Larry King, the Brooklyn-born man who became a beloved broadcast pioneer and renowned talk
show host, died on Jan. 23, 2021. King spent his final days at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
in Los Angeles, per a statement by his co-owned company, Ora Media. The statement reads,
"With profound sadness, Ora Media announces the death of our co-founder, host and friend
Larry King, who passed away this morning at age 87 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los
Angeles. For 63 years and across the platforms of radio, television and digital media, Larry's
many thousands of interviews, awards, and global acclaim stand as a testament to his
unique and lasting talent as a broadcaster."
While his legions of viewers may think they knew him pretty well, there's much to be learned
from the untold truth of the broadcast legend.
When he decided to embark on a career in broadcasting, Larry King was not yet Larry King. He shared
the story of how he came to be known by his now-famous moniker during an interview with
CNN's George Stroumboulopoulos.
"It was May 1, 1957, my first big day on the air."
Recalling day one of his tenure as on-air talent for a Miami radio station, King said,
"My first big day on the air and the general manager called me in. I had all my records
prepared and he said, 'What name are you gonna use?' I said 'Larry Zeiger'. He said 'You
can't use that. It's too ethnic. People won't remember, won't know how to spell it. You
better change your name.'"
With just three minutes until he was scheduled to go on the air, the panicked young disc
jockey and the station's GM searched for a solution. As he recalled, the Miami Herald
was open, there was an ad for King's Wholesale Liquors, which prompted the general manager
to suggest he go with the name "Larry King." And with that, broadcast history was made.
Miami was the city where Larry King both launched and built his career. As his on-air skills
grew, so too did the opportunities. On a 2017 episode of The Turnaround, he reflected on
his time as a DJ at a small station, which included hosting a morning show at a local
restaurant. He also became the voice of the Miami Dolphins, providing color commentary
while announcing the NFL team's games during the 1970 and 1971 seasons.
Decades after leaving Miami, King returned to the city in 2017. During that trip, he
spoke with the Miami Herald about his lingering fondness for what was once his adopted home,
saying,
"I have a special place in my heart for Miami, and I'm still a Dolphins fan. I've been out
of Miami for 40 years and had a great time there. Began my career there."
In 1961, Larry King was an up-and-coming radio deejay when he was cast in a locally shot
television drama, Miami Undercover. The role wasn't much of a stretch, with King playing
a Miami radio deejay named "Sleepy Sam."
In an episode called "The Thrush" in the show's one and only season, King's character is in
the broadcast booth when two shady-looking, weapon-toting men enter. They offer him a
bribe to play a particular record, but he refuses.
"I don't take payola from no creep little record outfit."
When a gun is held to his head, the deejay reluctantly agrees to play ball, but turns
the tables by describing the criminals live on the air, addressing the Miami Police department.
Panicked, one of the goons guns him down.
King's next acting role came more than 20 years later, when he made a brief cameo in
Ghostbusters. After that, the dam burst, and he went on to act in dozens of films and TV
series, usually playing himself, interviewing famous people on TV.
By the early 1970s, Larry King's career was on the rise. He was appearing on radio, television,
and in print, writing a column for the Miami Herald. That apparent success masked the fact
that King perpetually lived beyond his means, and was constantly in debt. Writing a bad
$5000 check led King to be arrested in December 1971 and charged with grand larceny. He eventually
pleaded no contest to passing the check, with the larceny charge tossed.
While King never served any time, the negative publicity slammed the brakes on his career.
Writing about the incident on his website, King admits what he did was stupid, and made
him go through the embarrassment of being arrested and taken in for a mug shot. The
shame was only part of it: In the wake of his arrest, he was dismissed from his job.
As the South Florida Sun Sentinel recalled, King didn't land another steady gig until
1975, and left Miami in 1978 for Washington, DC to host a national radio show. His luck
improved significantly in 1985 when media mogul Ted Turner hired him for CNN.
Larry King has interviewed several U.S. presidents, but there's only one he's hit with his car:
John F. Kennedy. King told Anderson Cooper in a 2009 interview,
"I crashed into him. I'm a struggling little disc jockey with four friends, we drive up
to Palm Beach on a Sunday morning in 1959. And there is no one on the road. It's a beautiful
Sunday morning."
According to King, he was only driving about 10 miles an hour when he accidentally struck
the back of Kennedy's vehicle, the only other car on the road at the time. King told Cooper
that Kennedy got out of his car to talk to him and his passengers. King said,
"The two of us are alone on the road, it's a sunny beautiful morning. I said, 'I wasn't
looking,' I was sorry. He said, 'Well, I'll tell you, I'm going to run for president next
year, vote for me, swear.' So we all raised our hands, 'We swear to vote for you.'"
Of all Larry King's most memorable onscreen moments, the one that remains impossible to
top is his delightfully loopy 1994 sit-down with Marlon Brando. The interview concluded
with a brief shot of the legendary actor sitting next to King, his arm around the broadcaster's
shoulder as they duet on old-timey hit "Got A Date With An Angel." At one point, Brando
gives King an affectionate slap on each cheek before looking him deeply in the eyes, leaning
in, and kissing him on the lips.
