Merv (7 page)

If I hadn’t booked him on
The Tonight Show
after his debacle with Jack, Woody’s stand-up career would have struggled a lot longer. There’s no question that his talent would have made him a star eventually, but Jack’s hostility was a big obstacle for any young performer to overcome.

Ironically, for the last forty years Jack has taken credit for giving Woody Allen his first break on national television. I kid you not.

That year Jack finally quit
The Tonight Show
for good. After five tumultuous years, he needed a break. As soon as the announcement was made, the jockeying to succeed him began.

I was also getting tired of my day job, having done
Play Your Hunch
almost as long as Jack had done
Tonight
. (There’s a delicious twist to what happened after I left
Hunch
that July. For a brief time it was hosted by Gene Rayburn, who was then replaced by none other than…Robert Q. Lewis. I had to chuckle when I read that the show was finally canceled while he was the host. Did some junior network executive tell him, “I’m sorry, Bob, but
you’re
no Merv Griffin”?)

Paar’s replacement was slated to begin that fall. During the summer I hosted the show for a total of six weeks. Although I had no great expectations of getting
The Tonight Show
myself (there were persistent rumors that Johnny Carson had been promised the job already; they later proved to be true), I went along with what was a rather strange nonaudition audition process.

On one of those summer shows, I had a free-for-all lineup that included the Smothers Brothers (another act that Paar wouldn’t book), my wife, Julann (whom Jack once seriously considered as a regular à la Dody Goodman), and that British actor I’d met on
Play Your Hunch
, Arthur Treacher. Arthur was a spry sixty-eight-year-old whose dry wit was perfect for the talk show format.

At one point in the show, Tommy Smothers got a little crazy and pretended that
he
was the host. So I went with it. I gave him my chair and let him take over the show. While he “interviewed” Julann, I moved over on the couch and spoke quietly with Arthur. I told him then that if I got
The Tonight Show
job, or any show like it, I wanted him as my “gentleman’s gentleman.” His words—and I remember them exactly—were “you dear little man.”

NBC couldn’t fathom the huge ratings I was getting during the summer. I was subsequently told by a network executive that I’d done so well during those six weeks that they wondered openly if they’d made a big mistake in committing to Carson so early.

So they decided to hedge their bets by offering me an hour-long daytime talk show that would air at two in the afternoon, one of the worst time slots imaginable. It would begin in the fall, on the same day that Johnny Carson would take over
The Tonight Show
.

I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of launching a new show simultaneously with Carson’s debut, but as Bob Shanks (a devout Cubs fan) astutely observed, “Merv, they want you warming up in the bullpen in case Johnny gets shelled.”

One big incentive for me to take NBC’s offer was that I could package and produce the show myself. I’d formed Merv Griffin Productions for just that purpose. Not only was this a good idea economically, but it would also provide me with the kind of creative control that would make the show fun to do.

If the deal was to work, there were a number of points that needed to be ironed out. My attorney, Roy Blakeman, had been talking with Herb Schlosser, the network executive (later NBC president) who’d been given the task of signing me.

While negotiations were going back and forth between Roy and Herb, I happened to be in one of the NBC control rooms. A monitor was carrying the closed circuit feed from the network affiliates convention in Houston. I wasn’t paying much attention until I heard my name mentioned.

“And starting in October, Merv Griffin will be a wonderful addition to our daytime schedule.”
I will?

The president of NBC had just announced me in their lineup when I hadn’t yet signed a contract. That was good news for me. Even better, nobody at NBC—particularly Herb Schlosser—had any way of knowing that I possessed this valuable information.

I called Roy Blakeman and, telling him what I’d heard, informed him that “I’m going with you to meet with Herb Schlosser.”

Roy was horrified. “Merv, you can’t. Talent
never
participates in negotiations. It’s not done.”

I said, “Well, there’s a first time for everything. What time is the meeting?”

The following day we arrived at Schlosser’s office and Roy whispered to me, “Let me do the talking, Merv. I think they’re going to make us a very good offer.” I didn’t say anything, so Roy assumed that I’d be a good boy and sit quietly while the grown-ups took care of business.

Schlosser put his offer on the table. Eight thousand dollars a week for me as the host.

“That’s awfully generous, Herb.” Roy was smiling. He’d been right. Or so he thought. “Are you
happy
with that, Merv?” he asked in a slightly patronizing tone.

“Of course not.” I was implacable. Now they were both looking at me with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance.

Then Herb Schlosser asked, “How much
do
you want, Merv?”

“Eighteen thousand.”

“What? Merv, that’s impossible,” sputtered Schlosser. “Nobody makes that kind of money.”

“Well, Herb, I don’t care about
nobody
. I know what my record was for you during the summer and I want $18,000 a week. That’s it. There’s no more negotiation. My lawyer may have told you that $8,000 was a generous offer, but
I
didn’t say that. It’s $18,000. Let me know what you decide.”

I got up, shook hands with Schlosser, and left the office. Roy followed me out into the hallway, shaking his head. “Merv…” he began.

I cut him off. “Don’t even start, Roy. I know what I’m doing. And next time check with me before you accept an offer on my behalf, okay?”

Needless to say, NBC caved. As I’d guessed, they were over a barrel having already announced me to their affiliate stations.

When Herb Schlosser called to tell me that NBC had agreed to my terms, he said, “Merv, if you ever decide not to perform anymore, I’d hire you in a second for our negotiating team.”

