Merv Griffin- A Life in the Closet Read online

  Eva would always listen patiently to him. Like a good courtesan, she would be reassuring. “You succeeded beyond your wildest fantasies, I am sure. You became not only rich, but the wealthiest man on the planet.”

  “I wouldn't go that far,” he cautioned her.

  “Rich and also adorable, an irresistible combination,” she said. “Zsa Zsa and I have found that rich men are all bastards. You're a marvelous exception to that rule. Who on Earth doesn't adore Merv Griffin?”

  ***

  “From the age of five, I became a showman,” Merv later recalled. “I've spent my entire life putting on a show.” At his grandmother's house on South Eldorado Street in San Mateo, he took down the curtains from her living room and used them as a stage curtain. “I started putting on shows for our neighborhood on her back porch. By the time I turned seven, I was known as the P.T. Barnum of San Mateo. No one could believe a kid as young as me could have such talent.”

  A neighbor, Sally Paule, told him, “If you were a girl, I bet you could go to Hollywood and replace Shirley Temple.”

  “That was music to my ears,” he said. “For a while I actually believed her, almost up until the time I began to face the disappointments and realities of show business.”

  Merv was the producer and emcee of all the shows, recruiting any kid in the neighborhood who had even a modicum of talent. All the shows began at three o'clock on Saturday afternoon, and tickets sold for a dime. Merv preferred musicals. He ripped off plots and scenes from almost any Shirley Temple movie, especially Stand Up and Cheer, Little Miss Marker, and Wee Willie Winkie.

  He was also fascinated by “The Three Stooges” reserving the character of Moe Howard for himself. “I liked Moe the best. He was cranky and sour-faced, and I could do that. But what I liked most was his tendency to inflict violence on the other Stooges. I perfected the two-fingered eye-poke, and nobody slapped faces better than I did—or pulled hair. Yes, I even yanked noses with pliers. Once I got carried away and broke this fat kid's nose. He screamed bloody murder. My parents vetoed all further Stooges shows.”

  Mervyn Edward Griffin Jr.

  aged 5

  Once when asked why he was so attracted to The Three Stooges, Merv said, “In show business you can't go wrong being gloriously lowbrow. But I soon got back to my singing. Slapstick comedy was just a detour for me.”

  When not staging shows, Merv published a local gossip rag, The Whispering Winds. He was only eight years old when he launched that sheet printed on an old Ditto machine. Nearly all the neighbors bought copies since it was filled with local gossip. Whispering Winds also contained rave reviews for any show Merv produced.

  Mr. and Mrs. George Faber lived three doors down from the Griffins. When Mrs. Faber went to Oregon to visit her relatives, Merv noticed a beautiful blonde woman, perhaps from San Francisco, slipping into the Faber household. In the next edition of The Whispering Winds, he reported this tidbit of gossip. The issue became a best-seller, and screams could be heard coming from the Faber household when Mrs. Faber returned home.

  Publication was suspended when Merv printed a dirty joke he didn't understand. Neighbors complained to the Griffins that their eight-year-old son was a pornographer. The Whispering Winds whispered for the last time.

  From that early mimeographed paper, Merv developed a life-long love of gossip that would never leave him and which would become in time one of the underpinnings of his empire.

  Rita Griffin,Merv's mother, had been born into a family of musicians, and she encouraged her son not only to sing but to take piano lessons. To earn extra money during the Depression, Claudia Robinson, Merv's aunt, gave piano lessons to some of the teenagers in the neighborhood. She also began giving Merv piano lessons when he wasn't even tall enough to sit on a piano stool and reach the keyboard. He had to stand.

  Both Rita and Claudia knew that the lessons had to be kept secret from Merv Sr. He disapproved of a boy taking piano lessons, viewing most musicians as “long-haired sissies. Boys should be taught sports. Leave the piano playing to the fat lady at the church.”

  After weeks of constant practice, Merv learned to play better than Claudia herself. “He's learned every one of my tricks,” she said. “The little devil plays better than I ever did. It's time he received more advanced lessons.”

