“I suddenly saw that I was a handsome man, not a Guy Madison, but not a bad-looking guy either. I was just as pretty as Gordon MacRae, who had been signed by Warners and cast in The Big Punch. I could sing better than MacRae too.”
Although Merv had not been jealous of Guy Mitchell, he would become locked into a bitter rivalry with MacRae, even at the very beginning of that star's rise to fame.
Merv would become particularly agitated sitting through any movie in the future, such as Tea for Two (1950), that co-starred Doris Day and MacRae. “I tried to blot out MacRae's image and sub my own. I felt that I, not MacRae, belonged up there on the screen in Doris's arms.”
Merv's weight loss gave him a self-confidence he'd never had before. He even began to feel that he could compete with other gay men for some of the handsome hunks walking around San Francisco. “I would no longer be ashamed to take off my clothes. In fact, I had hopes to find someone who would love me back so my life wouldn't be entirely about servicing rough trade,” he told his friend, Bill Robbins.
With his new self-assurance, Merv even gave in to Johnny Riley's request to take off all his clothes to show off his new physique. Johnny later recalled, “I was so impressed with Merv's new look that I tossed in a mercy fuck that night just for old time's sake. After all, he'd been lusting after me ever since grade school, and I felt he deserved some kind of reward.”
Heady days remained ahead for Merv as he spent his last months in San Francisco, with continued success for “The Merv Griffin Show,” which was presented until that day in 1948 when he resigned. Another offer came in that was far more tempting than the radio show, which had begun to bore him.
At night he hit the gay bars of San Francisco. “With my newly acquired physique, and with certain good looks that had emerged from behind the blubber, I became a whore on the make,” he told Johnny. “I was like a kid just released in the candy store and told to pick up anything I liked. I was enjoying a sex life for the first time in my life. I was far too young to settle down, and I wanted to have experiences that had been denied me up to now. I broke a few hearts back then. How different that was for me. Up to now, I'd had my heart broken lusting after ‘The Guy.’ Get that? Guy Mitchell and a few others.”
Merv's life was about to change, although he had no clue as to what was about to happen.
At the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, Freddy Martin stepped out of the shower. The radio was on. On the air he heard the romantic, melodious voice of Merv Griffin singing “Let There Be Love.”
The popular bandleader was looking for a “boy singer” for his orchestra, and he was captivated by Merv's voice, feeling that the singer would blend in with his music. Before appearing that night in the hotel's club, he ordered his secretary, Jean Barry, to “get me Merv Griffin.”
Jean contacted Merv that day and agreed to have lunch that Saturday afternoon. The Merv Griffin she encountered was a newly created man— young, handsome, and slender. In Jean's view he possessed one of the most romantic singing voices in America.
“I knew after lunching with Merv that Freddy had found his man,” Jean later recalled. “Before I'd left the hotel that day, Freddy said to me, ‘I just pray the fucking kid is a looker. The horny women who dance to our music like romantic ballads sung by a guy they'd want to go to bed with.’”
Back at the hotel that night, Jean gave Freddy the good news. “He's a handsome—not pretty—boy, and you already know how he sings. There's a possible problem that I don't think will be any trouble at all. I suspect he might be a homosexual. But if he's got the looks and the voice, what does that matter?”
“Half the boys in my band are homosexual, at least when they're on the road,” Freddy said. “This Merv Griffin will fit in just fine with my boys.”
Merv's breakthrough as a “boy singer”
in the waning days of ballroom dancing
was with big band legend Freddy Martin
Chapter Two
Merv stayed awake all that night, pondering Jean Barry's offer to make him the lead singer with Freddy Martin's band. As dawn came up over San Francisco, he decided to go for it. The way he figured it, being the lead singer of Freddy's band would take him across the country, where he hoped to make millions of new fans. Reflecting on that career-changing choice years later, he said, “I was too much of a fool to realize that I was hooking up with one of the Big Bands just as that musical form was entering its death throes. It had peaked in the 1930s and during the war years. But I never regretted my decision to join Freddy and his boys.”
