Merv Griffin- A Life in the Closet

by Darwin Porter

  Straight from the “Borscht Belt” in the Catskills, where he'd perfected his brand of Jewish humor, Sandy Baron had made his Broadway debut in Tchin-Tchin in 1962. Sandy found inspiration for comedy in such unlikely subjects as hate, prejudice, and bigotry.

  Years later, he achieved his greatest fame playing the role of Jack Klompus on the NBC sitcom, Seinfeld. His character became the comical nemesis of Jerry Seinfeld's retired father.

  Sandy met with notoriety when he released his controversial album, God Save the Queens, in 1972. It was an earnest but nowdated attempt to break down the stereotypes and mystique about homosexuality. Sandy promoted his album on Merv's show, causing a lot of “snickers in the audience,” he later recalled. “My promoters urged me not to go on the Griffin show and be so open about my album. They feared the audience would think I was a fag. As predicted, there was much talk that I was queer. If I refuted it, they'd say, ‘Me thinks the lady doth protest too much.’ What did I have to do to prove I was straight? Bring the audience into my bedroom and let them see me penetrating my woman?” Years before his death, Sandy said, “My false reputation as a gay came about from Griffin's show. There's still all this talk that I'm gay, which I'm not. The irony is that it was Griffin—not me—who is gay.”

  Sandy continued to make appearances on Merv's show in the 1970s. He was so influenced by comedian Lenny Bruce that many fans thought he was Bruce. He did impersonate him in the show Lenny in Hollywood in 1972.

  Like Sandy, Stanley Myron Handelman was another Brooklynborn comedian who went over with Merv's daytime TV audiences. He performed comedy egghead schticks, some of it inspired by his relationship with his mother.

  Tall and gangly looking, he wore large, darkrimmed glasses, like Merv's nemesis, Robert Q. Lewis, and stood with a nerdy demeanor under a porkpie cap. Years later, he sent Merv a copy of one of his latest films, Linda Lovelace for President. Lovelace, of course, was the star of the highest grossing porn film of all time, Deep Throat.

  Merv claimed that John Denver, the son of an Air Force officer, was an instant hit the first time he appeared on Merv's show. He found John appealing with his longish blond hair cut in a Dutch boy style. He wore bellbottom jeans and cowboy boots.

  Merv liked John so much he invited him out for drinks. “I thought he had an offbeat sex appeal,” Merv later confided to Hadley Morrell, “and I was hoping to get lucky. Boy, could that boy drink. I made a pass at him but I think he was too drunk to even know it.”

  John later had two drunk driving arrests, and he was to die in 1997 when a private plane he was piloting crashed into Monterey Bay in California. “Sigh,” Merv told his friends. “Sean Connery got away from Noel Coward. John Denver got away from me.”

  Most of Merv's audience could relate to him, but he liked to shock his fans by bringing on an occasional “alien from Outer Space.”

  Taking his name from the crippled lad in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Tiny Tim stunned audiences when Merv introduced him. The ukuleleplaying singer of 1920s ditties confused yet amused audiences, many of whom asked, “Is this guy for real?” His falsetto voice became an instant hit, and he was on his way to becoming an icon of the 60s. As one critic put it, “Tiny Tim became a cultural specimen that elucidated the Zeitgeist of that era.”

  When it was made known that Tiny Tim had fallen in love, Merv wanted him to marry “Miss Vicki,” his 17yearold girlfriend (Victoria Budinger), on the air, as part of the programmed content of The Merv Griffin Show. Merv was furious when the performer selected Johnny Carson's show instead as the wedding's TV venue. That ceremony drew the biggest audience ever recorded for a nighttime talk show, garnering 85% of all TV viewers.

  Muhammad Ali (a.k.a. Cassius Clay) appeared on Merv's show. “He was not the brightest bulb, but he was a colorful figure,” Merv said. Suddenly realizing the implication of that remark, he said, “I don't mean the color of his skin.”

