Merv Griffin- A Life in the Closet

by Darwin Porter

  Merv later revealed that in advance of Dr. King's arrival, his staff had prepared some explosive questions to ask Dr. King oncamera. J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, had submitted incriminating and embarrassing evidence about Dr. King's womanizing. “On the one hand,” Merv told his confidants, “King holds himself up as a great moral leader, but in hotel rooms around the country he's acting like a Tom Cat in an alley after dark.”

  The day before Dr. King's appearance, an array of provocative information about Dr. King had already been splashed across magazine and other nationwide media. Life's editors had denounced Dr. King's anti-U.S. tirades as “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.” The Washington Post had also condemned King, charging that the leader had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.” The newspaper was responding to King's outrageous claim that the United States had “killed a million Vietnamese, mostly children.”

  But fearing viewer backlash, and in advance of the interview, Merv had already decided not to bring up anything that was potentially embarrassing to Dr. King. During his interview, Merv listened politely to Dr. King as he condemned America's war policy.

  Aggressively, and in a style that polarized the audience and transformed the interview into a complete disaster, Harry Belafonte, who had configured himself as part of the “package” associated with having Dr. King on-air in the first place, virtually took over the show, lavishing praise on Dr. King—and then a long list of additional tributes. Merv's audience began to drift off, many switching to other channels.

  Dr. M. L. King, Jr.

  Merv's critics were screaming

  Backstage, when it was over, Merv chatted in a very friendly manner with Dr. King, who congratulated him for his effective use of The Merv Griffin Show as a platform for up-andcoming black entertainers. He'd been particularly amused by the appearances of Dick Gregory and Richard Pryor—“and the singers too,” he interjected.

  “Speaking of singing,” Merv said impishly, “my staff came up with the nugget that you'd sung as part of a church choir at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of Gone With the Wind. As you know, many African-Americans don't like the way your people were depicted in that movie. Did you, in fact, sing at the premiere?”

  “There are things in any man's life that are best forgotten.” Dr. King said before turning and heading out of the studio.

  Then Harry embraced Merv as part of his goodbye. “I know Dr. King is a bit to the left of some of your own political views, but remember—dissent is central to any democracy.”

  After their departure, Merv turned to some of his key staff members. “The show got so boring that at one point I was tempted to ask Belafonte to sing ‘Yellow Bird.’”

  ***

  From the days of his early childhood, Merv had been raised on John Wayne movies. As such, he was delighted when “The Duke” agreed to be interviewed. Aired in January of 1971, the show was called “Duke and I — Merv Visits John Wayne.”

  As part of the experience, Merv and his crew spent a Thanksgiving weekend at the cowboy star's 22,000-acre ranch near Phoenix.

  Wayne and Merv got drunk together the first night, and Merv later revealed how shocked he was at The Duke's candor. He admitted that “women scare the hell out of me,” yet during the course of his long career, he'd already seduced such screen goddesses as Clara Bow, Joan Crawford, Carmen Miranda, and Claire Trevor.

  “Marlene Dietrich was the best lay I ever had,” Wayne claimed. He'd costarred with her and Randolph Scott in Pittsburgh in 1942. “Things didn't work out too well with Joan Crawford, though.”

  “Things didn't work out between Crawford and me either,” Merv confessed.

  Wayne had made Reunion in France with Joan in 1942, the same year he'd appeared with Dietrich. Crawford later told her gay pal, William Haines, “Get Duke out of the saddle and you've got nothing.”

  Wayne kept Merv amused until the rooster crowed, relating stories of his career. He spoke of the time he'd starred with the British bisexual actor, Laurence Harvey, in the 1960 The Alamo.

  “Please, Duke,” Wayne quoted Harvey as saying to him. “Tonight. Just one time. I'll be the queen, if you'll be the king.” Wayne claimed he turned down “my chance to be a king with a queen.”

  Because of his strong, perhaps obsessive, political views, Wayne was asked if he'd ever consider running for political office. “I've already been asked, and I turned it down. George Wallace wanted me to run as his Veep on his American Independent Party. ‘No way,’ I told Wallace, although I do agree with a lot of his positions.”

