American talk show host, radio personality and columnist, whose work has been recognized with awards including two Peabodys, an Emmy award, and 10 Cable ACE Awards. From 1985 to 2010, he hosted the world’s most potent talk show, “Larry King Live” on CNN TV. Known for its commentary and debate on contemporary events, the show tuned into more than 1.2 million American homes nightly and was beamed to approximately 200 nations via satellite. He is the author of several books including Tell It to the King (1988), How To Talk To Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere (1994), The Best Of Larry King Live (1995) and Powerful Prayers (1998).
King was the second son of Russian Jewish immigrants Eddie and Jennie Zeiger. His older brother by six years died of appendicitis shortly before King’s birth and his younger brother Martin was born a few years later. His parents owned and operated a bar-and-grill in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn but sold it when the war broke out so Dad could join the war effort and work at a defense plant in nearby Kearny, New Jersey. The troubles came when Eddie died of a heart attack on the job on 14 June 1944, leaving Jennie to accept relief payments before she found work in the garment district a year later.
His idolized father’s sudden death traumatized ten-year old King, whose performance in school dropped dramatically. The excellent student who skipped third grade became negligent of anything academic and earned the reputation as a troublemaker in Junior High. Graduating Lafayette High School by one point above the minimum for passing, King spent most of his time watching the Brooklyn Dodgers and listening to the radio, with Arthur Godfrey serving as his role model.
While certain he wanted a career in broadcasting, King did not know how to break into it, so he spent four years after high school working odd jobs in Brooklyn. At age 23 in 1957, he boarded a bus to Miami, where he heard a neophyte could start a radio career. Working as a porter at 250-watt AM station WAHR, King was suddenly asked to replace the morning disc jockey who had abruptly quit. On 1 May 1957, having changed his name to King at the stations manager’s suggestion, he finally got a chance to speak into a microphone, and was so petrified he couldn’t utter a sound. Turning up the music so he wouldn’t have to talk, the station manager put his head in the studio and said, “Remember, this a communicating business.” The terrified King let the music go down and began talking into the microphone, telling what just happened because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
It was love at first “sound.” King clicked with the communicating business and never suffered “mike fright” again. Soon attracting the attention of larger Miami stations, King took a job at progressive station WKAT the following year where he was given the enviable morning “drive time” slot. His innovation and creativity got him hired by Pumpernik’s Restaurant to serve as host for a four-hour on-location radio show designed to boost the restaurant’s slow breakfast business.
Randomly picking guests from the restaurant’s clientele, King interviewed waitresses, cooks, conventioneers and the relatively unknown comedians Don Rickles and Lenny Bruce. Soon other celebrities made it a point to drop by Pumpernik’s, whose breakfast business was now booming. It was a turning point in the radio broadcaster’s career: “I found I could do more than shtick. I found I had an ability to draw people out in a interview. The key to my success as an interviewer is the fact that I am truly interested in a person’s craft, in his or her work. And when you sincerely want to find out why people do what they do, you’re going to learn a lot. The less I know in advance, the more curious I am on the air.”
By 1962, the show was moved from Pumpernik’s to a houseboat which was the setting for the TV show Surfside 6. King then took TV work hosting the nation’s first late-night talk show in addition to radio broadcasting. A year later he launched a free-lance writing career with a column for the Miami Beach Sun Reporter and later for The Miami Herald and The Miami News.
As his broadcasting success increased, his financial problems worsened. “At my most egotistical moments, of which there were many, I felt as if I owned Miami, and lived as though I did…I felt that whatever Larry King wanted, Larry King should have.” By age 38 he was a self confessed addicted gambler, unemployed, broke and unable to pay IOUs totally $352,000.
On 30 January 1978, The Larry King Show made its debut in 28 cities from midnight to 5:30 AM. By the early ’80s, the show could claim a weekly audience of three to five million people. In 1982, The University of Georgia honored the show with a George Foster Peabody award, which King considers to be the highlight of his career. After joining the Cable News Network in 1985, he brought Larry King Live to the top of the ratings by 1992 and refers to himself as an “infotainer conglomerate.”
King suffered a heart attack in 1987. He made eight marriages with seven women and had five grown children and at least nine grandchildren. He made his eighth marriage on 5 September 1997 to country singer Shawn Southwick, following a nine-month courtship. Quickly following the ceremony, King underwent an angioplasty to unblock a clogged heart artery. Shawn gave birth to a son, Chance Armstrong King, on 9 March 1999 at 6:31 PM in Los Angeles and King attended the birth and cut the cord himself.
He counted his blessings, “My career is swell, I’m in love with my wife, I appreciate family more. And I pinch myself,” he said, “I can’t believe I’m 65!”
Son Chance was joined by a brother on 22 May 2000 at 3:03 PM in Los Angeles. King was stepfather to Arena Football League quarterback Danny Southwick. King and Southwick filed for divorce in mid-April 2010 but on 9 July 2010 filed to rescind their divorce papers. Just a few weeks earlier, on 29 June 2010, King announced his intention to retire from his 25-year Larry King Live television show by year end. Larry and Shawn King filed for divorce again on 20 August 2019.
Late in his career he hosted Larry King Now on Hulu and RT America during the week, and on Thursdays he hosted Politicking with Larry King, a weekly political talk show which aired in the evening on the same two channels.
On 2 January 2021 it was revealed that King had been hospitalized ten days earlier in a Los Angeles hospital after testing positive for COVID-19. On 23 January he died at the age of 87 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles.
Link to Wikipedia biography