Interview: Larry King
Broadcasters' Hall of Fame

You can't possibly have foreseen as a young person what would happen to you, because what you do didn't exist when you were a youngster.

Larry King: No, certainly not. No international satellite hookups, no CNN. Although I will tell you this:

When I was 5 years old I would lie in bed, look at the radio, and I wanted to be on the radio. I don't know why. I was magically attuned to it. I would listen to these voices, and then as I got a little older -- and just a little older, 7 or 8 -- I would imagine myself doing what they were doing. I would actually stand up, sit down, I'd go to the mirror, and I would say, "The Romance of Helen Trent," as if I were the announcer. Then I would go to baseball games and I'd roll up the score card, and I'd sit up in the back row, and all my friends would look up at me, and I'd broadcast the game to myself. I fantasized being a broadcaster.

I'd go into New York and watch radio shows. Brooklyn was separate. When you lived in Brooklyn you didn't say, "Manhattan." You said you went into New York. So we went into New York and I'd go watch The Children's Hour and The Armstrong Radio Theater or Bob and Ray.

How old when you started doing that?

Larry King: Twelve or 13. When I finished high school, I didn't have good enough grades to go to college, my father had died when I was young, and I had to help my mother, so I worked a bunch of odd jobs. I worked on the United Parcel Service truck, I sold home delivery of milk. But always, in the back of my mind, I wanted to get into radio.

Once I worked for Associated Merchandising Corporation at 1440 Broadway. And that was a company that factored the sale of goods, and you had to call up and get credit lines. I was a mail clerk. But in that building was WOR. And WOR was on the 22nd floor, and we were on the 3rd floor. And almost five or six times a day I would take the elevator up to the 22nd floor and pretend that I was an announcer. Like going down in the elevator to go out to lunch. And sometimes when I'd get on the elevator, some announcers would walk on. And I'd hear them talk, and I just wanted to do that. I just wanted to be that.

So I literally fantasized myself into it. Every dream I had when I was 18 came true. Every logical dream, that is. I wanted to be in radio. I wanted to be in television. I wanted to be a communicator. I wanted to do sports, I got a chance to do a lot of sports. I didn't know that I'd be an interviewer, per se, but I knew I wanted to broadcast.

Herbie, my best friend, his father, Morris, used to walk with me down the street. I'd be 18 years old, just out of high school. All the other kids were going to college, and I was working at the United Parcel Service. And I was always telling everyone, "I want to be a broadcaster." And he would walk with me down the street and put his arms around me and would actually say, "What, are you nuts? What, are you a pipe dreamer? What, are you crazy? What, you're going to be Arthur Godfrey? You're not going to be Arthur Godfrey. Get a job with a future!"

Finally, when I was 22, I went down to Miami and started knocking on doors.

Why did you go to Miami?

Larry King: It's a funny story. I forget the circumstances, it could have been in the WOR building. But I ran into a guy named James Sirmons, who was chief staff announcer at CBS. That's when they had staff announcers. All they did was station breaks and say, "Now, Arthur Godfrey." I wouldn't have even known him by sight. But someone introduced me and I said, "Mr. Sirmons, I've always wanted to be in radio. You got any suggestions?"

He said, "Well kid, I'd go down to Miami. They've got a lot of stations, non-union, don't pay a lot. So, they've got to get very young guys, or old guys who are hanging it up on the way out, alcoholics. Go down there and knock on doors."

I went down and knocked on a bunch of doors and, finally, a small station, WAHR in Miami Beach, right opposite the police station. I stayed with my uncle. My aunt had died (my mother's sister), and he had a little apartment. I slept on the couch. I made the rounds, and I couldn't get in the door. But this small station -- a guy named Marshall Simmonds was the general manager -- gave me a mike test and it was the first time I'd ever spoken into a microphone, or been taped.

You say you'd never spoken into a microphone before you went to Miami. Really? After all those years you wanted to be on radio?

Larry King: It was all fantasy. We'd have parties in the club room, I'd be the emcee. I'd participate in school plays. I was in the Speaker's Bureau, but I'd never spoken into a microphone for the purpose of going out over the air. And this was a test he gave me. He gave me news to read. I'd never read a newscast. And he had a tape machine, a big Ampex. I was nervous. I sat down and did my thing for five minutes.

