Merv kissed Liberace's forehead and departed as he'd been instructed. Outside, the tears rolled down his cheeks. He later told friends, “I felt that I was leaving part of my life in that house with my dying friend. It was one of my most painful moments.”
Within the hour, Merv had fled, incognito, from Palm Springs.
After his death, Liberace's aides lied to the press, issuing a statement about how the flamboyant entertainer had died of congestive heart failure. Shortly thereafter, a coroner's inquest asserted that he'd died of complications resulting from AIDS. Ironically, even after his death, Wladziu Valentino Liberace remained locked in the closet, denying his homosexuality even from beyond the grave.
Face-lifted Liberace:
The final cover-up.
Merv, probably motivated by a fear of “Outing” himself, never publicly discussed his enduring friendship with Liberace. His only comment, delivered with a giveaway wink, was, “He certainly was one of the great peacocks of our century.” He went on to assert that Liberace had “paved the way” for such androgynous superstars as Michael Jackson, Elton John, and Boy George.
After his funeral, a reporter summarized one of show business's longestrunning acts. “Liberace's was a life of exquisite paradox involving flamboyance and repression, kitsch and concealment.”
***
In 1955, the year of its opening, the Beverly Hilton Hotel was hailed as “the most sumptuous hotel in the world” as part of an opening celebration presided over by Conrad Hilton himself. Richard Nixon showed up as part of the ceremony, recalling a time when the land adjacent to Wilshire Boulevard was mostly farmland. In the audience, listening to Nixon, was a photogenic “Hollywood couple” affectionately known as Ronnie and Nancy.
It was at this same hotel that Merv appeared years later to celebrate President Reagan's 80th birthday dinner gala.
At the 1955 inauguration, Esther Williams, MGM's mermaid, had swum through thousands of floating gardenias as part of the launch of the Hilton's Aqua Star Pool, the largest in Beverly Hills. All but a few of the U.S. presidents, from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton, had been involved in sexual trysts within the hotel's presidential suite. Kennedy came to view the Beverly Hilton as the Western White House. Through the lobby paraded every movie star from Judy Garland to Elizabeth Taylor.
Dale Olsen, longtime Hollywood publicist and journalist, summed it up nicely: “There hasn't been a celebrity in Hollywood for the past fifty years that hasn't been to the Beverly Hilton at least several times. It is the gathering place of the stars.”
From the very beginning, the hotel was known for secret liaisons among the stars. Unfounded rumors spread quickly. Was Tony Curtis really seen late at night leaving the room of Laurence Olivier? Did Barbra Streisand and Steve McQueen share a suite for a night?
With the passing of decades, as celebrities flocked to newer and more cutting-edge properties, the 1950s landmark had become a bit battered and had lost much of its prestige,
For years, Merv had been “itching” to get into the hotel business, dreaming of restoring the Beverly Hilton to its former glory. When it came onto the market, he went for it. On November 16, 1987, Merv bought the hotel from Hilton Hotels Corporation and the Prudential Insurance Company. After the deal was signed, he spent $60 million restoring it.
The Beverly Hilton had been an old stamping ground for Merv, and it was associated with what he called “one of the great nights of my life.” In the hotel's International Ballroom, he'd been presented with the Will Rogers Memorial Award by the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce.
Orson Welles waddled in that night to pay a public tribute to Merv, and even the latest incarnation of Freddy Martin's Orchestra turned out to provide the music. “As in olden days,” Merv said, “I sang with Freddy's boys once again, warbling ‘Tonight We Love.’”
After Merv's takeover of the hotel, he asked Eva Gabor to decorate the women's bathroom in the International Ballroom. She chose a soft pink marble, claiming, “I want to make it a room where a lady likes to linger while powdering her nose.” Caught in the can in 2000 at the Golden Globe Awards, Renée Zellwegger was blasting off as her name was called to accept the award.
The Beverly Hilton had been hosting the Golden Globe Awards since March 16, 1961, when Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus took the award for Best Picture.
Merv was delighted when his hotel could host a Royal Tribute to Cary Grant on October 17, 1988, an evening that netted more than a million dollars for the Princess Grace Foundation. Everyone from Monaco royalty to Alist entertainers came.