Appearing at the St. Francis Hotel's Mural Room that night, Merv met his mentor, Freddy himself. “He was such a nice guy I couldn't believe he was for real,” Merv said. “I thought his politeness might be a cover-up for the monster that lurked beneath.” Merv not only met Freddy but was asked to sing— unrehearsed—with his orchestra. Freddy asked him if he knew “Where or When.”
“Does a bear shit in the woods?”
“You're on, kid,” Freddy said.
“I don't know how I got through the number, but my voice held out,” Merv later recalled. “My legs were shaking more than those of Elvis in the years to come. But the audience clapped wildly, and I knew I'd made the right decision.”
The next day he began to feel he'd made a very rash decision when he was told that Freddy would pay him only $150 a week. Previously, he'd thought that it would be $150 a night. He was already pulling in $1,500 a week, very good pay for a singer in 1948.
Later Merv claimed that the actual money was not that important to him. That was hardly true. To this Depression era kid, money was vital.
Even so, he shrewdly interpreted this new job as a career advancement in spite of the low pay. “I decided it could lead to fame and fortune eventually. I'd be singing at the Starlight Roof in New York, the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles. Meeting all the big stars.”
The next day he barged into Bill Pabst's office at the radio station and resigned. It was easy to do since he didn't have a contract with the station manager. Pabst warned him he was making a big mistake and was shocked at the enormous cut in pay he'd be taking. What Merv didn't tell Pabst was that he planned to use his exposure with Freddy Martin's orchestra to launch a screen career. “Just think,” Merv said to Pabst, “with Freddy Martin's band, I'll be singing to Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Clark Gable, Lana Turner, and even Judy Garland.” As his own fortune teller, he was right on target.
“I see,” a skeptical Pabst said. “But think about this. What if Sinatra shows up one night at the Cocoanut Grove? He's highly critical of other singers, you know. You may be too sappy for him. What if he's drunk, a likely scenario. He might let out a catcall to disrupt your act. Embarrass you in front of everybody in Hollywood. And by the way, your act rips off Bing Crosby even more than it does Sinatra, and what if Der Bingle shows up to comment upon that personally?”
“I'll shit my pants and keep on singing.”
When joining Freddy Martin's band, Merv knew his new boss didn't rule the music scene in the 40s the way that Benny Goodman, Guy Lombardo, Glenn Miller, and Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey did. Even so, Merv daydreamed that he could pull off what Sinatra did when appearing with Tommy Dorsey, recording such hits as “Hear My Song” and “I'll Never Smile Again.”
Post-war dollars earmarked for entertainment were meager compared to what they'd been during the war years when men spent heavily, not worrying about saving for tomorrow when they didn't know if they'd have a tomorrow.
Now those same men who'd survived the war were moving to the suburbs where they built homes and began to raise families. The king of the Big Bands, Glenn Miller, was presumed to have died when his plane disappeared in December of 1944, and back home many ballrooms and night-clubs were either closing or doing poor business. Not only that, but many musicians returning from the battlefields, including Ray Anthony and Buddy Rich, were once again competing within the overcrowded field. “The competition was keen,” Merv said. “With mor
e and more musicians on the scene, that pie was being sliced into thinner and thinner slices. Even admission prices to ballrooms dropped. Some of the lesser known bands ‘disbanded.’”
Frankly, Freddy Martin—nicknamed “Mr. Silvertone”—did not lead Merv's favorite band. He much preferred the sounds of Glenn Miller's band or even the Dorsey Brothers. The kindest word Merv had for Freddy's boys was that they played “likable music.”
As a kid, he'd listened to their music, which went back to 1932 when they'd recorded for Columbia Records. His favorite among their repertoire was “Tonight We Love,” with Clyde Rogers performing the vocal. Freddy had based the arrangement on the first movement of Tchaikovsky's B-flat piano concerto.
When Merv joined Freddy's orchestra, it employed six violins, four brasses, and an equal number of sax. Freddy was a mean saxophone player himself— in fact, he was hailed as the best tenor saxophonist of the Big Band era.
