Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 1, 1990 TAG: 9006280384
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: EX1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALICE STEINBACH THE BALTIMORE SUN
DATELINE: BALTIMORE LENGTH: Long
He wasn't prepared for that last bit of news.
"What? No music? I'm singing without background?" he says in mock horror to the engineer who's recording "The Star-Spangled Banner" so that Merv (nobody calls him "Mr. Griffin") can lip-sync it later at an Orioles baseball game. He's in Baltimore as part of a promotional tie-in between Resorts International - his Atlantic City hotel - and the Orioles' radio broadcasts.
But not to worry; Merv's a pro. After checking whether it's "perilous flight" or "perilous night," he performs it perfectly on the first take. One hitch, though. It wasn't being recorded. So he stands there and does it over, a confident, relaxed, 64-year-old man - tanned, with a white shock of hair, sapphire blue eyes - singing and gesturing as though he were performing on stage in front of a live audience.
Perfect again.
It has been 40 years since Merv Griffin recorded the multimillion-selling "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts" with bandleader Freddy Martin - a hit record for which he received the magnificent sum of 50 bucks - but make no mistake about it: The one-time crooner still has pipes that are in good working order.
Of course, Merv doesn't need to sing for his supper anymore.
Over the years, the pleasant, easy-going performer who was host of a successful talk show for almost 25 years was quietly buying up radio stations and California real estate. He was also busy creating the two most popular game shows in television history: "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy!" Then in 1986, his personal fortune took a quantum leap when he sold Merv Griffin Enterprises, which included the two game shows, to Coca-Cola for $250 million-plus.
The following year Forbes magazine listed him as the wealthiest entertainer in America. The news that Merv Griffin was wealthier than the likes of Bob Hope or Bill Cosby surprised a lot of people. It also surprised Merv Griffin.
"I was driving my car on Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills listening to the radio when I heard this announcement that Forbes magazine had just named the richest performer ever in show business," Merv recalls. "And then they said, `We'll be right back after this message.' And I thought, `It's gotta be my buddy [Clint] Eastwood.' Then I thought, `It's gotta be Steven Spielberg or George Lucas.'
"Then they came back and said, `It's Merv Griffin,' and I went `AAAAGGGHHHH' and almost drove up the curb. Then I started looking at cars passing by, wondering if everybody was looking at me."i
Tackling Trump
Actually, it was in March 1988 when everybody really started looking at Merv Griffin. That was when he took on The Trumpster himself, waging a lengthy takeover battle for Resorts International with its flagship hotel and casino in Atlantic City and four more hotels in the Bahamas. Merv's aggressive corporate raid on Donald Trump shocked the public: Here was this mild-mannered, Clark Kent-like guy emerging as a Superman-type corporate raider.
The result of the takeover battle was a split between Griffin and Trump of the Resorts International package. And although the final word on who won and who lost is still up for grabs in the business community (Resorts International lost $303 million in 1989 and recently filed a Chapter 11 reorganization plan), the confrontation between public tycoon Trump and secret tycoon Griffin shocked even some of Merv's colleagues.
"I really didn't know he had built this empire with the game shows," said his friend Warren Cowan, head of Rogers & Cowan, a public relations firm. "I knew him as a singer and the best interviewer that talk shows have ever had."
So, Merv is asked, how did this overnight metamorphosis happen?
He laughs, puffs on his Marlboro Light, sips coffee from a paper cup. "Well, that's the public's perception of me. But from the first moment I started to make any appreciable money, I was always investing. But quietly.
"In those days, it wasn't a good idea for a performer to be known to have any appreciable assets. I remember in the early days walking down the street with Jackie Gleason, and every truck driver, every taxi driver - everybody - would scream, `Hey, Jackie!'
"Then one day it came out in the paper that Jackie signed a $12 million contract, and from that moment on, nobody ever yelled, `Hey, Jackie!' anymore. The public loses contact with people of any kind of wealth. They just don't feel comfortable seeing you on television when you have that enormous wealth."
But wealth has not changed Merv Griffin, according to those who know him. His affability and good humor is not a pose, and he does not turn into Leona Helmsley with his employees when the public spotlight is turned off.
"He treats everyone the same way," says "Wheel of Fortune" producer Nancy Jones, who has worked with Merv for 15 years. "It doesn't matter if you're a star or a bellman in his hotel, he treats you the same. He's a person who has not been affected by his success and wealth. He really has maintained a sense of reality."
And a good thing, too. Because Merv - like anyone with wealth and power - doesn't exactly travel the way most of us travel. A silver-gray stretch limo waits outside to whisk Merv and his entourage of young associates back from the radio station to the Stouffer Hotel, where Eva Gabor, his longtime companion, awaits. But he seems in no hurry. He's just warming up to the interview.
Right now, for instance, he's working in a few choice thoughts about Donald Trump's current cash crunch. Actually, he manages to work such thoughts in fairly regularly ("He shouldn't have fooled with me," he says at one point), while at the same time insisting that he and Trump are "friendly business associates."
Still, he says that the news of Trump's current financial difficulties does not surprise him.
"It was no surprise at all. If anybody had looked at how this great conglomerate was being put together, it was all O.P.M. - Other People's Money. And if that stack of cards starts to slip, it all slips. So here we are now, two years after Resorts International . . . " He pauses, and a cat-that-ate-the-canary look lights up his face. "So now, two years later, I don't have a cash crunch problem, and everything seems to be collapsing around him."i
Master of many games
Merv gets up to pour himself another coffee. "I just dropped 43 pounds," he announces proudly. Dressed in an expensive, finely tailored suit he is, in fact, looking good. But more than anything else, Merv Griffin comes across as a man who likes his life.
"Merv is having fun," Cowan says. "He's enjoying his money."
And how about that energy! Even after a whirlwind schedule of flying in from Los Angeles, doing a talk show and promotions, taping a television interview, Merv is unflaggingly energetic. Friends say it runs in his family. An avid tennis player from a line of tennis players - his father was Pacific Coast champion, Merv says proudly, and his uncle was a tennis pro - he and Eva Gabor are well-known on the celebrity tennis circuit.
Merv is still active in the TV game show business. "Monopoly" is his newest show; it premiered in prime time Saturday night on ABC.
Colleagues in the game show business contend that Merv Griffin is a genius when it comes to creating a game show format. "He understands games," says Mark Goodson, one of the country's top game-show producers and the man who gave Merv his first job as a host on "Play Your Hunch."
Apparently, Merv is also good at picking game show hosts and hostesses. It was Merv who spotted Pat Sajak, for instance, on a local weathercast and insisted he be hired as host of "Wheel of Fortune." And it was Merv who picked Vanna White. She proves, he says, The Merv Griffin Big Head Theory:
"The camera just loved her face," Merv says. "Why? Because her head's too big for her body. She's asked me to stop saying that, but it's true. I said, `Vanna, you don't understand. Joan Crawford's head was too big for her body; Marilyn Monroe's head was too big for her body. Bette Davis. All the great actresses had heads too big for their bodies.' "
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB