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Letter to the editor

The big wheel of talk, games

He was working on production of a new crosswords show.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published August 13, 2007

LOS ANGELES - Merv Griffin, the Big Band-era crooner turned impresario who parlayed his Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune game shows into a multimillion-dollar empire, died Sunday (Aug. 12, 2007). He was 82.

Mr. Griffin died of prostate cancer, according to a statement from his family.

From his beginning as a $100-a-week San Francisco radio singer, Mr. Griffin moved on as vocalist for Freddy Martin's band, sometime actor in films and TV game and talk show host. He made Forbes' list of richest Americans several times.

A lifelong crossword puzzle fan, Mr. Griffin devised a game show, Word for Word, in 1963. It faded after one season, then his wife, Julann, suggested another show.

"Julann's idea was a twist on the usual question-answer format of the quiz shows of the Fifties," he wrote in his autobiography Merv. "Her idea was to give the contestants the answer, and they had to come up with the appropriate question."

Jeopardy was born and went on the air in 1964.

The Merv Griffin Show lasted more than 20 years, and Mr. Griffin said his capacity to listen contributed to his success.

"If the host is sitting there thinking about his next joke, he isn't listening," Mr. Griffin reasoned in a recent interview.

But his biggest break financially came from inventing and producing Jeopardy in the 1960s and Wheel of Fortune in the 1970s. After they had become the hottest game shows on television, Mr. Griffin sold the rights to Coca-Cola's Columbia Pictures Television Unit for $250-million in 1986, retaining a share of the profits.

"My father was a visionary," Mr. Griffin's son, Tony Griffin, said in a statement Sunday. "He loved business and continued his many projects and holdings even while hospitalized."

When Mr. Griffin entered a hospital a month ago, he was working on the first week of production of a new syndicated game show, Merv Griffin's Crosswords, his son said.

* * *

Mr. Griffin was also a longtime friend of former President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy.

"This is heartbreaking, not just for those of us who loved Merv personally, but for everyone around the world who has known Merv through his music, his television shows and his business," Nancy Reagan said in a statement.

She said Mr. Griffin "was there for me every day after Ronnie died" in 2004.

Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak said he had lost "a dear friend."

"He meant so much to my life, and it's hard to imagine it without him," Sajak said.

* * *

Westinghouse Broadcasting introduced The Merv Griffin Show in 1965 on syndicated TV. Mr. Griffin never underestimated the intelligence of his audience, offering such figures as philosopher Bertrand Russell, cellist Pablo Casals as well as movie stars and entertainers.

An aunt, Claudia Robinson, taught him to play piano at age 4, and he soon was staging shows on the back porch.

"Every Saturday I had a show, recruiting all the kids in the block as either stagehands, actors and audience, or sometimes all three," he wrote in his 1980 autobiography. "I was the producer, always the producer."

Fast Facts:

Griffin milestones

July 6, 1925: Mervyn Edward Griffin Jr. is born in San Mateo, Calif.

1948: Freddy Martin hires Mr. Griffin to join his band at Los Angeles' Coconut Grove at $150 a week. It has a huge hit with I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Cocoanuts in 1949.

1958: Mr. Griffin marries Julann Elizabeth Wright.

1958: Mr. Griffin hosts Play Your Hunch through the early 1960s.

1959: The Griffins' son, Anthony, is born.

1962: When Jack Paar retires from Tonight, Mr. Griffin is passed over for Johnny Carson.

1964: Jeopardy starts.

1965: The Merv Griffin Show starts.

1973: Mr. Griffin divorces Julann because of "irreconcilable differences." He never remarried.

1975: Wheel of Fortune starts.

1986: Mr. Griffin sells the rights to Jeopardy and Wheel to Coca-Cola's Columbia Pictures Television Unit for $250-million, retaining a share of profits.

Sunday: Mr. Griffin dies at age 82 of prostate cancer.

[Last modified August 13, 2007, 00:38:42]