By the time Merv joined the band, the orchestra had already been the focal point of a film, Melody Time (1948), which is interpreted today as a camp classic. In it, Freddy Martin appeared as himself, as did the Andrews Sisters and the homophobic Roy Rogers with his horse, Trigger. Regrettably, the scenes of “Pecos Bill” which appeared within the original were edited out of its re-release years later as a DVD.
Merv also watched as Freddy Martin and his Orchestra appeared as themselves in Seven Days' Leave (1942) in which Victor Mature starred opposite Lucille Ball. Merv told Johnny Riley, “I'd even give up Errol Flynn, I think, for Victor Mature. He's too hot to handle.”
Merv had seen Stage Door Canteen (1943) six times, little knowing that one of its cast members, Tallulah Bankhead, would become his lifelong friend. It starred some of the great ladies of the theater, including Helen Hayes and Katherine Cornell. Even Katharine Hepburn made an appearance. Merv thrilled to the appearance of “Tarzan,” Johnny Weissmuller, but was more intrigued by the orchestra conductors cast in the film. They included not only Freddy Martin, but Guy Lombardo, Kay Kyser, Benny Goodman, and Xavier Cugat. He later claimed that watching this movie made him a lifelong fan of Count Basie.
Merv told Freddy that he hoped more movie roles would lie in the orchestra's future now that he'd joined as lead vocalist.
“I'm not sure movies in the years to come will feature 1940s orchestras with boy or girl singers,” Freddy said. “Even The Andrews Sisters are fading. What went over during World War II is dying out. The 1950s demand a new kind of sound.”
The following night, waiting backstage at the Mural Room, Merv watched as Stuart Wade, the singer Merv was slated to replace, sang his last songs for Freddy's band. At the end of Stuart's act, Merv shook his hand as he came off stage. “Great show!” Merv said with all the enthusiasm he could muster. In the background, he could hear Freddy Martin introducing him as the band's new singer.
Young Merv
To be polite, Stuart also waited backstage for Merv to finish his act. “You were fabu- lous,” he told Merv. “You'll go over bigger and better than I ever did.”
It would take months before Merv learned that compliments one performer makes to another are usually insincere.
“What's next for you?” Merv asked.
“Tomorrow, I head for Hollywood where I'm going to become the hottest actor in show business. The Robert Taylors, Tyrone Powers, and Errol Flynns are getting long in the tooth. They're going to have to move over and make way for me.”
As Merv watched Stuart depart, he knew enough at the time to realize that most dreams of show business success end when you wake up. But not in his case. He was determined. The Stuart Wades of the world would come and go, perhaps into oblivion. But he was determined to make it … and big.
At the end of Merv's first week of performing with Freddy, the orchestra leader raised his salary to $175 a week because he also wanted Merv to be his second piano player. He promised more $25 raises every thirteen weeks. “But you've got to knock off some more pounds, kid.”
“I'm a skeleton compared to the balloon I used to be,” Merv said. “But I'll keep eating those rare steaks and salads.”
“Merv was not a natural in front of a live audience, but I took a chance on him anyway,” Freddy later recalled. “He was very stiff and rigid. Very unsure of himself. It took weeks before he became natural.”
“The boys in the band kidded him because every week he sounded like somebody else,” Freddy said. “The first week we thought we'd hired Perry Como. The next week Merv sounded more like Bing Crosby. My God, one night I thought he'd been listening to Doris Day sing. I put a stop to him listening to her voice. We didn't want to signal to the ladies in the audience that Merv was a homo.”
“Another thing,” Freddy continued, “in the beginning Merv waddled on stage like a duck. When he came out with that walk, some people in the audience laughed at him. I think that waddle came from his fat period. I got around his awkward entrance by eliminating his walk-on. I had the boys kill the house lights. Merv could slip out onto the stage and stand before the microphone. The house lights would go on and the audience would see Merv standing in the spotlight instead of waddling on.”
It was a sad day in San Francisco and San Mateo when Merv told his family and friends good-bye. It was the beginning of a nationwide tour of seventy- four one-night stands in towns he'd never heard of.
