Merv Griffin- A Life in the Closet

by Darwin Porter

  Privately Merv had told Roddy that he envied the bisexual lifestyle of Robert and Peter and wished he could live as they did, but he could not bring himself to get sexually involved with a woman.

  When Merv drove up to Robert's house and rang the doorbell, there was no answer. He spotted a note tacked onto the mailbox. It was from Peter, telling him that he and Robert had gone for a ride in the Hollywood Hills and would be back soon. Merv was told to go around to the back of the house where Robert had left the door unlocked.

  Merv entered the darkened house and plopped down on the sofa. The whole idea of talking to Peter about taking Tom back was a wildly foolish dream. With Robert and Lana in his stable, what did Peter need with Tom?

  As Merv dozed off, he heard a sound. Bolting up, he was startled to see a nude woman emerging from the back bedroom. She was dripping wet from the shower and was obviously searching for a bath towel. Seeing Merv, she screamed and ran back into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

  He'd seen her for only a moment, but immediately recognized her as Nancy Davis (Reagan). He'd met her at the Cocoanut Grove with Clark Gable. So, the rumor mill was correct. Nancy was said to be having an affair with Robert. Roddy had heard talk that Nancy, Robert, and Peter often enjoyed a three-way together. Could this be true? He suspected that it was.

  Starlet, pinup, and future

  First Lady

  Nancy Davis (Reagan)

  The roaring of motorcycles in the driveway dis- tracted Merv. He went outside to the graveled driveway near the garage where he saw Peter and Robert pull into the yard while mounted on their bikes. In spite of the hot weather, both actors were clad in black leather jackets.

  Merv had heard that Peter rode his Enfield to MGM every morning until Louis B. Mayer put a stop to it, after the press reported that Robert had had a minor accident on his motorcycle. “I have no roles for movie stars with broken necks,” Mayer warned Peter.

  When Robert invited Peter into his house, Merv wondered if Nancy would appear again. She never did. Merv suspected that she'd dressed hurriedly and fled through the front door when Merv went out to greet Peter and Robert. He never mentioned to Robert that he'd seen her.

  At this point Merv still didn't know Peter very well, and had never seen him sober. Without the booze, he found him even more attractive than his 1930s idol, Errol Flynn. When Robert excused himself to take a shower, Peter stripped down to his underwear because the afternoon sun had made the living room very hot.

  Merv appraised his tight physique which was hardly that of a bodybuilder but which was extremely sexy and appealing. His smile was one of the most dazzling of all the leading men in Hollywood, especially on that still boyish face of his. It was his sharp wit, his ever so polite demeanor, and that divine London accent of his that added to his almost irresistible charm. Little wonder that everyone from Noel Coward to Rita Hayworth had fallen for him.

  Robert went to take a shower, as Peter watched him retreat. When he was out of hearing range, Peter asked, “Can you believe it? My two best friends are Robert Walker and Judy Garland. They view me as the steadying influence in their lives. No one except those two dears think I have a grip on reality. The fact that they turn to me for emotional support shows just how fucked up they are.”

  While Robert was away, Merv decided to accomplish his mission and get it over with. “Tom's heart is broken,” he said. “He wanted me to come and see you today. To plead with you to take him back.”

  “That's not going to happen,” Peter said, the soft lines in his face becoming harsher. He made his way to the bar for a drink. With his impeccable manners, he asked Merv to join him. “I'll see Tom once, maybe twice, a week. He's got a great little dick, made more for sucking than fucking, and I love it. But that's all. I'm not in love with him. I'm not going to live with Tom in some rose-covered cottage. Tell him he'll either take me on my terms—or not at all.”

  Robert came out of the same bedroom door from which Nancy had emerged. He too was stark nude and looking for a towel. “God damn it, Peter, you used up all my clean towels.”

  “A trick I learned from Sinatra,” Peter said. “He uses five big fluffy towels to dry himself on.”

  “You'd think a shrimp like that could manage with a T-towel,” Robert said.

  “It takes three towels just to dry his dick,” Peter claimed.