  Merv said that he learned that the world heavyweight boxing champion, through a distant link with his maternal grandmother, had Anglo-Saxon origins. He was linked by blood to Presidents William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Benjamin Harrison, as well as to Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

  Before Cassius arrived at the studio, an assistant had shown Merv a picture of the boxer in trunks with his penis hanging out the leg of his shorts, which he'd pulled up to expose himself. The picture had been printed in underground gay magazines and was sometimes sold in porno stores. At first, Merv wanted to quiz the boxer about his reaction to this exposure, but staff members talked him out of it.

  Instead Merv asked him what it was like meeting The Beatles. The boxer had posed with The Fab Four in the ring. “They're the greatest,” he said, “but I'm still the prettiest.” Later he modified that praise. “I don't admire nobody but Elvis Presley,” he said. “He was the sweetest, most humble, and nicest man you'd ever meet.”

  Merv had intended to see Barbra Streisand on Broadway in Funny Girl but when he got to the theater, he was disappointed when the stage manager announced that her understudy, Lainie Kazan, was going on in her place. Barbra had a throat problem that night.

  Lainie's dynamic performance, however, won Merv over, and he invited the Brooklynborn actress and singer to appear on his show. She was so successful that she was asked back. He agreed with her own personal summation of her voice.

  “I get a sensual feeling from my own singing voice,” she said. “When I am right, whether I'm moaning it or winging it, I just fly. I soar. I get all caught up in myself. And, baby, when that happens, you just know the audience has to be with me, having a ball.”

  Merv was also having a ball doing the show, but “I was getting itchy,” he said. I wanted to expand the show. The Little Theater was making me claustrophobic. I wanted to get out and see the world and bring on a whole new set of guests. ‘Let's go to Europe,’ I told Bob Shanks. ‘Hang out with Princess Grace. Attend the Cannes Film Festival. Fly to London. Maybe have a cuppa with Queen Elizabeth.’”

  Privately, he told Hadley in jest: “Maybe I can get Prince Philip to fuck me. I hear the Queen married him only when she found out he's got a big one. She had to bring some different genes into the House of Windsor. After all, her kin, including the Duke of Windsor, were known for having history's smallest dicks.”

  ***

  Before Merv arrived in Monaco to interview Grace Kelly, he'd heard all the stories about her wild, promiscuous days in New York and Hollywood and about her affairs with Bing Crosby, William Holden, Ray Milland, Marlon Brando, and her unrequited love for Clark Gable. Merv had also heard that she'd had affairs with Cary Grant, although he was mostly gay, James Stewart, Frank Sinatra, David Niven, Oleg Cassini, and Prince Aly Khan. Gary Cooper had told Merv that “She looked like a cold dish until you got her pants down. Then she'd explode.”

  Except for his control over some of the most expensive real estate in Europe, Merv didn't consider His Most Serene Highness, Rainier, the Sovereign Prince of Monaco, as “much of a catch.” Grace had put on weight since her movie days, and Merv had heard gossip that she'd been drinking heavily. Yet she remained elegant, nurturing a prim whitegloveswearing image which she presented to the public and his cameras. Back in Hollywood, director Henry Hathaway's wife had already proclaimed, loudly and in public, “Grace Kelly wore those white gloves, but she was no saint. In the old days they'd call her a whore.”

  Even offcamera, Grace was all charm and style to Merv, inviting him back to her kingdom on some future occasion. Nonetheless, he still found her just a bit of an “Ice Queen,” and their friendship would always be superficial.

  During the introductions at the palace, Merv had become aware of a strikingly handsome young man, perhaps French, who looked almost like the twin brother of Alain Delon. No matter where she moved, the young man followed Grace with his eyes. Merv had been introduced to him but couldn't remember his name. He later told Hadley, “I wanted to take him home as a party favor.”

  Grace
had a commitment that night for dinner, but invited Merv to join her for afterdinner drinks at a small private party in a salon within the Monte Carlo Casino. He showed up at ten o'clock and found a very different Grace there. No longer the prim and proper princess, she was tipsy, light hearted, and full of fun. The young man Merv had seen earlier in the day sat beside her.

  Ava Gardner had already told Merv, “Give her a couple of dry martinis, and Her Serene Highness becomes just another girl who likes to dish the dirt.” Rock Hudson had told him, “Grace likes to get ripped to the tits and then begs you to fuck her, even though you want to fuck her boyfriend instead.”

