Larry King doesn’t have a reputation for getting people to cry in the way that, say, Barbara Walters does.
He was not known for sharp interviewing skills the way Mike Wallace was but always seemed willing to ask anything, informed or not.
You rarely caught King on the scene of breaking news events, unlike Dan Rather back in the day or Anderson Cooper now. Journalism wasn’t really his thing. He was more comfortable with celebrity shmoozing.
And nobody accused King of breaking new pop-culture ground — or even being particularly well grounded in it. He once asked Jerry Seinfeld whether his show had been canceled. Seinfeld was appalled — “Do you know who I am?” — and called for a copy of his resume for the host. Then there was the time King addressed Ringo Starr as “George” during an interview.
Yet King, 76, is phenomenally well-liked in celebrity circles, beloved by colleagues, followed closely by loyal viewers and, judging by his tenure and salary, valued by employers.
When he hangs up his suspenders after 25 years on CNN this week, he will leave a nightly hole for a (shrinking) segment of the audience, and a remarkable legacy.
King’s last live show is Thursday. Guests are to be announced Monday; producers plan a send-off featuring numerous celebrities. “It’s a lot of moving parts,” said a CNN spokesman.
Irishman Piers Morgan, former tabloid editor and reality show judge who takes over the time slot in January, rightly hails King as “an institution.”
“It’s like following Sinatra at Vegas,” Morgan has said. “No one remembers that guy’s name.”
What interview sticks in memory? In 2007, during extensive tributes to King’s 50th anniversary in broadcasting, CNN hailed King’s NAFTA debate between then-Vice President Al Gore and Ross Perot in 1993 as the record-setter for the cable industry and a high point in CNN history, drawing more than 16 million viewers. But that’s not one that jumps to mind.
Presidents and kings, convicted murderers and celebrity divorcees, singers, athletes, politicians and spiritual leaders have all faced his microphone. Think Elizabeth Taylor, the Dalai Lama, the O.J. car chase or Prince, not NAFTA.
Perhaps King was at his best serving as national grief counselor and shiva host before, during and after celebrity passings. Speculation on unresolved murders or suicides was his subspecialty, and over the years he allowed all manner of barely connected acquaintances of the deceased to weigh in. The televised wake he held for Michael Jackson lingers in memory. There’s Liza Minelli, sharing memories with Larry, the two of them alternately leading a grieving globe and bonding as pals who might have been talking privately on the phone, except that millions of us were eavesdropping.
A force in prime time
The much-married and aged King is the butt of jokes that are themselves getting old.
But give him his due: After a long run in radio, King remade the prime-time TV landscape. The designation of the first worldwide live phone-in talk show now sounds quaint. But it truly was different. His title as the “Muhammad Ali of the broadcast interview” — or was it the Cassius Clay of the cable studio? — also rings of an earlier era. He’s the telegraph operator still clacking away in the Internet age. The reliably monotonous maker of small talk in these Twitter times.
TV’s low-res Walter Winchell holdover in a high-def age.
Past his sell-by date, he’s talking about what to do next. First up, he’s going into the bagel business. Seriously. He’s the national spokesman for the Original Brooklyn Water Bagel Co., now branching out to the West.
He may be signing off a tad late, but what he gave the TV world was more than consistent company. It was the electronic gossip over the back fence that, for better and worse, helped define the national conversation for a quarter century.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
