In his memoir “My Remarkable Journey,” talk-show host Larry King shines a spotlight on the international leaders, sports celebrities and top entertainers he has interviewed. He also talks candidly about the loss of his father, his money problems and his eight marriages to seven women. Here is an excerpt.
You’d see me in a different way if you were sitting at my table at Nate ’n Al Deli over breakfast every morning. First of all, I don’t wear the suspenders there. Second, you’d realize that I hate eggs. And third, you’d have to imagine me in a car trunk — because sooner or later the story of the “exclusive interview of the century” would come up.
This took place a while back. There was a producer on my show — call him Bob. A good guy, but the most hyper person I’ve ever known. One day Bob got a call from a bigwig at CNN International.
The bigwig said, “Bob! An incredible thing is about to happen!”
“What? What? What?” Bob was already on the edge of his seat.
“We’ve got an exclusive with Osama bin Laden.”
“Holy sh--!”
You can understand Bob’s reaction. The United States’ armed forces had been searching for bin Laden since Sept. 11, 2001. Television news couldn’t have landed a bigger interview unless it found talking aliens.
“It’s going to be in Pakistan.”
Bob was nodding furiously.
“But here’s the only way it’s going to work. We’re going to fly you and Larry in to a very remote area. You won’t have a film crew with you. We can’t bring any equipment. The film crew will be theirs. The sound crew will be theirs. The interpreter will be theirs. They’ll do the taping. When the interview is finished, they’ll give us the tape to bring home. That’s the deal we had to make.
“Oh, and Bob, there’s one other proviso. When you and Larry get to Pakistan, you’re going to be driven to a special spot. Then you and Larry will get out of the car. You will wait at that spot. Larry will get in the trunk of another car so he can be driven to Osama. There’s no other way to do it. They can’t risk anyone knowing the slightest details about Osama’s whereabouts.
“Larry will do the interview. They’ll give him the tape. He’ll get back in the trunk. The car will return to you. You and Larry will go back to the airplane. Then you come home.”
The phone call ended and Bob went berserk. As much as he wanted the exclusive of the century, he was also worried about the ramifications. Larry’s had quintuple bypass surgery. What if he has a heart attack in the trunk? What if they kill Larry? What if they take Larry hostage? What if they take Larry and me hostage? But how can we pass this up?
Bob called his mother. “Ma, what should I do?”
And his mother said, “Well, how long will Larry be in the trunk?”
“They didn’t say. Just that he’ll be in the trunk.”
Bob became frantic. He was calling people left and right. He was going crazy. Couldn’t contain himself. My executive producer, Wendy Walker, had to cut the April Fools’ Day joke short before he went absolutely nuts.
The thing is, if Bob had stopped in for breakfast at Nate ’n Al, he would’ve discovered that he had no reason to worry. George, who sits in the aisle, would’ve set him straight. “Larry would be in the trunk before you could finish asking him if he wanted to go,” George would’ve told him. “And I’d lay even odds that when Larry got ready to leave, Osama would get in the trunk with him so they could keep on talking.”
Is this really happening?
That may be a little farfetched. But one thing I can tell you. If I had gotten into the trunk, I’d be in a very familiar place. I’d be asking myself the same question I’ve been asking for the last 50 years.
What am I doing here?
Those five words sum up my whole life.
I’m telling you, there are times when my life feels like an out-of-body experience. I have to pinch myself to believe that little Larry Zeiger from Brooklyn is being beamed 22,300 miles into space, bounced off a satellite so that some guy in Taipei can watch me ask questions along with people in 200 other countries and territories around the world.
Was it really me, the kid who never went to college, who set up that million-dollar scholarship at George Washington University? Who got into a traffic accident with John F. Kennedy and came to know every president since Nixon? Who had Frank Sinatra sing to me while the two of us were alone in the greenroom? Who walked with Martin Luther King Jr. and then sat down with King’s murderer? Who got a phone call during dinner at Mr. Chow’s in Beverly Hills from the king of Jordan? Who fathered two boys while I was in my late 60s and watched them collect candy on Halloween dressed in Larry King masks and suspenders?
Nahhhhhh. The little Larry Zeiger I remember sat at home listening to the radio broadcast of the 1949 All-Star Game at Ebbets Field because I couldn’t afford a ticket. How could I have walked on the field during batting practice at an All-Star Game 40 years later and been asked to sign autographs ... by the players?
Come-mahhhhn, as we used to say in Brooklyn. It’s just not possible. The little Larry Zeiger who watched people crying in the streets of Brooklyn when Franklin Delano Roosevelt died never dreamed of getting into the Oval Office. But Larry King has been many times. Once I even sat with Hillary Clinton in the White House under a portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt. When I casually mentioned, “Oh, yeah, I interviewed Eleanor,” it was Hillary who gasped.
Did Mikhail Gorbachev actually show up to meet me for dinner wearing suspenders? Did a college crowd in Florida actually chant “Lar-ry! Lar-ry! Lar-ry!” when I showed up to interview John McCain during the recent presidential election? And did a Secret Service agent really turn to me and say, “Maybe we should be protecting you?”
An unbelievable rideIt still amazes me that my oldest friend, Herbie, and I were invited to the governor’s mansion in New York. Get this. The butler actually came over to us and asked, “Would the gentlemen care for an aperitif before retiring for the evening?”
Aperitif? Who ever heard a word like that in Maltz’s candy store?
Maybe Mario Cuomo, the guy who invited us, best understood what an unbelievable ride it’s been. Once, before he presented me with an award honoring the children of immigrants at Ellis Island, he told this story:
Somebody gave Larry King a present — cloth to make a suit. So Larry went to the tailor in Miami and asked for a suit with two pair of pants.
“I’m sorry, Larry,” the tailor said. “There’s not enough material to make you two pair of pants.”
So Larry went to another tailor, in Washington.
The tailor measured the cloth and shook his head. “Sorry,” the tailor said, “just not enough material here for an extra pair of pants.”
Larry tried Los Angeles. Same thing happened.
Finally, Larry went home to his old tailor in Brooklyn.
“Sure,” the old tailor in Brooklyn said, “I’ll make you a suit with two pair of pants and a vest.”
“How can you do that?” Larry asked.
The tailor said, “Because in Brooklyn, you’re not that big.”
Excerpted from "My Remarkable Journey," by Larry King. Copyright (c) 2009. Reprinted with permission from Weinstein Books.