He said, "Well, you sound very good. I'll tell you what, I'm going to give you a suggestion. I don't have any openings, but a lot of people come and go here, we're a very small station. Why don't you hang around? You can clean up the place. We'll give you a little money every week, and the first guy that quits, you've got the job." I literally lived at that station. I was there day and night. I would help sweep up. I would also learn how to rip and read, and learned news. And I would go to the Miami Stadium and watch the Marlins play, and watch the guys do the baseballs games. Everywhere I could go, anything I could do, I was there.

One day, a guy named Tom Baer quit. I'll never forget it. He quit because he figured out life was not treating him too fairly. He was making $60 a week and his alimony was 65. So Tom Baer was living off the fruits off trees and he figured at the end of the year he was minus $60. So Tom Bear quits and it's Friday afternoon.

Marshall Simmonds called me in and said, "Larry..." -- my name was Larry Zeiger -- he said, "Larry, Tom Baer just quit. And here's your shift. You start Monday morning. You're on from nine to noon with a disc jockey show. You play music, you talk. And then in the afternoon, you'll do two newscasts and one sportscast, and you'll work every day from nine to five, $55 a week."

Music, news, sports? You did it all.

Larry King: All the radio stations did that. Rock and roll was just coming in. WQAM was just starting to play formatted rock, the Top 40. May 1, 1957 was my first day on the air. I don't sleep all weekend. I pick out my theme song: Les Elgart, "Swinging Down the Lane." I am scared to death, but it's finally come, my moment. I was 22 and a half years old.

Marshall Simmonds calls me in. It's like five to nine, there's a newscast at nine, and I go on at five after. And he said to me, "Wonderful. Are you ready?" I said, "I'm ready." And he said, "'What name are you going to use?" I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "You can't use Zeiger. It's too ethnic and people won't remember how to spell it. You've got to get another name." I had never thought of another name. He had the Miami Herald open and there was an ad for King's Wholesale Liquors on Washington Avenue. He said, "How about Larry King?" I said, "Sounds fine to me." He said, "Okay, you're Larry King. Get in there, baby. Good luck."

I go in, I sit down, cue my record up -- Les Elgart, "Swinging Down the Lane" -- and my hands are shaking. This is, by the way, the last time I was ever nervous, was that first day. And I'm really scared. Now I start the theme music. I turn on the microphone, I lower the theme music and nothing comes out. Nothing! I turn off the microphone, I turn up the record, and in that one minute of all you're hearing at home is a record being faded, I am realizing that I don't have the guts. In other words, I have everything else I wanted, but I don't have the chutzpah to say, "I'm a broadcaster." This was a pipe dream, and I really in that minute saw everything going away.

Marshall Simmonds -- God rest him, he died last year -- kicked open the door to the control room, and screamed, "This is a communications business! Communicate!". And he slammed the door. I did something then, almost 40 years ago, only 22 years old, that I still do now. I decided I had nothing to lose, so I was just myself.

I turned on the microphone, turned down the record and I said, "Good morning, this is my first day ever on radio. All my life I wanted to be in radio. I prayed for this moment. I was just given a new name. My name is Larry King. It's the first time I've ever said that name and I am scared to death. But the general manager just kicked open the door and he said that this is a communications business. So bear with me, I'm going to try to communicate." I never was nervous again.

Never nervous again?

Larry King: Never on radio.

I later talked to Arthur Godfrey a lot, and did Arthur Godfrey's show, and he would be on my show. The only other time I was nervous was my first night on television. I was never nervous again because I learned something that day. And if more people could learn this, it would be the best advice I'd give you. As Godfrey later put it into better words, he said to me, "The only secret in this business is there is no secret. Just be yourself. If yourself is good enough, you're going to be good enough. If it ain't good enough, you can't be someone else."

Once I knew that, instead of being nervous, every day became expectancy. I couldn't wait for nine o'clock. I couldn't wait for that red light to go on. I was a glutton. If they asked me, "You want to do two shifts?" I did two shifts. I did sports, I did news, because, instead of being nervous, I loved it.

My first night on television was only three years later. It was May of 1960. The radio show had really gotten popular. I was doing a morning show on another station. I was doing a lot of funny stuff, and I thought I would be a funny morning disk jockey. There was no Don Imus then, but that's who I thought I'd be.

There was a fancy Jewish delicatessen called Pumpernick's, and the owner liked me, his name was Charlie Bookbinder. He wanted a mid-morning coffee klatch show where I'd interview people. We didn't book any guests, I would just interview whoever came in. I interviewed waitresses, and waiters, and just people hanging out.

