My Remarkable Journey (15 page)

“Larry, this is the Chair. I’m really down in the dumps. I got all shellacked, varnished… this was going to be my big break,
and at the last minute they cancel me.”

The guy was clever, so I kept it going. “Well, things look bad for ’80. Do you have any plans for the next election?”

“I’m thinking of giving it a try in ’84,” he said. “I have to start looking for an ottoman to run with me.”

Those were the things you could get away with deep into the night.

There was talk of an October surprise, a last-minute maneuver to release the hostages and save Carter’s presidency. But it
didn’t happen. Reagan won in a landslide. Minutes after he was sworn in, the hostages were released. When they arrived in
the U.S. they were kept a long distance from the press. After stopping to meet their families at West Point, they were flown
to Washington for a heroes’ welcome. Talk about being in the right place at the right time. The hostages were put up at the
Marriott in Crystal City, Virginia, the building next to the studio where we produced my show. Staffers found some of the
marines who’d been taken hostage dancing in a disco and convinced one to come over. If he wanted to go on the air, he was
told, great. If he wanted to watch, that would be fine, too. He decided to do the show. He spent two hours talking about how
the hostages communicated to each other on toilet paper and describing other amazing details of their captivity.

Boy, how Ed Little was right. Not a single listener in Miami or Denver would have turned the dial on that conversation. And
nobody listening in Berlin or Seoul through the American Forces Network would have shut it off, either. My influence was spreading
far and wide as I got closer to the center of events.

Sixty-nine days after Reagan’s inauguration, the president was wounded in an assassination attempt roughly five blocks from
Duke Zeibert’s restaurant. I don’t know why, but when I heard the news I sensed that Reagan would be OK. And he felt the same
way. As he told me years later during an interview, he didn’t even realize he’d been shot. He thought his rib had been broken
when the Secret Service agent jumped on him, pushing him into a car for protection. Reagan had no idea that a deflected bullet
was the origin of his pain until he reached down and discovered blood.

The shooting occurred near a gray stone wall outside the Hilton Hotel. The Hilton had the biggest ballroom in town. We all
knew it well. It was on a street that everybody walked. If I’d stayed in Miami, I’m sure the assassination attempt would have
been a big topic of discussion. But now I was at the center of it all when I walked by the roped-off crime scene on my way
to Duke Zeibert’s. The gunman, John Hinckley Jr., would be defended in court by my friend and mentor, Edward Bennett Williams.
Soon I became good friends with Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

The show took on a life of its own. Senator Al Gore would drive over late at night to come on as a guest. A caller from Portland
became a regular by doing nothing but laughing uproariously. We called him the Portland Laugher. I’d ask him a question and
he’d laugh so contagiously that anyone listening couldn’t help but join him. When the Portland Laugher hadn’t called in for
a while, other listeners would phone in wondering why. The show became like family for night watchmen, hospital workers, pilots,
police, and college students up late studying. One night I got a call from Arkansas. It was the governor, Bill Clinton.

“We’ll get to your point in a second, Governor,” I said. “But first, what are you doing up at two-thirty in the morning?”

“Never mind…” he said.

Stephen Colbert claims he lost his virginity while listening to the show.

When you tuned in, you didn’t know if you were in for laughter or tears. One night I had on the actor, singer, and comedian
Danny Kaye. At three in the morning, a woman called in. She said, “Danny, in my whole life I never thought I’d ever talk to
you. How would I ever get a chance to talk to Danny Kaye? I just want you to know that my son loved you. He used to imitate
you. He sang all your songs. He went into the Navy, and he was killed in Korea. They sent home all the belongings in his footlocker.
The only picture he had in that footlocker was of you. I took that picture and put it next to a picture of him in a double
frame. I dust it every morning. Now I’m talking to you. I just thought you’d like to know that.”

Danny Kaye started to cry. His brother was there, and his brother started to cry. I started to cry. Then Danny Kaye did something
brilliant. He asked the woman, “What was your son’s favorite song?”

