The shadow of the great Johnny Carson looms large whenever the subject of talk-show hosts comes up, but during his reign from the 1960s through the early ’90s, a lot of other memorable gabfest emcees also came and went.
Among the most notable are Dick Cavett, Jack Paar, Steve Allen, Tom Snyder and Mike Douglas — not just for their own engaging personalities or their innate ability to make real conversation with guests both entertaining and sometimes controversial, but also for the level of guests they managed to land.
And another name to throw in that mix is Merv Griffin, a big-band singer, a game-show creator, a smart entrepreneur and, yes, a talk-show host.
And a newly released box set demonstrates just how good he was as an affable entertainer and an interviewer who listened and responded to what his guests were offering.
And what guests. Most are highly entertaining for any audience, but they will be especially appealing to baby boomers.
“The Merv Griffin Show — 1962-1986” (MPI/DVD, 1962-86, color and b/w, 12 discs, 42 episodes, 30 episode excerpts, 13 musical excerpts, promos, featurette) is a marvelously engrossing set of shows with a lot of laughs and a lot of surprises.
Admittedly, there are celebrities here that can also be seen in DVD sets of Carson’s shows, as well as smaller sets devoted to Cavett, Paar, Snyder and Douglas. (Though, sadly, perhaps shockingly, Allen seems to have been completely overlooked.)
But there are also a lot of guests in the Griffin set that you won’t find anywhere else — including some that were quite controversial at the time. (And you won’t believe all the smoking!)
First, some background on Griffin: He is perhaps most famous these days for his legacy in the world of game shows but he started his show-biz career as a singer. Griffin traveled with Freddy Martin’s band in the 1940s and had a No. 1 Hit Parade song, “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts.”
In the 1950s, Griffin was “discovered” by Doris Day, who helped him get a movie contract, and he did appear in several films. Then, seeing a brighter future for himself in television, Griffin bought out his movie contract and began hosting and producing game shows.
Griffin was the creator of “Jeopardy,” and he even wrote the iconic theme music. (You can hear it in your head now, can’t you?) And he later created “Wheel of Fortune.”
His first talk show was an hourlong daytime program for NBC that lasted only a year, but it allowed Griffin to demonstrate his natural affability and a knack for putting guests at ease.
But in 1965, he launched “The Merv Griffin Show,” a 90-minute format (for most of its run) allowing for longer, deeper conversations, and that show continued for 21 years, in both network and syndicated versions.
The earliest clip in this set is 23 minutes of a 1962 NBC daytime episode in which Danny Kaye literally shanghais the show. It’s hilarious. But since nearly all of that first series is now lost, everything else is from Griffin’s ’65-86 program, which is owned by his estate (ever the savvy businessman, he negotiated to retain ownership of the show in his earliest contracts).
The lineup on these DVDs is amazing, and the diversity is demonstrated with the first show on Disc 1, from Sept. 2, 1965: His first guest is comic Phyllis Diller, and the episode concludes with Mitsuo Fuchida, the Japanese Navy Air Service officer who led and coordinated the attack on Pearl Harbor. Fascinating stuff.
Other rare talk-show guests include artist Norman Rockwell; astronaut John Glenn; baseball legend Willie Mays; boxer Muhammad Ali; authors Ray Bradbury, James Michener, Alex Haley, Irving Stone and Maya Angelou; as well as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon before he was president, Gerald Ford after he was president and Ronald Reagan (with wife Nancy) while he was a sitting president.
For movie buffs, there are fascinating groupings on single episodes: Francis Ford Coppola in 1980 with cast members of his 1974 film “The Conversation,” including Gene Hackman; Sylvester Stallone and his “Rocky III” cast around the film’s release date in 1982; and a “Grease” reunion with Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta.
Other movie stars on display include John Wayne, Laurence Olivier, Ingrid Bergman, Jane Fonda, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Hedy Lamarr, Warren Beatty, James Caan, a very young George Clooney and Orson Welles (who was more candid than usual and then died just hours after the taping).
Comics include up-and-comers Richard Pryor, Woody Allen, Steve Martin, George Carlin, Joan Rivers and Jerry Seinfeld (in his TV debut), and veterans Bill Cosby, Carol Burnett, Jack Benny, Lucille Ball and Jerry Lewis.
Songbirds/musicians include Aretha Franklin, Lionel Hampton, Nina Simone, Carole King, John Denver, Stevie Wonder, Liberace, Merle Haggard, Smokey Robinson, June Carter Cash, Isaac Hayes and “Weird Al” Yankovic.
And local audiences may get a kick out of a show from 1976 that features famous singing Mormon Marie Osmond and Gladys Knight, who would become a famous singing Mormon two decades later.
There are many more, but you get the idea.
With such a wealth of material here, it seems silly to complain that someone is missing, but it’s surprising that Doris Day isn’t here, since she was a great guest and was so instrumental in launching Griffin’s career to another level.
But let’s be grateful for what is here.
“The Merv Griffin Show” DVD set offers plenty of entertainment, along with some more thoughtful things that will make those of us “of a certain age” somewhat nostalgic, perhaps even wistful — especially in this age of myriad sound-bite interviews that promote much but reveal little.
Chris Hicks is the author of "Has Hollywood Lost Its Mind? A Parent’s Guide to Movie Ratings." He also writes at www.hicksflicks.com and can be contacted at hicks@deseretnews.com.