One day Bobby Darin walked in. He was singing across the street at the Deauville, and I interviewed him. I couldn't prepare for it, but I got to like that. And then Hoffa came in, and a lot of famous people came in and the show really caught on. The Miami Herald gave us big write-ups, so I got a television show. It was called Miami Undercover. Sunday night at 11:30 on Channel 10. There were a lot of write-ups in the paper: "Young radio star makes television debut tonight."

My first night on TV, and now I'm nervous. This is the second time I'm nervous, because I realize that I'll say whatever I want to say, but I can't control it. The camera came on me, and I said, "Good evening." I'm scared, but I'm not panicky. And I just said, "We're going to have debates every Sunday," and explained the format. "And tonight is..." and I introduced my guests. The subject was, should Communist China be admitted to the UN? Two lawyers were debating. They were on the left and the right, and I was in the middle.

But the producers had made a major mistake. They gave me a swivel chair with no back, this was supposed to look hip. What happens , I turned to my left and I just kept swiveling. I could not stop the swivel, I would go to one and have to grab myself to stop. So I swiveled the entire show. I was also smoking at the same time. You smoked on television then all the time. So my reviews said, "The swiveling, smoker! It could start a whole new concept!" It was just the wrong chair.

That show really took off because Gleason came to Miami. 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. So I had Gleason helping me on television, Godfrey on radio.

What was it about your background --- the people you were surrounded by growing up, your family, your friends --- that allowed you to realize that vastly important lesson in broadcasting? That there is no secret. What gave you the chutzpah to realize that if you're good enough, you're okay?

Larry King: That's a very good question. In fact, it's one of the questions I'm almost never asked. I have lifelong friends, and we ponder it a lot. My oldest friend, Herbie, has been a friend since I was nine and a half years old. I have other friends from when I was 12 years old. Herbie's in Washington, other friends are in Los Angeles. So I've had bonds for over 50 years with people.

We were all in the same neighborhood. Ernie Kovacs was in this neighborhood, a lot of federal judges, a lot of people came out of this neighborhood. There was something very different about Brooklyn. We were an island unto ourselves. We were very Jewish. The whole neighborhood was Jewish and Italian: synagogues and churches. I didn't know what a Protestant was.

Your neighbor was your neighbor, no one ever moved, no one ever got divorced. And we had a value system that dealt with a kind of loyalty, even a perverse loyalty. By that I mean, I know that I could walk out of here today, run into someone from 30 years ago and if he was in trouble, I'd help him. There was a bonding developed.

There's a little story I'll tell you. It shows you what kind of bonding it is.

Fred Wilpon, who was one of our friends, went on to be owner of the New York Mets. Owner of the New York Mets! He was an outstanding pitcher, he and Sandy (Koufax) are great friends. He goes on to own the Mets. Lenny Lefkowitz, another one of the guys, goes on to be sales manager of the New York Post. A regular working job, he sells advertising. I'm at a Met game now, and Herbie was with me, and we're up in Fred Wilpon's box, watching the Mets play. And we look down, and there's Lenny. Haven't seen him in 20 years. Lenny's walking with a couple of guys. Lenny looks up and he waves. And Fred Wilpon leaned out of the box and just yelled, "Lenny! Lenny! You paid?! You paid?!" He was mad, he's banging his fist. "You don't pay, Lenny! I own this team!" And the whole -- "I own this team! You don't pay!"

So the guys in the neighborhood didn't have to pay.

Larry King: That's still true. The guys in the neighborhood don't pay, because all of us would be that way. "You call me!"

If I do something caring for a friend, I have no doubt in my mind they would do it for me. People I've tended to bind to in life -- I've made a lot of mistakes. I've bonded with some people who use you, and some people that take advantage of you. But I was raised in that culture in Brooklyn -- which is part Jewish I guess, and part the culture of Brooklyn -- which was, giving was better than receiving. Much better to give than receive. It's joyful to give. And a sense that I know that if I give to Herbie if he's down, he would give to me when I was down.

It sounds like your childhood friendships gave you an enormous amount of self-confidence.

Larry King: It gave me confidence in that friendship. However, it also makes you prey for people who want to take advantage of you, because you're kind of an easy mark. That's another aspect of it, because I was on relief after my father died.

