Merv (5 page)

Finally, the manager broke the bad news: “You need a new motor.”

I was dumbfounded. “It’s a brand-new car. I just bought it. You’ve got to fix it.”

“I’m sorry,” although he clearly wasn’t, “but you’re over the mileage limit on your warranty.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” We were talking big money for that kind of job.

“There’s nothing we can do about it. Those are the rules. I’m sorry.”

Now, there’s something you should know. The year before, when I was still at Warner Brothers, I’d performed at a private show for all the top brass of the Ford Motor Company at the Pan Pacific Auditorium in Los Angeles. Many of the big Warner stars were on the bill and, afterward, all of us were introduced to the three Ford brothers, Henry, William, and Benson.

So I said to the manager, “Could I use your phone to call Mr. Ford?” He looked at Rita and me as if we were lunatics.

I ignored his attitude and calmly repeated, “Please let me use your phone. I want to call Benson Ford.”

Clearly annoyed, the manager said, “Would you
really?
” But he decided to call what was certainly my bluff.

So he turned to his secretary and said, “Get Mr. Benson Ford on the phone and tell him—what’s your name?—tell him
Merv Griffin
wants to speak with him.”

Luckily, he had a primitive kind of speakerphone in his office, so after she placed the call, I did all the talking.

“Mr. Ford’s office. May I help you?”

“Mr. Ford please, it’s Merv Griffin calling.”

“Oh yes, Mr. Griffin,” said Ford’s secretary. “Hold on, please, I’ll get him.” At that point the color began to drain from the manager’s face.

“Merv! How are you?” The booming voice of Benson Ford blasted over the speakerphone.

I replied, “Terrible, Mr. Ford, just terrible.”

Now the manager is suddenly looking at me with a mixture of awe and fear, like I’d just called God (which to him, I had). I explained our predicament to Benson Ford. When I’d finished my tale of woe, he simply said, “Put that manager on the phone.”

The manager, who was listening to all this over the speaker, said, somewhat hesitantly, “I’m right here, Mr. Ford.”

“Now you listen to me. Give that boy a new motor. Give him anything he wants. Just charge it to me. Got that?”

“Yes sir, Mr. Ford. Right away, sir.” Oh boy.

They gave us a new motor and we were back on the road two days later. If I’d asked him to, the manager would have driven us to New York himself.

I had a leg up when I arrived in New York because I was already represented by MCA, then the largest talent agency in the country. Marty Kummer, who also handled Ed Sullivan and Jack Paar, was my agent there, and he was devoted to me. He had that rare quality in an agent—he treated you with the same enthusiasm and attention whether you were making ten dollars or ten thousand dollars.

For a while Marty got me a lot of singing jobs, usually one-offs (a single night’s work). Since I was a quick study, I developed a reputation as being a reliable utility singer (“We’re on in twenty minutes? Get that Griffin kid.”).

Finally, after about six months of this, I called Marty Kummer and said, “I don’t want to sing anymore.”

“What do you mean, Merv? You’re a singer. That’s what you do.”

“But I don’t want to do it anymore, Marty.”

There was silence on the line. For a second I thought he’d hung up. Then, quietly, almost like he was talking to a child, he asked, “What is it you
want
to do, Merv?”

“I want to MC.”

“Merv,” he said patiently, “you know that singers aren’t accepted as MCs. They can’t talk. Have you seen
The Eddie Fisher Show
?”

I
had
seen it. It was a train wreck. “That’s different, Marty. He can’t talk. I can.”

By this time, Marty was resigned to losing the argument, so he shifted gears. “Okay, fine. Right now, there aren’t any MC jobs out there. I’ll put your name in if something opens up, but it could take quite a while. And there’s no guarantee you’ll even be seriously considered. So what are you going to do in the meantime? You’ve got to eat.”

“I don’t want to depend upon my singing voice anymore, Marty. I don’t think that’s the career for me. I’ll wait.”

I hung up the phone and thought, What the hell have I just done?

There’s an old Irish saying that God watches over drunks, fools, and little children. I’m not exactly sure where I fit in, but apparently He was watching over me anyway. Within a few months of that telephone call to my agent, a hosting job opened up on
Look Up and Live
, a Sunday morning religious show on CBS. I jumped at it, if only for the opportunity to prove that I could cut it as an MC.

