom. (If and when I ever write another book, I’m thinking of calling it “The Art of Knowing When to Get Out.” Catchy title, huh?)

Last, but certainly not least, in our cast of characters is Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is the Vince Lombardi of developers. For Donald, winning isn’t everything; it is the
only
thing. What he doesn’t understand is that you can only beat someone who chooses to play your game. I never did. Oh sure, we had the “War at the Shore” (largely an invention of the press), but in the end, he got the Taj Mahal and I got Resorts and Paradise Island. Each of us got what he wanted, which, in my book, is the definition of winning.

Donald has remained in the gaming business and I’m happy to report that he’s doing well with his three Atlantic City properties. He too suffered through the tough economic times and, like me, he used the bankruptcy mechanisms to reorganize his businesses and get them back on their feet. I love that town, and Donald is an important part of its ongoing success.

People ask me all the time if I still see Donald. Of course I do. Then again, how can you miss him? I see him constantly on those McDonald’s commercials with his arm around a giant furry, purple creature named “Grimace.” You know the spots. Donald is showing him New York City and reminiscing about all the great deals he’s made. You can see the Plaza Hotel out the window, just as I’d seen it when Donald tried to impress
me
with his deal-making ability.

I think the handwriting is on the wall. Grimace used to be best friends with Ronald McDonald, who, as you may have noticed, is conspicuously missing from those TV commercials. I have to believe that before too long the purple fellow will be getting a new best friend. After all, how could anyone beat a character named
Donald McDonald?

Watch out, Ronald.

I
knew my life was in trouble when my psychiatrist threw up on me.

When I met him in 1972, Dr. Martin Grotjahn was already one of the world’s most respected psychiatrists. He was in his late sixties, a diminutive man with translucent skin who had studied under Freud himself. Grotjahn’s accent was so thick that one of his patients, Danny Kaye, patterned his hysterically funny impression of a little old German man after him.

Dr. Grotjahn headed the psychiatry department at the University of Southern California, in addition to maintaining a private practice in Beverly Hills.

As it happens, this brilliant and worldly man harbored a lifelong desire that had gone unfulfilled—he’d always wanted to see the Grand Canyon. Somehow I discovered his secret wish and took it upon myself to grant it. I arranged to pick him up on a Saturday morning in my twin-engine Beechcraft (the first of many planes I would eventually own) and we flew to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon for lunch.

The little doctor was so excited. Not only would he finally see one of the great natural wonders of his adopted country, but for the first time in his sixty-nine years he would be going up in a private airplane.

We had a delightful meal at a restaurant overlooking the Grand Canyon, topped off with several glasses of wine. Grotjahn was like a child, taking in everything around him with new eyes.

When it was finally time to get back in the airplane and return to Los Angeles, Dr. Grotjahn said, “Merv, zis has been vonderful. Danke schoen.”

I told him that he was very welcome. Then we climbed back in the Beechcraft and buckled into our seats. A few minutes after takeoff, we hit an air pocket and the plane dropped suddenly. It was only a momentary bit of turbulence, but the doctor’s skin turned from pale white to sickly green. I put my hand on his arm to steady him. Before I could say, “It’s nothing to worry about,” he threw up in my lap.

That plane ride was a perfect metaphor for my life at the time—wonderful highs, interspersed with gut-wrenching lows.

You’ll remember that 1972 was also the year I finished my tumultuous ride on CBS. What I didn’t tell you was that in the same year, my marriage was coming to an end.

After almost fifteen years together, Julann and I had grown apart. My career had required her to give up living the life she loved on our farm in New Jersey and move to Los Angeles, a place she’d never really enjoyed. She came along, although for the first time in our marriage I sensed that Julann’s decision was based more out of concern for Tony than it was on support for me. Since he was an only child just entering adolescence, we both knew how important we were in our son’s life, both individually and as a couple.

Truthfully, the distance between us was based on more than just geography. Even if we’d stayed in New Jersey, our lives were headed in different directions. I was consumed by my show, particularly during those stressful two and a half years at CBS. At the same time, it was clear that Julann’s intelligence and abilities weren’t really being challenged in the traditional role of wife as homemaker-helpmate. Julann loved raising Tony, and she was a terrific mother, but she was no longer content with subsuming all her other interests into my career.

