Name: Talk Show Hosts Collection on Letterman, Part 5 of 7: Merv Griffin
Uploaded: 2021-02-07T02:33:34.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Talk Show Hosts Collection on Letterman, Part 5 of 7: Merv Griffin' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-02-07. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Talk Show Hosts Collection on Letterman, Part 5 of 7: Merv Griffin' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-02-07. Transcript available.

Talk Show Hosts Collection on Letterman, Part 5 of 7: Merv Griffin

"We'll see you next week."
"You'll see you next week."
Welcome back.
So, my first guest
is one of television's
most popular personalities.
Please welcome Merv Griffin.
"I've got to have a little bunch
of cake in action.
There they are,
standing in the way.
Big, one, small, one,
some as big as your hair,
but I've got to have
a little bit of a sound
that's exactly the same.
"I've got to have a little
a little bit of a deal."
"Okay, the pressure's on, David."
"Yeah, I know, it's tough."
"Interview me."
"I've been on your show
a couple of times,
and I'm just starting out here.
Some say I'm also finishing up."
"No, never."
"You helped my Wheel of Fortune."
"Is that right?"
"That's mine, you know."
"How so?"
"Because you're so hot
in the morning
that it carries through
Wheel of Fortune."
"Is that true, Merv?"
"Yeah, yeah."
"Well, thank you.
I appreciate that."
"I like your furniture, too.
It's really nice."
"Let me ask you here.
"You do a lot of these shows.
You have been on the air continually."
"Yours is the only one I have."
"No, no, I don't mean that.
Your own show.
Continually now for a long time."
"Yes."
"And I said in the beginning of the show,
there's only a handful of people
who not only sustain in television,
but dominate and influence
and become fixtures.
And I think you've got to be a very bright individual
and a very resourceful individual to do that.
But in the long haul, what happens on a show
and you know you're in trouble?"
"You let it happen."
"I know, but what?"
"I mean, you just let it happen.
And then you sit back like this and let it collapse."
"Yeah."
"Then you say we'll be right back."
"That's my tombstone, you know."
"Yeah."
"I've got it figured out."
"I will not be right back after this message."
"Do you like that?"
"What for you makes a real good guest?"
"Uh, probably a big mouth."
"Somebody who will just say everything out loud."
"Not running a popularity contest anymore."
"Just having fun, you know."
"So you like somebody to sit down and just take off?"
"Yeah."
"So when you sit back like this and let it collapse."
"Yeah."
"Then you say we'll be right back after this message."
"That's my tombstone, you know."
"That's my tombstone, you know."
"Yeah."
"I got it figured out."
"I will not be right back after this message."
"Do you like that?"
"What for you makes a real good guest?"
"Uh, probably a big mouth."
"Somebody who will just say everything out loud."
"And not running a popularity contest anymore."
"Having fun, you know."
"So you like somebody to sit down and just take off?"
"Yeah, yeah."
"Am I doing it?"
"Yeah."
"Oh."
"I want to be a good guest."
"You are?"
"This could be a whole new career for me."
"Being a guest?"
"Merv, guest."
"Yeah, I don't pay as well as the other way around."
"You're kidding."
"No, uh-uh."
"I watch you every morning. Do you know that in California?"
"I know it in most of the states."
"Yeah."
"Your Honor."
"Uh, now let me ask you about, um..."
"Your, uh..."
"You said..."
"Oh, I thought you liked it."
"No, no, I'm thinking here."
"Uh-huh."
"Tell me..."
"You have to lock eyes with me."
"You have to do that to get the best story out."
"Okay."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, heaven."
"There has to be an intensity to the interview."
"Don't look away."
"It's tough to, uh, to, uh, see my notes when I'm locked on your eyes."
"Ah."
"Now, tell me about, uh, Judy Garland."
"Judy Garland."
"Well, that's, that's a part of the book."
"Judy Garland probably was, from the time I was a kid,"
"I mean, we were about the same age."
"Uh, I just loved her."
"I mean, I just thought she was the greatest."
"I, she, I could cry at her movies."
"You know, the time Gene Kelly slammed his hand in the trunk to keep from going
to war."
"That kind of thing got me."
"Anyway, I just followed her whole career."
"Are you interested, David?"
"Yeah."
"Okay."
"And I just loved her all my life."
"I just thought she was the greatest superstar."
"Most thrilling performer I ever saw in my life."
"Uh, I lit, I met her, met her later in her career."
"And, um, she had called me one day, here in New York."
"She'd had a bit of a problem, and she was in the hospital."
"And said she would like to make a big return."
"Come back and do her stuff."
"And her life was straightened out."
"So she said, I'd love to do your show."
"I mean, I was ecstatic."
"So I said, okay."
"And we arranged everything."
"She came down, uh, from Boston."
"Middle of the night, took a train down."
"Checked into a large and famous hotel here."
"At 11 o'clock at night."
"And the night manager looked at her and said,"
"You're not checking in here, you owe us money."
"And threw her out in the street."
"Hmm."
"She had to borrow money from somebody in the street."
"Take a subway to Brooklyn, stay with friends."
"Call me the next day."
"I felt terrible for her."
"I mean, it was one of the greatest superstars we ever knew in this country."
"And, uh, so we called clothes people."
"We called, um, everybody to do her arrangements."
"She didn't have a thing."
"Put her on the show."
"And, uh, she was wonderful."
"It was her last show before she moved to England and, uh, died."
"It's a very sad story."
"And kind of a lesson to everybody."
"At the time, did you, was that pretty well hushed up?"
"Or did people understand the circumstances that she was living under?"
"Oh, I think they did, yeah."
"I mean, she really had a tragic life."
"Do you know what that means?"
