Larry King: Veteran US broadcaster dies aged 87

No disrespect to Larry but he seemed pretty clueless a lot of the time ie Seinfeld, Paul McCartney. What are the great interviews I keep hearing about?

 

I knew this was coming.

 

Can you tell us this weeks lottery numbers?

 

With Larry it was more about how chill he got the room, the artists/act/politician/whoever would be very relaxed and Larry King didn't ask obnoxious questions, and things moved logically.

 

No. I can only tell you what you already knew.

 

King did do a baseball column for a while in The Sporting News” in 1984. Detroit pitcher Jack Morris got off to a great start the first two months 10-1 record 1.88 ERA . King interviewed Baltimore catcher Rick Dempsey who said yeah Jack is good, but wait and see, he’ll have a stretch of 10 games with a mediocre 4.50 era. This caused a rhubarb...how dare Dempsey say that. Turns out Dempsey underestimated ..the next three months were close to 5.00

The one time in my life I ever say Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola (the childhood friends) together was on Larry King’s CNN show it was fun to see them kid each other.

One wonders if the 1992 presidential race would be different without Larry King. Would Ross Perot enter, drop out, re enter, did he change the election results going on King’s show?

 

Yes, he was seemingly blind to certain things. But it was his show and he did what he wanted. And it worked. Often he was a gruff but fair interviewer, also often kindly and too fawning, depending on the interviewee(s). Whatever his demeanor was, it worked for him and his shows.

Most of his Mutual Radio interviews were available on tapes from a place called "Lion Recording", individually duplicated on demand and payment - that seems to have disappeared just in recent years.
Nearly all of his CNN TV "Larry King Live" shows have transcripts available on this page
CNN.com - Transcripts

 

RIP Larry King & FZ

Here's a phone interview with Zappa

 

Really? I'm always shocked when an 87-year-old dies.

 

Larry probably wasn't aware of the details surrounding the sitcom ending, but Seinfeld's mock indignation was a bit. Jerry was promoting Bee Movie, which Larry was also in.

 

Trust me, the worst things you may hear about Russia and Russians - they are 99% true.

As for Larry - RIP. Legendary persona although I never understood why he has always been regarded so highly.

 

"Heaven, hello..."

For this listener, Larry King wasn't so much an interviewer as he was a conversationalist. King made his bones working in talk radio - specifically late night talk radio, where his goal was to get a good conversation going with his guest or his callers, not grill them for the truth. That was a strength on the radio in the wee hours, but it was a prime time weakness on CNN as King would get newsworthy guests who knew they'd get thrown softballs or enjoy an hour of largely unchallenged airtime. However, if you want to see Larry King work hard for his money, check out his interview with Marlon Brando. King's trying as hard to contain Brando as the zipper on Brando's windbreaker.

I met Larry King more than a few years back, when he was doing his show from D.C. on the Mutual Broadcasting Network. A buddy and I were on a road trip and we both worked in radio at the time, so he called the Mutual home office and asked if we could drop in. We were invited into the studio, introduced to him before the show and then watched the King do his thing. During station breaks, King asked his producer for updates on all the baseball scores "How'd Boston do? How'd Cleveland do?" in that unmistakable Brooklyn parlance of his. After, King signed some autographs and said "Thanks for dropping by, fellas. I'm off to Duke's..." (a reference to Duke Zeibert's, a long lost DC power lunch spot).

So, now Larry King's truly gone to Duke's.

 

I did.

What a terrible interviewer.

King was constantly interrupting.

Brando even commented on this in the segment.

I would have loved to have heard more from Brando on the various interesting threads that were started had King been able to shut up for 2 minutes.

 

I once read an interview with King, in which he described his prep for an interview - there wasn't any. He loved to read several newspapers everyday - so he claimed he had a great general knowledge about a wide variety of topics and people, but he did no specific research for any individual interview. (I have the vague recollection of him on various occasions looking down at notes I'm guessing one of the production crew provided him.) He stated he wanted his interviews to appear as a conversation between two people who just met and were getting to know each other.

 

Probably why there doesn't seem to be any memorable ones.

 

sometimes that works, like a child asking really good questions and getting answers an expert wouldn't/ the Seinfeld/Larry King is probably the most famous interview Jerry has done lol

 

RIP Larry

 

He almost NEVER had the right questions, never prepared enough, and failed to follow obvious and interesting lines of questioning almost all the time.

 

And the fun begins:

Larry King's estranged wife to contest his secret will