from msnbc.com--


Merv Griffin dies at 82

Entertainer turned multimillionaire produced 'Jeopardy,' 'Wheel of Fortune'



Television Legend
A singer, a talk-show host, a creator of popular game shows – Merv Griffin
made his mark on the world of entertainment.

BREAKING NEWS
AP
Updated: 3 minutes ago


LOS ANGELES - Merv Griffin, the entertainer turned impresario who parlayed his “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune” game shows into a multimillion-dollar empire, has died. He was 82.

Griffin died of prostate cancer, according to a statement from his the family that was released by Marcia Newberger, spokeswoman for The Griffin Group/Merv Griffin Entertainment.

Griffin, who began his career as a $100-a-week radio singer in San Francisco, soon moved on to become the featured vocalist in Freddy Martin’s band.

That led to a brief film career, in which he appeared opposite Doris Day and Kathryn Grayson, and later to a successful TV career as host of “The Merv Griffin Show,” which aired for more than 20 years.

His biggest financial break, however, came from inventing and producing “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune.”

Merv Griffin, the entertainer turned impresario who parlayed his “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune” game shows into a multimillion-dollar empire, has died. He was 82.

'I was never so bored in my life'
After they became the hottest game shows in television, Griffin sold the rights to them to the Columbia Pictures Television Unit for $250 million, retaining a share of the profits. He started spreading the sale money around in treasury bonds, stocks and other investments.

But he went into real estate and other ventures because “I was never so bored in my life,” he said in a recent interview.

“I said, ‘I’m not going to sit around and clip coupons for the rest of my life,’ “ he recalled in 1989. “That’s when Barron Hilton said, ‘Merv, do you want to buy the Beverly Hilton?’ I couldn’t believe it.”

Griffin bought the slightly passe hotel for $100.2 million and completely refurbished it for $25 million. Then he made a move for control of Resorts International, which operated hotels and casinos from Atlantic City to the Caribbean.

That touched off a feud with real estate tycoon Donald Trump. Griffin eventually acquired Resorts for $240 million, netting a reported paper profit of $100 million.

“I love the gamesmanship,” he told Life magazine in 1988. “This may sound strange, but it parallels the game shows I’ve been involved in.”

This breaking news story will be updated.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20236685

I don't have many memories of his talk show. I do remember that I would come home from school and it would be on in the late afternoons here. I'm sure I watched it many times, but right now the only specific memory of the show I have is what may have been the first major tv appearance by the Village People haha(hey I was 8 at the time and to me that was a big deal.........this was before my musical tastes evolved a bit). Also for some reason I remember Merv introducing Joe Louis, who was sitting in the audience. This was not long before Mr. Louis' death.

from Associated Press--

Entertainer, businessman Griffin dies

By BOB THOMAS, Associated Press Writer Today at 10:15 am

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- 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. He was 82.
Griffin died of prostate cancer, according to a statement from his family that was released by Marcia Newberger, spokeswoman for The Griffin Group/Merv Griffin Entertainment.

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.
His "The Merv Griffin Show" lasted more than 20 years, and Griffin's said his capacity to listen contributed to his success.

"If the host is sitting there thinking about his next joke, he isn't listening," Griffin reasoned in a recent interview.
But his biggest break financially came from inventing and producing "Jeopardy" in the 1960s and "Wheel of Fortune" in the 1970s. After they had become the hottest game shows on television, Griffin sold the rights to Coca Cola's Columbia Pictures Television Unit for $250 million in 1986, retaining a share of the profits.

"My father was a visionary," Griffin's son, Tony Griffin, said in a statement issued Sunday. "He loved business and continued his many projects and holdings even while hospitalized."
When Griffin entered a hospital a month ago, he was working on the first week of production of a new syndicated game show, "Merv Griffin's Crosswords," his son said.

In recent years, Griffin also rated frequent mentions in the sports pages as a successful race horse owner. His colt Stevie Wonderboy, named for entertainer Stevie Wonder, won the $1.5 million Breeders' Cup Juvenile in 2005.

Griffin started putting the proceeds from selling "Jeopardy" and "Wheel" in treasury bonds, stocks and other investments, but went into real estate and other ventures because "I was never so bored in my life."
"I said `I'm not going to sit around and clip coupons for the rest of my life,'" he recalled in 1989. "That's when Barron Hilton said `Merv, do you want to buy the Beverly Hilton?' I couldn't believe it."
Griffin bought the slightly passe hotel for $100.2 million and completely refurbished it for $25 million. Then he made a move for control of Resorts International, which operated hotels and casinos from Atlantic City to the Caribbean.
That touched off a feud with real estate tycoon Donald Trump. Griffin eventually acquired Resorts for $240 million, even though Trump had held 80 percent of the voting stock.
"I love the gamesmanship," he told Life magazine in 1988. "This may sound strange, but it parallels the game shows I've been involved in."

