...and his brilliant impression of Griffin on SCTV. Tsk, tsk, tsk....

jeez, you'd think leno might have been able to come up with an anecdote, instead of a recitation of the breaks he got from griffin and carson.

mememememememememememe.

What, no reaction from Denny Terrio?

Let the revisions begin! I guess Ol' Merv isn't (wasn't) GAY anymore!

......but thank God for Miles Davis. And no comments from Merv's favorite "beard" Eva Gabor.

really--whenever a celebrity dies, why even bother oputting together a tribute? Just open up the letters column. Call the results "Kick the corpse" and give a prize to whoever is edgiest.

Wait, you didn't use your name. Who the hell are you? I guess we'll have to pick a random obituary in the paper and assume it's you.

I was at a very distant reserve to Merv Griffin; at my TV station, when I used to have a morning shift, I had to record his show off satellite. Consequently, I saw a lot of his shows, and I never understood why anyone liked him. He was bland and pleasant; his shows were like spending an evening with Grandpa.

On one show, Weird Al Yankovic played "I Lost on Jeopardy." His audience - presumably of blue-haired ladies - didn't like anything until the song's bridge, with Don Pardo's voice, came on. THAT, they applauded. And they applauded again when Merv said he was bringing Jeopardy back. They didn't like comedy or satire, but they loved Merv talking about himself.

And then there was the time I was watching a satellite feed of Entertainment Tonight that mentioned that Merv Griffin was ending production on his show. I went to my station's program director and told him what I'd heard. He called Griffin Productions for the next hour and got a busy signal. Griffin didn't think enough of the affilates of his show to tell them he was ending the show in advance. This uplifted finger to the TV stations that carried him was unprofessional. It left a huge hole in our afternoon slot, and we were forced to take a risk on an unknown talk show host named Oprah.

Griffin wasn't as outright evil as some folks in show business, like Art Linkletter who sold defective beds to senior citizens and exploited his daughter's death to make himself a "drug abuse crusader." But he was a man whose very, VERY modest talents made him a fortune for no good reason at all. As with Eddie Cantor and Bob Hope, future generations will wonder what the hell people ever saw in him.

Watching the 'Oprah' show is like watching liberals inbreed. In fact thats what it is. They can all get-together & have a little lovefest.

Merv was a great businessman & made alot of money. Thats what the object is in a capitalist world. Good for Merv.

Oh yeah, Oprah's a billionaire too. But it's ok to be rich if you're a liberal.

Now, back to liberal-inbreeding.

I trust that your pledge to think kindly of me--an anonymous person--will hold true when you read my obituary or that of anyone else who could be me.

I have very fond memories of Merv, cause an audio version of his show used to play on Melbourne radio at 11:00pm when I was a teenager growing up in Australia. In those (Australian) pre-cable days, it represented a very rare glimpse of Hollywood glamour, and he came accross as a genuinely nice guy. ... And he was no dummy either: he had David Letterman on just after Letterman's daytime series had been cancelled, he assured him that daytime was an impossible challenge for Letterman's style of comedy, and predicted a big career for him in late night.

I can't believe that no one has pointed out that Merv Griffin was the Elevator Killer. Sure he invented Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune and sang about coconuts, but what about being the Elevator Killer?

- Salieri

whose favorite interview subject was ... himself! He never shut up about how great he was or how many famous people he hung with. Sorry, he may have been rich - but what a complete B-list entertainer. I hope the man is in heaven cause my idea of hell would be to spend eternity anywhere near Mr. Smiley.

I'm a little surprised by how negative people's reactions to Merv are. As a latchkey child of the 70s I spent many afternoons with Merv's show. I think the description of it as being bland and like spending time with grandpa are apt. I frankly don't remember too many specifics of the show at all. But it was a part of my childhood in the pre-cable days of maybe 6 TV channels. I suppose I was too young at the time to know or understand much about his politics. And it is too bad that he could never just come out already, but he was from a different generation and time.

is that she's dead. It's her sister, Zsa Zsa, who is still alive and kicking at 90 or 95 or whatever age she tells people she is. Totie Fields is dead too, so no comments from her, either. But Salon could have asked for some from Renee Taylor, who, if memory serves, came on Merv's show and dyed her shoes. Or that sweet girl singer, blond, whose name I can't dredge up right now, who sang "Try To Remember" long before Jack Palance's version trumped everyone else's.

I love trips down memory lane, Jeopardy, and Wheel of Fortune, not necessarily in that order.

He was a airhead, but one of the luckiest men in the universe.

Story is that his wife invented the TV game shows for which he takes credit. Very plausible, when one considers that he had the IQ of an ice cube.

That empty-head look of his was priceless.

Dumb as a fencepost, limited talent, but in the right place at the right time. Knew what to kiss and when.

I suspect that much of his appeal was to blue haired old ladies like my late mom who fantasize having such a "nice boy" -- who happens to be rich -- as a son.