That kiss is listed among King's best TV moments in magazines ranging from Entertainment Weekly
to Time, and generated plenty of buzz. Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales, for example, described
the interview by writing,
"As wastes of time go, this one was particularly and perversely entertaining."
The interview even inspired a Saturday Night Live sketch, with John Travolta as Brando
and Kevin Nealon impersonating King, who rubs the actor's feet with oil and dons a baby
bonnet at his request.
As King shared in his book Truth Be Told, the Brando interview became the one interview
that he's most asked about, writing, quote, "It ain't even close."
The phrase "lucky in love" decidedly doesn't apply to Larry King. In 2019, People reported
that King, who was then 85, filed for divorce from wife Shawn Southwick King after 22 years
of marriage. The divorce filing was his eighth. In the wake of this news, Divorce magazine
chronicled King's various marriages to seven different women, and yes, that math checks
out: He actually married and divorced Playboy bunny Alene Akins twice. King's most recent
marriage was also his longest; the shortest was with second wife Annette Kaye, with both
the wedding and the divorce both taking place in 1961.
Speaking with People about his 2019 divorce filing, King said his and Southwick's 26-year
age gap became an issue. He also offered an explanation for his plethora of ex-wives,
saying,
"I got married a lot. But in my head, I'm not a marrying guy. When I grew up, nobody
lived together. If you fell in love, you got married. And so I married the ones that I
loved."
However, King said that his marriages ended when he outgrew them, noting,
"What I loved at 20 is not what I loved at 30 and what I loved at 30 is not what I loved
at 40."
Larry King's health woes have been well documented over the years. He suffered his first heart
attack in 1987, requiring bypass surgery; his most recent heart attack occurred in 2019.
As he explained during a WebMD live event, when it came to maintaining his health, he,
quote, "didn't do anything right." He was also a heavy smoker, noting that he sometimes
smoked up to three packs per day.
While he ditched cigarettes immediately after his first heart attack, that three-pack-a-day
habit may have had later repercussions when, in 2017, he shared he had been diagnosed with
lung cancer. Unlike his headline-generating 1987 heart attack, he kept this health battle
secret.
King made the revelation in an interview with Us Weekly, saying,
"The doctor said to me, 'It was malignant but you were in the first stage. If it had
stayed and we didn't find it, you would have had trouble in two or three years, but we
got it and you were lucky.'"
After undergoing surgery, King was back at work two weeks later. He declared that his
latest chest X-ray was "all clear" after surgery removed 20 percent of the lung.
In addition to his radio and television broadcasts, Larry King also had a column in USA Today.
Before the newspaper dropped King's column in 2001, he wrote it for two decades. In addition
to his USA Today gig, King has written more than a dozen books, including one focusing
on prayer, another on his love of baseball and even a book about Princess Diana.
One thing readers may not know is that King is also the author of a murder mystery, the
2003 novel Moon Over Manhattan, which he co-wrote with Thomas H. Cook. King's foreword explains
that he and Cook wrote the book as, quote, "a lighthearted tribute to all the crazy,
wonderful characters who inhabit New York [...] we wanted to write a caper, something
light and funny."
It sounds like it worked: A review in Publisher's Weekly described Moon Over Manhattan as "a
delightful farce" and "a riotous tale."
Larry King doesn't like to do a lot of research on the guest he interviews, believing that
leads to a more freewheeling, anything-goes conversation. In addition, he said on a 2017
episode of The Turnaround, it places him in the same uninformed position as the typical
viewer.
Some call it curiosity, whereas others may have another word for it. Speaking with the
Guardian, King revealed that a friend once told him, quote, "You know the secret of your
success? You're dumb."
As an example, he pointed to a guest he had just interviewed, British television presenter
Mary Berry of The Great British Bake Off. As the Guardian pointed out, it was apparent
that King had little idea who Berry was. King concurred, but used the chef-turned-television
personality as an example to prove his point, saying,
"Like with the lady today — why do you want to bake cakes? What makes a good cake? What
cakes do you like ? What cakes don't you like? I'm dumb. I don't know a thing about baking."
"Thank you so much, Mary Berry."
Larry King was once so broke he was arrested for bouncing a $5,000 check, with the Telegraph
recalling that he even declared bankruptcy in 1978, listing debts of about $350,000.
Since then, however, his financial position has improved significantly. According to Celebrity
Net Worth, King is worth an estimated $50 million.
Making big money came later in life for King. It wasn't until 1985, when he was in his 50s,
that he landed the CNN gig that brought the big bucks. He told the South Florida Sun Sentinel,
"I really started making major money at 55. That's not young to start making money. It's
kind of a hoot."
Even then, King admitted he's always had a somewhat odd disconnect with money.
"I have never seen one of my own paychecks, actually. I have it all sent to my money managers
in Boston. They handle my mortgage, my credit cards, everything [...] I'm not good with
business or finances. That's not my facility."