Which brings us back to Dr. Martin Grotjahn. In ten years of doing my show, I’d interviewed literally dozens of psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychotherapists. They’d ranged from traditional Freudians to the pioneer of primal screaming, Arthur Janov. Dr. Joyce Brothers was practically a regular.

The public Merv Griffin spent hour after hour talking to highly trained therapists about every conceivable emotional issue. The private Merv avoided them like the plague.

Maybe it was the way I was brought up. My parents taught me to “never complain, never explain.” I truly believe it was this advice that provided me with the unshakable self-confidence I displayed at such a young age. Ironically, the same creed that served me so well in my professional life prevented me from sharing my personal problems with other people, particularly strangers.

Funny, isn’t it? My job was getting people to be candid, even revealing, about their personal lives. Yet the idea of doing that for myself seemed pointless to me.

That all changed on February 7, 1973, the day Julann served me with divorce papers. Although I had some inkling this was coming—things had become increasingly cool between us over the last several months—it caught Tony, who was barely thirteen years old at the time, completely by surprise. His reaction was just what I feared it would be.

He looked at both of us in tears and asked, plaintively, “Why are you
doing
this to me?”

Both Julann and I were devastated. We knew that it would be a mistake to stay together for Tony, but neither of us could bear to see him so crushed. I also understood that since he would now be living with his mother and seeing me mainly on the weekends, he was very likely to feel that I had abandoned him too.

My concern for Tony was all it took to get me over my lifelong aversion to therapy. I knew that I needed guidance in order to help him get through this tremendous upheaval in his life. By rationalizing that I was only doing this for Tony, I could pretend that
I
didn’t need any help myself. Of course that wasn’t true, but it was an agreed-upon fiction which allowed me to open up to Dr. Grotjahn without ever having to acknowledge there was anything troubling
me
.

When I made my first appointment with Grotjahn, he and I had never met before. So I had no way of knowing that he watched
The Merv Griffin Show
every single night.

That first session was a comedy of miscommunication. He thought that I’d made the appointment in order to ask him to appear on my show. Before I could even tell him why I was there, he announced that he never appeared on television because he felt that it would compromise the sanctity of his doctor-patient relationships. He explained that the mere fact of his appearance on a talk show might raise doubts about his trustworthiness with his many high-profile patients, thus undermining his ability to treat them effectively.

Then Dr. Grotjahn threw me another curve by saying that he strongly encouraged his students to watch my show because I was the perfect example of how to conduct a psychiatric session!

I wasn’t exactly sure how to take that, but he assured me that he was quite serious. Apparently my interviewing style employed the technique of “indirection” that Grotjahn favored in treating his own patients. He told me that I seemed to be intuitively aware of how to put a guest at ease while still eliciting good answers. Instead of putting someone on the spot with a direct question, I would “go around und come in ze back door,” as he put it.

To his great credit, after I’d been seeing him for several months, Dr. Grotjahn never even acknowledged the identity of any of his other patients to me.

Not that I didn’t probe a bit. My weekly appointment immediately followed Cher’s. I don’t think she ever saw me, but on a couple of occasions I saw her coming out of his office as I was arriving.

I’d sit down and say something subtle like, “Doesn’t Cher look great?”
Indirection
.

He just gazed at me beatifically like a Teutonic version of the High Lama played by Sam Jaffe in the film
Lost Horizon
.

“Ve shood talk about you und your son.”

I told Dr. Grotjahn how difficult it had been for Tony, particularly at school. It’s no mystery that kids at his age can be unbelievably cruel. One boy waved a copy of a tabloid newspaper right in front of Tony’s face. On the cover was a picture of his mom and dad with a graphically designed rip right through the middle of the photo to indicate the dramatic “break” in our relationship.

Tony slugged the kid and wound up serving many hours of detention. That was only one of several similar incidents that happened to him during the school year. Tony never complained to me (he’s a Griffin all right), but the school administrators were in regular touch with both Julann and me about what was going on with him at school.

Generally, Dr. Grotjahn spoke very little during our sessions together. As Freudians maddeningly do, he preferred to let his patient do all of the talking.