  Before dawn, Wayne shocked Merv by confessing, “Ever since I arrived in Hollywood, women have been attracted to me like flies on a steak dinner left in the sun. Men, too. You know, don't you, that John Ford is gay? But there's a downside to all this. When I take them to bed, they expect me to be hung like King Kong. I'm afraid I've disappointed quite a few of them. Paulette Goddard actually complained about my pecker. I guess that thanks to her getting regularly fucked by Charlie Chaplin, I couldn't satisfy her. Nowadays, when I can still get it up, I warn the gals, “If you want the Montana Mule, call Gary Cooper. In bed, I'm more pony than horse.”

  ***

  In the 1970s, as pornography became more prevalent and more or less legal, Merv developed an interest in the medium, especially after Hadley brought him a copy of Boys in the Sand, released in 1971. A landmark in gay pornography, and viewed today as a “classic,” the film was directed and written by a former Broadway choreographer, Wakefield Poole. It starred “Casey Donovan,” a wellbuilt, welleducated actor and model. Born in 1943 in East Bloomfield, New York, he'd had an employment history which included a stint as a teacher in a private school on Central Park West in New York City, experience as a romantic lead in several summer stock productions, and moonlight jobs as a male hustler. His birth name was John Calvin (“Cal”) Culver.

  Merv was so enchanted with the film that he insisted that Hadley run it three times. According to Hadley, Merv thought Cal Culver was “Guy Madison, Tab Hunter, and Troy Donahue—all rolled into one bankable commodity.”

  Hadley claimed that Merv “let out a gasp of joy” when the image of a naked Cal first appeared. The clip of Cal emerging from the ocean like Venus, or rather Apollo, rising from the sea, is today interpreted as an iconic moment in gay porn.

  The scene on shore that immediately followed became very graphic, with a dark, bearded Peter Fisk, who was Poole's reallife lover, performing oral sex on Cal. Later Cal penetrates Fisk on screen.

  The most controversial segment of the film, called “Inside,” involved interracial sex, which was very daring at the time. An African-American telephone repairman was played by Tommy Moore. Most of this segment involved Cal's fantasies about sexual encounters with the studly “pole man,” including scenes where Cal sniffs poppers and penetrates himself with a mammoth black dildo.

  The three segments that make up the film were each shot at Cherry Grove on Fire Island, a gay beach resort off the southern coast of New York's Long Island, in just three successive weekends. Amazingly, its budget was only eight thousand dollars.

  Boys in the Sand became the first gay porn movie to be both reviewed and advertised in The New York Times. Variety carried a fullpage ad on it. Reviews, both appreciative and scathing, appeared in newspapers and magazines across the nation. Variety claimed, “there are no more closets,” and The Advocate made the boast that, “Everyone will fall in love with this philandering fellator.”

  Merv, along with virtually everybody else, was astonished at the success of this film. Boys in the Sand —the title inspired by the Matt Crowley play (and later film) The Boys in the Band —was the first gay movie to achieve mainstream crossover success. It preceded Linda Lovelace's Deep Throat by almost a year.

  Almost overnight, “Casey Donovan” became an underground celebrity. Wherever he went in Los Angeles, San Francisco, or New York, he was immediately recognized, and in many cases, propositione
d. Although he'd pursued a legitimate career as a screen God, his hopes for that were dashed with the release of this controversial film. Instead of offers for legitimate stage and film roles, he was hired for everincreasing roles in porn flicks. Also, an intense and lucrative demand had emerged for his services as a paid male escort.

  Merv wanted to host a show that focused on the emergence of gay porn as a legitimate art expression whose freedom had recently been approved by the courts. His vision involved interviews with both Cal and his director, Wakefield Poole. He wasn't sure about what other guests to invite, but considered the avantgarde gay filmmakers, Kenneth Anger and Andy Warhol.

  Merv's plaything, and

  the world's most famous gay porn star

  Cal Culver, aka Casey Donovan

  Merv asked his staff to provide background material on Wakefield Poole. As for Cal, Merv asked Hadley to privately arrange “an audition.”

