My Remarkable Journey (7 page)

I was at work listening to the radio when the Dodgers finally beat the Yankees in the World Series. It was 1955. The most
amazing thing about it was how anticlimactic the ending was. The Yankees came up for the final time, and every Dodgers fan
was thinking,
We’ll make an error. The Yanks will score three runs
. But the Yankees went down one-two-three. It was great, but not the same with Herbie already away in the Army.

There were some good moments after Herbie left, but it was a lonely time. Most of my friends were gone. I was alone. I met
a girl named Frada through my cousin Julie. A plain girl, the type who doesn’t wear makeup.

You know the joke about the Jewish guy who’s going to get married? He goes to his mother and says, “I’m gonna test your intuition.
I’m gonna bring three girls home. My future wife, and two of her friends. See if you can pick which one I’m going to marry.
I’m not going to say a thing during dinner to give you a hint.”

They have dinner. The girls leave.

The guy asks his mother, “Which one?”

She says, “The second one.”

“How’d you know?”

“Because I couldn’t stand her.”

The joke doesn’t apply in this case. There was nothing about Frada to dislike. The reality is, the source of our attraction
was that she was lonely just like me. My brother was the best man. Frada and I got an apartment in Queens and a white couch.
But it never amounted to anything. We were together for maybe six months. I wonder what ever happened to Frada.

I was the best man at Larry’s wedding to Frada. It seems like a hundred years ago. Frada was a nice girl. She had a high-pitched
laugh. Funny, what you remember; I recall thinking that the marriage was hasty.

I came back from the Army and Larry was married. I said, “Why did you marry her?” He said, “Well, everyone was away and nobody
was around. It was cold that winter. So I got married.” That was his answer.

I don’t remember the circumstances of how it fell apart. But I wasn’t surprised when it did.

Sometimes I’d go to New York, stand in front of the buildings housing CBS or WNEW radio, and hope. What I wanted was right
in front of me and so far away. Yet anyone who really knew me could see that I already had what I needed to be successful
in broadcasting. It had been set inside me by my parents and my childhood in Brooklyn. I was funny and likable, just like
my father. I was open and loyal, just like my mother. I had tons of friends. I had the passion to transmit, and for as long
as I could remember people had always said that they loved my voice. I’d learned to pay attention to details through baseball
and knew how to come up with just the right ones to win an argument. What’s more, Brooklyn had taught me how to ask good questions.
Like, How could that new restaurant be called the Famous when it just opened?

One day, I ran into James Sirmons, a staff announcer at CBS. “Mr. Sirmons,” I said, “I’m twenty-four years old. I’ve always
wanted to be in radio. I’ve never given it a try. What do you recommend I do?”

“Go down to Miami, kid, and give it a shot,” he said.

“They’ve got a lot of stations. It’s easier to get started in Miami because there are no unions down there. In Miami, people
are either on the way out or they’re on the way up.”

I had an Uncle Jack living in Miami Beach.

It was time to go.

I
TOOK THE TRAIN
to Miami and stepped off with about eighteen dollars in my wallet. I can still remember what I saw. Two water fountains.
One said
COLORED
. The other said
WHITE
. I walked over to the one that said
COLORED
and drank out of it.

Then I went to stay with my Uncle Jack in Miami Beach. I was so excited that I started knocking on doors the next day. I stopped
at a small station on First Street, WAHR. The guy in charge liked my voice. “We get a lot of people coming and going,” he
told me. “If you hang around, you’ll get the first opening.”

I sat and watched in fascination for a few weeks. It was a tiny operation, but the sight of the UPI and AP machines furiously
clicking out news made me feel like I was on the brink of something big. Miami Beach was like a dream. The palm trees. The
ocean. I remember walking past Joe’s Stone Crab. Joe’s is more than a restaurant, it’s a landmark. It was full when I arrived
in 1957, and I guarantee you, people will be waiting in line tomorrow night. I stopped outside the front window with only
a few dollars in my pocket, unable to afford a meal, looking at the happy faces, wondering what it would take to get into
a place like that.