  Forgetting to eat, Robert and Peter wanted to talk the night away with the bottle. Merv would have preferred some food. After three drinks, he stopped and switched to club soda. Peter and Robert continued to walk to the bar. Each actor seemed to have an unlimited capacity for alcohol. As the evening waned, Peter seemed to retreat into a zombie state, but Robert kept talking and was amazingly candid about himself.

  “I can't live with my problems,” he told Merv. “That's why I turn to alcohol. It's my only escape.” At one point he launched into an attack on Selznick. “He had an obsession with my wife. He wanted Jennifer at all costs. I couldn't stand against a man as powerful as he was.”

  Later in the evening, he broke into sobs. Merv moved over toward the sofa where he sat and tried to comfort him. “I've been unloved and unwanted ever since the day I was born,” he admitted.

  “The world loves and adores you,” Merv assured him.

  When Robert spoke of his early days working on a banana boat in Central America, Merv found that he had a heart-grabbing, little-boy-lost appeal.

  He surprised Merv when he told him that he was playing a homicidal homosexual in Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, opposite Farley Granger. “Farley and I will know we're playing it homo, but only the hip ones in the audience will get it.”

  It was two o'clock that morning before Merv finally left Robert's house. Peter had already passed out.

  Merv had an early rehearsal and suspected he'd wake up with a headache. At that point he didn't know if he'd continue to see Peter, Robert, or even Tom. All three men, especially Robert, seemed a little too self-destructive for him. He carried none of their baggage. In fact, Peter had told him, “You're the most happy-go-lucky guy I've ever met. Haven't you suffered? Don't you have any problems to drive you to drink?”

  Actually, he didn't. His only dark secret was that he was a homosexual, but he seemed to be covering that up fairly well. At least he didn't plan to turn to drugs and alcohol to deal with his sexual preference. He was beginning to enjoy living in a secretive world and fooling the public. It made life more thrilling. He told Tom, “I owe the public a good performance, the best I can give them. I don't owe them a blueprint to my private life.”

  * * *

  Merv was elated at what he viewed “as a really big break” when Freddy Martin told him that he'd signed Merv and his orchestra for a twenty-six gig, “The Hazel Bishop Show” in New York. The televised thirty-minute program would be aired on Wednesday nights at ten o'clock. Merv would appear live on the show as the boy singer.

  In spite of his nationwide exposure, he later felt that the NBC feature did nothing to advance his singing or his film career, fearing listeners only tuned in to hear Freddy Martin and his orchestra. “Lawrence Welk did more with this type of show than we did,” Merv later recalled.

  The cosmetic queen, Hazel Bishop, was sponsoring the show, primarily to promote her new “lasting lipstick,” which she advertised as “Won't smear off, won't rub off, won't kiss off.” Merv was asked to do a commercial for the lipstick in front of a live audience. As pre-arranged, a beautiful girl came out in the middle of his song, ironically called “Never Been Kissed,” and kissed him on the cheek.

  Acting surprised, he reached for a white handkerchief to wipe off the lipstick. He was wearing a lot of makeup that night, and as he wiped his face a big gooey makeup stain appeared. In front of the black-and-white TV cameras, the stain photographed like a lipstick smear. Noting this, the audience burst into hysterical laughter which went on for two minutes. At the end, Merv claimed, “See, no lipstick smear!” His words were drowned out by more laughter. />
  It was his misfortune that night to encounter Hazel Bishop in the flesh backstage. She'd chosen this night of all nights to come to the studio to meet Merv and Freddy Martin for the first time. Merv later remembered Hazel “looking like a lesbian prison matron,” not the beautiful lipstick beauty he'd imagined she'd be.

  “You made a laughing stock out of me, Griffin,” she charged. “You're fired. I'm telling Martin tonight to get another boy singer. Dick Haymes could have pulled that commercial off without a glitch.”

  Merv with fag

  “Just a minute!” he said. “It was an accident. A blooper. Okay, so your lipstick doesn't smear. Dishwashers in diners across the country are grateful to you for no more lipstick traces on coffee cups. But those samples you sent over to Freddy's band caused a lot of trouble. They gave the lipstick to their girlfriends or mothers, and it made their lips swell. They ended up with bee-stung lips like Mae Murray in those old silents.”