In 1948, Freddy Martin hired Griffin to join his band at Los Angeles' Coconut Grove at $150 a week. With Griffin doing the singing, the band had a smash hit with "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Cocoanuts," a 1949 novelty song sung in a cockney accent.
Doris Day and her producer husband, Marty Melcher, saw the band in Las Vegas and recommended Griffin to Warner Bros., which offered a contract. After a bit in "By the Light of the Silvery Moon," starring Day and Gordon MacRae, he had a bigger role with Kathryn Grayson in "So This Is Love." But after a few more trivial roles, he asked out of his contract.

In 1954, Griffin went to New York where he appeared in a summer replacement musical show on CBS-TV, a revival of "Finian's Rainbow," and a music show on CBS radio. He followed with a few TV game show hosting jobs, notably "Play Your Hunch," which premiered in 1958 and ran through the early 1960s. His glibness led to stints as substitute for Jack Paar on "Tonight."
When Paar retired in 1962, Griffin was considered a prime candidate to replace him. Johnny Carson was chosen instead. NBC gave Griffin a daytime version of "Tonight," but he was canceled for being "too sophisticated" for the housewife audience.
Westinghouse Broadcasting introduced "The Merv Griffin Show" in 1965 on syndicated TV. Griffin never underestimated the intelligence of his audience, offering such figures as philosopher Bertrand Russell, cellist Pablo Casals and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer-philosopher-historians Will and Ariel Durant as well as movie stars and entertainers.

He was also a longtime friend of former President Reagan and his wife, Nancy. When the Reagans returned to California in 1988 after eight years in the White House, Griffin and Hilton threw a $25,000-a-table homecoming gala for the couple.

With Carson ruling the late-night roost on NBC in the late 1960s, the two other networks challenged him with competing shows, Griffin on CBS and Joey Bishop (later Dick Cavett) on ABC. Nothing stopped Carson, and Griffin returned to Westinghouse.

A lifelong crossword puzzle fan, Griffin devised a game show, "Word for Word," in 1963. It faded after one season, then his wife, Julann, suggested another show.
"Julann's idea was a twist on the usual question-answer format of the quiz shows of the Fifties," he wrote in his autobiography "Merv." "Her idea was to give the contestants the answer, and they had to come up with the appropriate question."
"Jeopardy" started in 1964 and the more conventional game show "Wheel of Fortune" was begun in 1975.

Mervyn Edward Griffin Jr. was born in San Mateo, south of San Francisco on July 6, 1925, the son of a stockbroker. An aunt, Claudia Robinson, taught him to play piano at age 4, and he soon was staging shows on the back porch.
"Every Saturday I had a show, recruiting all the kids in the block as either stagehands, actors and audience, or sometimes all three," he wrote in his 1980 autobiography. "I was the producer, always the producer."
After studying at San Mateo Junior College and the University of San Francisco, Griffin quit school to apply for a job as pianist at KFRC radio in San Francisco. The station needed a vocalist instead. He auditioned and was hired.
Griffin attracted the interest of RKO studio boss William Dozier, who was visiting San Francisco with his wife, Joan Fontaine.
"As soon as I walked in their hotel room, I could see their faces fall," the singer recalled. He weighed 235 pounds. Shortly afterward, singer Joan Edwards told him: "Your voice is terrific, but the blubber has got to go." Griffin slimmed down, and he spent the rest of his life adding and taking off weight.

Griffin and Julann Elizabeth Wright were married in 1958, and their son, Anthony, was born the following year. They divorced in 1973 because of "irreconcilable differences."
"It was a pivotal time in my career, one of uncertainty and constant doubt," he wrote in the autobiography. "So much attention was being focused on me that my marriage felt the strain." He never remarried.
Besides his son, Griffin is survived by his daughter-in-law, Tricia, and two grandchildren.

The family said an invitation-only funeral Mass will be held at a later date at The Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills.
___
Associated Press writers Beth Harris and Jeff Wilson contributed to this story.
Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

I will never forget when he had Peter Frampton on his show when Peter was riding the wave of Frampton Comes Alive. Let's also hope that the John Lennon & Yoko Ono appearances will make their way to DVD. They were on video quite a while ago.