She said, “Dinah.” He sang it to her right then and there. It was one of those precious moments that you can never get back
but always remain with you.

When John Lennon was killed, all I did for five hours was take calls about him. There was a lot of crying. I didn’t realize
the impact that the Beatles had until that night. Milton Berle called in. I began to sense that my show was a place that allowed
the nation to come together and grieve.

But it was the humor that I loved the most. I would do psychic readings at four in the morning. Of course, I didn’t know what
the hell I was talking about.

“Tomorrow,” I once told a caller, “you will be in Houston.”

“But I’m in Detroit,” the guy said.

“That doesn’t matter. Tomorrow, you will be at the airport in Houston. You will meet a woman named Martha. She will become
the love of your life.”

“But I’m already married!”

“Trust me.”

The people filming the movie
Ghostbusters
called and asked me to play myself in the movie. They shot me, cigarette in hand, behind the mike. The poet Rod McKuen came
on without any idea of the size of my audience. “I have a new book coming out, and anyone who buys it, cuts out the corner
flap, and sends it to me will get a free copy of my latest record,” McKuen said. Two hundred and fifteen thousand people sent
him the flap. Cost him a fortune.

The newspaper
USA Today
started in 1982, and its founder, Al Neuharth, asked if I’d write a weekly column.
USA Today
was the newspaper for people who got their news through television. The vending machines on corners even looked like television
sets. People made fun of
USA Today
at the start. They called it McPaper. But it was another sign of how America was shrinking, My show added affiliates by the
hundred.
USA Today
is now the nation’s largest selling daily newspaper by a mile.

I was doing my all-night radio show, writing for
USA Today
, and doing a local television interview show every Saturday night. But let me show you how good my timing really was. The
local television executives liked my weekend show so much, they made plans to package it as a syndicated show five nights
a week. They were going to run it in the early evening, before prime time. I had dinner with the general manager of the station
and he was very excited.

“I’m committed to another show for four weeks,” he said. “So I have to carry it for the next month. It’s a daytime show that
they’re trying out at night. It’s got no chance! After four weeks, it’ll be canceled and you’ll come on.”

The show was
Wheel of Fortune
. Daytime show! No chance! It’s turned out to be the longest-running syndicated game show in American television history.
Twenty-five years later, and it’s still running.

But think of it. If
Wheel of Fortune
had failed and my daily show had come about, I never would have joined CNN. Sometimes, what’s bad is good. Sometimes the
best trades in baseball are the ones that aren’t made.

Even though I didn’t like the mugginess of the summers or the harshness of the winters, I loved Washington. My marriage to
Sharon didn’t work out. The move from Miami was a little rough at first. I came home one morning to find that our two daughters—my
stepchildren—had tied my socks into knots. But the kids adjusted well over time. The real problem was that my relationship
with Sharon was either a ten or a one. It was never a six. Even after Sharon and I divorced, we still dated.

My daughter Chaia wanted to live with me. By that point, Sharon and I had separated, and Alene agreed that Chaia needed a
father in her day-to-day life. So Chaia came up from Miami. That was a little adjustment. I’d never had to raise a kid on
my own before. Suddenly I was taking care of a twelve-year-old daughter all by myself.

I’ll never forget the first night. I picked her up at the airport and brought her back to my one-bedroom apartment. It would
be another week before we could shift into a two-bedroom. For the first week she had to sleep on a cot in the living room
while I was in the bedroom.

I went to sleep wondering how I was going to do it.
Oh, man
, I told myself,
I’ve just taken on this responsibility. I have no idea how to make parental decisions. I work all night long. Who’s going
to watch her? How am I going to do this?

I woke up in the morning and Chaia was sitting on the edge of the bed. “Did you get up in the middle of the night?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Did you drink a glass of water?”

“Yeah, there was a glass of water already poured. I drank it.”

“You drank my contact lenses.”

This was my opening adventure in parenthood. One morning, I opened my eyes to find what looked like a rodent peering up my
nose.

“Isn’t he beautiful?” Chaia asked.

