Later, Merv said he regretted that he didn't let Adela interview Joan, as the columnist had done so many times in the past. On the air, Merv asked Joan if she'd ever felt any romantic attraction toward any of her leading men. Assuming a wideeyed, innocent look, Joan claimed that she had not.
“Now, Joan, you married three of them,” Adela butted in. “You must have had some feelings.”
Backstage Merv walked into a screaming argument between Joan and Adela. “HOW DARE YOU EMBARRASS ME LIKE THAT?” Joan shouted. “WHY DIDN't YOU JUST ASK WHAT IT's LIKE TO FUCK CLARK GABLE? But, of course, you could have answered that one yourself.” Then Joan grandly stormed out of the studio.
After she'd left, Adela turned to Merv and said, “That Joan! From Henry Fonda to Glenn Ford, she's fucked more of her leading men than Lassie has taken shits. You should have asked her what it was like going to bed with President Kennedy.”
Initially, Merv attracted biggername guests than the then relatively unknown Johnny Carson. Merv asked Danny Kaye's agent if the star would come on the show, and was rather surprised when Danny accepted. Merv wondered if Danny resented the fact that he'd done far better with his recording of “I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts” than the star had done with his. But when Danny came onto Merv's show, no mention was made of the Coconuts song.
Merv often bonded with his guests, but not with Danny. Privately Merv wanted to ask Danny all the big questions (“Tell me about your longstanding affair with Laurence Olivier.” “What's it like fucking Princess Margaret?”) but didn't dare.
After the show, Danny graciously invited Merv and a few members of the staff back to an apartment he was temporarily occupying. There he prepared what Merv called “the best Chinese dinner I've ever had in my life.”
Over afterdinner drinks, Danny told amusing stories about his fabulous career in Hollywood. Suddenly, he abruptly said, “Nobody wants to fuck Danny Kaye.”
“I do,” Merv said, chivalrously, smiling to indicate he just might be joking.
“I don't mean it that way,” Danny said. “Samuel Goldwyn himself uttered that statement about me, telling his associates that I don't have sex appeal. In The Court Jester I had to show off my legs in tights. Frankly, my gams aren't that great. I called in this expert costume designer, and he had me wear symmetricals. You might know them as leg falsies. That's why in that picture I had the shapeliest legs ever shown on the screen. But they weren't really mine.”
“The other day I heard that Edward G. Robinson is proud of his shapely legs and likes to show them off every chance he gets,” Merv said.
Joan Crawford with Merv
Wide eyed innocence,
screaming denunciations
There was a sudden silence in the room. After Merv's flippant remark, the party died. Merv never became the intimate friend with Danny that he'd wanted to be.
Hoping for another big name, Merv called yet another former roommate, Monty Clift, who had forgiven him for not recognizing him that night he'd showed up at Merv's apartment following his plastic surgery in the wake of his terrible automobile accident.
Merv hadn't seen Monty in months, so he placed a call to his friend Lee Remick for an update. She'd filmed Wild River with Monty. “His body is birdlike,” Lee said. “He's all skin and bones—practically half the man he was. If you put your arms around him, it's like hugging yourself.”
Monty showed up at the studio drunk, and Merv tried to sober him up with black coffee. He'd never seen the once startlingly handsome star look this awful. At first Merv considered canceling Monty's appearance and bringing in a substitute guest.
“Monty did appear on the show,” Merv said, “and I hated every minute of it. At times, he was so incoherent that he seemed retarded. The drugs in his body did all the talking—not Monty. I was on the edge of my seat all during the interview. I felt that Monty was going to have a nervous breakdown in front of millions of people.”
Backstage, Merv asked Monty if he'd join him for dinner “for old time's sake.”
Monty turned down the offer. “It's not that I don't want to hang out with you, but I don't want to talk about the past.”
“Well, we'll talk about the future,” Merv said.
“There is no future, at least not for me.” Monty embraced Merv and walked away.
***
The Merv Griffin Show had been on the air for less than a month before Johnny Riley told Merv that he was moving out and moving on. His new boyfriend was much older and a TV executive. Johnny would be living on the Upper East Side in the future, not in Merv's secret hideaway, which was still used infrequently for trysts between Rosemary Clooney and Robert Kennedy.