Then came my big break. There was a morning deejay named Tom Baer. He was making sixty dollars a week and his alimony was
sixty-five. He claimed to be living off the coconuts falling from trees. He quit on a Friday, and the general manager told
me I could start on Monday.

I must have rehearsed the entire weekend. I don’t even think I slept. On Monday morning I showed up at WAHR with the record
that would play my theme song, “Swingin’ Down the Lane.”

The general manager called me into his office to wish me good luck. “By the way,” he said, “what name are you going to use?”

“What do you mean?”

“You can’t use Larry Zeiger,” he said. “It’s too ethnic. People won’t be able to spell it or remember it. You need a better
name.”

There was no time to think about whether this was good or bad or what my mother would say. I was going on the air in five
minutes. The
Miami Herald
was spread out on his desk. Faceup was a full-page ad for King’s Wholesale Liquors. The general manager looked down and said,
“King! How about Larry King?”

“OK,” I said. This was the opportunity of a lifetime. I wasn’t going to blow it.

“Fine. You’ll host
The Larry King Show
.”

Nine o’clock was approaching. That’s when the news came on. A few minutes later,
The Larry King Show
would make its debut. I went through the control-room door, sat down, and set up my record. The news ended. I started my
theme song, then faded down the music so I could introduce myself. I opened my mouth. It was as dry as cotton. For the first
time in my life, I couldn’t speak.

So I brought “Swingin’ Down the Lane” up again and faded it once more. Again, not a single word came out of my mouth.

I could only wonder if listeners were hearing the pounding of my heart. I’d waited for this moment my whole life. How could
I be blowing it? Once more, I cranked up “Swingin’ Down the Lane”—but not a word came out of me.

The next thing I knew, the general manager was kicking open the door to the control room. “This is a
communications
business!” he roared in a way that only a general manager can. Then he turned, walked out, and slammed the door behind him.

Shaken, I leaned in to the microphone and said, “Good morning. This is my first day ever on the radio. I’ve always wanted
to be on the air. I’ve been practicing all weekend. A few minutes ago, they gave me my new name. I’ve had a theme song ready
to play, but my mouth is dry. I’m nervous. And the general manager just kicked open the door and said, ‘This is a communications
business!’”

That’s how my career started on May 1, 1957. Years later, Arthur Godfrey would tell me, “The only secret in this business
is… there is no secret.” He was right. I learned a great lesson on my first day. There’s no trick to being yourself. I don’t
think I’ve ever been nervous on the air since then.

I can’t remember if Uncle Jack heard me or if I met anybody else who did on that first day. It didn’t matter. I was on a high.
My dream was reality. I couldn’t wait to come back the next day, and the one after that. I so loved being on air that I’d
do anything. The people at the station knew I was a glutton. Sports. News. Whatever came up, someone would say, “Larry will
do it.”

One day, the general manager called and said the all-night guy was sick. “Would you like to fill in tonight?”

“Sure,” I said. “No problem.”

“OK, you’re on from midnight to six. You play music, you chatter a little, and you say the regular guy will be back tomorrow.”

I went in at night. WAHR was a small station. At night, I was the only one there. I started playing records, and the phone
rang.

“WAHR.”

A lady’s voice came through. I can still hear her voice. She said, “I want you.”

“What did you say?”

“I want you!”

I was a long way from losing that bet to Herbie for not being able to walk Iris Siegel down the front steps of Lafayette High.
All I could think was,
There are a couple of extra pluses to being in this business
. So I told her, “I get off at six!”

And she said, “Nah, that won’t do, I gotta go to work. You’ve gotta come now.”

“But I’m on the air!”

“I’m only eleven blocks from the station.” She gave me her address. “If you can make it, please, I
really
want you.”

There was no Mrs. Horowitz blocking the door. So this is what the audience heard.

“Folks, I’m only sitting in tonight. So I’ve got a real treat for you. You’re going to hear the entire Harry Belafonte at
Carnegie Hall album uninterrupted.”

Now I had thirty-three minutes—which was all the time I needed. Until this day, that’s still true.