  Rita agreed and began to cut back on the grocery money, saving quarter by quarter to secure a more professional instructor for her son. She even baked cakes—a pineapple and coconut custard was her specialty—and sold them to her neighbors for fifty cents each.

  Shortly before his thirteenth birthday, Merv Sr. learned that his son was a talented piano player. About thirty-five people, including relatives, had been invited to Merv Sr.'s birthday party. A neighbor, Betty Paulson, told him that she'd wanted to spend money on piano lessons for her own son. “But after hearing your Buddy play, I decided that I should encourage my boy to become a fireman or a policeman or something. I've never heard talent like Buddy's. He's a budding Mozart.”

  Merv Sr. disguised his shock until he could corner his son alone. “Do you know how to play the piano?” he demanded.

  “Yes, dad.”

  “Then God damn it, sit down and play something. Play and sing Danny Boy.” After Danny Boy, Merv played Tea for Two, one of his father's all-time favorites.

  From around two-thirty that afternoon until shortly after five, Merv never left the piano. He was occasionally joined by others at the party for a sing-along.

  “Merv Sr. was stunned at the talent of his son,” Claudia later said. “And also angered that Buddy's piano lessons had been kept a secret from him.”

  “From that day on,” Merv said, “my dad encouraged me to sing and play the piano as much as mom and Aunt Claudia did. When all the neighbors complimented him on my recitals, dad decided that having a talented musician as a son was something to be proud of—not ashamed of.”

  In time Merv was taught by a mysterious woman named “Madame Siemmens,” who incorporated green and purple eye shadings in her makeup, giving her a vampiric look.

  Merv dreamed of being a classical musician—Edvard Grieg was his favorite composer—and he temporarily abandoned his plan to go to Hollywood and replace Bing Crosby. When not playing Grieg's music at the piano, he became adept at mastering the works of Chopin and Beethoven.

  One day he came across some sheet music resting on the piano. A big hit in its day, the song was called “In a Little Gypsy Tearoom.” He played the song and loved it so much that he didn't get up from the piano until he'd mastered it.

  That night he couldn't sleep, as he kept hearing the sound of the song over and over in his head. The next morning he went to see his Aunt Claudia, informing her that he was going to devote his life—“from this moment on”— to pop music.

  She was shocked at his sudden conversion, later telling the family, “It was like the most rigid Christian converting to Buddhism overnight. But I went along with it, because I knew he was sincere. I told him to follow his instincts. It was good-bye Grieg, hello Rudy Vallee.”

  She was referring to Rudy Vallee, the very square, wavy-haired crooner with the quivery vocals who had all the women screaming, just like Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and The Beatles would do years later. “I got pretty tired of hearing Merv sing ‘I'm Just a Vagabond Lover,’ and was happy to see the day come when he dropped Vallee as his idol. I kept telling him to develop his own style. I even urged him to take acting lessons, pointing out that singing in night clubs was limited. ‘A singer who can act and sing can make it big in the movies,’ I told him. Of course, I also pointed out to him that he'd have to lose a few pounds if he wanted to become a romantic singing star in films like Nelson Eddy.”

  ***

  “If Dad continued to be worried about me becoming a sissy, he never confronted me with it,” Merv later told his close confidant, Hadley Morrell. “I was a bit of a sissy when I was growing up. I don't mean effeminate or limp-wristed, nothing like that. But I just wasn't interes
ted in football—maybe football players—and certainly not in gals. Instead of being on a baseball field or a basketball court, I'd rather sit in my room listening to Ethel Merman sing hits from Broadway shows. I also loved Billie Holiday.”

  Merv hated St. Matthews grade school, rebelling at its strict code of discipline and rigidly enforced draconian rules. He was constantly sent to the principal's office for disrupting class.

  When he was enrolled in San Mateo High School, he found the atmosphere more relaxed. Perhaps as a defense mechanism to protect himself from being too fat, he became the class clown. As he told Rita, “If they're laughing with me, they aren't laughing at me.” He became known as “that funny little fat boy,” a roly poly bundle of charm and humor. He was especially popular among girls, although not in any romantic sense.