  She looked startled hearing his news, which astonished him. Surely some consumer had brought this to her attention before. She took his hand, all anger disappearing from her face. “Thank you, Merv, for telling me this. Don't tell another soul. I'll take care of it right away.”

  As she was leaving, he called after all. “Instead of lasting lipstick, why not kissable lipstick?”

  That very night the chemist went back to her lab and isolated the ingredient causing the skin irritations. She forgot all about firing Merv, and he was able to finish his gig.

  Her no-smear lipstick became the foundation for a multi-billion cosmetic conglomerate.

  When she next encountered Merv in Los Angeles in 1955, she greeted him with a smile. “That year I met you, I took in $49,527 from my lipstick. In no time at all, I was raking in ten million a year. You were so right about that flaw.”

  On The Hazel Bishop Show, Merv made many close friends, who would later go on to hit it big in the entertainment industry. He was so warm and outgoing with people that he was almost universally liked. His capacity for friendship with people in all walks of life seemed almost limitless. In time, he became as close to women friends as he did to his straight male pals.

  The director of the NBC show was Perry Lafferty, who in the 1970s created such hit TV shows as “All in the Family” and “M*A*S*H.” For eleven years he would be head of West Coast programming for CBS, earning the studio number one ratings with such hits as “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” or “The Waltons.”

  In September 2005 when Merv sent flowers to Perry's funeral, he said that he had done more to awaken him to the possibilities of television than any other person in the business. “I was still day-dreaming about becoming a movie star when I met Perry,” Merv said. “But he knew the future was on the small screen—not the big screen. When I failed many times in my early days in TV, I turned to him like a father confessor. He told me never to give up, that I'd be big one day in television. And so it came to be.”

  “Perry battled with censors most of his life, but he won out in the end,” Merv said. “His 1985 An Early Frost won an Emmy for a TV movie. The brass had told him that straight America wasn't ready for a realistic drama about AIDS—one that wasn't a fucking lecture on morality—and Perry proved them wrong. Of course, he had to take that teleplay through a dozen rewrites. He was a pioneer of television, a real Renaissance man, and I loved him dearly.”

  Merv also became friends with Arthur Penn, the front stage manager. After making a name for himself as a director of quality TV films, Penn scored with such big-time movies as The Miracle Worker in 1962 and Bonnie and Clyde in 1967.

  Bill Colleran, the backstage manager, also bonded with Merv during the gig. After working with Merv, he became associate director of “Your Hit Parade,” a weekly TV variety show, and he also directed specials for Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, and was executive producer of “The Judy Garland Show.”

  Bill would later marry the actress Lee Remick in 1957. When their daughter, Kate, was born, Merv was asked to become the godfather. He would remain friends with Bill and Lee for life, even after their divorce. He faithfully called her with congratulations after her hits such as Anatomy of a Murder in 1959 and Days of Wine and Roses in 1962.

  It was early in 1991 that he called on her for one last time, not recognizing her at first because her face was so bloated by chemo treatments. They spoke of the many good times they'd had together, often with such mutual friends as Robert and John F. Kennedy. He was startled that she was still even talking about a possible comeback in films. “I make movies for grownups. When Hollywood starts making that kind of film again, I'll start acting in them again.”

  After leaving her that cold afternoon in Los Angeles, he kissed her forehead. “Good night, sweet princess.”

  Her final words were, “Baby, the Rain Must Fall,” a reference to a film she'd made in 1965. She died that July.

  * * *

  While appearing in New York, Merv picked up the phone to hear a famously seductive voice, even though it was coming from the throat of a teenager. “You said you wanted to date me,” she said. “Well, big boy, hop to it.”

  It was Elizabeth Taylor. She'd introduced him to his only really serious girlfriend up to now, Judy Balaban, and Elizabeth must have heard that their so-called romance was over.

  Breaking from the domination of her parents, a rebellious Elizabeth was in New York for her first extended stay. It was a city to which she would journey for the rest of her life.