I put the record on, rushed to my beat-up ’51 Plymouth, drove to her house, pulled in. The light was on. She said the door
would be open, and the door was open. She was sitting there wearing a white negligee. A little lamp was on and I could barely
see her face. The radio was on. Harry Belafonte was singing from Carnegie Hall. She opened her arms. I ran to her and my cheek
was against her cheek as Belafonte sang “Jamaica Farewell.”

“Down the way where the nights… where the nights… where the nights… where the nights… where the nights—” The needle was stuck
in the record.

I pushed her back. I rushed to the car. I drove to the station. And—this was Jewish masochism—I kept the radio on the entire
eleven blocks. “Where the nights… where the nights… where the nights… where the nights…”

I was petrified. I got back to the station and took off the record. The phones were ringing off the hook. I was apologizing
to people one after the other. The last call, I’ll never forget. An old Jewish guy.

“This is WAHR.”

He said, “Vhere da nights! Vhere da nights! Vhere da nights! I’m going c-razy! I’m going c-razy! I’m going c-razy!”

I said, “Sir, I apologize. But why didn’t you change the station?”

He said, “I’m an invalid. They set the station on the radio and I can’t reach the knob.”

The story may be funny now, but foxhole humor is never funny when you’re in the foxhole. The next time I walked into the station,
I couldn’t help but think, “Oh, God, this is the end.” But sometimes in life, the worst never happens.

How I got out of that one, I still don’t know. The only thing I can think of is:
Management doesn’t listen
. I say that in jest. But in this case it might have been true. Remember, this was a small radio station. It didn’t have a
great signal. The manager may have lived far enough from the station not to hear. Plus, it was three in the morning. Nobody
said a word about “Jamaica Farewell” the next time I came in, and my life seemed to get sunnier by the day. I got a second
job, announcing at the dog track in the evenings. I got into an affair with a beautiful woman who was ten years older than
me. And does it get any better than being in Florida when spring training rolls around?

The Dodgers were arriving in Miami to play an exhibition game in 1958 when the sports director at the station called me over.
He asked me if I wanted to go out to the park and interview one of the Dodgers before the game.
Would I?
After all those years as a kid wearing number 2 on my uniform, here I was phoning my hero, Leo Durocher, to try to set up
an interview.

Leo was working with the Dodgers at that time. Of course, he didn’t know me. And he wasn’t around when I phoned. So I left
a message to call Larry King, then I went on the air. When I got off, there was a message waiting for me. “Leo Durocher called.”
My
hero
called me back! I saved that slip of paper for years. So I called Leo back, but missed him. Then he called me back, but missed
me. We went back and forth like this all morning, but never connected. Now I’ve got five messages from Leo Durocher.

I went out to the stadium with the huge portable tape recorder that we used in those days. It was so heavy you had to sling
it over your shoulder. Even though I can picture the scene in my head, it’s a moment I’d love to have on videotape. Thousands
of people were at the park to watch the teams warm up. I stepped out on the field, and there he was, number 2, at home plate
hitting ground balls.

I walked over and said, “Mr. Durocher?”

“What do you want, kid?”

“I’m Larry King.”

He looked up and screamed loud enough for the people sitting in the top row of the park to hear, “What the
fuck
do you want?”

I must have flown back ten feet—tape recorder and all.

“Larry King!” he howled. “Who the hell
are
you? And
why
do you keep calling me?”

Remember, I was still a kid, and this was my first interview, so I had to have been a bit shaken. Come to think of it, if
Leo had said, “What can I do for you, kind sir?” that really would have stunned me. I still would have jumped. But nobody
likes to be yelled at in front of three thousand people.

I didn’t say, “I’m sorry, goodbye.” I managed to calm him down and we went to the dugout to talk. It was the first of many
great conversations we would have over the years. Leo was always a wonderful interview because he was expressive and opinionated.
Years after our first talk, he did the game of the week on NBC, and he was so honest that the network didn’t know what to
do with him. He’d say things like, “See this pitcher? I can hit him—and I’m sixty years old.”