Merv later told Hadley that during the break, “I found myself standing at the urinals side by side with Frank Sinatra, Burt Lancaster, and Cary Grant. Cary and Burt came up a little short, but Frank let it dangle with no hand needed. He lit a cigarette as all three of us took in the view.”
Within the hotel, in 1998, Merv launched The Coconut Club, the latest incarnation of the Cocoanut Grove where he'd once sung with Freddy Martin's Orchestra. Merv loved the word coconut, probably because it evoked his Big Band hit, “I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts.”
For decorations, he commissioned a fauxtropical setting with gold and silver palm trees and wildeyed monkeys. After the club's launch, Merv defined it as “The Supreme Dance Floor on the West Coast.” Somewhat bitchily, his critics said he'd created the club just as a means of having a showroom in which he could perform.
Faced with declining revenues, the Coconut Club closed its doors forever in 2002. But during Merv's regime, a remarkable array of celebrities was spotted on its dance floor.
The Beverly Hilton Hotel:
Merv's kingdom on Earth
They included Billy Crystal, Hugh Hefner, Mickey Rooney, Victoria Principal, Tom Cruise, Antonio Banderas, Michael Jackson, Jerry Lewis, Mark Wahlberg, Vanna White, Mel Brooks, Anne Bancroft, Jackie Collins, Ted Danson, and Robert Vaughn.
***
At this point in his life, and as new business opportunities were proposed and promoted, Merv recalled that, “I felt I had other dragons to slay. New challenges to meet. I was antsy to get on with the final phase of my life. I dared dream dreams of conquest in the business world that would have terrified me years before. I was ready to take chances.”
From the eighth floor of the Beverly Hilton, where Merv maintained a luxurious apartment, he looked out every night at a hilltop where he dreamed of building his own San Simeon to rival the castle of William Randolph Hearst. The site was the highest point in Beverly Hills.
He owned one hundred and fifty seven acres of this choice real estate, which he'd purchased from Princess Shams, the sister of the Shah of Iran. These Persian royals had wanted to turn the site into a sanctuary for the Peacock Throne in exile. Merv's plans for the site had included an elaborate Palladian villa on the hilltop's summit, along with stables and a trio of lakes. But Merv unexpectedly changed his mind, selling the real estate to Mark Hughes of Herbalife, the nutritional supplement company, for nine million dollars.
Around the same time, Merv bought a vineyard, the Mount Mervillian Winery, and sunk money into Merv Griffin Events, an outfit specializing in the organization of largescale fashion events for enterprises like Tommy Hilfiger and Gucci.
In the 1990s and beyond, Merv would buy and sell some seventeen hotels. Many of these became hangouts for celebrities, and occasionally one of his hotels would make headlines. Such was the case on July 22, 2002 when Robert Downey Jr. was arrested on charges of drug possession at Merv Griffin's Resort Hotel in Palm Springs. After that, Merv claimed his resort was deluged by clients wanting to book the room where Downey was arrested.
On September 15, 1993 Merv purchased Florida's Deerfield Beach/Boca Raton Hilton from the Prudential Realty Group, based in Newark, New Jersey. Some real estate agents in Florida wondered why Merv wanted a business travelers' hotel positioned at the intersection of Interstate 95 and Hillsboro Boulevard. “It's not his usual style,” said Danny Toldman, a real estate broker. “I doubt if Merv Grif
fin would even stay there. It's not grand enough. But who can figure out why Merv Griffin buys anything?”
In March of 1998, Merv acquired the Givenchy Hotel and Spa in Palm Springs from its owner, Rose Narva. The fourteenacre luxury property had been developed by the legendary fashion icon Hubert de Givenchy and had opened in 1995. As justification for its purchase, Merv told the press that he had enjoyed the hotel and spa since the day it opened.
By 2003, Merv's love affair with the Beverly Hilton was nearing an end. “It no longer has magic for me,” he confided to friends. Even so, tout Hollywood was shocked when he announced that he was selling his once beloved property to an investment group.
“After seventeen years,” Merv told the press, “I am pleased to turn over the reins, and I'm confident the new owners will continue the proud traditions of this extraordinary property.” On the last night of his ownership, Merv was seen “walking every inch” of the nine acres surrounding the hotel.