  He was terribly bright, one of the brightest boys in his high school. Yet because of an attention deficit syndrome, he made only Ds or even Fs, getting an occasional C.

  As he grew older, he became interested in boys, developing one crush after another, usually on one of the handsome school athletes, especially football players. But the objects of his affection always seemed to have a girlfriend waiting for them at the end of the game. “Saturday's Hero always had a Saturday night date with a beautiful girl,” Merv later told Hadley.

  “No one wanted to make it with a 240-pound boy,” Merv later recalled to Hadley. “Of course, in those days I didn't know what ‘make-it’ really meant. First things came first. My goal was to get a kiss on the lips. I'd seen girls getting them from handsome boys, and I wanted to know what it was like. Instead of lovers, I settled for male friends, both gay and straight.”

  Merv as a plump teenager

  One such friend was Bob Murphy, whose parents had bought him a mother-of-pearl drum set for Christmas. When he grew up, Murphy would pursue a career in real estate, although he maintained a taste for show business. In the early 1960s, Merv, remembering his long ago friend, hired him to work behind the scenes on his game show, Wheel of Fortune. In time Murphy became producer—later executive producer—of The Merv Griffin Show on TV.

  Merv also became close friends with Cal Tjader, who would become one of the foremost popularizers of Latin music in 1950s America. He primarily played the vibraphone, but was also accomplished on the bongos, congas, timpani, drums, and, like Merv, on the piano.

  At the age of seven, Tjader was brought by his parents to San Mateo where he became friends with Merv. His father had danced and his mother had played the piano on the vaudeville circuit. His father taught Cal to tap dance, and he became billed in the Bay area as “Tjader Junior,” a tap-dancing wünderkind.

  Merv would call Cal in 1980 to congratulate him on his Grammy win for his album, La Onda Va Bien, capping off a career that spanned more than forty years.

  But decades before that, Cal invited Merv to join him every afternoon at his parents' dance studio. Merv would later credit Cal and the Tjader family for “pushing and shoving me into show business.”

  Although Merv hardly had the physique of a ballet dancer, he began to hang out at the dance studio after school let out. He watched the boys and girls go through their routines, and often accompanied dancers on the rickety piano during rehearsals. At no point did he ever attempt to learn dance steps himself. He didn't want the other students making fun of him and his weight.

  It was at the Tjader Dance Studio that Merv met three of his future best friends, who would remain early confidants of his until time and distance eventually separated them. Paul Schone, Bill Robbins, and Johnny Riley.

  Unlike Merv, each had a lithe, agile body, and each aspired to pursue dancing as a career. None of them had an interest in football either. Of the three, Johnny danced to a different drummer. He was bold in stating his wish “to become the greatest ballet dancer in the world.” Bill and Paul had more modest goals and would happily settle for the role of chorus boys on Broadway. Merv quickly bonded with these young men, especially the handsomest one, blond-haired, blue-eyed Johnny, who was the most charismatic of the lot.

  Soon all three dancers became star performers in Merv's Saturday afternoon shows. “We were a precursor to those Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland movies where they were always putting on a show,” Merv said. Later he would talk about these shows of his to the real Judy Garland herself.

  An adult view of Merv's

  childhood friend Cal Tjader,

  Merv Sr. had grown comfortable with the idea of his son becoming a singer or a piano player. But young Merv always thought his father disapproved of his dancer friends and really didn't want them in his house. He found Bill Robbins “too girlish” and once asked Merv not to hang out with him any more.

  “He's my friend,” Merv protested. Since his father never brought up the subject again, Merv continued to see all three dancers. “My father was a kind man,” Merv later recalled. “I think he saw how I was developing and wasn't too happy about it. But Aunt Claudia was in my corner. For a woman born in her age and time, and with her strong religious beliefs, she was hip for her age. She assured my father it was just a stage I was going through.”