“It was the strangest thing,” Johnny later recalled. “Merv showed almost no reaction. He seemed neither elated to get rid of me nor terribly disappointed. He wished me well. If anything, it showed me that we should have always remained friends and should never have attempted a love affair. It wasn't a love affair, really. Call it an affair. If anything, Merv seemed to relish his newfound freedom. He already had the stability of a family. I think he wanted to play the field in his spare time, and not be tied down with any one person on the outside.”
Johnny moved on, but Merv continued to maintain the hideaway with Paul Schone and Bill Robbins, neither of whom showed any indication that they wanted to settle down with anyone. It would be three years before Johnny saw Merv again, although Johnny continued to see his friends, Paul and Bill, apart from Merv, on the side.
Not only did Merv lose Johnny, but he temporarily lost his show as well. NBC pulled it off the air in favor of the Giants/Yankees World Series.
During the interim, Merv flew to London to tape a series of interviews. Through a publicist, one of the interviews was arranged with a young actor, Peter O'Toole, who had just completed filming Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Marlon Brando had foolishly rejected the leading role in this film, and at the time, the media was filled with talk and speculation about this movie.
When Merv with his TV crew showed up at Peter's home outside London, Peter wasn't there. Merv later learned he was drinking at the local pub. The interview was rescheduled for the following day, at a locale in central London, although Merv was so furious at being stood up that he almost cancelled the gig altogether.
This time, Peter and his publicist showed up. As Merv would later tell Bill Robbins, “I found him devastatingly handsome with steely blue eyes and beautiful brown hair. He wore socks that were the brightest green I've ever seen.”
“I always wear one item of green clothing,” the actor explained, “because I take pride in my Irish ancestry.”
A brilliant Shakespearian actor, the harddrinking O'Toole was the son of an Irish metal worker, football player, and racetrack bookmaker. His father had taught Peter much about life, introducing him to hard drinking and teaching him how to escape from a racecourse with gambling proceeds even when the wrong horse ran past the post.
The interview with Peter went so well that the actor agreed to appear on Merv's show in three months, when he'd scheduled a trip to America for the preview of Lawrence of Arabia in December.
Merv had called Noel Coward the previous evening. Although the playwright was too busy to see him, during their phone dialogue Merv told Noel that he was about to interview Peter O'Toole.
Peter O'Toole (Lawrence of Arabia) and Omar Sharif:
Rendezvous with a transsexual
“I saw the dear chap only the other night,” Noel said. “I told him if he were any prettier, the movie would have to be called Florence of Arabia.”
During his interview with Peter, Merv found him the most candid star he'd ever met. Noel had already told Merv that only Richard Burton had seduced more women. Peter confessed to Merv that at the age of twelve, when he was a schoolboy in Leeds, he formed the Mutual Masturbation Society with his male friends. “We called ourselves the MMs,” Peter said. “Even when the headmaster found out about our club, he wasn't appalled. He felt it was a healthy alt
ernative to ordinary sex. But three years later, I had sex with a woman, a trollop. From then on, no more masturbation for me. There is nothing on earth as good as a man and woman coming together.”
“I suppose that would depend on your taste,” Merv said.
What Merv really wanted to ask Peter involved details of his involvement with a British transsexual, a young model named April Ashley. Born in Liverpool in 1935 as George Jamieson, she was destined to become the most famous transsexual in the UK. Peter and his costar, the Egyptian actor, Omar Sharif, had met April in Spain where some scenes from Lawrence of Arabia had been filmed.
Peter, Omar, and April had been seen out together almost every night. In Spain, they had appeared together at the opening of a new bodega in Jerez de la Frontera at a party staged for the press by the Marques de Domecq d'Usquain. Omar was on one of April's arms, Peter on the other.
Later, April joined Omar and Peter in their shared suite. Peter's biographer, Michael Freedland, claimed, “Peter found her deliciously feminine — soft, creamy skin, gently curving hips and breasts that would have delighted the readers of Playboy.”