***
When the Reagans returned home to California in 1988, after occupying the White House for eight momentous years, Merv threw a $25,000atable homecoming gala.
Inspired partly by his friendship with the Reagans, Merv had become a heavy donor to Republican causes and in 2003 publicly blasted CBS for the unfavorable slant of their twopart TV biopic, The Reagans. (Yanked by CBS because of massive rightwing protests, it was later picked up by Showtime and subsequently earned seven Emmy Award nominations.)
Merv seemed on top of the world. Everything in his life was “coming up roses,” as he put it. But at his first private luncheon with Nancy, she issued a dire warning: Her latest astrologer had told her that the upcoming 1990s were going to be the darkest years of both of their lives.
“I don't believe it,” he said boastfully. “I'm about to take on Donald Trump, and he ain't seen nothing ‘til he's dealt with this feisty Irishman.”
Chapter Eleven
Known for his extravagant lifestyle and his devotion to beautiful women, all of whom have given him high marks as a lover, New Yorker Donald Trump is America's most famous real estate developer. His celebrity is spread by the success of his NBC TV reality show, The Apprentice (“You're fired!”), of which he is the host and executive producer. “The Jewish Don” is also the founder of Trump Entertainment Resorts, which brought him into contact with Merv Griffin in 1988.
The idea of transforming a resort like Atlantic City or the one on Paradise Island in The Bahamas into a touristy destination linking entertainment with gambling appealed to Merv. “Big stars—or at least big stars from yesterday — with high rollers, what a combination!” Merv told Dale Scutti, a car dealer from upstate New York, who at the time was a shareholder in Resorts International.
With his newly materialized millions, and with perhaps a need for attention, Merv began to covetously eye Donald Trump's Resorts International. “The Donald” owned eighty percent of the voting stock and controlled a huge hunk of Paradise Island. He also owned two Atlantic City hotels and casinos, one of them an antiquated relic (The Resorts Atlantic City Hotel), as well as the as yettobecompleted Taj Mahal, which, when it opened, was the largest and costliest hotelcasino ever built along the New Jersey shoreline.
As a means of rounding out his ownership of Resorts International, Donald had originally offered to buy the outstanding shares of that organization for $15 a share. Later, under threat of law-suits, he raised his offer to $22 a share. Behind the scenes, as part of a complicated bidding war, Merv outbid him, offering an astonishing $35 per share.
“You mean, Merv Griffin?” Donald asked in astonishment. “That boy singer with Freddy Martin's boys?”
The counter offer brought Merv into gladiatorial combat with the powerful New York mogul.
Merv sued Donald as a means of sabotaging his attempt to purchase the remaining shares of Resorts for $22 a share. Merv then announced that he was willing to offer just under $300 million for ownership of the entire corporation, including the 85% controlled by Trump.
Donald's reaction was immediate. “Is Merv Griffin fucking crazy? In fact, his offer is so crazy that I don't think I should ask for more. Normally, I might say, ‘Merv, make it $40 a share and it's yours, sweetheart.’ Not in this case. Talk about Jeopardy! He will learn what Jeopardy! is when he gets deep into the shit of the gaming business.”
Flying into New York on a private jet, Merv had arranged a showdown meeting with his adversary at Trump's penthouse office on Fifth Avenue.
No one will ever really know what transpired that day high above the streets of Manhattan between Merv and Donald. The accounts both men have rendered are selfserving and contradictory.
Donald later claimed that he put some hard questions to Merv. “As a guy who's never built anything bigger than a Wheel of Fortune set, do you feel prepared to deal with the contractors, unions, bureaucrats, and politicians who stand between you and success?”
At the end of that afternoon in the glass penthouse, Donald agreed to sell out his ownership interest in most of Resorts International, but held onto the Taj Mahal and the Steel Pier in Atlantic City. Merv ended up with Bahamasbased Paradise Island (which had been known years before as “Hog Island,”) and the less desirable of the two hotels in Atlantic City, Resorts Atlantic City. Originally known as Haddon Hall, it was the first Atlantic City hotelcasino launched after gaming was legalized there in 1976. An Atlantic City insider told author Gwenda Blair that Haddon Hall “used to be our shithouse along the boardwalk. After Trump converted the old building, we called it a shithouse with carpeting.”
