Larry King
Larry King (born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger;[1] November 19, 1933 – January 23, 2021) was an American author and radio and television host. His awards and nominations include two Peabodys, an Emmy, and 10 Cable ACE Awards.[2] King was also awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 32nd Annual News and Documentary Emmys.[3] During his career, King conducted over 50,000 interviews on radio and TV.[4]
This article is about the television host. For other uses, see Larry King (disambiguation).
Larry King
January 23, 2021 (aged 87)
Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery, Los Angeles
- Radio host
- television host
- author
- spokesman
1957–2021
5
King was born and raised in New York City to Jewish parents who immigrated to the United States from what is now Belarus in the 1920s. He studied at Lafayette High School, a public high school in Brooklyn. He was a WMBM radio interviewer in the Miami area in the 1950s and 1960s and beginning in 1978, gained national prominence as host of The Larry King Show, an all-night nationwide call-in radio program heard over the Mutual Broadcasting System.[5]
From 1985 to 2010, he hosted the nightly interview television program Larry King Live on CNN.[6][7] King hosted Larry King Now from 2012 to 2020,[8] which aired on Hulu, Ora TV, and RT America. He hosted Politicking with Larry King, a weekly political talk show, on the same three channels from 2013 to 2020. King also appeared in television series and films, usually playing himself. He remained active until his death in 2021.
On January 2, 2021, King was hospitalized with COVID-19 at the Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles. King recovered from the virus, but died on January 23 from sepsis at the age of 87.[9]
Early life and education[edit]
King was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 19, 1933.[10] His parents were Orthodox Jews who immigrated to the United States from Soviet Belarus in the 1920s.[1][11][12]
He was one of two sons of Jennie (née Gitlitz), a garment worker who was born in Minsk in the Russian Empire (today in Belarus), and Aaron Edward Zeiger, a restaurant owner and defense-plant worker who was born in Pinsk[13][14][15] (also in modern-day Belarus).
King attended Lafayette High School, a public high school in Brooklyn.[16] When King was nine years old, his father died of a heart attack.[17][18] This resulted in King, his mother, and brother going on government welfare.[17] King was greatly affected by his father's death, and subsequently lost interest in his schoolwork.[19]
After graduating from high school, King worked to help support his mother.[20] From an early age, he desired to work in radio broadcasting.[20]
Career[edit]
Miami radio and television[edit]
A CBS production supervisor, James F. Sirmons, suggested he go to Florida which was a growing media market with openings for inexperienced broadcasters. King went to Miami, and after initial setbacks, he gained his first job in radio. The manager of a small station, WAHR[21] (now WMBM)[22] in Miami Beach, hired him to clean up and perform miscellaneous tasks.[23] When one of the station's announcers abruptly quit, King was put on the air. His first broadcast was on May 1, 1957, working as the disc jockey from 9 a.m. to noon.[24] He also did two afternoon newscasts and a sportscast. He was paid $50 a week.
He acquired the name Larry King when the general manager declared that Zeiger was too difficult to remember[25] ("too German, too Jewish and not showbusiness enough"[11]), so minutes before airtime, Larry chose the surname "King", which he got from an advertisement in the Miami Herald for King's Wholesale Liquor.[26] Within two years, he legally changed his name to Larry King.[27]
He began to conduct interviews on a mid-morning show for WIOD, at Pumpernik's Restaurant in Miami Beach.[28] He would interview whoever walked in. His first interview was with a waiter at the restaurant.[29] Two days later, singer Bobby Darin, in Miami for a concert that evening, walked into Pumpernik's[30][31] having heard King's radio show; Darin became King's first celebrity interview guest.[32][33]
King's Miami radio show brought him local attention. A few years later, in May 1960, he hosted Miami Undercover, airing Sunday nights at 11:30 p.m. on WPST-TV Channel 10 (now WPLG).[34]
King credited his success on local television to the assistance of comedian Jackie Gleason, whose national television variety show was being taped in Miami Beach beginning in 1964. "That show really took off because Gleason came to Miami," King said in a 1996 interview he gave when inducted into the Broadcasters' Hall of Fame. "He did that show and stayed all night with me. We stayed till five in the morning. He didn't like the set, so we broke into the general manager's office and changed the set. Gleason changed the set, he changed the lighting, and he became like a mentor of mine."[35]
During this period, WIOD gave King further exposure as a color commentator for the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League, during their 1970 season and most of their 1971 season.[36] However, he was dismissed by both WIOD and television station WTVJ as a late-night radio host and sports commentator as of December 20, 1971, when he was arrested after being accused of grand larceny by a former business partner, Louis Wolfson.[37][38] Other staff covered the Dolphins' games into their 24–3 loss to Dallas in Super Bowl VI. King also lost his weekly column at the Miami Beach Sun newspaper. The charges were dropped.[38][39] Eventually, King was rehired by WIOD.[38] For several years during the 1970s, he hosted a sports talk-show called "Sports-a-la-King" that featured guests and callers.[32]
Charitable works[edit]
Following his 1987 heart attack, King founded the Larry King Cardiac Foundation, a non-profit organization[90] which paid for life-saving cardiac procedures for people who otherwise would not be able to afford them.[91]
On August 30, 2010, King served as the host of Chabad's 30th annual "To Life" telethon, in Los Angeles.[92]
He donated to the Beverly Hills 9/11 Memorial Garden, where his name is on the monument.[93]
Health problems and death[edit]
On February 24, 1987, King had a major heart attack before a successful quintuple-bypass surgery.[51][127] Following this, he wrote two books about living with heart disease. Mr. King, You're Having a Heart Attack: How a Heart Attack and Bypass Surgery Changed My Life (1989, ISBN 978-0-440-50039-1), which was written with New York's Newsday science editor B. D. Colen, and Taking On Heart Disease: Famous Personalities Recall How They Triumphed over the Nation's #1 Killer and How You Can, Too (2004, ISBN 978-1-57954-820-9), which features the experience of various celebrities with cardiovascular disease, including Peggy Fleming and Regis Philbin.[128] King quit smoking after the heart attack, having smoked three packs of cigarettes a day until then.[129]
King related his heart attack experience in an interview in the 2014 British documentary film The Widowmaker, which advocates for coronary calcium scanning to motivate preventive cardiology and highlights the financial conflicts of interest in the widespread use of coronary stents.[130][131][132] He received annual chest X-rays to monitor his heart condition. During his 2017 examination, doctors discovered a malignant tumor in his lung. It was then successfully removed with surgery.[74]
On April 23, 2019, King underwent a scheduled angioplasty and also had stents inserted. It was erroneously reported that he had another heart attack along with heart failure; these claims were later retracted.[133] He returned to Politicking with Larry King on August 15. On November 27, he said he had had a stroke in March, and was in a coma "for weeks".[134] He later admitted he had contemplated suicide following the stroke, telling Los Angeles television station KTLA, "I thought I was just going to bite the bullet. I didn't want to live this way."[135]
At ten days earlier, on January 2, 2021, it was reported that King had been admitted to the Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles with COVID-19, but moving out of ICU.[136][137] Three weeks later on January 23 at the age of 87, King died of sepsis infection while he had recovered from the virus.[138][139][140][56][9] His ex-wife, Shawn Southwick King, told Entertainment Tonight that King died from an infection, which was "unrelated" to COVID-19.[141] According to the CDC, and death certificate obtained by People magazine, sepsis was his immediate cause of death, with two underlying conditions leading to the infection—acute hypoxemic respiratory failure and end-stage renal disease.[142]