TV mogul Merv Griffin dies

http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2007-08-12-griffinobit_N.htm

TV mogul Merv Griffin dies
By William Keck, USA TODAY
8-12-7

Who was America's foremost talk show host, game show creator and billionaire hotel mogul?

Merv Griffin, who would surely consider the question too easy for Jeopardy! or Wheel of Fortune— two shows he created and proudly called "America's games."

The affable Hollywood tycoon died of prostate cancer, according to a statement from his the family that was released by Marcia Newberger, spokeswoman for The Griffin Group/Merv Griffin Entertainment.Griffin, who was 82, leaves behind a vast empire that will continue to entertain the world for many years.

Griffin began as bit player in film and on stage. In 1950, he crooned the No. 1 novelty song, I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts. During his lifetime, he became a billionaire owner of hotels, casinos, a jet, a yacht, champion racehorses and a television legacy rewarded with numerous Emmys.

The always well-dressed, perpetually tan California native created Jeopardy! in the 1960s and Wheel of Fortune in the '70s. Wheel, he said, was based on the Hangman games he would play with his sister during family road trips. And he credited his ex-wife, Julann, with suggesting the concept behind Jeopardy! — contestants providing questions to supplied answers.

The 1986 sale of the shows and his entire Merv Griffin Enterprises holdings netted him a widely reported $250 million, plus a share of future profits. He also pocketed $80 million in royalties for composing the catchy Jeopardy! theme. "Every show I go on, I sing it," he said of his trick for increasing royalties.

Griffin, who was first diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1996, will not see how his latest game show brainchild, Crosswords, fares when it debuts in syndication on Sept. 10. He believed it would succeed, like his two earlier hits, because of its simplicity. "If you can't explain your game in one sentence, forget it," he told the New York Post.

During his 1962-86 run as host of daytime TV's The Merv Griffin Show, he interviewed four U.S. presidents and routinely booked controversial figures, such as Jane Fonda, Richard Pryor, stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, transsexual pioneer Christine Jorgensen, Spiro Agnew and Muhammad Ali, many of whom had been banned by other shows. "I did a very unusual interview with Martin Luther King Jr.," he told The Miami Herald. "I had Bobby Kennedy on. Rose Kennedy, I don't think anybody else ever sat her down on television, and she came on with me twice."

He told The New York Times that he took pride in never asking boring questions, such as "How did you prepare for the role?" or "Do you have any hobbies?" And cocktails, he admitted, were sometimes employed to get guests like Bette Davis to loosen her lips. "If we knew they were stiffs, we'd get 'em a little stiff," he said.

He was fond of recalling when he got the extremely private Orson Welles, a frequent guest, to finally talk about his past loves — just two hours before the famed director died in 1985.

Though Griffin took great pleasure in getting stars to open up about their personal lives (though never "too personal," he clarified), he rarely discussed his own. His 2003 autobiography, Merv: Making the Good Life Last, devoted just three pages to his 1958-76 marriage to Julann Elizabeth Wright, with whom he had one son, Anthony Patrick. For more than a decade, until shortly before her 1995 death, Eva Gabor was his constant companion, a vacancy filled in recent years by close friend Nancy Reagan.

Quizzed about two high-profile, multimillion-dollar 1991 sexual harassment suits — both dismissed, from former male employees — Griffin told a New York Times reporter, "I tell everybody that I'm a quartre-sexual. I will do anything with anybody for a quarter."

Such self-deprecating humor (he often poked fun at his expanding waistline) and admiration in the Hollywood community helped him quickly bounce back. In 2005, he received the lifetime achievement award at the Daytime Emmys.

Of his many Emmys, Griffin joked to the Los Angeles Times in 2003, "They're everywhere. Some of them are even lamps now."

While he criticized present hits such as Deal or No Deal and The Jerry Springer Show ("Like watching somebody go to the toilet"), he praised David Letterman and Ellen DeGeneres, the latter whom he said was "born for the medium." He was also a huge American Idol fan and took pleasure in crossword puzzles (at least four a day), his dogs (including a beloved Shar-Pei named Charlie Chaplin), a 142-foot yacht (he had three over the years, all named The Griff), a 18th century manor in Ireland, a 57-acre Carmel Valley vineyard, and a 240-acre thoroughbred ranch in La Quinta.

His great love of horses, he told the L.A. Times, was sparked by seeing the legendary Seabiscuit race twice when he was a boy. He acquired quarterhorses, Arabians and thoroughbreds. One horse, Stevie Wonderboy, was a Kentucky Derby hopeful in 2006. Earlier this year, he competed at the Derby again with Cobalt Blue. "It's always nice to win an Emmy," he recently told the Houston Chronicle. "But there's nothing like the winner's circle."

Throughout the decades, he amassed an empire of hotels and casinos, with some acquisitions pitting him against Donald Trump. He called his present relationship with Trump "perfect" because "he doesn't see me, and I don't see him."

Retiring to any of his exotic resorts was never an option for Griffin, who likened retirement to death. "At a certain age, you just await your turn," he said in the 2005 New York Times interview. But, he boasted, "I've got great energy, and I've got all my hair."