“I had the craziest image of Merv Griffin whirling me around the ballroom,” Blonsky said. “For Merv, showbusiness heaven is still a ballroom, and in his ballroom fantasy he moves from one dream to another, and, as with our own dreams, they're always incomplete, inchoate. He ends up disillusioned and immediately begins a new fabrication. Failure is the end of the dream and the driving force to change again.”
Eva, whether by fault of her accent or because she was making an ironic joke, always referred to Merv as a “typhoon,” not a tycoon.
Merv's success caused amazement in others, including Mike Dann, the chief programming executive at CBS. “For a guy like Griffin to have made it to the top is like Joe the Plumber becoming a bestselling novelist.” This Joe the Plumber reference was said years before John McCain immortalized another Joe the Plumber during one of his presidential debates in 2008.
Merv too was sometimes awed by how far he'd gone in show business. “I could have become even bigger,” he often said. Years after his $250 million sellout was concluded, many Wall Street financiers told him that had he waited another four or five years, he might have gotten one billion.
“Bankers like that are trying to give me a heart attack—and to think I seriously considered bailing out for $45 million,” Merv said.
***
On numerous occasions and over many years, Merv had encountered Ronald and Nancy Davis Reagan, including that embarrassing runin at Robert Walker's house when she was “not dressed for the occasion.” As for “Ronnie” (as Merv then called him), Doris Day had introduced him to Merv back on the Warner's lot in the early 50s.
The Reagans' relationship with Merv remained casual until Nancy and Reagan, back when he was Governor of California, made a joint appearance on Merv's talk show. The oncamera banter among the three of them had been personal and intimate, but hardly revelatory. The Reagans weren't former movie stars who revealed their darkest secrets to millions in front of TV sets.
“Beginning with that talk show, the Reagans and Merv bonded,” Hadley claimed. “He talked about them all the time. Although they didn't see that much of each other, they talked a lot on the phone. Merv was much closer to Nancy than Ronald, as was to be expected. Merv and Nancy have much in common, including their joint interest in astrology. A true friendship between Merv and the Reagans didn't really blossom until he was invited to the White House. That was sometime around March—or maybe April, I don't remember—in 1983.”
As Merv relates in his second autobiography, he arrived at the White House around eleven in the morning and was ushered into the private apartments of the First Family. He'd worn what he called “my best dark suit,” but found them dressed in clothes they might have worn at their ranch in California. “Oh, that's just great!” he said to them. “Here I am dressed like Herbert Hoover and you two look like Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.”
That broke the ice between them, and the couple chatted like old friends over lunch that day. “Even though temporarily misplaced on the East Coast, Nancy, Ronnie, and I were Californians at heart, I being a native and they being transplants,” Merv said. “Their pleasant afternoon was broken by a grim visit to Andrews Air Force Base to salute a plane carrying sixteen Americans who had been killed at the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut.”
When the Reagans returned to the White House, Nancy—and later the President himself—showed Merv around the family quarters. The President also took him into the Oval Office where Merv noticed big jars of multicolored jelly beans.
“You sure do love those jelly beans,” Merv said. “Not me. Pure sugar. They'd make me fatter than I already am.”
“Actually, I'm not crazy for jelly beans at all,” Reagan revealed. “Someone just wrote that in the press. After that I get daily deliveries of jelly beans, which we accept politely and Nancy sees that thank you notes are sent out.”
“If not jelly beans, what is your passion?” Merv asked.
“Aside from Nancy,” he said, “peanut brittle.”
From that day on, until the Reagans left the White House, Merv always sent the most expensive and besttasting peanut brittle that money could buy.
As President, Reagan respected what he viewed as Merv's media savvy. He called Merv on several occasions, seeking his advice on how to handle the press.
Toward the end of his administration, Reagan even called Merv to ask for advice about how to treat Jane Wyman in his memoir, An American Life. “Nancy doesn't want me to mention her at all,” Reagan said.
