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Larry King
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Lawrence Harvey Zeiger (born November 19, 1933), better known by his stage name Larry King, is an American television and radio host. He is recognized in the United States as one of the premier broadcast interviewers of modern times. King has conducted some 40,000 interviews with politicians, athletes, entertainers and other newsmakers. He has won an Emmy Award, two Peabody Awards and ten Cable ACE Awards.
King began as a local Florida journalist and radio interviewer in the 1950s and '60s.
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Encyclopedia
Lawrence Harvey Zeiger (born November 19, 1933), better known by his stage name Larry King, is an American television and radio host. He is recognized in the United States as one of the premier broadcast interviewers of modern times. King has conducted some 40,000 interviews with politicians, athletes, entertainers and other newsmakers. He has won an Emmy Award, two Peabody Awards and ten Cable ACE Awards.
King began as a local Florida journalist and radio interviewer in the 1950s and '60s. He became prominent as an
all-night national radio broadcaster starting in 1978, and then came to dominate the airwaves when he began hosting
the nightly interview TV program Larry King Live on CNN, which started in 1985.
Biography
Early life
Lawrence Harvey Zeiger was born to Jennie (née Gitlitz), a garment worker, and Edward Zeiger, a restaurant owner and defense plant worker. Larry's parents were Jews who had emigrated from Belarus (Minsk and Pinsk) to Brooklyn, New York City, where Larry was born. He was raised in a "very culturally Jewish" family. His father died at 44 of heart disease when Larry was nine, and his mother had to go on welfare to support Larry and his younger brother. His father's death affected Larry greatly, and he lost interest in school, ruining his chances to go to college. After graduating from high school, he worked to help support his mother. From an early age he wanted to go into radio.
Miami radio
A CBS staff announcer, whom Larry met by chance, told him to go to Florida, a growing media market where openings still existed for inexperienced broadcasters. Larry rode a bus to Miami. After initial setbacks, Larry got his first job in radio through persistence. The manager of a small station, WAHR (now WMBM) in Miami Beach, hired him to clean up and perform miscellaneous tasks. When one of their announcers quit, they put Larry on the air. His first broadcast was on May 1, 1957, when he worked as the disc jockey from 9 a.m. to noon. He also did two afternoon newscasts and a sportscast. He was paid $55 a week. He acquired the name Larry King when the general manager said that Zeiger was too ethnic and difficult to remember, and instead suggested the surname King, which he got from an ad in The Miami Herald for King's Wholesale Liquor. He started interviewing on a midmorning show for WIOD, at Pumpernik's Restaurant in Miami Beach. He would interview anyone who walked in. His first interview was with a waiter at the restaurant. Two days later, singer Bobby Darin, in Miami for a concert later that day, walked into Pumpernick's as a result of coming across King's show on his radio; Darin became King's first celebrity interview guest.
His Miami radio show launched him to local stardom. A few years later, in May 1960, he hosted Miami Undercover, airing Sunday nights at 11:30 p.m. on WPST-TV Channel 10 (now WPLG). On the show, he moderated debates on important issues of the time. King credits his success on local TV to the assistance of another showbiz legend, comedian Jackie Gleason, whose national TV variety show was being filmed in Miami Beach during this period. "That show really took off because Gleason came to Miami," King said in a 1996 interview he gave when inducted into the Broadcasters' Hall of Fame. "He did that show and stayed all night with me. We stayed till five in the morning. He didn't like the set, so we broke into the general manager's office and changed the set. Gleason changed the set, he changed the lighting, and he became like a mentor of mine."
WIOD gave King further exposure as the color commentator for the Miami Dolphins broadcasts during the early part of the Miami Dolphins' perfect season of 1971-72. However, he was dismissed by both radio station WIOD and television station WTVJ as a late-night radio host and sports commentator as of December 20, 1971, when he was arrested. Other staffers covered the Dolphins' games into the final days of the 1972 winning season. He also lost his weekly column at the Miami Beach Sun newspaper.