April later recalled, “When Peter strips off his clothes, he's like an El Greco.” She had also, she related, visited Omar's bed as well. It was while Omar was making love to her that April allegedly told him that she'd once been a sailor in Her Majesty's Navy.
Merv was intrigued with Omar Sharif, and he asked Peter to help arrange an interview with him. As the years went by, Merv avidly followed Omar's career both on and off the screen as the Egyptian launched into serial seductions of his leading ladies. They included Ingrid Bergman (The Yellow Rolls Royce, 1964); Julie Christie (Doctor Zhivago, 1965), Sophia Loren (More Than a Miracle, 1967), both Catherine Deneuve and Ava Gardner (Mayerling, 1968), and Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl, 1968). After Omar romanced Streisand on screen, a furor erupted in his native Egypt. The actress was not only Jewish, but she'd raised money for Israel.
The best story Merv ever heard about Omar was a tale the actor relayed about himself. The actor claimed that when he was in Dallas, a woman with a handgun broke into his hotel room. Aiming the gun at him, she demanded that he strip off all his clothes and make love to her. He looked down at his flaccid penis. “It's not possible at the moment,” he told the disappointed woman.
***
That night in London, back in Merv's suite, a call came in from Noel Coward, claiming that he was so disappointed that they couldn't get together. “I'm sending Graham over to keep you company.” Within the hour, Graham Payn arrived, having lost his Jamaican suntan.
The actor spent the night with Merv. “Somehow it wasn't as romantic as it had been in Jamaica,” Merv later told Paul Schone. As if sensing that there was no longer a spark between them, the resourceful Graham suggested that he show Merv “some of the pleasures of London” the following night.
In a taxi en route to Belgravia, Graham told Merv that he was taking him to a pub, The Grenadier, which had been a former hangout for officers serving under the Duke of Wellington. Behind the scarlet door of the pub, Merv during the course of a long evening was introduced to five of the Queen's guardsmen, each of whom were known to Graham. Merv had agreed to give each of them twenty pounds if they'd return, with Graham, to his hotel suite. None of the guardsmen had ever been paid that much for their sexual services before.
Merv did not go into great detail when he flew back to New York, but he told Bill Robbins and Paul Schone that he and Graham had had an orgy with these guardsmen. “Merv claimed it was one of the most thrilling adventures of his life,” Bill said. “That night in London set a pattern for Merv. He would set up many orgies in the future with young models and actors. But he always claimed that Liberace was better at staging orgies than he was.”
***
As promised, Peter O'Toole and his publicist showed up at the prearranged time in New York for an interview on The Merv Griffin Show. Merv, however, did not meet the actor backstage before he was summoned to go on. Later Merv recalled, “It was the most disastrous interview of my life.”
When Peter, now a platinum blond, walked out onto the set, Merv did not recognize him. At first he thought Bob Shanks was pulling some joke on him, having hired some British actor to impersonate Peter. Before his arrival in America, Peter had dyed his hair so that audiences would recognize the look he'd had in Lawrence of Arabia.
After a few minutes with the sullen guest and an interview going nowhere, Merv asked Peter why he'd dyed his hair, although by this point in the interview, he'd figured it out for himself.
“I'd rather not discuss that, Mr. Griffin,” was Peter's acidic response.
From that point on, Peter mumbled oneword answers to Merv's increasingly desperate questions. The interview would evoke a future appearance of Anne Bancroft on The Johnny Carson Show when she responded in much the same way.
In exasperation, Merv finally asked Peter if he'd like to return to England.
“I would, yes,” Peter said.
“Thank you for coming,” Merv said. “Goodbye.”
Peter got up and walked off the show. The audience could hear Peter yelling backstage. “GRIFFIN's A SON OF A BITCH.” This appearance, which became notorious, was America's first introduction to the degree to which O'Toole had become a temperamental diva.
After the show, Merv talked to his staff, asking, “What pissed this guy off so?”
“By asking if he'd bleached his hair, maybe he thought you were suggesting that he was a faggot,” said a staff member.
Another member of his staff had a different answer. “I hear he gets belligerent when he's drunk, and he's always at least a little bit drunk.”