His introduction to life on the road as a “boy singer” began in the hardest, most grueling way. “Almost from the first, my daydreams about making it big in show business came crashing in on me,” Merv said. “I was introduced to the realities of show business in Eureka, California. Reality instead of dreams was setting in.”
He was heartsick after a long bus ride to Eureka, and he became even more so when he saw the patrons file in. They were loud and raucous, and many had already consumed far too many beers.
In the big cities such as New York, Freddy's band was known for attracting what was left of “café society.” But the Eureka audience looked like farmers.
The club was dreary, but Merv did all his big numbers such as “Never Been Kissed” and “Wilhelmina.” He tried his best and the audience clapped but with no enthusiasm. He felt the patrons would much rather be hearing Roy Rogers singing about how the stars were big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas.
It was clearly understood that after each of the one-night stands, Merv had to be packed and ready, following his performance, for a late-night supper at one o'clock in the morning. Immediately after that, sometime before 3am, Freddy and his boys would climb onto the bus for transit to the next performance. Often they pulled into town just before the beginning of the next evening's show. They slept on the bumpy bus.
“My god,” he complained to Freddy. “I don't even have time to wash the piss stains out of my underwear.”
Long used to life on the road, the band leader just smiled. “Then don't wear underwear.”
Merv recalled celebrating his twenty-third birthday in Prairie du Chien, Wyoming, where the band threw him a surprise party. Even that wasn't spontaneous. Merv later learned that before leaving San Francisco, Jean Barry had been given a one-hundred dollar bill from Merv's mother, Rita, to honor him on the occasion. “At that point I felt so homesick I cried,” he said. “Except for visits to Los Angeles, I'd never really been anywhere but the Bay area.”
“Those tears finally came, and when they did, they rained like buckets,” Merv said. It was early one morning as he walked the bleak streets of Fargo, North Dakota, with not a soul in sight. “It was my first time away from home, and I missed all my family and my friends like Johnny Riley. I kept in touch by phone on occasions, but calls were expensive and my new salary didn't allow for a lot of luxuries. My support group was gone. But I did make a friend in Jean.”
Freddy's secretary traveled on the road with what she called “my boys.” She bonded so well with Merv and spent so much time with him that some members of the band suspected a romance. “Far from it,” Jean said. “We were good buddies
—and that was that. I became the first of what Merv called his gal pals.”
Beginning with Jean Barry, and ending with the glamorous Eva Gabor, Merv over the years formed relationships with a number of women. “From what he told me, no sex was involved, only good times,” Johnny Riley later recalled. “He was like many gay men in the late Forties and Fifties who formed superficial relationships with women and ‘dated’ them.”
“But after a kiss on the cheek at the doorstep, it was good night, sweetheart,” Johnny claimed. “These romances of Merv's in New York and Los Angeles were about as serious as Tab Hunter dating Debbie Reynolds in the 1950s.”
Bill Robbins, the other close friend of Merv's, said, “Of course, Merv had male friends. Take Paul Schone, Johnny, and me for an example. Even Cal Tjader. But he also sought out women to pal around with him. He genuinely liked women, and he liked to be in their company. He enjoyed taking them out. In the years to come, it was fun for him to be seen with Elizabeth Taylor on his arm. But I doubt if he ever fucked Elizabeth Taylor. For fucking, she had to turn to Richard Burton, Frank Sinatra, whomever.”
On that first road tour with Freddy and his boys, Merv sat up front in the bus with Jean beside him. “As we crossed the American Plains, some trips lasting twelve hours, I grew bored. Freddy always had his nose buried in a book, and some of the boys played cards. I didn't play poker, and I didn't like to read. To pass the time, I invented word games, including one called ‘Twenty Questions.’”
“I was just trying to kill the time, little knowing that I would one day make millions of dollars in television off word games,” he said. “I guess I had to start someplace, and I got my start in word games on those long, long rides to Rinky-Dink, U.S. of A. Almost every night in some hell-hole, some drunk would call out for me to sing ‘Melancholy Baby.’ I got so tired of that I began to close my act with that song, anticipating a drunken request.”
Merv Griffin- A Life in the Closet Page 6
