Who’s Talking About Retirement?
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — The procedure that Larry King underwent in mid-March to flush a blocked major artery — which put him at heightened risk of a stroke — also caused a few flutters among his bosses at CNN.
That’s partly because Mr. King, 73, once a four-pack-a-day smoker who had a heart attack and underwent cardiac bypass surgery two decades ago, continues to be the most highly rated host on CNN’s schedule, drawing nearly a million viewers a night. Little wonder, then, that one of the first calls Mr. King received after the clogged artery was detected during an ultrasound exam was from Jon Klein, the president of CNN’s domestic operations.
“I just wanted to make sure he was doing O.K., and that it was as minor as he said it was,” Mr. Klein recalled. Mr. King vowed that he would miss only a day of work, and would return the Monday after his surgery to interview Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat. He kept his word, though he never told his boss what the anesthesiologist remarked when he first glimpsed the build-up of plaque inside the carotid artery in question. “This,” the doctor said, as Mr. King tells it, “is a lucky guy.”
In interviews here both before a recent show (over blueberries and a purportedly “heart healthy” corn muffin at Nate ’n Al’s delicatessen) and afterward (veal schnitzel at Spago), Mr. King said that he felt terrific, notwithstanding the visible incision still healing on the right side of his neck. He said he hoped to hold forth on “Larry King Live” for 10 more years. At that time he would be 83. His current contract, which he said he would soon seek to extend, expires in mid-2009.
“What would it take to go?” he said, paraphrasing a visitor’s halting question as succinctly as he might on his own talk show. “If, God forbid, I had an onset of dementia or Alzheimer’s. That would be it. And what I would wish is that if I get that, no joke intended, that it happens on the air. Just to see how they handle it.”
Then, doing a caricature of his own much-imitated gravelly baritone, he imagined his next incarnation. “Live, from the nursing home in Livingston, here’s ‘Larry King,’ the only show hosted by a guy with Alzheimer’s,” he began, before posing his opening question: “Is it day or night?”
When his tenure does eventually end, Mr. King said his first choice to succeed him would be Ryan Seacrest, the “American Idol” host and disc jockey, presuming he is interested.
“He’s the classic generalist,” Mr. King said, his eyes peering through rectangular lenses that evoke flat-panel televisions. “The only thing I don’t know, and I’ve gotten to know him pretty well, is how versed he is in politics, world affairs. Does he read the paper? Is he interested in Iraq? Because if he is, he’s going to be very good.”
Told of Mr. King’s comments, Mr. Seacrest, a sometime guest host on “Larry King Live,” said through a publicist that he was flattered. When Mr. Klein was asked about Mr. Seacrest, he was complimentary, though diplomatically noncommittal.
“Having worked at ‘60 Minutes,’ ” Mr. Klein, a former CBS producer, said, “I’m convinced these guys can all go till they’re 90. I’m presuming that’s going to be the case with Larry.”
To that end Mr. King is readying plans for a week of shows beginning April 16 that will celebrate the 50th anniversary of his first job in broadcasting, at a radio station in Miami. They will feature Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, as well as a roast and an interview of Mr. King by Katie Couric. The following week he is scheduled to travel to Texas to interview George H. W. Bush.
“Most people, they look forward to retirement — at 65, 67,” he said. “They say, ‘I’ll get the boot, I’ll go to Arizona.’ ”
“What,” he said, before uttering a word he can’t say on the air, “am I going to do in Arizona?”
At least part of Mr. King’s longevity can be explained by his work day, which does not usually extend much past the hour his show is broadcast live early each weeknight, mostly from the CNN bureau in Los Angeles.
Once a seemingly permanent fixture on the East Coast — he is a proud graduate of Lafayette High School in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn — he began shifting his program from New York and Washington to California during the O. J. Simpson trial in 1995. He moved here a little over a decade ago, after meeting Shawn Southwick, 26 years his junior, who would become his sixth wife. The couple have two sons, 8 and 7, whom Mr. King walks to school each morning from his home in Beverly Hills.
His routine rarely varies after that. First there is breakfast in a booth at Nate ’n Al’s. Typically he is joined by two old friends from Lafayette and the Jewish Community House on Bay Parkway in Brooklyn. They are Sid Young, a retired construction company executive, and Asher Dann, a real estate agent.
Ranging from pop culture (Donald Trump’s feuds) to stories of friends long since passed (Jimmy Hoffa, Frank Sinatra), their conversation is not unlike that on Mr. King’s show, as if “The View” had been hijacked by the cast of “Grumpy Old Men.” A recent outtake:
Mr. Young (motioning toward Mr. King): “He likes everybody.”
Mr. King: “No, I don’t.”
Mr. Young: “O.K., who don’t you like?”
Mr. King: (after a pause) “Hitler.” (another pause). “Although he did build the bahn.’ (Big laughs.)
Though his friends said they would be first to alert Mr. King if his mind begins to slip, he does sometimes struggle to find the right word. At Nate ’n Al’s he referred to Jerry Stiller when he meant Jerry Seinfeld, and, when discussing Brian Williams, also said: “The other guy is terrific too. I forget his name.” (Charles Gibson.)
Occasionally that forgetfulness seeps onto his show. One night a few days before his surgery, he included Chris Farley on a list of forthcoming guests, only to catch himself. He had meant Chris Rock; Mr. Farley died in 1997.
“It’s been happening since I was 30,” Mr. King said.
After returning home to make a few calls, and then go out to lunch, Mr. King usually arrives at CNN’s offices on Sunset Boulevard around 4, two hours before show time.
On a recent afternoon he came off the elevator in denim high-top sneakers without laces that had been painted with a skull and crossbones. He was also wearing a pair of AG jeans (a gift from Mr. Seacrest) in which a tailor had sewn buttons to support his trademark suspenders.
Soon, in a glassed-in office within full view of his staff (most of them women), Mr. King removed his casual shirt and proceeded to argue good-naturedly with his executive producer, Wendy Walker, over the tie for that night’s show. For several minutes, he looked less like someone about to interview two senators (Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican) than a guy who’d lost a poker game. Appearing thin and a bit gaunt, he stood naked from the waist up, but for the suspenders he had already snapped over bare shoulders.
For the rest of the afternoon, he mostly schmoozed with his producers. Mr. King has always prided himself on doing the barest preparation for his interviews so that, he says, he might be illuminated along with the viewer; this day was no exception. He had watched almost none of CNN’s coverage of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s questioning of D. Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, though it would be the subject of his lead segment.
“I don’t want to know too much,” he said in his office. “I want the senators’ opinions.”
It is an approach that has proved as soothing as an electric blanket to politicians and celebrities, though maddening to critics, including Amy Reiter of Salon, who wrote last summer: “Whether a guest is flogging a forthcoming movie, airing a few carefully chosen words about a divorce,” or “just trying to sell a war to the American people, he can be sure that Larry will keep him squarely in his comfort zone.”
On this night, once on camera, Mr. King asked Senators Schumer and Specter many variations of a single question — “What do you make of that?” And he asked basically the same question during the two-part segment that closed the show, about the run of Sanjaya Malakar, the 17-year-old “American Idol” contestant with borderline talent who somehow has kept advancing; Mr. King interviewed relatives of Mr. Malakar and his pastor.
Afterward Mr. King confided something that would have surely surprised many viewers, considering how well the interviews had gone. “I have no idea who that guy is,” he said of the “Idol” contestant whose hairstyle has turned heads.
And then, he slipped into the elevator and off to dinner at Spago.