As more information becomes available today, the more details are revealed about Griffin's life...


from ABC News--

Entertainer Merv Griffin Dead at 82

TV Game Show King and Entertainment Mogul Suffered From Prostate Cancer

By BRIAN ROONEY / ABC News
Aug. 12, 2007

Merv Griffin, who parlayed a talent for talk and entertainment into a one-man business conglomerate, died of cancer early this morning. He was 82.
A talk show host for nearly 25 years, Griffin was also the creator of the long-running game shows "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy."

With his entertainment earnings, he built a real estate and horse-racing business last valued by some estimates at $1.6 billion.

Originally a singer, Griffin got his start, when he was just 19 years old, as host of his own music show on KFRC Radio in San Francisco. He went on to perform with the Freddy Martin Orchestra, and had a number-one song in 1950, selling three million copies of "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts."
Fame won Griffin an acting contract with Warner Brothers, for which he made a handful of movies, including the lead opposite Katherine Grayson in "So This is Love."

But, movies were not his future, and in the 1960s, television producers were convinced that Griffin's affable personality would make him a comfortable talk show host. Long before Oprah, Griffin dominated talk.
Starting in 1964, "The Merv Griffin Show" was on daytime television — for a time, at night against Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" — for nearly 25 years. He is credited with taping 5,500 shows and interviewing 25,000 guests.
He once said, "I must be doing something right, because everything lasts."
Griffin didn't so much interview his guests as hang out with him. He joked around with such stars as Don Rickles and Jack Benny. And he sat down with political figures — Bobby Kennedy, The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Richard Nixon.
He had an eye for talent, showcasing young guests like Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno and Billy Crystal, who went on to become major stars.
Griffin was a friend of power hitters, both in Hollywood and on the national scene, most notable among them President Ronald Reagan.

In addition to creating his two games shows, which are among the longest-running shows on television, he even wrote the "thinking" music that accompnies the last moments of "Final Jeopardy" as contestants contemplate their answer.

Griffin sold his television company, Merv Griffin Enterprises, to Coca Cola Co. for a quarter-billion dollars in 1986. He used that money to build a real estate and horse breeding conglomerate, Griffin Group/Merv Griffin Enterprises.

He once wrested control of Resorts International from another famous mogul, Donald Trump, and owned a number of hotels and casinos.
Griffin was married in 1958 and divorced in 1976. In 1991, he was unsuccessfully sued for palimony by a male horse trainer, and for sexual harassment by Deney Terrio, the former host of a Griffin production, "Dance Fever."

Griffin is survived by his son, Anthony and two grandchildren.

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=3472131&page=1

Merv was a talk-show icon for many many years... starting around the time Johnny Carson started. That's going way way back to the early 60's.
Merv always had many fascinating guests on his program, which usually ran around 9 pm weeknights here in the Los Angeles area. I can remember watching his show as a young lad with my grandfather. He wasn't flashy as he was comfortable. I never got the impression he was funny or as talented as Carson but... reading over his lifetime accomplishments... Merv was very talented, and in many more areas.
Yes, he was responsible for legendary game shows Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune but... in later years, he was probably more well known for his vast real estate holdings than the talk-show host from years past. Does anyone happen to even remember Arthur Treacher?
Merv was even parodied on SCTV to great effect...

We recently lost Tom Synder, and now another tv icon from our younger days...Merv Griffin... is gone.
Thanks for the many fond memories Merv!

In case anyone is interested, Larry King Live is running a full-hour interview he did with Merv last year. Basically it was to promote a dvd set that was released which was the 40 most interesting people he interviewed. The King show is on right now and would be rebroadcast again at midnight and its featuring clips from many of Merv's shows.

As far as the John Lennon and Yoko Ono appearances, I believe you have Merv confused with Mike Douglas.

Both had similar daytime syndicated talk shows in the 70s, and I think Douglas died last year.

Ah yes. Thank you. I did get that screwed up. That's typical of me. But I definitely do recall the Frampton appearance. That or else I'm going senile. I am saddened by Merv's passing though. Anybody from the Bay Area, where I'm from, usually gets props from me. He's one of them for certain in my book.

Thanks, Merv, for helping me graduate from law school debt-free!

Oh yeah, I remember that story...didja buy any vowels?

Y'know, now that you mention it, I don't think I did. I'll have to check next time I watch the tape.

Wasn't Larry King enraged when his guest Kathy Griffin claimed that Merv's "boy" parties were and are still legendary? Um, earth to Larry. Hello.