I caught one more unexpected break in putting the deal together. Of all places, it came from the United States Supreme Court. They’d finally issued a decision on a case that had been working its way up the judicial ladder for years. The upshot of their ruling was that talent agencies couldn’t wear multiple hats without violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. That meant that MCA (which also owned Universal Pictures) was effectively out of the talent agency business. And it also meant that I didn’t have to pay them a hefty packaging fee for the sale of
The Merv Griffin Show
. Timing, as they say, is everything.

Just as starring in a major motion picture hadn’t been nearly as glamorous as I’d once imagined, my first day at NBC was a rude awakening about what it actually meant to be a network “star.”

In the early sixties, the NBC studios at Rockefeller Center seemed like a warehouse badly in need of a coat of paint. Furniture was scattered and mismatched; the “art” on the walls looked like something you’d pass up at a garage sale. My office was a 9 x 12 cubbyhole with a low ceiling and no windows. Perhaps as a concession to my soon-to-be star status, there was a drape covering one of the walls, behind which there
might
have been a window.

And you know what? I didn’t care a bit. I was having the time of my life. In August, Bob Shanks and I sat down and planned out the first month of Merv Griffin shows, which would begin on October 1. The first thing I did was hire three talented young writers. Dick Cavett and David Lloyd were friends at Yale who had become a writing team working for Paar (David would go on to be an Emmy-winner for such classic sitcoms as
The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, Cheers
, and
Frasier
). The third member of our team was a large, incredibly funny man named Pat McCormick, who you’ll probably remember as a comic actor (he was “Big Enos” in the
Smokey and the Bandit
movies).

They were a great bunch. One time I asked them to come up with some gag songs that I could do on the show. I’d pretend they were examples of some of the terrible songs that people would write “
especially for you Merv
,” and send me in the mail.

Here’s one that Dick wrote (I wrote the music):

Once the writing staff was set, we started booking talent. My first move was to put Woody Allen under contract to appear on the program every Friday. Then I called in some chits. I’d known Joan Crawford slightly back in San Mateo (my old Panda Records partner, Janet Folsom, was friendly with her), so when I called to ask her to appear on my new show, she quickly agreed. Then I called Adela Rogers St. Johns, the prominent newspaperwoman and author, who used to play tennis with Uncle Elmer. She was delighted to know that her former ball boy was doing so well, and she also agreed to be one of my first guests.

Those two months went by unbelievably fast. One day I woke up and—bang—my calendar read October 1. Only nine months had elapsed since Bob Shanks shoved me back onstage to finish that first terrifying show, but I wasn’t the same guy. From the moment I walked into Studio 6B (the same studio Carson would use at night), I felt like I was home.

That first week of shows was a blur. I remember asking Joan Crawford at one point if she had any romantic feelings toward any of her onscreen leading men. She gave the standard studio reply about how “they were all just friends and nothing more.”

Adela, who suffered neither fools nor liars, couldn’t let that one go by. “Now, Joan,” she said, “you
married
three of them. You must have had
some
feelings.”

It was going very well. From NBC’s standpoint, possibly
too
well. Few people remember it now, but for the first six months of
The Tonight Show
, Carson had a lot of trouble getting big names to come on the air with him. He was an unknown quantity and they weren’t willing to trust their careers with him—at least not yet. On the other hand, major stars like Danny Kaye, Montgomery Clift, and Harry Belafonte all agreed to do my show because I’d already proven myself subbing for Paar. The
New York Times
ran a feature story that said “
The Tonight Show
looks better in the afternoon.” And my most important critic—my mother—gave me her highest praise: “Buddy, I like your show better than
Lawrence Welk
.”

The problem for the network (and ultimately for me) was that
The Tonight Show
generated four times more in advertising revenue than my little afternoon show.

After only three weeks on the air,
The Merv Griffin Show
was preempted by the Giants-Yankees World Series, which was broadcast on NBC that year. During the break, we took the show over to London to tape some interviews.

Our big coup in England turned out to be landing the first American interview with a young actor named Peter O’Toole, who’d just completed shooting a motion picture called
Lawrence of Arabia
. I’d been following the press reports about this soon-to-be classic film even before O’Toole was cast in the part. (I’ll bet you didn’t know that Marlon Brando had initially agreed to play Lawrence—it was announced in the newspapers—before changing his mind and backing out. Then Albert Finney was given a screen test, but he turned down the role as well. Try picturing either of them on that camel crossing the desert. Can’t do it, can you?)

The Columbia press agent had pitched Peter O’Toole to us aggressively. After all, he was still a virtual unknown and no one had actually seen the film yet. So when we agreed to tape the interview, the studio people were tremendously excited. They arranged for us to meet the actor at his home in Blackheath. On the appointed day, we caravanned out to this quiet residential neighborhood in three huge television trucks and a line of cars. When we pulled up in front of O’Toole’s house it resembled a parade. Bob Shanks went up to the front door and rang the bell. The maid answered and politely informed him that, “The mister is not in. May I tell him who rang?” We were madder than hell (but not very smart; he was in the corner pub, a block away). We spent the entire trip back to our hotel cursing out the press agent, who was mortified.

There is only one real job requirement for a press agent and that’s an unlimited capacity for humiliation. This guy had no shame. The next day he was back on the phone to us, apologizing profusely and begging us to give O’Toole another chance. “I’ll lose my job,” he pleaded. I thought of pointing out to him that with clients like this, he’d be better off unemployed. But I finally relented.