Later, King also did color announcing for the old Shreveport Steamer of the World Football League in 1974-75.
Legal and financial troubles
In the early 1970s, King was entangled in legal and financial troubles. He was arrested on December 20, 1971 and charged with grand larceny.
The charges stemmed from a deal he had made with Louis Wolfson, who had been convicted of selling unregistered stock in 1968.
The circumstances of what occurred between the two are unclear. According to King, he told Wolfson that he could arrange a special investigation by John Mitchell, the incoming US Attorney General, to overturn the conviction. Wolfson agreed, and paid King $48,000. King never delivered, and could not pay back the money. When Wolfson was released from prison, he went after King. According to Wolfson, King served as an intermediary between Wolfson and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. Garrison was investigating the assassination of President Kennedy, but needed to raise funds for the investigation. Wolfson offered to pay $25,000 to help fund the investigation. The arrangement was that Wolfson gave Larry King cash (about $5,000 per visit). King was supposed to give this to Richard Gerstein, the State Attorney for Dade County, Florida. Gerstein was to transfer the money to Garrison. This took place over a year or two. Wolfson eventually found that not all the money he gave to King made it to Garrison. The larceny charge was dropped because the statute of limitations had run out. But King pled no contest to one of 14 charges of passing bad checks. As a result of these troubles, he was off the air for three years. During those three years he worked several jobs. He was the PR director at Louisiana Downs, a race track in Louisiana, and he wrote some articles for Esquire magazine, including a major piece on New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath.
National TV and radio career
King managed to get back into radio by becoming the color commentator for broadcasts of the Shreveport Steamer of the World Football League on KWKH. Eventually, King was rehired by WIOD in Miami. In 1978, he went national, inheriting the nightly talk show slot on the Mutual Radio Network, broadcast coast-to-coast, that had been "Long John" Nebel's until his death, and had been pioneered by Herb Jepko. One reason King got the Mutual job is that he had once been an announcer at WGMA-AM in Hollywood, Florida, which was then owned by C. Edward Little. Little went on to become president of Mutual and was the one who hired King when Nebel died. King's Mutual show developed a devoted audience.
It was broadcast live Monday through Friday from midnight to 5:30 a.m. Eastern Time. Larry King would interview a guest for the first 90 minutes, allowing callers to continue the interview for another 90. At 3 a.m., Larry would allow the callers to discuss any topic they pleased with him, until the end of the program, where he expressed his own political opinions. They called that segment "Open Phone America." Some of the regular callers included "The Portland Laugher," "The Miami Derelict," "The Todd Cruz Caller," "The Scandal Scooper," "Mr. Radio" and "The Water Is Warm Caller." "Mr. Radio" had over 200 calls to Larry during Open Phone America. The show was wildly successful, starting with relatively few affiliates and eventually growing to more than 500. It ran until 1994.
For its final year, the show was moved to afternoons, but, because most talk radio stations at the time had an established policy of local origination in the time-slot (3 to 6 p.m. Eastern Time) that Mutual offered the show, a very low percentage of King's overnight affiliates agreed to carry his daytime show and it was unable to generate the same audience size. The afternoon show was eventually given to David Brenner and radio affiliates were given the option of carrying the audio of King's CNN evening program. He started his CNN show in June 1985, and the Westwood One radio simulcast of the CNN show continues at the time of this writing.
On the Larry King Live show, King hosts guests from a broad range of topics. This includes controversial figures of UFO conspiracy theories and alleged psychics. One notable guest is Sylvia Browne, who in 2005 told the Newsweek magazine that Larry King, a believer in the paranormal, asks her to do private psychic readings.
Unlike many interviewers, Larry King has a direct, non-confrontational approach. His interview style is characteristically frank and no-nonsense, but with occasional bursts of irreverence and humor. His approach attracts some guests who would not otherwise appear. King, who is known for his lack of pre-interview preparation, once bragged that he never pre-reads the books of authors who appear on his show. In a show dedicated to the surviving Beatles, for example, Larry asked George Harrison's widow about the song "Something," which was written about George Harrison's first wife. He seemed surprised when she did not know very much about the song.