We didn't have any money, and I was nine and a half, going to be 10, and my brother was six and we were on relief for two years. Now it's called welfare, then it was called relief. New York City bought my first pair of glasses. Went to Bush Opticians, it was wire frames, that's all you could get. The relief men would come and inspect the refrigerator, see what kind of meat your mother was buying. Yeah, because you couldn't buy -- you weren't supposed to buy Grade A meat, because you buy Choice. You don't buy Grade A, you don't buy top. And they used to yell at her, "Don't do this," because she used to give her children better. Or she'd take in sewing on the side and try to hide it. You know, hide the sewing that she would take in to make some extra dollars.

She must have been tremendously important to you.

Larry King: I'll tell you what kind of woman she was. Maybe I've been searching for her all my life, but she was a hell of a woman. Came over with seven sisters from Russia. She lost a son before I was born. Burst appendix. Died on the way to the hospital. He was six years old, but I think he was in fourth grade, like he was operating at a higher level. He was a prodigy, and he was in some advanced school. Never went to kindergarten, never went to first grade.

I was born a year later, then my brother was born. Then she lost her husband, and lost her mother a week after her husband died. She never remarried. After we got off welfare, she worked hard and raised her two kids. I moved her down to Miami, and she died in Miami 20 years ago.

You said that you own circumstances could have been a lot better. The implication there is that you ought to be thinking in terms of the advantages you have, the assets you've got, rather than the liabilities.

Larry King: This is hindsight. We did not look around at 18 and say, "Boy, don't we have a great childhood?" In retrospect, we had a great childhood, friends for life,. We knew we were having a good time. We knew something was kind of special. But you're right.

I didn't have a father, so my friend Herbie's father, Morris, who would walk with me and tell me not to be in broadcasting, became like a semi-father to me. I really wanted a father. So I am a father-father when I'm a father to someone. I know what a father means because I didn't have a father.

So, if you have a father and your father's close to you and cares about you, use him! He's a wonderful asset. Mothers are fantastic assets too, and they're different. They're biologically different, temperamentally different. They look at things a little differently.

I remember my father. I was only nine and a half, but I remember. I remember his laugh, I remember the way he smelled, I remember how he felt. He was a real trombenike kind of guy. He died telling a joke, which doesn't surprise me at all. If you're lucky enough to have parents who care about you, or step-parents who care about you, some older figure who puts a stake in you... That's why I like to put a stake in people, because I know people helped me. Tony Bookbinder helped me a lot. Herbie Cohen's father helped me a lot.

Can adversity be an asset?

Larry King: Yeah, if you use it right.

In the early '70s I lost all the jobs I had. There was a guy named Louis Wolfson, was a financier and he got in trouble with the law and he was sentenced to jail and tried to get out, and I was supposed to try to set up a meeting with him with Nixon and I never did it. And all this broke in the newspapers, and I lost my job, and he went to jail, and the district attorney lost his job. And it was like a two-year story, and I was off the air for three years, and then eventually I got back. But that come-down -- and I didn't handle money well, and I was in debt all the time -- that come down taught me. The day I went back on the air, I told myself, "I will never, ever goof again." I'll never get myself in the kind of situation where I could owe people money, or scared of when the phone rings, and stuff like that.

So I hired people to handle money for me. That adversity helped, because I changed my whole lifestyle. See, I was a big man in a small town.

It was heady to me that Lou Wolfson actually called me. I knew Richard Nixon, that I could actually get a meeting with Richard Nixon! That was heady stuff to a Jewish kid from Brooklyn who's suddenly driving around in a Cadillac. So even though I was making 50,000, I was living 80,000. And eventually that catches up with you. So when it all caught up with me and I lost everything and then got back on, I knew that if I could get back on I would never, never lose it.

Were you in agony doing those three years when you were off?

Larry King: Yeah, I did all sorts of odd things. I was a PR director at a race track at a race track in Louisiana. I still had some friends. I wrote some articles for Esquire magazine. Joe Namath was great to me. Everybody was after Joe Namath 'cause he wasn't doing interviews. He liked me, so he had me do this piece for Esquire , and they gave me $25,000. I got the chance to go to training camp with him, and did this long piece with Namath, which was a big help to me.

I did odd little jobs, but I always knew I'd get back. I was in San Francisco, where I had a friend, Don Farber. I was staying at his house, so I didn't have to pay rent. This was only 22 years ago. I would go to San Francisco every day, knock on doors. Finally I got hired at KGO to do University of California Berkeley football and baseball. I would do color.

My mother wasn't feeling too well back in Miami. I had two months 'til the job started, so I drove back to Miami to spend some time with my mother and I stayed in my mother's apartment. I got a call one day from the general manager of the radio station where I used to work, saying, "Let bygones be bygones. Why don't you come back?" I came back, and I came back to television, I came back to writing a newspaper column, it all came back. And I stayed in Miami, never went back to San Francisco.