So it was something of a surprise when, in the fourth or fifth session, he interrupted me with the following observation: “Mr. Griffin, you haff a vonderful opportunity now. Zis will make you und your son much closer.”

I asked him what he meant by that remarkable statement and he replied, “Vot do
you
tink I mean?”

The damnedest thing was that he was absolutely right. Even though Tony stopped living with me, we became closer than we’d ever been before. I looked forward to our time together on the weekends, and I protected it from any encroachments by my professional life. More than just father and son, we became best friends. And we’ve remained that close ever since.

I did a number of things to help me handle the stress of going through the divorce, some of them positive, some of them not.

On the plus side of the ledger, I bought the twin-engine Beechcraft that I used to take my psychiatrist to the Grand Canyon (and lose his lunch); I took flying lessons that eventually allowed me to pilot a plane myself, and which helped me to overcome my longtime fear of flying; and I bought a condominium in Pebble Beach that served as a weekend getaway spot for me and Tony.

I also employed a not-so-positive coping method: I tripled my cigarette habit, going from one pack a day to three.

When Tony was a little boy, he’d say, “Daddy, I just saw it on TV. You’re going to have cancer.”

“Tony, don’t talk like that.”

“Well, you’re going to die from the smoke. They just said it on television.”

Well then it
had
to be true. He used to scare the hell out of me with comments like that. Not to mention his gift for making me feel guilty: “Does that mean we won’t go to the park anymore?” He was a very outspoken child.

My mother, a smoker herself (who never quit and lived to age eighty-three), took a more subtle approach than my son. When I was still doing my show from New York, she’d call from California and say, “Buddy, I like your show very much. But I can’t see the guests.”

I’d say, “Mom, that’s an old television. Go out and get a new one. I’ll send you the money.”

“No, dear. It’s not that. You’re blowing smoke right at people.” It was true. I took home some show tapes and saw that she was right. There was a billowing cloud of smoke wafting across the set, right into my guests’ faces.

Not so subtle was the head of Westinghouse. He called me one day when I was doing my show with Group W and said, “Merv, I’m on the board of the American Cancer Society and we think that you’re committing public suicide every night.”

“Hey, if you don’t like my singing just say so.”

I don’t have an addictive personality, so it’s never been that big a deal for me to quit. And I don’t use patches or gum. I wake up one morning and say to myself, “I don’t feel like smoking anymore.”

Mark Twain had it right. He said, “It’s not hard to quit smoking…I’ve done it a hundred times.”

I’ve stopped for two, four, six years at a time. Once I quit for twelve years.

During 1972 and 1973, when I was leaving CBS and breaking up with Julann, I quit three separate times. Which led to a different problem. Every time I quit, I gained between twenty and thirty pounds.

Throughout my life, I’ve had to fight to keep from putting on weight. It’s been an awful battle ever since I was a kid. I’ve already told you I weighed 240 pounds after high school and that I subsequently lost eighty pounds (or looking at it another way, one third of myself). What I didn’t tell you was why.

All during adolescence I was teased, often cruelly, about my weight. I think that I had extra empathy for Tony’s difficulties with his classmates because I’d never forgotten how awful it feels to be mocked and taunted by your peers.
“Fatty, fatty, two-by-four, can’t get through the kitchen door…”

When I unexpectedly became an overnight radio star at the age of twenty, I wasn’t prepared for some of the attendant requirements of fame. It’s one thing to have a show named after you, but it’s quite another to discover that total strangers have opinions and expectations of you as well.

You’ll recall that it was Bill Pabst who hired me at the radio station in San Francisco. Bill was a good guy who always treated me well. Not wanting to make me feel self-conscious, he never mentioned my weight or the annoying facial acne that still plagued me.

Bill concocted a plan to create an air of “mystery” around his new romantic singing sensation. He told me that they wouldn’t make any publicity pictures of me available to either the press or the public.

“They’ll be clamoring for you, Merv. The less we tell them, the more interested they’ll be.”

I thought it was a little strange that the station was responding to requests for pictures of me with a form letter that said, “Sorry, but we don’t have any photos of Merv right now. As soon as we do, we’ll get one right out to you.”

I was young and very green, so I didn’t think it my place to question the wisdom of Bill’s plan.