The Lion in Winter
“You can't do that,” Merv cautioned. “Of course, you're the President and can do what you like. But you have to mention her. My God, you were married to her for eight years. She was a famous movie star. An Oscar winner. If you don't mention her, it'd be a sin of omission. The press would mock you for it.”
“But Jane and I agreed at the time of our divorce not to write about each other or give interviews about our marriage.”
“You've still got to mention her, Mr. President.”
Finally, after mulling it over, and after overcoming Nancy's protests, the President called Merv with what he'd personally written. He read from a printed page.
The same year I made the Knute Rockne movie, I married Jane Wyman, another contract player at Warners. Our marriage produced two wonderful children, Maureen and Michael, but it didn't work out, and in 1948 we were divorced.”
The President paused for a long moment. “What do you think, Merv?”
“Short but sweet, Mr. President.”
Presumably, the subject of homosexuality reared its head only rarely in the relationship between Merv and Reagan. It can be assumed that Nancy had told her husband that Merv was a homosexual. In private Reagan wasn't as antigay as he was often depicted.
Very rarely did he want to bring up the subject, however. “Reagan lived in an era when homosexuals were locked up in the closet so they wouldn't frighten guests in the parlor,” said Truman Capote, no great admirer of the Reagans. “During his administration, with the outbreak of the world's AIDS disaster, the President didn't want to mention that either, thinking it a gay disease. But God likes to play tricks on men like Reagan. That's why God herself gave him Ron Reagan Jr. for a son.”
In a private phone call to Merv, Reagan said, “I have to bring up a delicate matter. It's about my son, Skipper. Because he's into ballet, the press is making a lot of insinuations….” He paused. There was an awkward silence.
“They're saying he's gay, you mean?” Merv said.
“Exactly,” Reagan said. “We've checked him out. He likes girls. The rumors are untrue. What can I do?”
“You can ignore it, Mr. President,” Merv advised. “It's suggested all the time in the press or somewhere—mostly idle gossip—that I'm a homosexual, too. As we both know, that's not true. If some jerk in the press asks you if Skipper is gay, just deny it—and move on. That's the only way. The less said the better.”
“Yes,” the President said, “the less said the better. That's the way I've always treated the subject of homosexuality, and I'd like to live my life the way I was brought up. Did you know that I didn't know what a homosexual was until I got to Hollywood?”
“Hollywood,” Merv said. “Well, that's the place to find out all about it.”
“After being introduced to Errol Flynn, I learned far more about homosexuality than I'd ever wanted to know,” Reagan said. Abruptly changing the subject, the President invited Merv to dinner with Nancy and himself.
Merv eagerly accepted.
The Reagans were so impressed with Merv that they allowed him to return to the White House about five months later to interview them in their private space, the President filling in the first forty-five minutes, with Nancy making an appearance for the final 15-minute segment of the hourlong show.
***
The private encounters between Merv and the President and his Lady would never be known if Merv hadn't insisted on providing most of the details to his friends.
Although he shared stories about the Reagans with his intimates, he never did so at their expense. “I think Merv had a genuine affection for the President, but he developed a deep, loving friendship with Nancy,” said Rosemary Clooney. “Like any good friend, he knew her faults and shortcomings, and she was willing to overlook some of the more sordid aspects of Merv's life. I'm sure all those gossips in California she surrounded herself with kept her well supplied with anecdotes about Merv's nocturnal life.”
In the years to come, Merv would become Nancy's closest male confidant. Since he was homosexual, the President would not get jealous of Merv the way he was with his wife's attention and devotion to Frank Sinatra, on whom she maintained a lifelong crush.
After her tenure as First Lady, Merv often took Nancy to Holmby Hills, an affluent neighborhood adjacent to Beverly Hills. There, they visited the mansion of real estate mogul Marge Everett, where the former First Lady and Merv often sang duets together at the piano. Johnny Mathis sometimes joined them. Nancy's favorite number was “Our Love Is Here to Stay.”