"That Frank's playing it down."
"Yeah, no."
"We'll be right back. Don't tell Murr."
"Hey, Murr Griffin is here and, uh, it's a fascinating book."
"And, uh, let me tell you what I'm fascinated by."
"And I mentioned this earlier."
"Just a handful of people survive in television."
"Yeah."
"Uh, Johnny Carson, Dick Clark, yourself, Walter Cronkite."
"These people are institutions in American TV."
"Uh, now, how do you sustain?"
"I've been hammering away here for three months."
"And, and I feel like I've been doing a hard time somewhere."
"Yeah."
"But everybody feels that way."
"You, you propel your career really thickly."
"I mean, for example, if anything, I, I did shows, talk shows in the daytime."
"And they failed and I thought, well, that's the end of it."
"I mean, my whole career is over."
"But oddly enough is what it does is it brings you, there are only 400 people
in show business who have to know who you are."
"And once those 400 know who you are, then they move you on to something else."
"It's the Peter Principle."
"You start, you fail here, but they move you on to a better time period."
"And they move you on to something else."
"A lot of people, out of failure, pull back."
"They withdraw from it and say, oh, well, I'm a disaster in that."
"And I never did that."
"I mean, I had, I was the greatest tax write-off in show business."
"For networks, recording companies, they'd say, let's, we need another tax
write-off, sign them."
"Right?"
"One failure write-off."
"My whole life is out right in that hallway."
"My whole career in show business."
"Here on the sixth floor."
"I started across the street, across the hall here, at 6B, with Play Your Hunch."
"Then I did Word for Word, One in a Million, How's Your Sister?"
"Kiss Your Brother," all those things.
"And they all collapsed around me, but it was great. Makes your mind better."
"You know, when I was looking through this book, the amount of people, and not
just people, but quality people, that you've had on your show."
"And not only had, but helped, like you."
"We're talking about Judy Gerland."
"I read an article about Richard Pryor the other day."
"Yeah."
"And I believe he started on your show."
"He started with me."
"We found him at Cafe La Mama."
"Yeah."
"In the village."
"Woody was the first."
"Woody Allen was the first person we ever put on, that we discovered."
"And I had him under contract, to come on the show every Friday."
"And I released him from that contract."
"Was he a little nervous about coming on?"
"Oh, no. No, he was just wonderful."
"Why did you let him go?"
"Well, because my show was canceled."
"Oh, yeah."
"I didn't want him being at my house, and I had no income."
"That's silly."
"Sure, you don't..."
"And then following Woody Allen came Richard Pryor and George Carlin, and then
Lily Tomlin, and then John Denver, and then Seals and Crofts."
"How many people do you think, different major stars of you?"
"That are operating today."
"Yeah, that you've..."
"About 30, including Burt Reynolds, who started with me from the very beginning."
"Unbelievable."
"Again, and forgive me, but we'll be right back."
"I will."
"Thank you."
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
This book is here this morning.
This book is a fascinating chronicle of not only your life, of course, but just
television
and growing up and stuff.
And you wanted to talk a little bit about your, you had a daytime talk show.
Yeah.
Well, see, I was doing a show here called "Play Your Hunch."
It was right across the hall.
Six feet.
X, Y, and Z.
Yeah.
Jack Parr was the biggest talk show host in the business.
And the only.
He had no competition.
And consequently, when he did something extravagant on his show, it made the
front pages of the
paper, not the television section.
He would do something.
He'd cry, you know, or fight with Ed Sullivan or something on the front page.
Now, nobody could get him as a guest.
He didn't know that I was using his studio in the morning to do a show because
he didn't
come in until four o'clock in the afternoon.
So we were doing around 10 o'clock in the morning.
And it was one of those moments when I'd say the contestants, "Think it over."
And they'd go.
So there was silence in the room.
Now, he had come in early for a dentist appointment and decided he would walk
from his office on the
seventh floor down through the studio.
He walked through.
There was nobody backstage.
And he walked through the curtain.
And we were on the air live.
And he looked and people were thinking it over.
That was my first ad lib, David.
And I looked at him and said, "What are you doing here?"
And he looked at me and said, "What are you doing here?
This is my studio."
And I said, "We are on the air.
There's a major show."
And he jumped and he left.
He did a couple of funny things.
He left and he called his agent and said, "Who is that?"
So they told him, you know.
And he said, "He can take over on a Monday night."
Let him.
Because he was quitting the show anyway.
He didn't care what happened on Monday nights.
So I went in on a Monday night and the whole staff took the night off.
Except for one guy who had to stay and produce the show.
Now, I went out and did my monologue.
I didn't know whether the audience laughed.
I didn't see them.
I didn't do anything.
I was absolutely fainting on the spot.
And I did the monologue and I introduced my agent in the monologue.
I said, "I know you people don't know who I am.
Here's my agent and he will tell you."
But, now, see it was Al Kelly, the double talker.
And they didn't know who he was out there.
He came out and he said, "Merv is a wonderful guy.
And he starred in the Fratestad in the Storm but he's the opponent."
And the whole audience went, "What?"
And they started to laugh, you see.
Then I let him have the show and I said, "We'll be back."
And I left and went off the stage and this kid was standing there, Bob Shanks,
who was producer.
And I said, "I don't know how to do your show and I have to go home."
And he said, "I swear to you, it's in the book."
I said, "I have to go home right now. I cannot."
He said, "Merv, there's 85 minutes to go."
I said, "You have to get somebody else. Dagmar's over there.
They can do it. Or she can do it."
And so...
The guys are vicious, right?
And so I said, "Let her do it. I really have to go home."
He literally pushed me onto the stage again.
And in all of this frantic, not knowing what to do thing,
was very funny to t