Look Up and Live
was a show that ran its entire script through the TelePrompTer, so I had to learn to read my lines while making it look like I was ad-libbing. One day I was midway though an earnest conversation with a Protestant minister when the whole show, quite literally, unraveled. The early TelePrompTers were little more than long rolls of paper. Suddenly the entire thing scrunched up and the paper tore, then completely ripped apart.

I looked at the minister and, without pausing, I said, “Isn’t that right, Reverend?”

He glanced at me nervously. “What?”

“What I just said. Isn’t that right?”

“Oh yes,” he said, still not sure of what he was agreeing to, “that’s exactly right.” (He wasn’t listening either.)

I’d just dumped it all on him. At least he could fall back on Scripture, even without the TelePrompTer.

Very early in my career, I had discovered something important about myself. When that red light came on, I didn’t have a single nerve in my body. It was like stepping out of reality and becoming someone else.

While I was doing
Look Up and Live
, I became quite friendly with Mahalia Jackson and Sidney Poitier, both of whom were regular performers on the program. Mahalia sang gospel songs and Sidney acted out various Bible stories.

Sidney was about my age and, like me, he was frustrated at the direction his career was—or wasn’t—taking. But unlike me, he loved acting. He’d even started his own drama school up in Harlem. One morning we were having breakfast and he asked me what I’d do if I couldn’t get work as a host after this show. I thought about it, and then realizing how much I’d come to admire my agent, Marty Kummer, I said, “I think I might try my luck at being an agent.” Sidney said that if things didn’t pan out for him soon, he’d quit acting and run his drama school. After we left the show we lost touch with each other, and I didn’t see him again for more than twenty years. One day we ran into each other in Sardi’s, where we were both having dinner. By this time, I had a national television show running five nights a week and he had my Oscar.

We greeted each other warmly. “Sidney,” I asked earnestly, “do you still have your acting school?” Without missing a beat, he said, “No, Merv, that didn’t work out for me. Are you still an agent?”

After I finished my run with
Look Up and Live
, CBS gave me an even bigger opportunity. It was a slot on their version of the
Today
show—
The CBS Morning Show
. Even though they wanted me as a singer, I took the job because it was the same show where Jack Paar got his start.

After Paar, CBS had given the host’s job to John Henry Faulk, the great American humorist (who was subsequently blacklisted on charges that were eventually proven false). Faulk was the host when I was hired.

American Airlines was our sponsor and they served us breakfast on the air between seven and eight in the morning. Every day they gave us these huge portions of pancakes and bacon. I suppose they wanted people to think that these were airline-size portions. Right.

Because we had to repeat the show for the West Coast at nine (no tape in those days), we had to eat the same damn breakfast all over again…
and
look like we were enjoying it. Well, I was already annoyed at having to go to work at 4:00
A.M.
(an hour I far prefer at the end of my day rather than the beginning), but having to eat those stupid meals twice a day on camera was beginning to put me over the edge.

I can handle almost anything in life except boredom. And this job was boring me to tears.

Now several times during the show, the announcer stood up and gave a weather report on camera, much in the same way Al Roker does it now on the
Today
show. However, in those primitive days of television, there were no maps and charts and satellite photographs. He just stood there with a long sheet of paper and read the temperatures and forecasts from around the country.

So, one day—and I still don’t know what made me do this—I leaned over and lit the bottom of his weather report on fire. He screamed, “I’m on fire!” although it was only his copy that was burning slightly around the edges. The poor guy panicked. He wore a toupee and, fearing that it would soon ignite, he yanked it off his head and threw it across the room. By this time the fire was out, but the damage was done. He turned to me and said, on camera, “That was evil.” Stifling the urge to laugh, I said, “Oh, I guess it was. I’m very sorry.”

I’m not sure how you would describe my behavior in those days. I don’t think I was brash…well, perhaps setting the weatherman’s copy on fire
was
brash. But it was entertaining.

Shortly after that, Faulk was let go. We learned that his replacement would be a young disc jockey from New Orleans who’d only done local television; his name was Dick Van Dyke. This would be his big national break. CBS flew him to New York, he had a great rehearsal, and everything was set for his debut the following day.

