Merv Griffin, Talk Show Host and Game Show Visionary, 82

Merv Griffin, the onetime big-band singer who leveraged his career as a popular TV talk show host into a business empire whose foundations included the creation of the wildly successful syndicated game shows “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!,” died yesterday. He was 82.Griffin died of prostate cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to a statement from his family released by a spokeswoman for his Beverly Hills-based Griffin Group, Marcia Newberger, said. In a statement yesterday, Nancy Reagan called the news of Griffin’s death “heartbreaking” and remembered Griffin’s friendship and support during President Reagan’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease.“Merv meant the world to me. He was there for me on some of the hardest days when Ronnie was fighting Alzheimer’s and he was there for me every day after Ronnie died.” An entertainer-turned-entrepreneur, who sold Merv Griffin Enterprises to Coca-Cola Co. for $250 million in 1986 and recently was reported to have a net worth of $1.6 billion, Griffin presided over an array of business endeavors.The Griffin Group includes film and television production; a luxury home development; closed-circuit coverage of horse racing around the country; a real estate brokerage specializing in highend residential properties, and a stable of thoroughbreds.Since buying the Beverly Hilton in 1987 — he spent millions renovating the hotel, which he sold in 2003 — Griffin has bought and sold more than 20 hotels, gaming resorts, and riverboats, including Resorts International in Atlantic City, N.J., and the Bahamas.Although he was a TV talk show host for more than two decades, Griffin’s most enduring show business claim to fame is creating and producing “Jeopardy!” (launched in 1964) and “Wheel of Fortune” (launched in 1975). Both shows originally aired on NBC and, beginning in the 1980s, became the two most popular syndicated game shows in television history.Both programs were included in the 1986 sale of Merv Griffin Enterprises. But Griffin wrote the theme music for “Wheel of Fortune” and the famous “thinking music” played in the final round of “Jeopardy!,” which continued to provide him with millions of dollars in royalties.“I have to say that the ongoing success of ‘Jeopardy!’ and ‘Wheel’ is my biggest thrill,” Griffin, a self-described “word and puzzle freak,” told the Hollywood Reporter in 2005. “I mean, they’re still right there at the top of the ratings — they’ve never slipped. They’re timeless and ageless, and in the history of TV there has never been anything like them.” In 2005, Griffin received a lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and a similar award from the Museum of Television and Radio in New York, which is now called the Paley Center for Media.“There really has been no one who has managed to have his type of success in front of and behind the camera,” then-president of the Museum of Television and Radio, Stuart N. Brotman, told The New York Times at the time. “He is a one-man conglomerate, and I can’t think of anyone else who has had that reach.” Critic and show business historian Leonard Maltin agreed.“Other show business figures have gotten wealthy from good investments, but I can’t think of anyone who’s become a one-man conglomerate quite like Merv Griffin,” Mr. Maltin told the Los Angeles Times via e-mail. “The closest comparison I could make would be Gene Autry.” For older Americans, Griffin is best remembered as the genial host of “The Merv Griffin Show.” For two decades — the Emmy Award-winning show aired variously on NBC, CBS, and, for most of its 1960s-to-1980s run, in syndication — Griffin presided over a wide-ranging gab fest.

Merv Griffin, Talk Show Host and Game Show Visionary, 82

Merv Griffin, Talk Show Host and Game Show Visionary, 82

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