Merv Griffin, 82, dies of prostate cancer

With Carson ruling the late-night roost on NBC in the late 1960s, the two other networks challenged him with competing shows, Griffin on CBS and Joey Bishop (later Dick Cavett) on ABC. Nothing stopped Carson, and Griffin returned to Westinghouse.

A lifelong crossword puzzle fan, Griffin devised a game show, “Word for Word,” in 1963. It faded after one season, then his wife, Julann, suggested another show.

“Julann’s idea was a twist on the usual question-answer format of the quiz shows of the Fifties,” he wrote in his autobiography “Merv.” “Her idea was to give the contestants the answer, and they had to come up with the appropriate question.”

“Jeopardy” started in 1964 and the more conventional game show “Wheel of Fortune” was begun in 1975.

“I’m very upset at the news. He was a very close friend of ours, a good friend of mine and a good friend of Eva’s,” Zsa Zsa Gabor said of her sister, Eva Gabor, who died in 1995. “He was just a wonderful, wonderful man.”

Mervyn Edward Griffin Jr. was born in San Mateo, south of San Francisco on July 6, 1925, the son of a stockbroker. An aunt, Claudia Robinson, taught him to play piano at age 4, and he soon was staging shows on the back porch.

“Every Saturday I had a show, recruiting all the kids in the block as either stagehands, actors and audience, or sometimes all three,” he wrote in his 1980 autobiography. “I was the producer, always the producer.”

After studying at San Mateo Junior College and the University of San Francisco, Griffin quit school to apply for a job as pianist at KFRC radio in San Francisco. The station needed a vocalist instead. He auditioned and was hired.

Griffin attracted the interest of RKO studio boss William Dozier, who was visiting San Francisco with his wife, Joan Fontaine.

“As soon as I walked in their hotel room, I could see their faces fall,” the singer recalled. He weighed 235 pounds. Shortly afterward, singer Joan Edwards told him: “Your voice is terrific, but the blubber has got to go.” Griffin slimmed down, and he spent the rest of his life adding and taking off weight.

Griffin and Julann Elizabeth Wright were married in 1958, and their son, Anthony, was born the following year. They divorced in 1973 because of “irreconcilable differences.”

“It was a pivotal time in my career, one of uncertainty and constant doubt,” he wrote in the autobiography. “So much attention was being focused on me that my marriage felt the strain.” He never remarried.

Besides his son, Griffin is survived by his daughter-in-law, Tricia, and two grandchildren.

The family said an invitation-only funeral Mass will be held at a later date at The Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills.

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