The next morning we were all at the studio at four, everybody except Dick. Five o’clock comes, then six, and still no sign of our new host. Finally it was five minutes to seven, and the producer comes rushing out and says to me, “We’ve looked everywhere. We can’t find him and we’re going on live at seven. You’re going on in his place.” Maybe it was because I was too young to know any better, or maybe it was because this scene was already very familiar to me from all those Judy Garland–Mickey Rooney movies where somehow the show always managed to go on, but I wasn’t nervous at all. I just said, “Okay, I’m ready. Let’s go.”

At two minutes to seven the producer handed me a bunch of public service announcements (“Don’t forget this is National Bunion Awareness Week”) and said, “Read these.” I looked at them and said, “These are diseases. It’s seven in the morning. Trust me, nobody wants to think about getting sick when they’re not awake yet. I’ll just wing it.” I handed him back the papers and before he could argue with me, the red light came on and we were off to the races. For the next three hours, I MC’d the show without a script and when it was over, I thought to myself, This is fun. I can
do
this.

Oh, maybe you’re wondering whatever happened to Dick Van Dyke. It turned out that he was so nervous he slept through his wake-up call and all the frantic calls from the production staff that followed. He never did show up that day. By the next day he was fine, and he had a great run as host of the show. Obviously, CBS never lost confidence in him. A good thing too—ten years later he was their biggest star. Dick and I have laughed over this story many times. He takes credit for launching my career as a talk show host and I point out that he’s just lucky I didn’t set him on fire.

W
hen I decided to leave
the CBS Morning Show
the following year, it wasn’t because I didn’t want to do television anymore. On the contrary, I was now convinced that my future was hiding somewhere inside that large box with the small screen. I couldn’t see it clearly yet, but I knew that it was only a matter of time before my life came into focus.

I still didn’t want to take singing jobs, but I rationalized that any job which gave me more experience in television was—for the time being—worth taking.

Then I met Robert Q. Lewis.

Lewis was a radio personality who’d occasionally substituted for Arthur Godfrey on
Talent Scouts
(the first
American Idol
, for those of you who are generationally impaired). Based on these few appearances, CBS decided to take a chance on him with his own half-hour variety show. With his black horn-rimmed glasses and perpetual smirk, Lewis was an odd fit for television. He seemed more like a dyspeptic accountant than the urbane host he thought himself to be. He wasn’t humorous, and I don’t think he was very inventive. But as so often happens, he had a gargantuan ego that was not commensurate with his talent. And as I was soon to discover, he was also insane.

I’d been brought in by CBS producer Irving Mansfield (Jacqueline Susann’s husband) to help save the show, which was floundering in the ratings. Lewis didn’t want me there, but he couldn’t fire me. Our first confrontation came very early on. As the featured singer, I had to do two songs every day. And he insisted that they be new songs, often from the latest Broadway shows. But there was no way anyone could learn that much material on a daily basis. That meant the lyrics had to be put on the TelePrompTer, which Lewis insisted remain on the floor below the camera, not behind it. Because of this, I had to look down while I was singing, never an impressive way to perform.

So one day (which also happened to be Yom Kippur, the highest holy day in the Jewish faith) I came in and started to rehearse one of my two new songs—“On the Street Where You Live” from
My Fair Lady
. I’d only sung a few bars before Lewis (whose real name, I should note, was Bobby Goldberg) shouted, “Stop the rehearsal!” He was in the back of the studio, the disembodied voice of God. Over the speaker comes the sarcastic question, “Mr. Griffin, on St. Patrick’s Day, we all sang St. Patrick’s songs. What are you going to do on this high Jewish holiday?
That
song?” I responded calmly (which I knew infuriated him), “Well I’m rehearsing it. That’s what the show selected.” But he wouldn’t let go. Again the voice came back from out of the darkness, “Aren’t we going to do something for the Jews?” With just a hint of a smile, I replied, “Would you like ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’?”

The entire cast and crew fell apart laughing.

Lewis failed to see the humor. He came rushing out of the darkness waving the script in the air. “Griffin,” he screamed, his eyes bulging behind his glasses, “whose name is on the cover of this script, yours or mine?” He threw it down at my feet and stalked off, kicking chairs and banging on tables as he departed.

Did I mention that he was crazy?