  Poole's name was already known to Merv. The director had been a wellknown Broadway choreographer. Both Poole and Merv had shared the sexual favors of Rock Hudson, and the choreographer had previously collaborated onstage with such big names as Hal Prince, Stephen Sondheim, Jane Powell, and Debbie Reynolds. Poole even knew the campy aspects of both the good and bad witches from The Wizard of Oz thanks to his friendships with Billie Burke and Margaret Hamilton.

  Poole's banishment from the Great White Way came when he sued Richard Rodgers in court—and won—for the show, Do I Hear a Waltz? The waltz in the show had been staged and choreographed by Poole, who had received no credit and no royalties. Even though he won the case, he found himself suddenly barred from future involvements on Broadway because he'd dared to sue a theatrical icon like Rodgers.

  Merv's staff retrieved evidence that Poole had wanted to make a serious statement with Boys in the Sand, a somewhat highbrow but highly commercial onscreen fusion of art and hardcore sex. As he later recorded in his autobiography, Dirty Poole, “I wanted to present high profile homosexuality without the guilt.” Merv learned that prior to filming, Poole had issued a command to his actors and collaborators on Fire Island—“No top, no bottom, just two men discovering each other.”

  Hadley contacted Cal and arranged a private meeting with Merv. “Merv was eagerly anticipating Cal's arrival,” Hadley said. He expected some dumb blond with a big dick and a small brain.

  “When Cal came into the apartment,” Hadley said, “he had the big dick—we'd already seen that on the screen—but he was well educated, a cultured young gentleman.”

  “He's an elegant, buttoneddown male courtesan,” Merv later told Hadley.

  This blond California Golden Boy, with a healthy appetite for the pleasures of the flesh, sometimes described himself as “Robert Redford's younger brother.”

  During Cal's conversations with Merv about the theater, he seemed to have inside knowledge about show business personalities. “Merv was fascinated, imagining that Cal was somebody you could invite to the Queen's Garden Party,” Hadley said. “He was very preppy, wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. He was the old Arrow Shirt man of yesteryear come back to life. He was gracious and charming, not some hardened hustler. And he was a real blond—no bleach. Actually his hair was golden like wheat, and he had blue eyes that would put Paul Newman to shame. His sex appeal was natural, not some girly man on the screen pretending to be macho. The press had described him as the boy next door. Any gay man should have been so lucky to live next door to Cal Culver, especially if that man had a strong pair of binoculars.”

  Hadley said that when he saw that the chemistry between Merv and Cal was bubbling, he excused himself and went around the corner to the local gay bar. Later Cal claimed, “I liberated Merv sexually that night. He was one uptight dude until I had raunchy sex with him. When it came to sex, Merv was rather vanilla. I taught him to put some gooey chocolate fudge over that white vanilla sundae.”

  When Johnny Carson learned that Merv intended to host a TV show devoted to gay porn, he said, “Why not? Griffin's already interviewed transsexual witches from Transylvania and boylovers wanting to revive the ancient Greek tradition of sodomy.” Carson obviously was speaking tongue in cheek.

  Perhaps because of Carson's mockery, or perhaps for personal reasons, Merv decided not to forge ahead with the show. His rival, David Susskind, turned out to be more receptive to the idea of doing a TV talk show devoted to gay porn.

  Merv had to tell a disappointed Cal that he had abandoned the idea of such a show. “That does not, however, have to mean the end of our friendship.”

  Cal later claimed that Merv clearly suggested that it would be “extremely lucrative” if Cal continued their relationship, especially the sexual aspects of it.

  “Sign me up,” Cal told him.

  ***

  When Merv tired of Cal after eighteen months, he shipped him off to the beds of both Liberace and Rock Hudson. Through various connections established by these stars and others, Cal, whenever he wasn't shooting porn, eventually obtained full employment as a gay male escort. In a claim he made in Key West, where he functioned briefly as the unsuccessful manager of an unsuccessful gay guesthouse, The Casa Donovan, he said, “For several years I was America's number one star fucker, and I owe it all to Merv Griffin for getting me launched.”

