Larry King
Exuberant broadcaster whose CNN show was the platform of choice for politicians and celebrities
LARRY KING, the former host of CNN’S Larry King Live, who has died aged 87, was a quintessentially American success story – the boy from a poor immigrant family who struggled his way up to become the “Pope of Talk” – the most avidly watched television personality in the world.
On the way King had been through disgrace, bankruptcy and eight marriages (two to the same woman). At his peak in the 1990s, however, the “little Jewish Kid from Brooklyn” not only ruled American television but personified the very notion of the electronic global village, his craggy features, loud braces, smoothedback hair, horn-rimmed glasses and Brooklyn drawl was reported by PR Week to reach 170 million households worldwide. Saddam Hussein was said to be a fan, as was Slobodan Milosevic; Milosevic once even sent King his personal congratulations on the birth of a son.
Everybody who was anybody wanted to talk to King. Washington power brokers and world leaders queued up for a slot and the programme became a mandatory stop for celebrities promoting a project or agonising about their latest personal crisis. When the billionaire Texan Ross Perot announced his decision to stand as a presidential candidate in 1992, he did so on Larry King Live.
Marlon Brando gave his first interview in 20 years to King. The day after he was acquitted of murder, OJ Simpson rang in for a live chat.
The show became a platform for foreign personalities wanting to make a splash. When Gerry Adams and Ken Maginnis met for the first time, they did so on Larry King Live. Sarah Ferguson came to complain about how she had been snubbed by the royals.
When Margaret Thatcher went to America to plug her memoirs, she too did so on the show. Altogether King claimed to have conducted interviews with more than 30,000 people, including six American presidents and their wives. The Pope and Jackie Onassis were two of the very few of the world’s famous and powerful who failed to respond to King’s invitation.
CNN billed King as “the Muhammad Ali of the television interview”, but as a description of his style this was several leagues wide of the mark. Among the Washington press corps he was viewed as a suspect figure who fawned on the rich and powerful (one media watcher called him “our great national suck-up”) and gave his interviewees a free ride.
A common criticism levelled at King was that his questions were “softball”. Typical King exchanges began “How does it feel..?” or “What is it like?” Authors promoting their latest work were told their books were “tremendous”, even though King admitted he never read them. Politicians got much the same treatment. “Do you miss being Prime Minister?” he asked Mrs Thatcher.
When in the 1980s he interviewed the South African ambassador he did not mention Nelson Mandela once, even though at the time pressure to free Mandela was intense. “If you come off Larry King looking bad,” observed the Republican Pat Buchanan, “you’ve only yourself to blame.”
King never pretended to be the brightest spark on television (“Folks, it’s a talk show. It ain’t rocket science,” he once said), but claimed that his chummy non-confrontational approach could lull interviewees into allowing personal truths to come out. What other method, he asked, would have yielded Dan Quayle’s admission – against party policy – that he would support his daughter if she chose to have an abortion?
King described himself as an “infotainer” rather than a journalist, and part of the appeal of his show was that he seamlessly bridged the gulf between Hollywood and politics. An interview with the head of the CIA or the defence secretary might be followed by a schmooze with a pop star or an interview with the Muppets – the style remained the same throughout.
Larry King was born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger on November 19 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Jewish immigrants from Minsk in Belarus. He was 10 when his father, a bar owner, died, leaving the family living on welfare in a slum attic.
Larry was not a good student and barely got through high school. But he knew he had a “kinda gift” from his bar mitzvah when he had held guests spellbound with his “today I am a man” speech. He dreamed of being on the radio and, after leaving school, took a job as delivery boy in the postroom of a New York office that was also occupied by a radio station, hoping to talk his way on to the air. But things did not work out and in 1957, with a few dollars in his pocket, he hopped on a bus to Miami after hearing that prospects were better there.
After touting himself round several radio stations, he was finally given a job sweeping floors with WAHR radio Miami and when, shortly afterwards, a disc jockey at the station resigned, he convinced the management to try him out as a replacement. His manager told him the name Zeiger was “too German, too Jewish and not showbusiness enough”, so he changed his name to King. Within two years he had his own morning talk show.
