KING OF CHAT (REMEMBERING LARRY KING)

When it came to landing in-depth interviews with public figures, talk show host Larry King reigned supreme - particularly in his 25 years as a CNN host.

An American broadcaster who commanded the same respect across the world as David Frost, he shared the legendary British television host's ability to extract much more from the political leaders and Hollywood stars he interviewed than they may have intended.

In an era of aggressive interviews, his less confrontational, more conversational approach often seduced public figures into revealing more about the influences that shaped their lives.

And he could also get them to disclose their real opinions.

Born in Brooklyn in 1933 to Lithuanian and Ukranian parents, his mother was a garment worker and father ran a restaurant.

Raised Larry Ziegler in the Orthodox Jewish tradition, he lost his father at the age of nine after he suffered a heart attack.

With the family reliant on welfare, he attended Lafayette High School in Brooklyn but was so affected by his father's passing that he lost interest in education.

King would later tell the Guardian newspaper in 2015: "It was a real blow to me.

"But eventually, I channelled that anger because I wanted to make him and my mother proud."

A keen baseball fanatic who continued to support the Dodgers after they switched from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, he would credit his father for engendering his love of sport and his sense of humour.

In 1952, King married his childhood sweetheart Frada Miller at the age of 19 but it was eventually annulled.

It would be the first of eight marriages, with a shortlived marriage to Annette Kay in Florida in 1961 with whom he would father Larry Jr who he would not meet until his son was in his thirties.

In 1961, he also married Alene Akins, a Playboy Bunny from one of Hugh Hefner's Miami nightclubs and adopted her son Andy but the marriage again only lasted a year.

King married for a fourth time in 1963, wedding Mary Stuphin and after that collapsed, remarried Akins in 1969 with whom he had a daughter Chaia.

They divorced three years later but in 1999 Larry and Chaia co-wrote a children's book 'Daddy Day, Daughter Day' to help kids whose parents had separated.

There was a sixth marriage in 1976 to maths teacher and production assistant Sharon Lepore that lasted until 1983.

In 1989, he met businesswoman Julie Alexander and proposed to her on their first date - marrying later that year.

After living in separate cities, they separated in 1990 and divorced two years later.

Within three years he proposed to the actress Deanna Lund but never saw the relationship through to marriage.

However in 1997, three days after undergoing heart surgery, he married Shawn Southwick in his hospital room in LA.

The couple would have two children - Chance and Cannon and he was a stepdad to her son, the Arena Football quarterback Danny Southwick.

The marriage would last until 2019, even though Southwick filed for divorce nine years earlier and they had managed to reconcile.

King had had five children with seven wives, nine grandchildren and four great grandchildren but in August 2020, suffered a double setback when the children he raised with Akins, Andy and Chaia died within days of each other from a cardiac arrest and lung cancer, aged 61 and 55 respectively.

In his twenties, King began to focus on a career in broadcasting after a chance encounter with a CBS announcer who suggested he go to Florida where opportunities were opening up for inexperienced broadcasters.

He landed a job in 1957 as a disc jockey on WAHR-AM in Miami but was urged to Anglicise his name because Ziegler was too ethnic.

In his 2009 autobiography he explained: "There was no time to think about whether this was good or bad or what my mother would say.

"I was going on the air in five minutes. The Miami Herald was spread out on his desk.

"Face up was a full page as for King's Wholesale Liquors. The general manager looked down and said: 'King! How about Larry King?'"

And so his broadcasting persona was born.

At first he did the 9am to noon slot.

However King also earned vital experience and $50 a week as a newscaster and sports broadcaster as well.

Working for the commercial news/talk radio station WIOD, King broadcast from Punpernik's Restaurant in Miami Beach, where he developed his interviewing style by inviting whoever walked in to go on air.

His first interview was with a waiter but two days later the crooner Bobby Darin walked in while on tour, having heard the show and became his first ever celebrity guest.

The show established King as a broadcaster in Florida and he was recruited as the host of his first TV show 'Miami Undercover' in 1960 on WPST-TV Channel 10.

The comedian Jackie Gleason was also broadcasting a variety show nationally from Miami Beach and became a close friend and mentor, taking the young broadcaster under his wing and even changing the look of the set for his show.

In 1965, such was King's celebrity status in Florida that he became a columnist for the Miami Herald.

He was also employed in 1970 and 71 as a "colour commentator" at Miami Dolphins American Football matches.

However in 1971 he was suspended from his radio and television hosting roles at WIOD and WTVJ after his arrest on the back of accusations from a business partner of grand larceny.

Despite the charges being dismissed a year later, King was not rehired and so he headed to Louisiana instead to work as a freelance journalist.