Thirty years later, I was seated in St. Germain, an elegant restaurant on Melrose in Los Angeles that I used to go to for lunch when my show was taping in Hollywood. I’d just started eating when Robert Q. Lewis walked in. (I need to tell you that at this point my first book,
Merv
, had just come out and was already on the
New York Times
best-seller list. And unfortunately for Bob, I have an extremely good memory. My account of our time together was probably very unpleasant for him to read, precisely because it was completely accurate.)

So Lewis sees me and walks over to my table, the familiar scowl still on his face all these years later. “I read your book,” he snapped. And I said, “It’s good, isn’t it? Oh, and by the way, Bob, whose name is that on the cover?” He just glared and walked away. I never saw him again.

Surprisingly enough, I will always be grateful to Robert Q. Lewis. You see, I married his secretary.

Born with big dreams in the small town of Ironwood, Michigan, Julann Wright arrived in New York in 1954 determined to break into show business. Her first love was the theater, but like me she’d been forced to compromise in order to gain experience—and eat. Lewis hired her as a secretary-assistant on his Saturday radio program, which had continued to run even after he got the television show.

One day when Lewis was on the air, Julann came quietly into the studio with his coffee. On a whim, Lewis just started talking to her, live on the radio.

“Oh, Julann, thank you so much for the basketball that you gave me for Christmas.”

Of course, she hadn’t given him anything for Christmas, but Julann was so quick, nothing fazed her. Like a redheaded version of Judy Holliday, she replied, “Oh, you’re welcome. I knew you had a hoop.”

The audience ate it up. After that Julann played the part of his daffy secretary every Saturday. (Nothing was further from the truth. Like Judy Holliday, Julann used her talent for playing dumb to conceal an extremely sharp mind.)

Even though she only appeared on the radio show, our paths inevitably crossed and we quickly fell in love. She was (and still is) one of the warmest, funniest people I’ve ever known. Two years later, after our marriage was announced in the papers, Lewis told people that I had purposely married Julann just to get back at him. In his mind, even our marriage was about
him
, that’s how egocentric he was.

Eager to escape Lewis’s lunacy (and to take Julann with me), I actively pursued other opportunities. You want to know how desperate I was? When “Buffalo” Bob Smith had a heart attack and couldn’t work for a while, I came
thisclose
to filling in for him on
Howdy Doody
. In the end, even
I
couldn’t rationalize that playing second banana to a dummy was a good career move. (I confess, however, that I’ve long had one regret about my decision. I pride myself on spotting and developing new talent. Had I taken the
Doody
job, I would have always been remembered as the man who introduced Gumby to the world.)

Fortunately, the producer who offered me
Howdy Doody
, Martin Stone (who would become a lifetime friend and mentor to me), came back with another prospect that was far more attractive. ABC, then the fledgling third television network, was launching a Miami-based variety show called
Going Places
and they wanted me as the host. In a few short years, Marty Kummer’s admonition that “singers are not thought of as MCs” was no longer valid. Increasingly, singers were replacing comedians as television hosts. That year (1957) more than twenty shows were being MC’d by singers ranging from Perry Como and Dinah Shore on NBC to Frank Sinatra, Pat Boone, and Julius La Rosa on ABC.

Although it meant commuting to Florida from New York every weekend, I didn’t hesitate in accepting the job. This would be my first solo effort as a host, and I was ready—eager—for the chance.

Although it was fun,
Going Places
wasn’t exactly my road to stardom. More like an off-ramp, actually. One of my first interviews was with the mayor of Miami, who, for some reason, thought my name was “Herb.” Another guest referred to me as “Mirth,” while the orchestra leader kept calling me “Mark” (shades of Warner Brothers). But the final blow to my pride came the day after the broadcast when the
Miami Herald
, in its review, credited me as “Mery” Griffin. At least
she
got a good review.

When I spoke with my parents on the phone that night, neither of them mentioned any of the miscues. To them, I was now a television star. In the manner of a typical Irish-Catholic father of his generation, my dad was gruff but proud. “Ya did good, Buddy. Keep it up and keep your nose clean. Here’s your mother.” My mother told me that I looked too thin (ah, the good old days), but very handsome.

Ultimately,
Going Places
went nowhere and ABC canceled it after eight months. I’m sure very few people remember it today, even the people who put it on the air. Yet for me, it will always be a special experience for reasons having nothing to do with my career.