After moving as a DJ to a rival station, King began to develop his personality, inventing a character called “Captain Wainwright of the Miami State Police”. Sounding like Broderick Crawford, Wainwright interrupted traffic reports with absurd suggestions, such as advising listeners to save a trip to the racetrack by flagging down police officers and placing their bets with them. The Wainwright character became so popular that bumper stickers appeared with “Don’t Stop Me. I Know Capt. Wainwright”.
By 1970, King had both radio and television shows, a $70,000 a year column in the Miami Herald and a spot as colour commentator for the Miami Dolphins football broadcasts. He lived a playboy’s life, married a former Playboy bunny, Alene Akins, had extramarital affairs, drove a Cadillac, and gambled on the horses.
But King found success harder to handle than poverty and in 1971 he was charged with stealing $5,000 from a business partner. The charge was eventually dropped, but the unfavourable publicity cost him his jobs – as well as his marriage. It would take four years before he worked regularly in broadcasting again.
From 1972 to 1975, King struggled to get back on his feet. He took a job as a tout for a Louisiana racetrack, became a commentator for a shortlived football side, the Shreveport Steamers, and remarried and divorced again his third ex-wife, Alene Akins. In 1975 one of his former Miami radio stations offered him his old show back, but by 1978 high living and divorce settlements had taken their toll and King was declared bankrupt.
Things took a turn for the better when, later that year, the Mutual Broadcasting Company hired him to launch an all-night talk show. Though his interviews were never more than puff pieces, King captivated audiences with his easy charm and his unvarnished Brooklyn accent.
Starting on only 28 stations, The Larry King Show grew to be the first nationwide call-in show and one of the most popular radio shows in American history. King’s audience appeal led the fledgling Cable News Network in 1985 to book him for Larry King Live and again he scored an enormous hit. Soon Larry King Live became CNN’S highest-rated programme.
King’s interview with Ross Perot in 1992 initiated a new trend in campaigning as other candidates followed suit by sidestepping traditional news conferences with trained reporters in favour of live call-in talk shows that allowed them to appear approachable as they responded to questions from viewers.
King became an important figure in the corridors of power, famed for his power-lunching and name-dropping. He had a scoop in 1999 when Donald Trump revealed on Larry King Live that he was forming a committee to look into the possibility of running for the presidency.
King was listed by Washingtonian magazine as the country’s most influential media personality and the Mayor of Washington even declared January 29 Larry King Day in his honour.
King’s audience seemed to like him for the same reason as his guests. During the Gulf War, the show quadrupled its audience, apparently because American viewers had become fed up with live coverage of military news briefings that showed reporters pounding soldiers with questions that many American viewers found unfair, even unpatriotic. They preferred to hear the subject speak without interruption, a service King was happy to provide.
The cynicism with which King was regarded by his fellow hacks was undoubtedly tinged with envy. “You know why I can stiff you on press conferences?” President Clinton asked a roomful of journalists in 1993. “Because Larry King liberated me by giving me back to the American people directly.”
Such was King’s celebrity that he played himself in television shows and some 20 films, including Enemy of the State, Primary Colors and The Jackal. By the dawn of the 21st century, he was earning an estimated $7 million a year and living in a vast Mediterraneanstyle mansion in Beverly Hills.
As well as his television appearances, he had a weekly column in USA Today which ran until 2001 and a daily radio show. He finally stepped down from Larry King Live after 25 years in December 2010 (to be succeeded for a period by Piers Morgan), though he would reappear two years later with a new talk show on Ora TV, a digital channel which he launched with backing from the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.
Larry King wrote several books about his life (notably My Remarkable Journey, 2009), about broadcasting, and about the rich, powerful and titled who had become his “close personal friends”.
Of his marriages he once remarked: “I just like diversity. The girl I liked at 20 was not the girl I liked at 30.” As well as his ex-wives, King had to put up with the revelations of an ex-fiancée who, in siding with one of his exes in court, revealed that he used the same pick-up line (“There’s chemistry between us”) on all the women he dated.
Larry King was married for the eighth time, in 1997, to Shawn Southwick. They separated last year; she survives him along with their two sons and a son from a previous marriage. Another son and a daughter predeceased him.
Larry King, born November 19 1933, died January 23 2021