Merv Griffin, the big band-era crooner turned impresario who parlayed his "Jeopardy" and "Wheel of Fortune" game shows into a multimillion-dollar empire, died Sunday from prostate cancer. He was 82.From his beginning as a $100-a-week San Francisco radio singer, Griffin moved on as vocalist for Freddy Martin's band, sometime film actor in films and TV game and talk show host, and made Forbes' list of richest Americans several times.
PIONEER OF TALK SHOWS
Merv Griffin had a series of overlapping careers. His stint as a television talk show host was associated from the beginning with that of Johnny Carson, the reigning "king of late night talk" from the 1960s through the 1980s.
Griffin's first daytime talk show on NBC began the same day as Carson's reign on the Tonight show, and if Carson was consistently rated number one as national talk show host, Griffin was for significant periods of time clearly number two.SENORED FOR VIETNAM WAR STANCE
As the late night television talk show wars heated up between Carson, Joey Bishop, Dick Cavett, and David Frost, Griffin entered the fray in 1969 as CBS's candidate to take on Carson in his own time slot.
He immediately ran afoul of network censors with controversial guests and topics. Concerned with the number of statements being made against the War in Vietnam in 1969, CBS lawyers sent Griffin a memo: "In the past six weeks 34 antiwar statements have been made and only one pro-war statement, by John Wayne." Griffin shot back: "Find me someone as famous as Mr. Wayne to speak in favor the war and we'll book him."
KING OF SYNDICATION TELEVISION
By the beginning of 1972, Griffin had had enough. He secretly negotiated a new syndication deal with Metromedia which gave him a daytime talk show on the syndicated network the first Monday after any day he was fired. A penalty clause in his contract with CBS would give him a million 1971 dollars as well.
With his ratings sagging, CBS predictably lowered the boom and Griffin went immediately to Metromedia where his daytime talk show ran for another 13 years. In 1986 he retired from the show to devote full time to his highly profitable game shows.
But when it came to Black entertainers and news makers, we will remember Merv was the first to interview Black notables like Martin Luther King Jr., and start the careers of performers like young teenage Whitney Huston ...