Comedy

If I had a chance to do it all over again . . .
I’d do just what I’m going to do now.
Be a stand-up comic.

There’s no more exhilarating feeling than walking out on a stage and making people laugh. It’s orgasmic. I’ve always dreamed of doing a one-man show on Broadway. Who knows? Maybe in the future it’ll be one more thing that I can’t believe ever happened to me. For now, I’m taking a comedy show on the road. A guy asked me if I’m going to wear suspenders. What did he expect? A cape and a Phantom of the Opera mask? I’m not going to reinvent myself. I’m just going to show the world another side of me.

The Finale

The columnist Art Buchwald once introduced me at an awards ceremony like this: “The great thing about Larry King is that he doesn’t know he’s Larry King.” I always thought a good title for my autobiography would be What Am I Doing Here? because I can’t believe it all happened to me. The final night of my show was no exception.

Larry King Live was going down as the longest-running show with the same host at the same time on the same network in the history of television. But there was no time to sit around and get nostalgic about it. Family and friends had come in from all over the country for the party after the show. Plus, I was dealing with ten- and eleven-year-old boys.

The Replacement

When Bill Clinton was in office we taped a show in which we toured the White House around Christmas. Our timing was great because a holiday party was scheduled for later in the day.

I returned for the festivities with Shawn, the broadcaster Tim Russert, and the sportscaster Jim Gray and his wife, Frann. The guards out in front of the White House checked Shawn in. They checked in Tim. They checked in Jim and Frann. Then I stepped up.

Getting and Giving

Not many people realize that the final show of Larry King Live was not really the final show. We taped a show that aired two days after the finale. It was among a series of favorites that filled out the last two weeks of the year and was called “The War on Cancer.”

The principal guest was a man who’d been told he had only twelve months to live . . . eighteen years ago—Mike Milken. The former junk-bond king is now known as the man who changed medicine. As the show unfolded, we ran clips showed Lance Armstrong, Colin Powell, Sheryl Crow, Olivia Newton-John, Joe Torre, General Norman Schwarzkopf, and others discussing the disease. Nobody knew it, but there easily could have been a clip of me among that group. You would have heard me describe what it was like to be laughing over breakfast with my buddies when a call came from my urologist, asking to see me face-to- face. That’s how I found out that I had prostate cancer. It was the start of 2010—yet another layer to the wildest year of my life.

The Middle East

“ I don’t want to say Larry King has a lot of experience in the Middle East,” a guy once said, needling me at a roast, “but his first interview was with Moses.”

Not exactly the kind of compliment you look forward to in life. But the guy had a point. I’ve seen a lot. As a kid I dropped pennies into a little blue cardboard box to support Israel. As a young radio broadcaster in Miami I got into arguments when I opened the microphone to the Young Egyptian League. Jews picketed the station. When it came to Israel, they didn’t believe an Egyptian point of view had a right to exist.

Politics

A little tip to my replacement. If you’re ever going to interview Barbra Streisand—do it live. At least then you’ll know when you’re going to start.

I learned my lesson years ago when we set up a taped interview with Barbra at the Plaza in New York. She tried on many different dresses, changing over and over for hours, checking how each one looked not only in the mirror, but on camera.

Broadcasting

Very often people are disappointed when they get to meet their heroes. Their heroes just can’t live up to their expectations. I’m lucky—that’s never happened to me. Mine have always treated me in a way that made me proud. I went to visit one of them at the beginning of my final year on the show. He was ninety-one at the time and in a wheelchair. But whenever I see Mike Wallace, I picture myself as a young man in Brooklyn racing home to watch his show. The show was called Night Beat.

Crime

This is a serious topic. So let me ease into it with a funny story. The topic is crime. The story goes back to when I was just making a name for myself as a radio show host in Miami. There was a convention for police chiefs and another for district attorneys taking place over the same few days. They were both ending with Sunday afternoon sessions. Somebody came up with the idea to cancel both afternoon sessions, rent out the ballroom at the Fontainebleau Hotel on Sunday night, and conclude both conventions with a combined dinner.

Movies

I ’m often asked who’s been my favorite interview. There’s just no answer to that. I’m proud of so many of them.
But a guy recently came at me from a different angle. What’s the one interview, he wanted to know, that I’m most asked about? It ain’t even close. The one where Marlon Brando kissed me on the lips.

We were comparing that interview to the one I did with Al Pacino that aired as the show began its final two weeks. Then the guy asked, Would you be happy if the only work you’d left behind were your interviews with Brando and Pacino?
No, I wouldn’t. What’s important to me is my body of work. But I understand where his question was coming from. It was really about legacy. How would I like to be remembered?

Music

Musicians were guests on many of the shows that aired over my last two weeks. Jon Bon Jovi brought along a pair of bright red suspenders for me to wear on my final show. Celine Dion sang John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Barbra Streisand opened up her home. Garth Brooks took the time to talk with people on our staff in a way that made them feel as special as he is. Stevie Wonder composed a song for me. It had a rhyme I wasn’t quite expecting.

Larry, I’m gonna miss ya.
If you were a woman, I’d kiss ya.

Riches

T he day after the Putin interview aired was one of the best of my life: The richest man in the world came on my show and then over to my house for a dinner party. Where I came from in Brooklyn, we didn’t have dinner parties. Your aunts and uncles came over for supper.

After my father died, my family went on welfare—only in those days it wasn’t called welfare. It was called Relief. I can remember an inspector coming over to look in our refrigerator. My mother was only supposed to buy choice meat, not top Grade A. But she bought top Grade A so her children could have the best and took less for herself. Those are the things you don’t forget. And now I was hosting a dinner party for the richest guy in the world.

Leaving

I ’m not sure which comes first—acceptance or belief. When you first realize you’re about to lose something that’s a part of you, it’s hard to accept. But even when you start to accept the loss, it’s still hard to believe.

I knew my show had only a few months remaining when I sat down last September to interview the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the third time. Yet as our final session ended, the words that left my mouth were: “We’ll pick this up next year . . .”

Time

I ’ve never thought much about time, because I’ve always been too busy looking at my watch.

That sounds like something Yogi Berra might say. But it’s true. You can’t be a broadcaster without being extremely conscious of the clock. I’m never late. I remember a time after I had heart surgery. I was at the La Costa Resort, waiting for my surgeon to meet me so we could head to the airport. I said, “Jeez, where is he?” Somebody who knew him said, “He can be late. He’s a surgeon. Surgery doesn’t start without him.”