Merv Griffin- A Life in the Closet

by Darwin Porter

  “What did the fag have to say today?”

  (Left to right) Pacifist and Nobel Prizewinner Lord Bertrand Russell,

  Merv, and President Richard Nixon.

  Months after the Russell interview, Merv himself came to oppose the Vietnam War, much to the annoyance of Richard Nixon. In one incident, Nixon reportedly asked an aide, “What did the fag have to say today?”

  ***

  The British journalist, author, and satirist, an English gent named Malcolm Muggeridge, became a familiar face on American TV chat shows. Merv was eager to interview him, not knowing what the former communist sympathizer, former British spy, former alcoholic, former heavy smoker, and former womanizer was going to say. “That's what made him a fascinating media personality,” Merv said.

  In his role as editor of Punch Magazine from 1953 to 1957, Muggeridge had written an article, “Does England Really Need a Queen?” The reaction to the article was so violent that the BBC banned him for months, and his contract with Beaverbrook newspapers was canceled.

  When he came onto Merv's show, he railed against the “Pills and Pot” of the late 1960s, attacking both birth control pills and marijuana. He even blasted The Beatles, calling them “four vacant youths… dummy figures with tousled heads and no talent.” The audience booed him.

  Years later, Merv was surprised to hear that during his final years, at the age of 79, Muggeridge had converted to Roman Catholicism. He became known as the “discoverer” of Mother Teresa and launched her legend in a TV documentary he filmed in Calcutta. It was called Something Beautiful for God, as was his bestselling book of the same name. “I liked him better when he was a downanddirty whoremongering drunk, before he started protesting against the commercial exploitation of sex and violence,” Merv said. “What's wrong with the media exploiting sex? Of course, we don't need the violence.”

  Merv continued to have what he called “thinkers” on his show. After Muggeridge, he booked Buckminster Fuller to come on, though some members of his research staff dismissed this architect, author, designer, futurist, and inventor as a “hopeless utopian.”

  Fuller coined the term “Spaceship Earth” and was one of the world's first advocates of renewable sources of energy such as solar or windderived electricity. He contributed a wide range of ideas, designs, and inventions to the planet, among the most visible of which was the geodesic dome. This visionary wasn't always right. For example, he predicted that the world would successfully conquer poverty by the year 2000.

  “A lot of what he said went over my head,” Merv later admitted. “I was finally reduced to asking him a question like, ‘Why do you wear three watches, Mr. Fuller?’”

  “I'm a frequent flier,” he said. “I have one watch for the time zone I'm in, another from the zone I've just left, and a third watch for the time zone I'm flying into.”

  Feeling out of his depth, Merv in desperation asked Fuller, “Can you conclude with some advice for all of us.”

  “Yes,” Fuller said. “Stop using the words ‘up’ and ‘down.’ They are awkward in that they refer to a planar concept of direction that's inconsistent with human experience. Use the words ‘in’ or ‘out’ instead. They better describe an object's relation to the gravitational center, the earth.”

  As he went off the air, Merv looked puzzled. “I don't know how yet, but somehow I'm going to work in Buckminster as an answer on Jeopardy! See if one of the guests can come up with the question.”

  ***

  Unlike Arthur Treacher, Merv rarely insulted a guest. “Sometimes the chemistry wasn't right between a guest and me,” Merv said. “Peter O'Toole is a case in point. I also struck out with Al Pacino, whom I found very hostile right from the beginning.” Merv brought the young actor onto his show long before he achieved fame in The Godfather.

  Knowing he came from an urban neighborhood of the Bronx before breaking into show business, Merv asked, “How did you make it from the Bronx to Broadway?”

  “By subway,” Pacino said, garnering loud laughter from the audience.

  Years later, Pacino told an interviewer that he'd abandoned talk shows forever “after being asked a completely stupid question by Merv Griffin.”

  Although Pacino is hailed as one of the greatest and most influential actors of all time, Merv was not impressed. He once claimed to a reporter that, “I've never seen one of his films and I've never had him on my show,” even though millions of Merv's fans knew otherwise. He once told Roddy McDowall, “Pacino's asshole is too tightly clenched for my dick.”