  Ever the sexual opportunist, Cal detected an interest on Merv's part in young emerging porn stars. He saw a chance to make money by arranging discreet introductions to male stars who intrigued Merv after Cal showed him porno films, which often starred Cal interacting with a prospective lover for Merv.

  As the months went by, Cal more or less evolved into Merv's pimp, linking him up to “big names” in the porn business. Collectively, Cal and his associates managed to replace the array of otherwise unknown models, outofwork actors, and surfers that Hadley might have otherwise proposed as sexual diversions for Merv.

  ***

  “Our old gang was breaking up,” Paul Schone lamented. “Once in San Mateo Bill Robbins, Johnny Riley, and Hadley Morrell had each promised Merv that they'd be his friends for life.”

  But it didn't work out that way. Johnny was the first of the quintet to move on, establishing himself as a kept boy in a new relationship.

  Merv, too, had moved on to other friendships, other relationships, and other business affairs, finding that he had less and less time for his old friends of yesteryear.

  Sometime during the 70s, Merv parted company with both Paul and Bill. “There was no final goodbye, and no little bonus for the way we'd served him so well over the years,” Paul lamented.

  Both Paul and Bill called Merv repeatedly, leaving messages, but the calls were never returned. “I don't think he was actually angry with us,” said Bill. “I think he just outgrew us. We were going nowhere in life, and Merv was shooting to the top.”

  More than Johnny, Paul, and Bill, Hadley had been the most intimately involved with Merv. “But as time went by, I too was replaced in Merv's life,” Hadley said. “He'd developed other friendships by then, and Cal Culver seemed to be supplying him with tricks, and eventually, I simply wasn't needed.”

  Consequently, when Hadley's ailing mother, who had moved to Texas, became seriously ill, Hadley and Merv more or less separated, and remained apart for years. Then, after his mother died, Hadley came briefly back into Merv's life in the late 1980s or early 90s. But Hadley grew tired of being a friend that Merv kept hidden in the closet. Perhaps he also grew tired of the servant role as well. Since he'd been bequeathed some money from his mother's estate, Hadley knew he could retire in reasonable comfort if he watched his spending. According to some reports, Merv gave him $50,000 in cash. Presumably, Hadley returned to West Texas to live out his days in his mother's house and was never heard from again.

  ***

  As a means of making money, and perhaps in a spirit motivated partly by jealousy and revenge, Paul and Bill began drafting page after page of sometimes negative memoirs about their experiences with Merv. It's because these no
tes and memoirs were circulated in the 1970s to publishers and literary agents (including the Jay Garon-Brooke & Associates Agency), whose president and namesake, Jay Garon, referred to them as “explosive”) that we know some of the details of Merv's early life.

  Jay Garon had a reputation as a ruthless and to some degree sleazy marketer of the often embarrassing memoirs of the rich and terribly famous, as proven with his successful launch of Hedy Lamarr's Ecstasy and Me, as well as an intensely embarrassing expose of Bette Davis by her estranged daugher.

  Garon's enthusiasm for the Bill Robbins/Paul Schone memoirs dampened however, after months of shopping it around privately and unofficially to editors he knew personally at, among others, Doubleday, Random House, Simon & Schuster, and a paperback publishing house, Manor Books.

  In every case, the Robbins/Schone book proposal was rejected, editors fearing with ample justification that Merv would sue for libel if such a book were ever published.

  Presumably, Paul and Bill eventually left New York, their fate unknown. And having previously fallen out with Johnny, they lost track of him too. Then, after many a year, Johnny too disappeared from the radar screen.

  Predictably, at one point, both Johnny and Hadley also floated and somewhat halfheartedly marketed their own rough drafts of memoirs, neither of which was as negative or as scandalous as that penned earlier by Paul and Bill. But whereas Paul and Bill felt deeply betrayed by Merv, Johnny and Hadley harbored feelings that were more benign. And when it had become obvious that the vitality of the relationship with Merv had faded, Johnny and Hadley departed without protest to pursue other lives.