Merv (17 page)

As all three of us continued the tour, I heard band music coming from somewhere outside. I asked the president if he knew what piece they were playing.

He looked at me quizzically. “You know, Merv, I couldn’t really tell you.”

I feigned incredulity. “You don’t
know?
Gosh, if it was
my
garden, I’d certainly know what the band was playing.”

Both of them were smiling now. Nancy walked over to a nearby window and opened it. The music came drifting up. It was some kind of march. Trying to hear better, all three of us stuck our heads out the window. At that moment, the daily tour of the White House was passing by immediately below us. It was a funny scene, made funnier by the fact that not
one
of the hundred people on the tour happened to look up. If anyone had, they never would have believed it. We stopped by the president’s study and I immediately noticed the numerous jelly bean jars scattered throughout the room. It was a kaleidoscope of candy—jars of yellow, jars of green, jars of purple, jars of orange. There was even a jar containing red, white, and blue beans, layered in a patriotic pattern.

I said to the president, “You really
do
love jelly beans, don’t you?”

He walked over to his desk and opened the top drawer. Inside was a big bag of peanut brittle. “Actually, Merv,
this
is what I really enjoy. But don’t tell anyone, will you? Everybody sends me jars of jelly beans because someone once wrote a story that said I liked them. I wouldn’t want people to think that I didn’t appreciate their gifts.”

“And
I
wouldn’t want all that peanut brittle arriving in the mail,” said Nancy, dryly.

Exactly five months later, I returned to the White House, this time with a camera crew in tow. I’d been granted permission to conduct the first talk show interviews ever broadcast from the first family’s private quarters. The President would be my sole guest for the first forty-five minutes, then Nancy would join us for the final fifteen minutes.

I was allowed to use the Lincoln Bedroom as a place to review my notes. (No matter what anyone tells you, I never jumped on the bed.) Rereading the notes that my staff had prepared, I started to shake my head. These were questions that Sam Donaldson should be asking, not me. I wasn’t a hard news reporter, nor did I want the job.

The problem was that all of my questions had been sent to presidential assistant Mike Deaver weeks in advance. And there wasn’t enough time to make any last-minute changes with Mike—the interview was scheduled to start in twenty minutes.

It was one of those moments where you just say to yourself, “Go for it.” What Orson Welles had done to me, I was about to do to Ronald Reagan. I put aside sheaves of carefully prepared research material, as well as the approved list of questions, and pulled out a blank 4x6 index card. Sitting on Abe’s narrow bed, I just began to write. The questions flowed out of me. I wanted to know what life in the White House was really like. As interested as I was in world events, I knew that I was in a unique position to pose the sorts of questions that most reporters couldn’t get away with.

When we sat down, the only copy of the questions was in my hand. The president must have been puzzled when midway through our forty-five-minute interview, I had yet to ask him any of the questions he’d been told to expect.

When I look back on that interview, one question—and one very personal answer—stands out in my mind.

“After the assassination attempt on your life, Mr. President, did your personal priorities change?”

President Reagan paused before responding. This was definitely off the script, and he was clearly thinking about how he felt. Finally, he was ready to answer.

“Well, no. I can’t really say [that they did]. I think I had them pretty well in line. But Merv, I had to feel—as I learned later how close it was—I had to realize that any time I’ve got left, I owe to Him.”

As he said, “I owe to Him,” the president cast his eyes skyward, just as Orson had done.

Nancy joined us shortly after that and lightened the mood considerably when she described one of her most embarrassing moments in the White House.

“Does anything ever go wrong, Nancy?” I asked. “Has there ever been a terrible moment for you here?”

“I had a meeting up here with a lady and it was a fairly serious meeting,” replied Mrs. Reagan. “She and I and Jim Rosebush, who’s my chief of staff, were all here.”

“The president is laughing already,” I interjected. “It must be terrible.”

“He knows the story,” said the First Lady, her eyes twinkling. “So we finished the meeting. Now I had on a skirt and a blouse. Jim had turned to go to the elevator, thank goodness. I stood up and I had my hand out to say, ‘Thank you and goodbye.’ As I stood, and she stood with her hand out, my skirt just went right down to the floor. And I was standing there with my
blouse
on. I was yelling to Jim, ‘Don’t turn around! Don’t turn around!’ The poor woman was standing there with her arm out and the only thing I could think of to say was, ‘Well, I’m sure this is a meeting you’ll never forget.’ ”

President Reagan will be remembered as one of the greatest chief executives in our nation’s history. With his gentle good humor, unflagging optimism, and clear-eyed vision of a better America, he restored our national pride.

Yet for all of Ronald Reagan’s accomplishments as a leader, I think it is his humanity that I admire most. He is one of the kindest, most compassionate people that I’ve ever met. But more than anything, his love for his beautiful Nancy is astonishing to behold. I’ve never known two people who love each other so deeply. I am honored by, and grateful for, their friendship.

I
first heard Whitney Houston sing at a small New York nightclub over on Tenth Avenue. She was just a kid, only twenty-one years old at the time. A recording executive I knew had called me and said, “Merv, there’s this fantastic girl singer—actually she’s a model, but she’s trying to have a singing career. She’s giving a little performance tonight and I’d really like you to come see her. She’d be terrific on your show.”