  The Princess looked puffy, and had lost that stunning beauty that she'd displayed in such films as To Catch A Thief.

  Before the evening ended, Grace seemed to be aware that Merv was evaluating her through the cruel eyes of a Hollywood camera. “I've been svelte all my life,” she said. “What's the point of trying to maintain an image of long ago?” She looked Merv up and down. “You look like you could lose a few pounds yourself. Let's face it: I'm older now, but so are you.”

  “Your Majesty,” Merv said, “you will always live in the public's mind as the most beautiful blonde who ever graced the screen. The one with the most class.”

  In 1956, Merv defined it as “The Wedding of the Century.”

  Ranier, the Sovereign Prince of Monaco and his bride, movie star Grace Kelly

  Grace graciously kissed Merv on each cheek before heading out the door. She walked with an uncertain step. The mysterious Alain Delon lookalike followed her.

  Merv turned to a trusted staff member. “If I'm judging the scene right, and I'm never wrong about these things, the Princess of Monaco is going to get the fucking of her life tonight. Gary Cooper may have been the best hung man in Hollywood, but he had no ass to push it with. That boy going to that door has not only the goods up front, but, as those tight pants reveal, the world's greatest ass as well. Lucky Grace. When will my Prince Charming ever come? Forget that pudgy Rainier. I bet he has a twoinch dick. Let's get the fuck out of here and head for Cannes. Monaco is too dull for me.”

  ***

  After Monte Carlo and his interview with Grace Kelly, Merv journeyed west to Cannes for the famous film festival. His bookers had already arranged for an interview with Sean Connery, who was scheduled to appear the following day.

  In the meantime, Merv had met a young man of nineteen from the old papal city of Avignon. Hadley had not been invited along for the trip and Merv was lonely.

  The young man, whose name is not known, seemed only too willing to help Merv through his nights… and some French francs, of course.

  When Merv learned that the slender, strikingly handsome beach boy wanted the equivalent of only twenty U.S. dollars a day, Merv struck up a deal with him, even though language was a barrier.

  The boy spoke only a few words of English. “We used the universal language known to aging men and young hustlers the world over,” Merv boasted to Hadley upon his return from France.

  On the beach in Cannes, Merv was on a chaise longue figuring out a crossword puzzle, waiting for the return of his young Frenchman, who had gone for a walk on the sands. He rushed up to Merv, brimming with excitement. At the time Beatlemania was sweeping England, the United States, and Europe. “Lennon, John Lennon,” the young boy said. “Over there. Look! Beatles.”

  A beach encounter with

  John Lennon

  At first Merv thought the boy was mistaken. He pointed in the direction of a young man who was in swimming trunks and lying on a padded quilt, reading a book all by himself on the beach. Merv thought he was seeing things. Surely Lennon would be surrounded by bodyguards, or else he'd be mobbed by adoring fans.

  Merv walked over to discover that it was indeed John Lennon. Introducing himself, Merv learned that Lennon was to some degree vaguely familiar with his name already. To Merv's surprise, Lennon agreed to an interview. It would mark his first interview on an American talk show. With no preparation, Merv called his camera crew and spontaneously interviewed Lennon on the beach.

  His studio in New York viewed this as a major coup, and Merv even rewarded his French boy with a hundred dollar bill before he flew back home from the Nice airport.

  “When the film was developed,” Merv recalled to his friends, “we realized that at one point, Lennon had raised his legs, exposing his uncut cock and balls. Apparently, his trunks didn't have a lining to hold himself in. Lennon didn't seem to notice or care. Of course, the editors had to cut that bit from the film. I guess it didn't matter if Lennon showed the full monty or not. Both he and Yoko Ono would reveal the full monty—or whatever you call that thing between her legs—to the whole world when they posed for that notorious album cover.”

  ***

  Merv's encounter with Sean Connery included not only an interview for The Merv Griffin Show, but also an insight into his selfimage as a singer. Unknown to many of his fans, the Scottish actor in his pre-James Bond days had already sung in films. But few of his 007 fans had ever seen him. He had starred in Walt Disney's unsuccessful movie Darby O'Gill and the Little People in 1959. In the film, he sang “Pretty Irish Girl” to his onscreen love interest, and his version of that song was eventually released as a single.