  Various degrees of provocation, chez Merv, on daytime TV

  Left to right: Al Pacino, Buckminster Fuller, and Lily Tomlin

  In contrast with Pacino, Merv bonded immediately with Lily Tomlin, the American actress and comedian who made her first television appearance on The Merv Griffin Show in 1965. She told him that her first “professional gig” was as a waitress at Howard Johnson's on Broadway near Times Square. “There was a mike in the restaurant, and I delivered zingers. I was a lousy waitress but I had the customers in stitches.”

  Merv laughed at her one liners. “There will be sex after death—we just won't be able to feel it,” or “The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat!”

  Merv was delighted when five years later she shot to fame as a cast member of the slapstick sketch show, Rowan & Martin's Laughin. He always claimed that her impersonation of the wacko telephone operator Ernestine was one of the best comedic acts ever broadcast on TV.

  At the time of her appearance on Merv's show, Lily was living in a shanty near the rail tracks in Yonkers. “She might have been skipping a meal or two,” Merv said. “But I knew this gal was going places.” He paused. “There was the lesbian thing, of course, but somehow I didn't think that was going to hold her back.”

  ***

  To Merv, Mark Herron's marriage to Judy Garland followed a predictable pattern. Merv could almost anticipate the urgent calls before receiving them.

  After Time magazine wrote that “Judy Garland may have gone over the rainbow for the last time,” she took a lethal overdose of Seconal. Mark saved her life when he found her in a coma and rushed her to the hospital.

  Mark called Merv on August 16, 1966, announcing that he planned to sue Judy for a divorce.

  “This does not come as a surprise,” Merv said. “I've talked to Judy. She claims that the marriage was never consummated.”

  “That's a question for the courts,” Mark said. “I let her give me two or three blowjobs. Does that constitute consummation?”

  “You got me on that one, kid” Merv said. “I've had entire relationships that consisted of oneway blowjobs, with me blowing in the wind.”

  On December 3, 1966, Judy counterattacked, amending her plea in court from divorce to annulment, and indeed citing that the marriage to Mark had never been consummated.

  Judy's divorce from Mark was finalized on April 11, 1967. She spoke to Merv two weeks later. “I've changed my name,” she proclaimed.

  “You did pretty well with Judy Garland,” Merv said. He advised her to hang on to her name.

  “Believe it or not, my legal name has been Frances Ethel Gumm Rose Minnelli Luft Herron. Today I'm officially Judy Garland.”

  “Well, Miss Judy Garland,” Merv said, “I've got a great idea. I want you to come onto my show. You'll be spectacular. I'll get back to you with details. After all, you're only the biggest star in the world.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “If that's true, why am I perpetually broke?”

  “Good question,” he said before hanging up.

  Merv announced his plans to bring Judy onto his show. He was also considering designating her as hostess while he went on vacation. But in April of 1966 he received a midnight call from Peter Lawford in Hollywood. “I think Judy's gone over the deep end.”

  “You mean, again?”

  “You haven't seen her in quite a while,” Peter said. “She's crazy most of the time. Totally out of contr
ol. Her most recent rage against Mark Herron was the most violent ever. During the course of that socalled marriage, she phoned me one night claiming that Mark had attacked her with a razor. I think she called me because she knew that at the time, I was having an affair with Mark. I rushed to her house, nearly getting ticketed along the way by a cop for speeding. When I got there, I ran upstairs to her bedroom. Judy's face was a mass of blood. It had been cut badly in several places. The maid was trying to stop the blood. I couldn't find any disinfectant, so I used the vodka by her bed side. I doused her with that while the maid called for an ambulance. She's become completely selfdestructive. She'll be dead in a year or so. I just know it.”

  “Thanks for the grim news,” Merv said, “but I still believe in Judy's ability to put on a show. In spite of all her suicide attempts, she's eternal.”

  “We'll see,” Peter said with a sigh before hanging up.

  Superstar Judy Garland

  “Over the Rainbow

  a few times too many”

  Although he'd sounded optimistic on the phone with Peter, Merv had second thoughts about bringing Judy onto his show. He called her on the afternoon of the following day. At first he didn't believe it was Judy on the phone. She spoke in a voice angry and bitter.