The disastrous interview with Peter O'Toole was the exception to an otherwise rather benign rule. Nearly all the guests Merv brought on related to him and gave relatively uncontroversial interviews. Merv rarely probed too deeply into a star's personal life, even though he had a gossipy nature and knew a great deal about the personal lives of his subjects. For example, he interviewed many gay actors who presented themselves as straight, and Merv dutifully went along with their charade, never wanting to embarrass or force a guest to reveal more than he or she wanted to air before the public.
With Bob Shanks, Merv made the decision to bring onto his program stars who had been blacklisted during the infamous Communist witch hunt launched by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s.
One of his first guests, the Brooklynborn comedian, Jack Gilford, was on the Red Channels list of both real or suspected Communist sympathizers. Gilford and his wife, the actress Madeline Lee Gilford, were specifically cited as Communist sympathizers by choreographer Jerome Robbins in his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
After interviewing Gilford, the witty but rather ugly comedian, on his show, Merv said, “He seemed harmless to me, not exactly a Russian bear or The Red Menace that his detractors claimed.”
In the years ahead, Merv noted that in spite of a distinguished acting career, Gilford became best known to millions of Americans when he appeared in television commercials for Cracker Jack.
Much to the annoyance of the “suits” at NBC, Merv also booked the New York bornandbred character actor, Phil Leeds. He won the audience over by announcing at the beginning of Merv's interview, “I'm not pretty, but I'm warm and feisty.” Even though he'd entertained American troops in the Pacific during World War II, Leeds found himself caught up in McCarthy era, anti-Communist hysteria. He too joined a list of entertainers who had already been blacklisted and in most cases, were out of work.
As regards booking Leeds onto his show, Merv defiantly announced, “I've never paid any attention to the Red Channels list, and I don't intend to now.”
One star wasn't officially blacklisted, but had her career derailed anyway when she was forced to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. That was Judy Holliday, who'd won the Oscar as Best Actress for her portrayal of Billie Dawn in the 1950 Born Yesterday
. By winning that award, she beat out such formidable contenders as Gloria Swanson for Sunset Blvd. and Bette Davis for her role in All About Eve. Even though Judy had an IQ of 172, her lawyers advised her to “play dumb like Billie Dawn” during her appearance before the committee. Even though the committee's chairman repeatedly threatened to ruin Judy's career, she steadfastly did not reveal the names of other alleged Communist sympathizers. Having no real charges against Judy, the committee was forced to let her go. But despite the fact that she was cleared of all charges, the stigma of being called for interrogation before the committee caused her to lose major job offers, especially from TV.
“Book Judy,” Merv told Bob Shanks, “and to hell with any blacklist. Bring her on.”
Merv bonded with Judy so well on the air that he wanted to socialize with her. She readily accepted his invitation to dinner because she claimed to have some personal matter to talk over with him.
Two nights later Merv invited Judy to an Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village, after she'd assured him of her fondness for Mediterranean food.
In the early part of the evening, she amused him with stories of her career in Hollywood. Her funniest story occurred when she was called into the office of 20th Century Fox mogul Darryl F. Zanuck. He told her that all the women at the studio “belong to me.”
“Don't ask, don't tell”
Judy Holliday
“Then he whipped out his super-size dick and exposed himself to me,” Judy said. “‘Have you ever seen a whopper like this?’ he asked me. At that point I removed my falsies and threw them in his face. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I guess these belong to you too!’”
With the understanding that Merv was a bisexual like herself, Judy was very candid with him, even hinting that she'd had an affair with Katharine Hepburn during the making of the MGM film Adam's Rib in 1949.
Before the end of the evening, Merv and Judy openly discussed their sex lives. She claimed that she'd lost her virginity to a New York policewoman, Yetta Cohn. She also alleged that her first sexual encounter with a man involved the handsome English actor, John Buckmaster, who had raped her. John happened to have been the son of the famous actress, Gladys Cooper, and the brotherinlaw of Robert Morley. In the 1930s, John had had an affair with Vivien Leigh, Merv found these revelations fascinating.
Merv Griffin- A Life in the Closet Page 49