Why is it that you, Larry King, ended up talking to heads of state, world figures, presidential candidates, and somebody else from the old neighborhood went to the electric chair?

Larry King: Eddie Cantor once said years ago, "The only difference between me and Louie Lepke (who went to the electric chair, and they grew up together. Louie Lepke founded Murder, Inc.) is that I could sing, and Louie couldn't. So when we went down to the corner, I sang and someone threw me a dime. Louie had to rob the apple." That was so profound to me. The gift was the blessing of talent. That's a gift, and I had that gift. I don't know what I would have been if I didn't have this gift. I mean, I couldn't tell you what I would have been. I had no particular skills. I knew I was bright, and I was funny. Maybe I'd have been a comic. But I don't know what I would have been if I didn't have a gift.

My ethic was such that I don't think I would have stolen. But people say, "Never say never." Les Miserables is one of my favorite stories. That's why I hate moralists when they say, "Thou shalt not steal." A good rule, right? Let's say my daughter has a fever of 104, and the only thing that will help her is this antibiotic. And the drug store is closed and I can't reach the druggist. And I see that antibiotic through the window, and I break in. That's wrong, but there's a higher morality there. We were raised with a pretty high moral code, high sense of loyalty, high degree of stick-to-it-iveness, a high degree of care.

Now Tony Mancuso, who went to the chair, had that same sense of loyalty, perverted. He would not rat. Squealing is the worst. That is still bad to me. I'm still offended by the guy who talks. That's the code of the streets, "You do not talk." It's very hard to explain this, but I understand A.C. Cowlings, because I'd have done that for Herbie. All I would want is the truth. I would want Herbie to tell me. "Did you harm your wife?" And I would expect him to tell me the truth. "You need a car? You need a witness? You're my friend."

What do you say to kids who don't grow up in neighborhoods like yours, who don't have that kind of support from friends? How do they get to be Larry King?

Larry King: I could be glib and say, "In some cases, you might grow up in a better atmosphere than that. Maybe your father doesn't die. Maybe you go on to college and get a much better background than I ever had, reading the great books." I never attended a day of college in my life, so all my learning was self-learned. I wasn't a very good student. I was until my father died, and then I lost interest. I think I used his death, but I lost interest.

What I would tell kids today is: persevere. This is a very tough business and it's a business everybody wants to get into. Communications is the number one major in America today. We know that CNN had 25,000 applicants for five intern jobs this summer. 25,000 applicants for five intern jobs. People would pay money to work at CNN.

When I broke in, in 1957, you didn't have to have gone to college. It was wide open. Now it's a very "in" field. So you're up against strong competition. So the first thing I would say is, it doesn't matter where you grew up. If you grew up in Indiana, or Mississippi, or New York, or you grew up poor, or rich, you've got to want it. You've got want it real -- every one of my friends who are successful wanted. If they didn't know what field they wanted, they knew they wanted to be somebody. That great Marlon Brando line in On The Waterfront , "I could have been a contender!" We wanted to be that. We had a high ratio of success orientation. One of my jokes is, even our criminals went to the chair. We didn't have guys do two to five. Come on! We didn't have no petty larceny. These guys were heavyweights. Tony Mancuso died in the electric chair. He was one of our heroes. I mean, he was a gutsy guy.

You've got to know you want it. This is true in any field. If you think, "Well, I think I might want to be a broadcaster," then don't do it, because the competition is vicious. I have great friends in the field, I love people in the field, and there's nobody in the field, nobody in broadcasting who doesn't like it. Nobody.

I know guys in medicine who are disappointed in medicine. Guys in law who would give it up. Guys in business who say, "I wish I could do something else." I never knew a broadcaster that wanted to make a mid-life career switch. There's something about it. It's an art form that is always as good. In other words, I'm having as much fun today as I did when I made $55 a week, because it is as much fun. I mean, the names are bigger, the show is worldwide, but basically, I get a chance -- and any broadcaster gets this, if you're co-hosting a show, if you're broadcasting a game, if you're doing anything -- you've got a royal pass onto life in the broadcasting business. If you're a disk jockey in Biloxi, Mississippi making a hundred dollars a week, you're having as good a time as me.

Well, thank you Larry King. It's been a real pleasure.

Larry King: For me too. Thanks.