  During the course of their talk, she denounced Mark, calling him a “faggot,” and he'd never heard her use that word before. She even called her loyal fans, especially the gay ones, “sonsofbitches!” He assumed that she was either drunk or drugged—perhaps both.

  On an impulse he called her again the next day. This time, the voice that came over the phone was more conciliatory. It was the Judy he'd known and loved. Vulnerable, yes, but not bitter, although she maintained her gallows humor.

  Putting aside his doubts, he decided to arrange for her to come onto his show. “Fasten your seat belt,” he told Bob Shanks. “It's gonna be a bumpy ride.”

  ***

  A week before she was scheduled to go on the show, Merv finally succeeded in speaking to Judy “after calling all over the country.” She was a patient in a private hospital, where she was registered under a false name, trying to recover from an overdose of drugs which, mixed with her huge alcoholic intake, had almost killed her.

  She was desperate, aggressively denouncing Sid Luft, her former husband before Mark Herron. “He's trying to sabotage my career. He took all my arrangements, even my wardrobe. I have nothing. Not a penny. In my state, no one in his right mind would want to give a booking to the broken down old hag from yesterday, Judy Garland. If MGM remakes Meet Me in St. Louis, I can take the Marjorie Main part.”

  She meant it when she claimed that she was broke. He wired the train fare she'd need to come to New York, and reserved a suite for her at the Americana Hotel. He also promised to hire a designer for her wardrobe. “As for musical arrangements, Mort Lindsey is my conductor,” Merv said. “He's conducted music for you for years. Just leave it to old Mort.”

  After putting down the phone, Merv booked her into the hotel at his expense and called Christian Dior, ordering an expensive sequined gown for Judy. He also phoned Mort to prepare arrangements for her appearance.

  It was agreed in advance that she would sing, “I'd Like to Hate Myself in the Morning,” followed by “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and “The Trolley Song.”

  Judy's train arrived in New York the following evening. She took a taxi to the Americana. The night manager had not been informed about the details of her arrival, or that her expenses would be covered by Merv.

  When she got there, the night manager ordered her out of the hotel lobby. Unknown to Merv, Judy had run up a big, and unpaid, bill at the Americana during a previous visit. Management had issued a standing order to eject her if she came back and didn't settle her way overdue account.

  Humiliated and out on the street, Judy called a girlfriend in Brooklyn and spent the night with her. When Judy phoned the next morning and explained the situation, Merv swung into action. He called the New York Hilton and arranged a suite for her, and then he hired a messenger to rush some cash to Brooklyn so she could get a facial and book the town's best hairdresser. She'd warned him that she couldn't deposit a check into any bank because the Internal Revenue Service was systematically confiscating her funds to pay off a tax lien.

  Basking in Merv's beaming approval, and with her beloved Mort Lindsey backing her up, Judy wowed Merv's audiences and her millions of fans. “You've still got the magic,” Merv told her after the show, hugging her and kissing her.

  He startled her by asking her to take over his show while he flew to Zurich for a Christmas holiday in Switzerland. Merv suggested that she bring on as guests some of her most loyal friends.

  She began to tick them off immediately. “Burt Lancaster, of course, he adores me. James Mason, my most loyal fan. We'll get Gene Kelly. Naturally, you must let me have Liza on.”

  Merv was shocked the next day when his staff reported that each of the “friends” had turned Judy down. Liza had claimed she'd be out of town on an engagement. Merv belatedly learned that Liza hadn't spoken to her mother in months.

  Burt Lancaster said, “I wouldn't trust that drunk on the air” before slamming down the phone. James Mason declined, claiming that their roles in A Star Is Born should have been reversed. “Judy should have played the broken down drunk who walks into the sea.” Ethel Merman, who'd once adored Judy and had reportedly had an early lesbian relationship with her, called Merv personally. “I can't go on the show. I'll be conveniently busy. Got that?”

  Merv managed to conceal from Judy that all her “dear friends,” including her own daughter, had turned her down.

