Merv Griffin, that great bon-vivant television-talk-show host extraordinaire, has written his autobiography, and to celebrate its publication Richard E. Snyder, the president of Simon & Schuster (and the publisher of Merv’s book) threw a party for Merv Griffin in his penthouse suite at the St. Moritz Hotel. Almost everything about this party was great: the food (platters of cold cuts, cheese, pâté, bowls of black olives, three different kinds of bread) was great, and there was lots of it; the flowers were great, and they were all over the place and they were real; the chess set that was there just in case anyone wanted to play a game of chess was great, and it had a real marble board; Bobby Short, the great saloon singer and pianist, was there, and he looked great; Edwin Newman, that St. George of the English language, was there, and a lot of people were willing to swear that his presence alone was great; Christopher Reeve, the star of Superman, was there, and many of the people at the party looked at him as if they
thought he was great; Gloria Swanson, the great former Hollywood beauty and actress, was there, and she was wondering out loud if her new book—her autobiography—started too slow to grab the reader’s attention, but a woman who had just said to her, “Miss Swanson, you don’t remember me. Barbara Walters brought me up to your apartment the other day,” now said, “Oh, but I think your book is so wonderful, so great”; Barbara Howar, the well-known Washington social person and writer, was there, and she is extremely great; a woman was there who was talking about that great best-seller about that titan of society and fashion Gloria Vanderbilt, and she was saying to a man whose greatness wasn’t obvious but couldn’t be doubted, “Everything is great. The book is being used at Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth for the sense of history”; Dan Green, the head of one of Simon & Schuster’s great divisions, was there, and he was talking to Dominique Lapierre, the co-author of a fictional book about New York City being held hostage by terrorists who have an atom bomb—which is an idea so great that most people can hardly get through the day for worrying about it; Joni Evans, head of her own book-publishing division under the Simon & Schuster imprint and the wife of Richard E. Snyder, was there, and she is such a great human being that she kept trying to get a reporter to take home some of the food that the great guests hadn’t consumed; and, of course, Merv Griffin was there, and he shook hands with the guests and smiled at them, and when he smiled his teeth looked white and gleaming and great.
Years ago, on The Merv Griffin Show, the actor Forrest Tucker, who was a guest on the show that day, turned to the actor Mickey Rooney, who was also a guest on the show that day, to tell him what a great actor he was. He said, “They can put you up there with anybody. I don’t care. You’re greater than any of them. You’re greater than Gielgud.”
—October 20, 1980