  When Merv arrived at Elizabeth's hotel suite, he brought her three dozen long-stemmed yellow roses. After smelling the flowers with that regal nose of hers, she kissed him. “How could you have known they're my favorites?” Smiling, she answered her own question. “How smart of you. You called Roddy McDowall.”

  It was a new and provocatively different Elizabeth Taylor he encountered that night. She was no longer the beautiful young girl he'd met at Roddy's party in Los Angeles. While still in grade school, she'd made The Conspirator with the bisexual actor, Robert Taylor. Rumor had it that she'd given him such a raging hard-on that he had to be shot from the waist up in their scenes together.

  It took him a while to adjust to her new look. No longer did she depend on her beautiful face and those violet eyes to get her across the threshold of Hollywood. She was dressed seductively with a plunging décolletage. “Let's go dancing,” she said. “I love to dance. Let's dance the night away.”

  At the Stork Club, she danced with him through three numbers before the orchestra took a break. At table he ordered champagne. If the waiter might have had any concern that she was too young to drink, he did not reveal that. As they talked, he admired the way she could speak candidly about herself, as if “Elizabeth Taylor” were a product she was selling to the public, not the actual person who sat before him.

  She confided to him that the master portrait photographer, Philippe Halsman, had told her, “You've got tits, gal. ‘Bout time you started cashing in on them.”

  “After just one session with him,” she said, “I suddenly learned to become sultry like Ava Gardner and Lana Turner. I even know how to pose like Marilyn Monroe even though I don't feel the need to show my pussy. Incidentally, I like Ava and Lana. Can't stand Marilyn. Who does that slut think she is?”

  At table, Elizabeth seemed self-enchanted. She kept turning one side of her face to him, then the other. “Philippe claims my left side photographs more mature than my right side which makes me look like a little girl. Still. What do you think?”

  “Both sides look gorgeous to me,” Merv said to reassure her. “I think Philippe is full of shit.” One aspect of her body disturbed him, but he said nothing. For the first time, he noticed that her bare arms were peppered with tiny black hairs. It was unsightly and distracted from her otherwise stunning beauty, but he was certain that many makeup artists in her future would call this to her attention, with remedies of how to rectify it.

  The occupants of the other tables couldn't stop staring at Elizabeth, who seemed to t
une them out until she got up to go to the women's room. Then she was trailed by a retinue of adoring fans. Back at table she giggled and whispered to Merv, “I think the rubberneckers wanted to see me take a piss.”

  Several hours later, at the door to her hotel suite, Elizabeth kissed Merv gently on the lips but didn't invite him to come in, much to his relief. The following night he took her for dinner at Twenty-One. In the middle of the meal, Clark Gable walked in with his new wife, Lady Sylvia Ashley, a willowy blonde with a peaches-and-cream complexion and Wedgwood blue eyes.

  Nancy Davis (later Nancy Reagan) had failed to get Clark to marry her. Lady Sylvia pointedly ignored Elizabeth even though introduced. Clark shook Merv's hand, remembering him from the Cocoanut Grove, before leaning over and kissing Elizabeth on the cheek. The newlyweds departed quickly to their own table.

  “I've had a crush on Clark for years,” Elizabeth confided. “If he wants to take my virginity, he's welcome to it. Now that's a real movie star. That kiss on my cheek made me shiver.”

  “What did you think of Lady Sylvia?” he asked, eager for her response.

  “That gold-digging bitch. I heard she got her start modeling bras and bloomers. You know, she was once a chorus girl in the seediest clubs in London's Soho.”

  That night, back in front of the door to her hotel suite, Elizabeth did invite Merv in for a nightcap, but for no other reason than to continue their talk. “I'm thinking about getting married.”

  “Well, I'm an available candidate,” he said, not at all seriously.

  She looked at him lovingly and smiled, showing more far wisdom about human nature than a teenager might possess. “Oh, Merv, let's not kid ourselves. You and I will always be friends, not lovers, and you know that better than I do.” She quickly changed the subject. “For me, it's college or marriage. I've got to escape from my parents. Personally, I think marriage would be more fun than college.”