hanging around?”
Ever the patient man, Marty put his arm around me as the elevator closed without me in it. “Come on, Merv. They wouldn’t get you up here if you didn’t have a shot. Trust me. They’ll love you.”
At that moment the secretary reappeared and said, “They’re ready for you now.”
I looked at Marty. “Just read the cards, Merv. You’ll be great.”
Well, I was already there. I might as well see it through. It would probably be good for a laugh. And in those days, I needed all the laughs I could get.
As I walked through the door, somebody said, “Now, here’s the star of our show…Merv Griffin!” I found myself standing in a conference room full of Goodson-Todman employees, posing as a studio audience. All of them were applauding as I entered the room.
I turned to Marty, who was right behind me. “I guess we’re playing for keeps, huh?” Which was fine by me. Adrenaline pumping, I stepped right up to the podium and began interviewing the faux contestants. I read the cue cards and discovered that the show was called Play Your Hunch . For the next thirty minutes we played the game, which involved a series of stunts that tested the abilities of the players. The host needed to sing, dance, lead an orchestra, perform in skits—and be funny the whole time. By the time I was through, the applause was clearly genuine.
Then the diminutive producer, Mark Goodson (who I later learned was a fellow San Franciscan), said, “Merv, are you sure you’ve never done a game show before? You’re a natural!” Marty was smiling broadly, although he had the decency not to say “I told you so.”
I did the pilot for Play Your Hunch and, during the six months it took CBS to buy it, I returned to my grueling regimen of staying home and watching television. Occasionally, I even appeared on it. For those months I became the “go-to guy” when they needed a substitute or replacement host on some of the daytime shows. I replaced Carl Reiner as moderator of Keep Talking on ABC, and I was a frequent substitute for Bud Collyer on To Tell the Truth . (On one of those appearances, my panel included a young comedian who already had his own game show: the host of Who Do You Trust? —Johnny Carson.)
But even though I was now getting occasional jobs during the day, I was always home by 11:30 P.M. to watch The Tonight Show . Almost from the moment Jack Paar made his debut as host on July 29, 1957, I was an unapologetic “Paar-tisan,” as his fans were quickly dubbed. With the distance of time, it’s hard to explain just how riveting he was or how obsessed with him America became, almost overnight. It was like watching a high-wire walker work without a net. Or, as one columnist put it, “would this be the night that Jack finally has a nervous breakdown on the air?”
Jack’s emotions were never far from the surface, every night. This made for compelling, if exhausting, television. His feuds were legendary. Powerful newspaper columnists like Walter Winchell and Dorothy Kilgallen were no match for the emerging power of television, and Jack knew it. Once, he literally threw Mickey Rooney off his set.
Yet for all his volatility, Jack was also an extremely bright and engaging interviewer. He was fascinated by the world and he shared that fascination with his viewers. When Castro came to power in Cuba, Jack went to Havana to interview him, for which he was roundly criticized in the press. He sought out Albert Schweitzer in Africa and then he took his show to Berlin, so we could watch that terrible Wall go up on live television.
Jack was at the height of his influence in 1960. His interviews with Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy were considered as pivotal to the outcome of that closely fought presidential election as Oprah’s chats with Bush and Gore would be forty years later. In fact, the president-elect’s father, old Joe Kennedy, sent Jack a note afterward that read: “If we had had
Ever the patient man, Marty put his arm around me as the elevator closed without me in it. “Come on, Merv. They wouldn’t get you up here if you didn’t have a shot. Trust me. They’ll love you.”
At that moment the secretary reappeared and said, “They’re ready for you now.”
I looked at Marty. “Just read the cards, Merv. You’ll be great.”
Well, I was already there. I might as well see it through. It would probably be good for a laugh. And in those days, I needed all the laughs I could get.
As I walked through the door, somebody said, “Now, here’s the star of our show…Merv Griffin!” I found myself standing in a conference room full of Goodson-Todman employees, posing as a studio audience. All of them were applauding as I entered the room.
I turned to Marty, who was right behind me. “I guess we’re playing for keeps, huh?” Which was fine by me. Adrenaline pumping, I stepped right up to the podium and began interviewing the faux contestants. I read the cue cards and discovered that the show was called Play Your Hunch . For the next thirty minutes we played the game, which involved a series of stunts that tested the abilities of the players. The host needed to sing, dance, lead an orchestra, perform in skits—and be funny the whole time. By the time I was through, the applause was clearly genuine.
Then the diminutive producer, Mark Goodson (who I later learned was a fellow San Franciscan), said, “Merv, are you sure you’ve never done a game show before? You’re a natural!” Marty was smiling broadly, although he had the decency not to say “I told you so.”
I did the pilot for Play Your Hunch and, during the six months it took CBS to buy it, I returned to my grueling regimen of staying home and watching television. Occasionally, I even appeared on it. For those months I became the “go-to guy” when they needed a substitute or replacement host on some of the daytime shows. I replaced Carl Reiner as moderator of Keep Talking on ABC, and I was a frequent substitute for Bud Collyer on To Tell the Truth . (On one of those appearances, my panel included a young comedian who already had his own game show: the host of Who Do You Trust? —Johnny Carson.)
But even though I was now getting occasional jobs during the day, I was always home by 11:30 P.M. to watch The Tonight Show . Almost from the moment Jack Paar made his debut as host on July 29, 1957, I was an unapologetic “Paar-tisan,” as his fans were quickly dubbed. With the distance of time, it’s hard to explain just how riveting he was or how obsessed with him America became, almost overnight. It was like watching a high-wire walker work without a net. Or, as one columnist put it, “would this be the night that Jack finally has a nervous breakdown on the air?”
Jack’s emotions were never far from the surface, every night. This made for compelling, if exhausting, television. His feuds were legendary. Powerful newspaper columnists like Walter Winchell and Dorothy Kilgallen were no match for the emerging power of television, and Jack knew it. Once, he literally threw Mickey Rooney off his set.
Yet for all his volatility, Jack was also an extremely bright and engaging interviewer. He was fascinated by the world and he shared that fascination with his viewers. When Castro came to power in Cuba, Jack went to Havana to interview him, for which he was roundly criticized in the press. He sought out Albert Schweitzer in Africa and then he took his show to Berlin, so we could watch that terrible Wall go up on live television.
Jack was at the height of his influence in 1960. His interviews with Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy were considered as pivotal to the outcome of that closely fought presidential election as Oprah’s chats with Bush and Gore would be forty years later. In fact, the president-elect’s father, old Joe Kennedy, sent Jack a note afterward that read: “If we had had
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