File Name: DLS_067.

wmv
Show Number: DLS_067
Transcribed by: Frances Galanza
Episode Length: 00:19:07
DAVID LETTERMAN :
There are maybe just a handful of people who have prevailed in
television 5. 10, 15 , wp years and inorder to do that you gotta be very
shrewd, very talented and very smart.
Merv Griffin is one of these people. He will be with us.
Also a man who has endured, Arthur Ash. Ahh... An incredible story
connected with Arthur Ash. as you know he is a ahh...champion, ahh..
Wimbledon was his last championship and ahh...he's had some
difficulties but he's overcoming them. And he's here to talk about his
health and other matters and the life of Arthur Ash.
Rich Hall will be here. And he has a special offer.
Now, were running this amazing contest whereby we bring his
extravaganza into your home.
Rich will ahh...be here to show you how, if you don't win the contest,
you can still have the thrill that is the producing of the show from your
home.
Also were gonna take a look at some male or...mail order items.
And we can tell you how you can enter that unbelievable contest.
Over here, this gentleman is Frank Owens and the symphony
orchestra.
Is it hot in here? Does it seem to be hot?
It's nasty outside. It's Christmas here in new York and it's a hundred
and ten.
I ahh...Well, today is ahh... What is today? Did we cover that?
Tuesday the twenty-third and it means it's time to take a look at the
small town news from around the country

We subscribe to about 40 of these newspapers. And you get very

interesting news. This is the first one today. From ahh...East Grand
Rapid's Caddis?
Anybody here from Grand Rapids?
Okay. well, it could be more meaningful than we had hoped.
Ahh... Grand Rapids is a beautiful city.
Anyway, there's an article here talking about crime on the streets
ladies and gentlemen, time to put an end to this.
A gang of youths took grapes from a tree inside the yard of a resident
of a 900-block of gladstone. Smashes them in the driveway, and then
left.
We've got to put an end to this sort of heinous behavior.
I think they got it on on the south branch. Well.
This comes to us from Mooresville, Indiana. I got a speeding ticket near
this town a couple of weeks ago.
I'm not paying.
Uhmm... See i figured if you get a ticket in a trammeled car, thats just
like when you miss a turn in monopoly right?
Yeah. Now,
No. I'm just teasing. Now, ill pay it dont you worry,
Anyway, Mooresville, Indiana. The reporter, and this is on the front
page and headlined - "Hurt Stamping Bug".
A young Mooresville man injured his foot or leg. That's quite a
diagnosis huh?
Early this morning when he stamped on a large bug in downtown
Mooresville.
His limb was injured evidently by the abrupt contact with the
pavement. Folks this bug must have been the size of a buick.
This comes to us, ohh...

One of my favorite places in the world, Wapakoneta.

Wapakoneta, Ohio.
I believe Neil Armstrong was born there. Do you have any idea?
Hmm-mm...
This is from the Wapakoneta daily news.
A naked man was arrested last night by the Wapakoneta police
department. While apparently trying to steal a television antenna from
a trailer located at a Bobkin trailer park in Willaby Street.
The police were called at the trailer court at 11:32 last night by the
manager of the court, Freeda Bobkin. After seeing that the man was
nude, Mrs. Bobkin called the police.
Of course stealing the antenna lawfully dressed of course was a not a
crime.
When the police arrived at the scene, the man ran behind the trailer
and attempted to hide behind the tree while trying to put on his pants.
Police took the man into custody and he admitted later for going over
to the trailer to try and remove the antenna. He told police that he had
removed his clothing so that if any one had saw him, he could not be
identified by his clothing.
This comes from the western news in Derby Florida.
Former garment worker and wife are 50-year nudists, it says here.
For 50 years, Rey Perkins made clothes for other people as a garment
worker in the state of New York but also for 50 years, Reys wife Helen
had not needed much clothing as theyre nudists.
Rey is also an entertainer and provides some comic relief for many of
the nudists camp shows.
Now what does that mean exactly?
Heres a picture of Rey and his wife. Providing a little comic relief right
there I believe.

Okay. Now, were very excited right now were calling someone in the
ahhnear Montsy I believe.
This is from the Montsy star. Mrs. Donne Seville from Cartridge,
Indiana. President of Tri-county Porkets.
Will demonstrate how to make creative crafts with pig skin.
Nice to have that on your table on a hot day wouldnt it?
Ohh..3-1-7
Mrs. Don Saville?
Cartidge, Indiana.
Were going to find out what interesting things you can fashion from pig
skin.
Oh. Thats encouraging.
MRS. DON SAVILLE : Hello?
DAVID LETTERMAN : Hello. Is this Mrs. Sa-ville? Saville?
MRS. DON SAVILLE: Yes. Mrs. Saville.
DAVID LETTERMAN : Mrs. Saville. Thank you
My name is David Letterman. Im calling you in New, from New York
City.
How are you this morning?
MRS. DON SAVILLE : Well Im fine. Just trying to get a hold of this.
DAVID LETTERMAN : Ahh I uhhuhmm
Well I was reading an issue of the Monsty Star and it lists you as the
President of the Tri-county Porkets is that correct?
MRS. DON SAVILLE : Yes sir.
DAVID LETTERMAN : Were interested in finding out about creations
made with pig skin.
MRS. DON SAVILLE : Oh? Okay.

DAVID LETTERMAN : I think weve been the victims of some sort of

cruel hoax ladies and gentlemen.
Can you give us an example of what creations from a pig skin might
be.
MRS. DON SAVILLE : Well we use the rye hide of the hog. Make clothing
from them. Which is beautiful clothing.
DAVID LETTERMAN : It is beautiful?
MRS. DON SAVILLE : Yes sir it is.
DAVID LETTERMAN : AhhIt seems like it might chafe.
MRS. DON SAVILLE : It is soft.
DAVID LETTERMAN : Huh?
MRS. DON SAVILLE : It is very soft!
DAVID LETTERMAN : Very soft?
MRS. DON SAVILLE : Yes.
DAVID LETTERMAN : Ahh do you have to cure it or tan it, or anything?
MRS. DON SAVILLE : Oh yes, its tanned.
DAVID LETTERMAN : Yeah? Do you ahh wear this stuff a lot, around?
MRS. DON SAVILLE : For special occasions.
DAVID LETTERMAN : Yeah.
Okay well, thats fascinating Mrs. Saville. Ahh how are things there in
Cartridge?
MRS. DON SAVILLE: Theyre fine.
DAVID LETTERMAN : Oh good. Well, it was a pleasure talking to you on
the phone.
MRS. DON SAVILLE: Thank you.
DAVID LETTERMAN: Thank you very much and have a nice day.

MRS. DON SAVILLE : Thank you. Same to you.

DAVID LETTERMAN : Okay. Bye-bye.
MRS. DON SAVILLE : Alright.
DAVID LETTERMAN : Okay, that was Mrs. Saville who make clothing out
of pig skin.
Merv Griffin will be here in a minute or two and well ask him if hes
ever worn any pig skin.
[COMMERCIAL BREAK]
DAVID LETTERMAN : Welcome back to the show.
My first guest is one of televisions most popular personalities.
Please welcome, Merv Griffin.
MERV GRIFFIN : Okay. The pressure is on me.
DAVID LETTERMAN : Yeah its on.
Ive been on your show a couple of times and ahhIm just starting out
here ahh but some say Im also finishing up.
MERV GRIFFIN. : you helped my Wheel of Fortune.
DAVID LETTERMAN : Is that right?
MERV GRIFFIN : Its mine you know.
DAVID LETTERMAN: How is that so?
MERV GRIFFIN : Because youre so hot in the morning, that it carries
your wheel of fortune.
DAVID LETTERMAN : Is thatIs that true Merv?
MERV GRIFFIN : Yep. Yep.
DAVID LETTERMAN : Wow, thank you . I appreciate that.

MERV GRIFFIN : I like your furniture too.

DAVID LETTERMAN :
Ahh Let me ask you here ahh
You throw a lot of these shows. Youve been on the air a few years ago.
MERV GRIFFIN : Theres only one that I have.
DAVID LETTERMAN : No. I dont mean that. I mean your own show.
Continually now, for a long time.
And I said from the beginning of the show theres only a handful of
people who not only sustain in television but dominate and influence
and become fixtures.
And I think you gotta be a very bright individual and very resourceful
individual to do that. But, in the long haul, what happens in the show
and you know youre in trouble?
MERV GRIFFIN : It happen.
I know that you just let it happen and sit back like this. And let it
collapse.
DAVID LETTERMAN : Yeah?
MERV GRIFFIN : And you say, well be right back.
Thats my tombstone you know.
I got it figured out. I will not be right back after this message.
DAVID LETTERMAN :
What for you, makes a real good guest?
MERV GRIFFIN: AhhProbably a big mouth.
Ahhsomebody who will just say everything out loud and not running
a popularity contest anymore just having fun.
DAVID LETTERMAN : Hmm-mm