Chaia wound up with three ferrets running around the bathroom. She worked on Capitol Hill for a summer and joined me at Duke
Zeibert’s. It was an idyllic time. We went to baseball games with Edward Bennett Williams. I sat with Williams when the Orioles
won the World Series in 1983, and befriended the Orioles announcer Jon Miller. One night, Jon told the audience that he was
going to do a Larry King impersonation for an inning. None of the radio listeners could see that I was sitting next to him.
For the next inning, I lived my childhood dream of announcing a baseball game. On my show later that night, a listener called
and asked, “Were you at the game?”

“No,” I lied, to see what would happen.

“Did you hear the broadcast?”

“No.”

“Well, Jon Miller imitated you.”

“How was he?”

The guy said, “Fair.”

Then another phone call came at just the right time. I was having such a good time in Washington that I didn’t even realize
how good the timing was.

Larry’s great on TV. But he was incomparable on radio. He would do a five-and-a-half-hour show that every mover and shaker
in Washington would listen to. People would work late in the White House and they’d turn on the radio and listen to Larry
on the forty-five-minute trip home. Larry’s resurrection was unbelievable. He had come back like the Phoenix.

There is a story I heard about Larry going to the racetrack with hardly any money during difficult financial times. He left
his car a long way from the track to avoid paying for parking, and he walked.

A couple of months later, he went to the same track with Angie Dickinson in a limo.

O
NE NIGHT
, out of the blue, I got a call from Ted Turner. I liked Ted. I knew him from the Atlanta Braves and the Turner Broadcasting
System. He’d been a guest on my radio show. Now he was running CNN.

CNN was just getting off the ground. I don’t think you could even get it in Washington at that point. I didn’t have it in
my home. The only time I ever saw CNN was when I was on the road. I remember seeing it in Atlanta once. It didn’t look like
much.

I had been a guest once on a CNN show called
The Freeman Report
. Sandi Freeman was on at nine o’clock every night. She did the show out of New York. We discussed all-night radio. She was
pretty good.

So Ted called and said something like, “You know
The Freeman Report
? Sandi Freeman’s contract is up. Her husband manages her, and he’s pissing me off. He’s trying to hang me up for more money.
I’d love to ship his ass out the door. You want to come work for me? You want to do nine o’clock?”

This was a Tuesday night, and her contract was up on Friday.

I said, “Jeez, Ted, I don’t know.”

Not only was I caught off guard, I was also hesitant because I really liked my life at that point. I was single, having a
good time, going to Orioles games at night. I remember going out with Katie Couric when I was in Washington. She was single
and just getting started. She invited me back to her apartment and I was thinking,
This could be good! This could be good!
I wasn’t counting on the roommate she said she had who wanted to meet me. After the dates and the ball games, I’d do my radio
show at midnight. I didn’t want to give up my evenings.

“Ted,” I said, “my agent is Bob Woolf.”

“I know Bob real well,” Ted said. “I’ve negotiated baseball contracts with him. Tell him to call me. Have him call me
now
.”

So I called Bob at home. He called Ted, then called me back.

“Here’s what Ted wants to do,” Bob said. “He’ll give you a three-year contract. He’ll give you $200,000—that will double your
pay. You’re already making $200,000 from radio. The second year, he’ll give you $225,000. And the third, he’ll give you $250,000.
But he needs to know today, because he wants to put the screws to this guy.”

I said, “Does he want
me
so much, or does he just want to put the screws to this guy?”

“Well, here’s one good point I negotiated. At the end of the first year, if you don’t like it, you’ve got an option to leave.
It’s your option. Not his option. So if it doesn’t work for you, or if you’re missing your Orioles games, you can go back
after a year.”

“Well, that ain’t bad,” I said. “Tell him OK.”

Bob called Ted and set up the deal. Ted called the husband to set up a meeting. Apparently, the husband thought he was going
to get the contract he wanted. From the way I heard the story, he was a brusque guy. He came into the meeting and said something
like, “Well, Ted, I’m glad you came around to
our
way of thinking.”