Living well is the best revenge.
Once, during his business involvement in The Bahamas, and after their tenure in the White House, Merv asked Ronald and Nancy Reagan to join him on Paradise Island. One afternoon when she was having her hair done, Merv invited Ronald to a bar for drinks. “Nancy was furious at me when she found out,” Merv recalled. “I told her, ‘Come on, lots of people drink at bars. John Wayne drinks at bars.’”
Nancy shot back, “John Wayne is not the former President of the United States.”
In 1994, when the ex-President wrote his famous letter to “My Fellow Americans,” informing them that he was afflicted with Alzheimer's disease, he accurately predicted that he had begun “the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life.”
Merv shared in that journey, being with Reagan whenever he was invited by Nancy to see the President. He saw a lot more of Nancy and was almost in daily contact with her, if not in person, then by phone.
When Merv first saw Reagan after he'd written that famous letter, the former President seemed cheerful and optimistic. “My mother always said that if life hands you lemons, make lemonade.”
Merv had a frontrow seat to watch the slow but steady postpresidential decline of his friend Ronald Reagan. He shared the gruesome details with Eva Gabor, who, without any malicious intent, shared those same details with her close friends—and that is why we know today about Merv's role in the life of the Reagans.
On several occasions, Merv attended private luncheons, arranged by Nancy, at Reagan's postpresidential office at Century City in Los Angeles. The former President arrived there late every morning and left early. He was incapable of doing any actual work except—perhaps—pose for a picture with some Girl Scouts.
It had been recommended to Nancy that Alzheimer's patients needed some sense of routine—hence, Reagan's ritual visits to his office five days a week. Nancy would write out a schedule for him for the day, just as his White House staff used to do, but it was filled only with busy work to keep his mind occupied. Merv was one of the few people she trusted to be alone with the former President.
In his first luncheon meeting, Merv was surprised when the former President tossed salt over his left shoulder. “I'm superstitious,” he said.
Merv told Eva a secret he'd never told anyone. Over lunch, according to Merv, Reagan talked about two things—Doris Day and flying saucers. He said that when he was dating Doris, during the aftermath of his divorce from Jane Wyman, he was seriously considering proposing marriage to her. “He spent most of the lunch talking about what marriage to Doris would have been like,” Merv told Eva, “but he hastened to add that he'd made the perfect choice in Nancy.”
The remainder of the luncheon involved talk about flying saucers. The President informed Merv that he was an ardent believer in UFOs, claiming that in California, back in 1947, he'd seen flying saucers on three separate occasions. He also told Merv that he believed that aliens had been spying on the Earth for decades, and he feared that an invasion of the United States was imminent. “I just know it,” Reagan said. “They've selected some desert somewhere in the West here to make their initial landing.”
As the months went by, Merv couldn't help but notice that the President's condition, and especially his memory, had faded. “As long as he was able to go to his beloved Rancho del Cielo with Nancy, he seemed okay,” Merv said. “The fresh air there, the chance to cut brush, those still romantic moments when he could walk handinhand with Nancy to observe the beautiful sunsets—all of that seemed to keep his spirit alive.”
One day Nancy called Merv to tell him that, “Ronnie has cleared his last brush.” Her voice sounded melancholic. Ronnie had lost all interest in the ranch and didn't want to go there anymore. She was going to put it up for sale.
In 1997, Merv paid his last call on the President. He later told Eva, “Ronnie didn't know who I was. I respectfully addressed him as ‘Mr. President.’ He looked up at me confused. Very slowly, he asked me, ‘President of what? I was never the President. That job belonged to Jack Warner.’”
After leaving the Reagans' home that day, Merv believed that Reagan had obliterated all memories of his years in the White House, as well as his memories of Sacramento when he was governor of California. “But he still retained some memory of being in films. His mind had gone back to a happier time, perhaps the 1940s when he was a movie star.”