Right before the second show was going out live from the Gulf-stream racetrack in South Florida, I received a long-distance call from my sister, Barbara, in California. My father had just suffered a massive heart attack.

“I’m sorry, Buddy,” she was crying. “He didn’t make it.”

I just stared at the phone in my hand. This wasn’t happening. It
couldn’t
be happening. He was only fifty-five.

“Buddy? Are you there?” I heard my sister’s voice as though it were being filtered through an echo chamber.

“Yes. Yes, I’m here. I’ll take the first plane back. I love you.”

Fifteen minutes later I was on live television bantering with my guests as if I didn’t have a care in the world. It was like an out-of-body experience. “Mirth” Griffin was doing my show for me. Buddy was watching from the sidelines, crying. I didn’t tell anyone until the show was over. I knew that if anyone had offered me so much as a word of sympathy, I would have lost it right on the air.

Of all the thousands of television hours I’ve logged in my career since then, that first installment of
Going Places
—one week before he died—was the only time that my father ever saw me hosting my own show. For that reason, I’ve always believed that silly little program in Florida was something I was meant to do.

That year was very hard for me. Not only because of the loss of my father, but after I returned to New York, it also seemed as if I might be losing my career as well. Day after day I sat in my apartment on West 57th Street (which I’d sublet from Marlon Brando), waiting for the phone to ring. Occasionally I picked it up to see if there was still a dial tone. Given my dire financial straits, this was often a fifty-fifty proposition.

I’ve always been an enthusiastic, energetic person. Waiting around doesn’t work for me. For the first time in my life, I began to doubt myself. What if I’d made a huge mistake by giving up singing? Although I’d only received $50 for it (Freddy got the rest), I had a number one hit song with “Cocoanuts.” Now I owed my mother money.

In the middle of the longest summer of my life, I turned thirty-two. Some swivel-hipped kid named Presley was the nation’s new singing sensation; even if I’d wanted to, I could scarcely call myself a boy singer anymore.

Up to that point in my life, I’d always bet on myself. What I mean by that is I followed my instincts and made my own choices. It’s a very difficult thing to gamble on oneself. It can be scary. But in the end, it’s the only bet worth making. Because when it pays off, the rewards are all your own.

And until that summer, even when the bet was a long shot, my self-confidence was usually justified. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

If life were a movie, this would be the scene where the phone finally rang. But in reality, it never did.

Finally, I got so tired of waiting around in New York that I took a vacation from being unemployed. Using what little savings I had (If the phone wasn’t going to ring, why give it any money?) I found a cheap flight to the Caribbean.

While I was down there, my agent, Marty Kummer, who’d never given up on me, sent me a telegram that read:

Mark Goodson and Bill Todman were the most successful game show producers in television. They’d developed a string of popular programs during the 1950s, including
To Tell the Truth, I’ve Got a Secret, What’s My Line
, and
Beat the Clock
. Possibly the only good thing about having a lot of time on my hands was that I got to watch television in the morning. I’d seen all of them. A lot. This was something I could do. And I’d be following in Jack Paar’s footsteps yet again. In the early fifties, he’d hosted
I’ve Got News for You
and
Bank on the Stars
.

I made my way back to New York and showed up at the Goodson-Todman offices at the scheduled time, seven o’clock on a Friday night. Marty Kummer was supposed to meet me. When I got off the elevator on their floor, no one was there. No receptionist, no staff, nobody. I could hear the sound of laughter coming from somewhere deep inside the offices, but the connecting door was locked, so I was stuck outside in the reception area. Finally a secretary came out and asked me to wait. After about a half an hour of cooling my heels (as I’ve told you, I’m not good at waiting), I got up, said “to hell with it,” and punched the elevator button. Literally. When the elevator door opened, Marty Kummer stepped out, just as I was getting in.

“Where are you going?”

“Home. They’ve been in there laughing and shouting for almost an hour now, Marty. They don’t want me. It sounds like they’ve got someone anyway. And I don’t even know what the show is. What’s the point of hanging around?”

Ever the patient man, Marty put his arm around me as the elevator closed without me in it. “Come on, Merv. They wouldn’t get you up here if you didn’t have a shot. Trust me. They’ll love you.”