  When the show was taped on December 23, 1968, Merv's staff had arranged for Judy's line-up to consist of Margaret Hamilton and Moms Mabley. Judy's loyal friend from her MGM days, Van Johnson, also agreed to come onto the show. She'd once had a crush on him in the 40s.

  On the air, Margaret Hamilton confided that ever since the release of The Wizard of Oz in 1939, in which she'd played “The Wicked Witch of the West,” children had scorned her, asking her why she was so mean to Dorothy. For nostalgia's sake, Judy asked her to deliver her most famous line from Wizard. Switching into the greenfaced and (at least to children) terrifying character from long ago, Margaret screeched, “I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!” She then burst into her witch's cackle.

  Billed as “The Funniest Woman in the World,” Moms Mabley was an African American who had a “bag lady” persona and a sharp wit. She had Judy in stitches. “There ain't nothing an old man can do for me except bring me a message from a young one.” Moms had no apparent feminine characteristics. Her cackling, scratchy voice led to various rumors that she was actually a female impersonator.

  Judy and Arthur Treacher wooed the audience with “The Only Girl in the World” and “Just in Time.”

  The show marked Judy's last American television appearances. Regrettably, the studio lost its archival tape, although it exists in a grainy pirated version that some young Judy fan recorded by actually filming what appeared on the TV screen.

  The day after Judy's appearance, fans flooded the studio with letters. A typical comment: “Judy did not look good, thin as a rail. Sang awful and was out of it. Where the hell was Liza? Or Sid? Or any number of her supposed friends? Any one of them should have taken her and saved her. Watching her I realized it was all over except for the funeral.”

  Other fans responded more positively. “On Judy's worst day, she's better than most on their best day.”

  ***

  As a footnote to Merv's career, he created the game show, Reach for the Stars, which aired on NBC on weekday mornings. Launched in January of 1967, it ran for a total of 65 episodes. Longtime broadcaster Bill Mazer hosted the show, which was similar to the more enduring The Match Game. A correct answer allowed a contestant to “reach for a star” on a game board, but a wrong answer meant the loss of a star. Later Merv called the show “one of my minor efforts.
”

  ***

  Robert Kennedy was assassinated in the early hours of June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Merv's close friend, Rosemary Clooney, had spent months campaigning across the country for the man she wanted to be president and the lover she could never have just to herself. She'd been forced to share him not only with this wife, Ethel, but with Marilyn Monroe, Lee Remick, and surprise surprise, Rudolph Nureyev, who had also enjoyed the charms of Jacqueline Kennedy.

  The days had long passed when Robert and Rosemary conducted their sexual trysts in Merv's hideaway. Even though Robert had long ago moved on to other lovers, Rosemary was still madly in love with him.

  “Bobby was the passion of Rosie's life,” Merv confided to Hadley. “He never really loved her—he was still in love with Ethel—but he wanted her friendship and support. He abandoned her bed, but he never abandoned the friendship.”

  With two of her five children in tow, Rosemary arrived at the second floor Embassy Room of the Ambassador. The crowds were overflowing that night, and at one point Rosemary went to the floor below and entertained the burgeoning crowd with “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” and “This Land Is Your Land.”

  “I was in the VIP section,” Rosemary later said, “and I never got to say a final goodbye to Bobby. After his victory speech, he was supposed to come into the ropedoff VIP area to greet us and thank us. Instead some aide led him toward the adjoining banquet room, where he was directed to take a shortcut through the kitchen.” Tears welled in her eyes. “Even now, I can't stand to think of what happened next.”

  Other than Ethel Kennedy, perhaps no woman in America suffered the death of Robert Kennedy more than Rosemary. “She literally went into exile,” Merv said. “Reports reached me that she had begun dangerously mixing excessive booze with drugs. The pain in her heart was just too great. She had to dull it. She literally became a basket case. I knew she'd always loved Bobby and had for years, but until I went to see Rosie at the hospital, where she'd collapsed into a nervous breakdown, I never realized the full extent of that obsessive love. After Bobby's death, he was all she could think about. I'd never seen anything like it. She was behaving like the grieved widow, as if she were the mother of all of Bobby's children.”