After endless legal and financial hassles and “closing adjustments,” the sale was concluded on May 27, 1988.
The Nemesis:
Donald Trump
Merv's own lawyer, Tom Gallegher, called it “the deal from hell,” But Merv seemed unflappable. In looking back upon dealing with Trump, Gallegher said, “there was the good twin and the bad twin. In many ways Trump is a Jekyll and Hyde guy. He can be enor-mously charming and you get the feeling he's nice, decent, and warm. That's when the bad twin emerges.”
Merv had been able to pull off the deal by transferring ownership of $325 million of Michael Milken's junk bonds as the currency that was used to purchase Resorts International.
After the deal was signed, Trump encountered Merv and shook his hand. “Enjoy your Resorts, which is falling apart. Enjoy Paradise, which is the worst dump you've ever seen. Have a lot of fun.”
“I kicked his ass!” Trump told his friends. “It was a great deal for me. I got the Taj Mahal—he got shit!”
Most Wall Street financiers agreed that Merv got a bad deal from Trump. As Michael Craig put it, “Griffin was right to be so reluctant to complete the transaction. The deal was a horrible loser right from the start. For more than $700 million—the cost of buying out Trump and other shareholders and assuming all the debt, minus Trump's payment for the Taj Mahal—all Griffin got was decrepit Resorts, not especially well run, and in dire need of restoration.”
Merv went so far as to call Trump's account of their negotiation, as printed within the pages of his memoir, Surviving at the Top, “a novel.”
He later charged that Trump had completely misled him, claiming that he could “fix up” the Atlantic City resort for 15 million dollars,” when Merv knew it would take that much money just to renovate the lobby.
After taking over from Trump, Merv found himself saddled “with interest payments that equaled the treasury of many small countries.” His company president, David Hanlon, told the press that “museumpiece elevators and a leaky roof have kept Merv from trading on his cachet to book celebrities.”
Just paying the interest on the loans was more than Merv's money advisors could cope with. The money just wasn't there, unless the debt could be restructured.
As clever as Merv had been in his negotiations, often outwitting “The Donald” and his lawyers, he did not foresee the oncoming recession, with the hardships that lay ahead. Waking up one morning in 1989
he found himself $925 million in debt. Most of that debt, $600 million, had been assumed when he'd purchased Resorts International. To retain his twenty percent equity, Merv had to plow another $30 million of his own money into the company. Working behind the scenes, he was able to reorganize Resorts under Chapter 11 of the Federal bankruptcy laws.
To publicize his resorts, Merv began to invite stars for highvisibility visits, often friends from yesterday, including Burt Lancaster and Dinah Shore. He even brought in one of the nation's bestselling novelists, Sidney Sheldon, for a book signing.
For entertainment he booked such stars as the operatic great, Roberta Peters, or “my old buddy,” Tony Bennett, who on one drunken night in California, had been mistakenly introduced to the audience by Merv as Tony Martin.
Merv admitted that “I tried every trick in the book to gain business and publicity, at one point giving away $150,000 in thousand dollar bags to fifteen people every hour.”
Even so, he was forced to restructure the organization's debt again in 1994, Trump mockingly referring to it as “Griffin's Chapter 22.”
In 1996, Merv's promotional ploys for his New Jersey hotel, Resorts Atlantic City, brought in revenue of $64 million, up from the $16 million it was earning when he took it over in 1988. By 1996 Merv was able to terminate his tumultuous venture into gaming, selling out at $20 a share to Sol Kerzner, the South African real estate developer.
All in all, it is estimated that Merv personally lost $50 million in his flirtation with the gaming industry.
Merv took the money from Kerzner and invested it in Player's International, an outfit that launched and maintained riverboat casinos in Louisiana, Missouri, and Illinois. He sold his investment to Harrah's at a profit in 2000.
As part of a final kissoff to “The Donald,” Merv called him in the 90s, when he was first considering a run for president in the Republican primaries. “Donald, I'm going to contribute one hundred dollars to your campaign. I've thought it over and that's all I can afford.”
Merv Griffin- A Life in the Closet Page 65