“When Nancy limited my access to the President,” Merv said, “I understood completely. After all, she was the chief custodian of him — the gatekeeper, so to speak. In the end she wanted to protect the President from prying eyes. He had gone too far into that sunset he wrote about in the letter. Ronnie had already gone over the top of the world, and darkness—not even twilight—had set in. Ronnie had to be shielded. Old friends could no longer come to call and talk about the good times in Sacramento or Washington. At some point, and I'm guessing here, Ronnie no longer remembered even being a movie star, much less President.”
Nancy Reagan:
Deep in December
In one candid moment, Merv claimed that Nancy had been virtually under “house arrest for ten years when Ronnie was sick.”
Even in the darkest of times, Merv brought humor into the former First Lady's life, including a Saturday lunch he had with her at Chez Mimi, a chic Santa Monica eatery favored by celebrities. “Merv's a real, real upper,” Nancy said. “He will not let himself be depressed or low. He cheers you right up!”
When Merv visited Nancy after Ronald had surgery on a broken hip, he knew the end was coming. “But she was so brave. She also knew it was the end yet she appeared optimistic. The actress in her put up a front for me.”
“He's going to get well, you'll see,” she told Merv.
Nancy also revealed that she was “stretched to my limits,” when she'd visited Reagan's first daughter, Maureen, and her husband on the same day at the same hospital.
“Of course, Nancy, without saying so, knew she was conducting a death watch for both Maureen and Ronnie at the same time,” Merv told Eva.
Born in 1941, Maureen was the only biological child of Reagan and his first wife, Jane Wyman. She was active in Republican party politics, and the first daughter of a U.S. President to run for public office. She was defeated in both of the two elections she spearheaded. They included the race for US Senator from California in 1982, and a decade later, an unsuccessful race for California's 36th congressional district.
Maureen was never particularly close to Nancy (her stepmother) and sometimes endorsed political positions—including a prochoice platform on abortion—that opposed the widely publicized tenets of her famous father. Death for Maureen from melanoma cancer came prematurely, in 2001, at the age of sixty.
Nancy had slept every night of her life that she could with her husband, even during the months before their marriage in 1952, when she'd become pregnant. “The saddest thing for Nancy was when she was told she could
no longer sleep at Ronnie's side,” Merv said. “She had to order a hospital bed with bars on either side so Ronnie would not fall out of bed again and injure his hip.”
“That bed I wake up in every morning these days feels very lonely indeed,” she told Merv.
Merv sent flowers when the Reagans celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary on March 4, 2003. “It wasn't much of a celebration,” Nancy confided in him. “The cake was small and we sat in silence. Ronnie didn't know what we were celebrating.”
Nancy called Merv on June 5, 2005, to tell her that “Ronnie has gone on his way.” He promised to come over at once.
After the President died, Merv was among the first to visit Nancy with condolences. In tears she looked up at him. “The most painful thing for me to endure over the past few years was when the moment came that we could no longer share memories together.”
To mask his grief, Merv turned a bright face to the press waiting outside the Reagans' Bel Air home. “In all the stories you're filing,” Merv told the press, “don't forget to add that Ronald Reagan was the most successful actor in history. As for me, I'm going home to watch Ronnie and Nancy in Hellcats of the Navy.”
***
In 1990 Merv created a television game show based on the parlor game Monopoly. Hosted by Mike Reilly, the show premiered on June 16, with three contestants competing to answer crossword puzzlestyle clues and gain property on the Monopoly board. After only thirteen episodes, the show went bust. Many viewers claimed that Merv made the rules too complicated for the average viewer.
Recordings of each episode of the show survive, but so far no network has opted for reruns. In a touch of irony, it was announced in 2006 that Donald Trump, Merv's nemesis, was “going from boardroom to Boardwalk.” The Apprentice star said he was going to become the executive producer of a reality show based on the classic board game.
Merv Griffin- A Life in the Closet Page 67
