COVID claims a King of TV
Stars and leaders pay tribute to legend Larry
LOS ANGELES: The iconic talk show host Larry King, one of the most recognisable figures on television as he interviewed everyone who was anyone over a career spanning 60 years, died on Saturday after a battle with COVID.
The company he co-founded, Ora Media, did not state a cause of death but media reports said King, 87, had been battling the virus for weeks and had suffered several health problems in recent years.
King, with his trademark suspenders, black rim glasses and deep voice, was best known for a 25-year run as a talk-show host on CNN’s “Larry King Live.” “For 63 years and across the platforms of radio, television and digital media, Larry’s many thousands of interviews, awards, and global acclaim stand as a testament to his unique and lasting talent as a broadcaster,” Ora Media said.
King’s long list of interviewees included every US president since 1974, world leaders Yasser Arafat and Vladimir Putin, and celebrities Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando and Barbra Streisand.
Tributes from the media, politicians and Hollywood stars poured in, led by Mr Putin, who hailed the interviewer’s “great professionalism and unquestioned journalistic authority”.
“The world has lost a true broadcasting legend,” CNN founder Ted Turner tweeted.
Star Trek icon and social media personality George Takei noted how King understood “human triumph and frailty equally well”, while Kirstie Alley, of “Cheers” fame, described him as “one of the only talk show hosts who let you talk”. British TV hosts Piers Morgan and Craig Ferguson paid tribute to King’s interviewing skills.
“Larry King was a hero of mine until we fell out after I replaced him at CNN & he said my show was ‘like watching your mother-in-law go over a cliff in your new Bentley’. (He married 8 times so a motherin-law expert),” said Morgan.
“But he was a brilliant broadcaster & masterful TV interviewer.” Singer Celine Dion said King “made all of us feel as though we were speaking with a lifelong friend”, while basketball legend Magic Johnson said: “I loved being on the show.”
Born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger on November 19, 1933, to poor Russian Jewish immigrants in working-class Brooklyn, New York, King says he never wanted to be anything but a radio broadcaster.
He became a disc jockey for a Miami radio station in 1957, changing his name to King when the radio’s manager told him his was “too ethnic”.
He had five children. After 22 years of marriage he divorced his seventh wife Shawn Southwick in 2019, having filed eight times for a divorce — he married one wife twice.