  “He'll grow out of it,” Claudia told Merv Sr. “One day he'll settle down with a beautiful gal—that is, if he takes off some weight—and raise a house filled with happy kids. You'll be the proudest grandfather on the block.”

  “I'm not so sure that's how it'll work out,” Merv Sr. told her. “Not if he goes into show business. We know the kind of men who inhabit the world of show business. Bad influences, every one of them.” But in spite of his reservations, Merv Sr. never again interfered in his son's present or future friendships.

  Merv later told Johnny, “I think dad was disappointed in me, in the way I was growing up, but he never said anything. I sensed a growing separation between us, though we were very limited in what we could talk about. Many subjects were taboo, and we never went there.”

  Of the three dancers, Merv grew closer to Johnny than all the others. Even though he was only fourteen, he seemed more experienced than Bill or Paul. Johnny sensed Merv's growing physical attraction to him and quickly deflected it. “Let's be sisters,” Johnny said. Merv had never heard a man refer to himself as a “sister.” “You're just not my type. It's better that we remain friends. I like sports heroes, men like that.”

  To soften the blow, he invited Merv to “be my date” at a Saturday afternoon football game. “But you hate football,” Merv said.

  “I may hate football, but not the boys who throw the balls. Especially one named Terry Fletcher.”

  Merv knew the name. He was the stud of the school. All the girls were after him. A rumor had spread that the school bad boy had gotten one of the girls pregnant, and she'd had to drop out.

  Merv attended the game with Johnny, who seemed mesmerized not by the game but by any play Terry made. It was a custom in those days that fathers of the players, perhaps their younger brothers as well, join the players in the locker room to congratulate them after the game or beef up their sagging spirits if they lost.

  Although Merv was reluctant to come along, he was urged on by Johnny. In the locker room visitors were dressed in suits, the players in jock straps, uniforms, or nothing at all. Terry had been instrumental in winning the game, and he received most of the congratulations.

  As the crowds thinned out, Johnny urged Merv to stick around. Both boys were there to watch Terry undress and head for the shower, where he lathered his body with soap. The athlete seemed to be aware that he had an audience. If anything, he didn't attempt to shoo them away or conceal himself. Merv noted that he paid special attention to soaping his penis, which was beginning to grow hard.

  When a coach came over, he threw a wet towel at Merv. “Get the hell out of here!”

  But for some reason the coach shook Johnny's hand. “Welcome,” the coach said.

  Merv waited outside for Johnny, only to learn later that he'd been given the job of water boy. “Oh, the fun I'll have. That Terry baby can
be had.”

  “Do you think?”

  “Do I think? I know.”

  As they were heading across the field, Merv had a question for Johnny. “Until today I didn't know that boys grew that big.”

  “You mean Terry? Girl, you ain't seen nothing yet.”

  ***

  Johnny turned out to be a prophet. In later years, a type of young man like Terry would be referred to as “gay for pay.” Long before that, he would have been called “rough trade.” Soon Johnny was spending all his money on private sessions with the school athlete.

  One day he wanted to show off Terry's prowess to all his friends, including not only Merv, but Bill Robbins and Paul Schone. When Johnny's parents were gone one afternoon, he invited his friends to his basement where they sat around Terry, watching him masturbate. The athlete was paid five dollars for his performance, money the boys earned by staging Merv's Saturday afternoon shows.

  Before putting back on his blue jeans that day, Terry told the boys that he was available for private sessions with each of them, granting the three the same privileges he gave Johnny. “But it'll cost you,” he said as a final warning.

  As far as is known, Merv had his first sexual experience with Terry. Merv later told Johnny that Terry “didn't find me much of a cocksucker compared to you, but he took my five dollars anyway.” There were many repeat performances, not just between Merv and Terry, but between the football player and both Bill and Paul—that is, when Terry wasn't engaged by Johnny, who always got first choice. Before the end of the school year, Terry had saved up enough to buy a car. Sometimes Merv and Johnny saw him riding around town with the campus beauty queen in the front seat with him. “I bet we get more of Terry than that stuck-up bitch does,” Johnny told Merv.