The club wasn’t crowded, so my first reaction was that she probably wasn’t any good. But then she started to sing.

I thought, “That’s a
model?
Models don’t have voices like that.” My God, she was unbelievable—the voice of an angel.

I went backstage after her set and we were introduced. Cutting through the preliminaries, I said, “Whitney, I’m doing my show at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in Lincoln Center all this week and I want to have you on tomorrow night.”

Bear in mind, I never did this. Even if I liked someone, I made it a rule to leave the actual booking to my staff. Every once in a while I’d pass on a conversation that I’d had with someone about coming on the show, but I almost never invited someone to appear on a specific night.

Whitney couldn’t believe it. “You’re kidding.
Really?”

“Really,” I said, feeling like Ziegfeld.

Ah, the advantage of celebrity. You could say something utterly incredible like, “I want to have you on my show tomorrow night,” and people had to take you seriously.

Since the taping was less than twenty-four hours away, I asked a practical question. “Do you have any arrangements?”

“Well, I’ve done an album with Clive Davis that hasn’t been released yet.” Then she said, “By the way, Mr. Griffin. I think you know my mother—Cissy Houston.”

“
She’s
your mother?” I’d known Cissy for years. She was a great session singer who’d sung backup for the Supremes and Aretha Franklin. Not to mention that her sister—Whitney’s aunt—was Dionne Warwick. This girl had quite a pedigree.

There were over a thousand people in the audience to see Whitney Houston’s first television appearance. They weren’t disappointed; she brought the house down. For an encore, I called her back out to sing a duet with her mother, whom she’d brought along for “luck.” Like she needed it.

C
omedians were always my favorite guests, particularly when it was someone new that later scored big.

In 1981, Jerry Seinfeld made his television debut on
The Merv Griffin Show
, and it was obvious to everyone that he would have a huge career. He’d just turned twenty-seven, but he looked eighteen.

It’s the dream of every young comic to be invited over to the couch for an interview when he finishes his act. It’s something of a rite of passage, after which a comedian’s career is taken more seriously. In show business parlance, this is called “paneling.” For some, it takes a long time to wangle that invitation. Others never get one.

His very first time out, Jerry got to “panel.” He was as funny chatting with me about his life as he was doing his routine for the audience. He talked about an experience that we’ve all had, taking tests in school:

He had
everyone
—me, the audience, even the normally jaded crew—laughing hysterically.

Here’s a good one. You’ll like this. It turns out that a certain sixteen-year-old girl from Long Island happened to be watching my show that afternoon. This girl also thought that Jerry was very talented. So talented, in fact, that she took down his entire act verbatim, then performed it herself at a local comedy club the very next night.

Shortly after that, someone (not Jerry’s lawyer) was kind enough to explain to Miss Roseanne Teresa O’Donnell of Commack, New York, that you weren’t supposed to use other people’s material without their permission.

On the other hand, I was very flattered when Rosie told me (and every reporter who interviewed her) that she had modeled her talk show after mine. I was familiar with her stand-up act and I knew that she’d be a hit, even before she went on the air. She’s a natural. I’d seen her walk into a room and people would just laugh at everything she’d say, even when she wasn’t performing.

Over the years, Rosie has also come to me for both career and business advice, which I’ve been happy to give her. Even during her show’s first season, we had discussions about how to know when it was the right time to leave, and of the importance of doing so on her own terms. I have nothing but admiration for the way Rosie has handled herself, both personally and professionally. We haven’t heard the last from her, not by a long shot.

In ways that I wasn’t aware of at the time, my show affected a lot of people’s lives. Once I asked Arnold Klein, now one of the world’s leading dermatologists, to talk about skin cancer. Americans were just starting to learn about the dangers of pursuing the perfect tan. And in a culture that idealized the beach, this information was hard for a lot of people to accept.

“All right,” I said, challenging Klein to back up his claims, “you guys keep talking about melanomas. Let’s hear you describe one in detail.”

Following the broadcast, we got a huge amount of mail from viewers who said that Klein’s description of what a melanoma looked like caused them to get a potentially life-saving checkup.

The extent of my show’s impact really hit home to me when I was a guest on
Larry King Live
, ten years after
The Merv Griffin Show
had left the air.

Toward the end of the hour-long interview, Larry took a call from a woman in Philadelphia.

“Hello, I’d like to thank Mr. Griffin. He saved my life many years ago with one of his theme shows.”

Larry leaned closer to his microphone, signaling his interest in what the caller had said. “What was it?”

“Rape.” Now she was talking to me. “You had a woman on there who said it was time for women to start fighting back. A man broke into my house and I realized he did not have a weapon and I fought.”

“You fought,” I repeated incredulously.

“And I got him out and he did not rape me. And I have always wanted to thank you for this, always.”

Larry and I just looked at each other, stunned, as she continued.

“You have no idea how much I appreciate what you did. I wish you’d come back on the air because I think you handled it so wonderfully, so professionally, so beautifully, that I remembered it and was able to think [clearly] while this man was there.”

I’m rarely speechless, but I was so moved by her call that all I could think of to say was, “Thank you. I appreciate that. That’s an amazing story.”