So you like somebody who just sit down and take off.
MERV GRIFFIN : Yeah.
Am I doing it?
DAVID LETTERMAN : Well yeah.
MERV GRIFFIN: I wanna be a good guest.
DAVID LETTERMAN : You are.
MERV GRIFFIN : This could be a whole new career for me.
DAVID LETTERMAN : Being a guest?
MERV GRIFFIN : Yeah. Guest.
DAVID LETTERMAN : They dont pay as well as the other way around
huh?
MERV GRIFFIN : No kidding.
DAVID LETTERMAN : Ahh
MERV GRIFFIN : I watch you every morning. Do you know that?
DAVID LETTERMAN : In California? In most of the States, yeah.
Ahh your honor.
Now let me ask you about uhmm youre ahh
MERV GRIFFIN : You okay?
DAVID LETTERMAN : No, no. Im thinking here.
MERV GRIFFIN : Uh-huh
You see, you need to lock eyes with me. You have to do that to get the
best story out of them.
DAVID LETTERMAN: Really?
MERV GRIFFIN : Yeah.

DAVID LETTERMAN: Oh. Heaven.

MERV GRIFFIN : There has to be an intensity to the interview.
Dont look away.
DAVID LETTERMAN: Its tough to see ahhsee ahhmy notes when Im
locked in your eyes.
Now tell me about the ahhJudy Garland.
MERV GRIFFIN : Judy Garland.
Well, thats, thats part of the book. AhhJudy Garland was ahh
From the time I was a kid, we were probably the same age. Ahh I
just loved her.
I mean I just thought she was the greatest. SheI could pry at her
movies.
You know, the time Jean Kelly slammed his hand in the trunk to keep
her from going to war. That kind of thing got me.
Anyway, I just followed her whole career.
Are you interested David?
DAVID LETTERMAN: Yeah.
MERV GRIFFIN : And I just loved her all my life. I thought she was the
greatest superstar whose thrilling performance I ever saw in my entire
life.
Ahh I met her later in my career. And ahhhmm She called me one
day here in New York. She had been of a problem. She was in the
hospital. And said she would like to make a big return. Come back and
do her stuff when her life was straightened out.
So she said, I love to do your show. I mean I was, ecstatic.
So I said okay, and we arranged everything.
She came down from Boston in the middle of the night. Took the train
and went down.

Checked in a large and famous hotel here. At 11 oclock at night, the

manager said, Youre not checking in here, you owe us money.
And threw out the street. She had to borrow some money from
somebody in the street. Took the subway to Brooklyn, stayed with the
friend, called me the next day, I felt terrible for her.
One of the greatest superstars we ever knew in this country. And ahh
so we called close people, we called ahh everybody doing
arrangements.
She had a thing, put on the show and she was wonderful.
It was her last show before she moved to England and ahhdied.
It was a very sad story. Kind of a lesson to everybody.
DAVID LETTERMAN: At that time did you ahhwas that pretty well
hutched up or did everybody understand the circumstances she was
under?
MERV GRIFFIN : Oh I think they did.
She really had a tragic life.
DAVID LETTERMAN: You know what that means?
MERV GRIFFIN : Franks playing the piano.
DAVID LETTERMAN: Yeah.
MERV GRIFFIN : Well be right back dont tell Merv.
DAVID LETTERMAN: Hey!
Merv Griffiin is here and ahhits a fascinating book and ahh tell
me ahhIm fascinated by it and I mentioned this earlier.
Just a handful of people survive in television.
MERV GRIFFIN : Okay.
DAVID LETTERMAN:
AhhJohnny Carlson, Dick Clark, Hugh Saw, Walter Krumkike, these
people are institutionals in American TV.

Now how do you sustain it?

Ive been hammered away here for three months and Ive been feeling
like Im doing hard times somewhere.
MERV GRIFFIN : Yeah.
Well, everybody feels that way.
You prepare your career really for failure.
I mean, for example, ahh I did shows, talk shows in the daytime and
they failed.
And I thought, Well thats the end of it. I mean, My whole careers
over.
But hardly enough, it doesnt bring you for, there are 400 people in
showbusiness who have to know who you are and once 400 know who
you are then, they move beyond to something else.
Its a Repeater Principle.
You start, you fail here, but you move on to a better time here. And
you move beyond to something else.
A lot people out of failure, pull back. They withdraw from it and say,
Oh, well Im a disaster in that.
I never did that. I had, I was the greatest tax write-off in show
business. For networks, recording companies, theyd say, We needed
a tax-write-off, sign him.
One failureMy whole life is right in that hallway. My whole career in
showbusiness. Right here on the sixth floor.
I started across the street. Then across the hall here, at 6B with Player
Hunch.
Then I did Boyd for Word, One in a Million, Hows your Sister,
Curse your brother, and they collapsed around me and it was great.
Makes your mind better.
DAVID LETTERMAN:

You know when I was looking through this book, the amount of people,
and not just people but, quality people that youve had on your show.
And not only had but helped, like, you were talking about Judy Garland.
Ive read and article about Richard Pryer the other day.
MERV GRIFFIN : Yeah.
DAVID LETTERMAN:
And I believe, he started on your show.
MERV GRIFFIN : Yeah at the bottom at Caf la Mama.
Woody was the first. Woody uhmm. Was the first person we ever put on
that we discovered. And I remember, we put him under contract. He
had to come on the show every Friday.
And I released him from that contract.
DAVID LETTERMAN: Was he a little nervous about coming on?
MERV GRIFFIN : Oh no. He was just wonderful.
DAVID LETTERMAN: Why did you, why did you let him go.
MERV GRIFFIN : Well, because my show was cancelled.
DAVID LETTERMAN: Oh, yes. Im sorry.
MERV GRIFFIN : And following Woody out, Cambridge took prior and
Butch Tomlin and then Lily Tomlin and then John Denver and then Seals
McCroffs.
DAVID LETTERMAN: How many people do you think major stars that
you
MERV GRIFFIN : That have been operating today?
DAVID LETTERMAN: Yeah. That youve
MERV GRIFFIN : Maybe about thirty. Including Burt Reynolds who
started with Amy
DAVID LETTERMAN: Unbelievable and again, fogive me, but well be
right back.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]
DAVID LETTERMAN: Merv Griffin is here this morning and his book is a
fascinating chronicle.
Not only your life of course but just television and growing up and stuff.
You talked a little about your other daytime talk shows.
MERV GRIFFIN : Yeah.
Well you see, I was doing a show called Player Hunch it was on the
other side of the hall, 6B.
DAVID LETTERMAN : Yeah. XYZ.
MERV GRIFFIN:
Jack Parr, was the biggest talk show host. And the only, he has no
competition.
And he did something extravagant on his show that made the front
pages. The paper not the television and he deuced and hed cry, hell
fight with that Sullivan something.
Nobody could get him as a guest. He didnt know that I was using his
studio in the morning to do a show. Coz he come at 4 oclock in the
afternoon.
So we were doing at around 10 oclock in the morning and it was one
of those moments when I say to the contestants, Think it over and
theyd go
SO there was silence in the room.
Now he had come in early from a dentist appointment and decided he
would walk to his office from the seventh floor down to his studio. Now
hed come in, there was no backstage, we had no guest stars.
He walked through the curtain. And we were on the air live.
And he looked and people were thinking it over.
That was my first ad-lib day.
And I looked at him and said, What are you doing here?

And he said to me, What are you doing here? This is my studio.
And I said, We are on the air, its a major show.
And he jumped and he left. He did a couple of fighting and he left. He
called his agent and said, Who is that?
So they told him and he said, He can take over on a Monday night.
He was quitting the show anyway and he didnt care what happened
on Monday nights.
So I came in on a Monday night. The whole staff took the night off
except for one guy who had to stay and produce the show.
Now I went out and did my monologue.
I didnt know whether the audience laughed; I didnt see them; I didnt
do anything. I was absolutely failing on the spot.
And I did the monologue and I introduced my agent in the monologue.
And I said, I know you people dont know who I am, heres my agent,
he would tell you.
But now, see it was Al Kelly. The double talker and he came out and he
submerged. He was a wonderful guy and jeopardized the department.
And everybody was like
And they started to laugh, you see.
And I let him have the show, and I said, Well be back and I left and I
left the stage and this kid was standing there, Bob Shanks.
And then I said, I dont know how to do your show and I have to go
home.
I swore to you, its in the book. I said I have to go home and now and
he said, Whothere is 85 minutes to go. And I said, You have to
get somebody else, Meg Mars over there, he can do it, she can do it.
And so, Ithese guys are vicious.
And so I said, Youd have to let her do it, I really had to go home.

He literally pushed me into the stage again. And then all this frantic,
not knowing what to do thing was very funny to the audience.
No guest would come on with me. Nobody. No stars.
So I for my first guest I said, Heres a lady psychologist, shes from
Kentucky.
And came in a brilliant lady. Out in with this nice lady.
And she came in with this big hat on and she talked about psychology.
Relating it to pipes.
That you had a fear pipe, a left pipe, a wonder pipe and another pipe.
This is the tonights show and her point of argument is that itll be
alright if you let your pipes cleaned.
DAVID LETTERMAN: This book by Paul Merv. Thank you very much.
Well be right back ladies and gentlemen.
[END]