King returned to Miami in 1978 after he was re-employed by WIOD but his late-night radio programne 'The Larry King Show' was also syndicated nationally by the Mutual Broadcasting System network.

Originally broadcast in 28 cities across the US, it soon spread to 118 within five years, with listeners enjoying his 3am "Open Phone America" slot which enabled them to ring in and raise whatever subject they wished.

In 1985, Ted Turner's new 24 hour news channel came a calling and 'Larry King Live' was created.

With its in-depth interviews with high profile figures, it would become the network's most popular show for two decades, with King undoubtedly becoming its most famous host.

Over the years, there would be many memorable interviews with people ranging from UFO conspiracy theorists to superstars like Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor to international figures like Nelson Mandela and a famously tetchy joint interview with the then Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and the Ulster Unionist MP Ken Maginnis in 1994.

With his trademark rolled up sleeves and braces on his shirt, King had numerous memorable interviews.

One of the most talked about episodes was a debate he moderated between Vice President Al Gore and the Texas businessman and third party Presidential candidate Ross Perot about the North America Free Trade Agreement which proved instrumental in winning over public and Congressional support for the initiative.

In 1993, Elizabeth Taylor spoke frankly about her battle with alcoholism, telling how she would consume three to five glasses of Jack Daniels before 5.30 and have wine with her dinner without ever appearing to be drunk.

King sang a duet with Marlon Brando in a bizarre encounter in 1994, in which the Hollywood icon uttered the phrase "if the dog hadn't stopped to pee, he might have caught the rabbit" when asked if he would rather have been a musician.

Brando infamously returned in 1996 and came in for heavy criticism for remarking "Hollywood is run by Jews".

In what would be his last major interview, Frank Sinatra famously oscillated in 1998 from being easy going to combative - denouncing the writers of kiss and tell books about his life as "pimps and whores" while also candidly talking about his experience of stage fright.

He waxed lyrical about interviewing the ANC leader and South African President Nelson Mandela in 2000, describing it as "one of the great moments of my life.

"I regarded him as the greatest figure of the 20th Century, the years of imprisonment, fighting Apartheid and then to lead his country as President was unbelievable to me."

Not every interview gelled, however.

The comedian Jerry Seinfeld mocked him in 2007 for asking if the decision to end his hit NBC sitcom 'Seinfeld' had been his own or had been taken by the network.

In 2010, he also came under fire after asking Democratic Congressman Eric Masa if he was gay amid allegations that he groped a male staffer.

There was a rather gauche question that year to Lady GaGa about having a family history of lupus.

By 2010, there were signs that audiences were becoming tired of King's interview show.

He agreed to step down, making way for the former British tabloid newspaper editor Piers Morgan and signed off by saying to his CNN audience: "I don't know what to say except to you, my audience, thank you. Instead of goodbye, how about so long?"

There were occasional specials which he hosted for CNN up to 2012, when he established Ora TV with the Mexican business man Carlos Slim.

Initially intended as a web based interview series, 'Larry King Now' was carried on Hulu and the Russian news channel RT America.

RT carried his Thursday night political talk show 'Politiking' on its channels around the world right up to the 2020 Presidential Election.

In December 2020, the broadcaster was taken to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre after contracting the Coronavirus just before New Year's Eve.

He had had a history of heart trouble, having suffered a massive cardiac arrest in 1987 and undergone quintuple bypass surgery and later an angioplasty while stents were inserted.

In 2017, a cancerous tumour was also discovered on his lung but was removed successfully during surgery.

He also had a stroke in March 2019 and revealed later that year he had contemplated suicide because of his string of ill health.

However Covid-19 would eventually claim his life.

Over the course of an estimated 60,000 interviews he conducted throughout his career, King interviewed every serving President from Gerald Ford to Barack Obama.

There was also a prescient interview with Donald Trump in 1987 in which he noted the property mogul was sounding "a lot like a politician" despite his protestations that he didn't want to be the President of the United States.

A winner of the Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting and an Emmy, his not for profit Larry King Cardiac Foundation funded life saving procedures for those who could not afford them.

Describing himself as a Jewish agnostic, he also made appearances as himself in movies like Ivan Reitman's 1984 box office smash hit 'Ghostbusters,' Tony Scott's hi-tech 1998 thriller 'Enemy of the State' with Will Smith and Gene Hackman and Jerry Seinfeld's 2007 animated family comedy 'The Bee Movie'.

However he will be forever remembered for his long reign as the king of American talk on radio and TV and for his ability to land exclusive interviews with some of the most significant names in world politics, business, sport and entertainment. 

(Larry King passed away at the age of 87 on January 24, 2020)