  Although Sean remained reticent throughout their time together, Merv at least got Sean to confirm one rumor. During his adolescence in Scotland, he had worked as a coffin polisher.

  Merv wanted a juicier interview, but Sean closed the doors to his private life. In England, Sean had filmed Another Time, Another Place (1958) with the sultry Lana Turner. They'd engaged in a torrid affair. When word of that tryst reached Lana's gangster boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, he showed up on the set, threatening to shoot both Lana and Sean. Sean managed to wrestle the gun from him and eject him from the set. Then he went about his business, making love to Lana on the screen, and for his pleasure, making love to Lana off the screen as well.

  “He didn't even whip it out for me,” Merv complained in a transatlantic phone call to Hadley. “But at least now I know why Noel Coward is so ‘Mad About the Boy.’”

  The following Christmas, Noel sent Merv a drawing of Sean in a Gstring; a female student had drawn it in Edinburgh when Sean was posing nude for one of her art classes. As a joke, Noel also included a photograph of himself taken in a Gstring on a beach in Jamaica.

  ***

  Michael Chaplin agreed to appear on Merv's show. The third son of Charlie Chaplin, he was born in Beverly Hills in 1946, eventually moving to Switzerland with “The Little Tramp” and his mother, Oona O'Neill, the estranged daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill. As a tenyearold, Michael had been cast in his father's final film, A King in New York (1957).

  Michael had written a book, I Couldn't Smoke the Grass on My Father's Lawn. Even though he grew up in luxury with his parents, surrounded by swimming pools and servants, Michael had rejected his father and was highly critical of him.

  Fleeing from home at the age of fifteen, Michael descended into a twilight world of poverty, radical politics, and LSD. In London, reporters tracked him down to a seedy dive in Hampstead, where he was living on a National Assistance grant of ten pounds a week.

  When he interviewed Michael, Merv suggested that nineteen was a bit young to be penning memoirs.

  “Not when you've led the life I had,” Michael said. “I've packed sixty years of living into my first twenty years.”

  Merv wanted to know what it was like to be born “to the most famous movie star of all time.”

  “To be the son of a great man can be a disadvantage,” Michael said. “It is like living next to a huge monument. One spends one's life circling around it, either to remain in the shade, or to avoid its shadow.”

  ***

  In London, Merv wanted to bring on some “heavyweights” as he called them. “I was attacked throughout my career for interviewing drag queens, drug addicts, child molesters, or commie sex perverts, but we could have class too.”<
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  One of those heavyweights was Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, historian, and logician. A worldfamous advocate for social reform, he'd won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950.

  Merv was mildly surprised when he met Lord Russell at his bonebare flat in Chelsea. “I didn't expect him to be so old. He was ninetythree at the time, but he was sharp of mind and still articulate.”

  Russell's views on sexuality shocked Merv's audiences. He attacked Victorian notions of morality, advocating sex out of wedlock, even trial marriages, and he was one of the first to endorse sex education and widespread access to condoms. He also advocated a change in the law regarding homosexual practices in Britain, and lived to see homosexuality legalized there in 1967.

  Privately, after the taping, Russell told Merv that his efforts to have homosexuality legalized “will make the world a finer place for men such as yourself to live a long and happy life.”

  Merv appeared shocked. “Oh, please, Mr. Russell,” he said, “you've been misinformed. I'm a happily married man. I'm not a homosexual.”

  “Have it your way,” Russell said. “But there is homosexuality in all men.” He turned and walked away.

  As a pacifist, Russell used Merv's show as a platform to attack the United States for its war in Vietnam.

  After the airing of Merv's interview with Russell, massive protests poured into the studio, most of them objecting to Russell's views on the war. He'd called America's policies “neargenocidal.”

  Russell's denunciation of the Vietnam War and charges of genocide against the United States contributed to the most controversial show ever presented on the air by Merv. Even though he specifically stated that he was airing Russell's viewpoint—and not his own—Merv was nonetheless denounced across the country. Newspaper editorials referred to him as a Communist and a traitor, despite his wellestablished status as a conservative Republican.