Throughout his career he has interviewed many of the leading figures of his time. In all, CNN claims that he conducted more than 40,000 interviews over the course of his career.
1987 heart attack
On February 24, 1987, King suffered a major heart attack and then had quintuple-bypass surgery. It was a life-altering event as previously, smoking was one of his trademarks and he was unashamed of his addiction. King was a three-pack-a-day smoker and kept a lit cigarette during his interview so he would not have to take time to light up during breaks. He now encourages curbing smoking to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.
King has written two books about living with heart disease. Mr. King, You're Having a Heart Attack: How a Heart Attack and Bypass Surgery Changed My Life (1989, ISBN 0-440-50039-7) was written with New York's Newsday science editor, B. D. Colen. Taking On Heart Disease: Famous Personalities Recall How They Triumphed over the Nation's #1 Killer and How You Can, Too (2004, ISBN 1-57954-820-2) features the experience of various celebrities with cardiovascular disease including Peggy Fleming and Regis Philbin.
Charitable works
As a result of heart attacks, he established the Larry King Cardiac Foundation, an organization to which David Letterman, through his American Foundation for Courtesy and Grooming, has also contributed. King gave $1 million to George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs for scholarships to students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
On September 3, 2005, King aired "How You Can Help", a three-hour special designed to provide a forum and information clearinghouse for viewers to understand and join nationwide and global relief efforts. This was following the devastation to the Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina. Guest Richard Simmons, a native of New Orleans, told him, "Larry, you don't even know how much money you raised tonight. When we rebuild the city of New Orleans, we're going to name something big after you."
Later controversies
On September 10, 1990, while on The Joan Rivers Show, Rivers asked King which contestant in the the Miss America pageant was "the ugliest." King responded, "Miss Pennsylvania. She was one of the 10 finalists and she did a great ventriloquist bit [...] The dummy was prettier." King was a judge for the September 8, 1990 pageant. King later sent Miss Pennsylvania, Marla Wynne, a dozen long-stemmed roses and a telegram apologizing for saying she was the ugliest contestant in the pageant that year.
In 1997, King was one of 34 celebrities to sign an open letter to then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, published as a newspaper advertisement in the International Herald Tribune, which protested the treatment of Scientologists in Germany, comparing it to the Nazis' oppression of Jews in the 1930s. Other signatories included Dustin Hoffman and Goldie Hawn.
On September 23, 2004, John Clark sued King and CNN after an interview with his ex-wife, Lynn Redgrave, aired. Clark argued that he was defamed by the banner statements scrolling at the bottom of the screen, and that the taped show did not allow him to appear to defend himself. The court would not allow the suit to proceed ruling that he was not defamed. Two years later, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco, dismissed his appeal.
Awards
King has received many broadcasting awards. He won the Peabody Award for Excellence in broadcasting for both his radio (1982) and television (1992) shows. He has also won 10 CableACE awards for Best Interviewer and for Best Talk Show Series.
In 1989, King was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame, in 1996 to the Broadcasters' Hall of Fame. In 2002, the industry magazine Talkers named King both the fourth-greatest radio talk show host of all time and the top television talk show host of all time. King was the only person to place in the top ten on both lists.
King is an honorary member of the . He is also a recipient of the President's Award honoring his impact on media from the in 2006.
King is the first recipient of the Arizona State University Hugh Downs Award for Communication Excellence, presented April 11, 2007, via satellite by Downs himself. Downs, the highly respected broadcaster and TV host, sported red suspenders for the event and turned the tables on King by asking "very tough questions" about King's best, worst, most emotional and most influential interviews during King's 50 years in broadcasting.
Filmography
External links
- - Foundation to fund treatments cardiac patients with little or no insurance
- - Throw your own Save a Heart Party to support the Larry King Cardiac Foundation
- - Learn how to prevent heart disease.
- - Transcripts of all interviews since 2000
- by Gianluca D'Agostino
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