| Larry King  AKA Lawrence Harvey Zeiger
Born: 19-Nov-1933
Birthplace: Brooklyn, NY
Gender: Male
Religion: Jewish
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Talk Show Host Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Larry King Live Larry King is one of America's most popular talk show hosts. Larry King Live airs live on CNN, and is then rebroadcast on tape ad nauseum until viewers know it by heart. King's parents were Russian immigrants, and he grew up in Brooklyn, where Sandy Koufax was a childhood chum. King started working as a janitor and gopher at a Miami Beach radio station in 1957, and first went on the air when one of their announcers quit without notice.
In 1971, King was arrested for grand larceny, and pleaded no contest to passing a bad check. The particulars remain muddled and unproven, but it's alleged that King tried to sell his influence with Richard M. Nixon's attorney general John Mitchell to a convicted stock swindler named Louis Wolfson.
After these odd events, King was off the air for a few years, and worked as an announcer at a race track. In 1978, he started his nationally syndicated Larry King Show on Mutual Radio, and in 1985 he joined CNN, with a similar format of yakking with celebrities and newsmakers, then taking calls from the public. On the air, he wears suspenders and black-rimmed glasses, and always comes across as a nice guy. King prefers to ask what he calls "human questions", not "press-conference questions", and characterizes himself as an "interviewer", not a journalist. He often explains that he does not prepare for interviews. Fine when he is interviewing Kirsten Dunst or Stephen King -- it is a tedious disservice, though, when interviewing politicians and policymakers, who know the questions will be softball.
From 1982-2001, King wrote a regular column for USA Today, consisting of just a sentence or two on one subject dot-dot-dot and then a sentence or two on the next subject dot-dot-dot. It made Entertainment Tonight seem like serious journalism by comparison, and the column was perfectly parodied in The Onion:
The Amish make fine houses... I wish Freddie Prinze was alive today so we could both laugh... Some of the most beautiful women in the world work in diners... Sex after 60 may be a challenge, but I like challenges... If I had four awards to give, I would give them all to the Golden Girls...
In 2001, announcing that the column would be discontinued, a USA Today press release explained that they wanted the paper to be "trendier, newsier and to have greater impact than it has now".
At last count, King had five children from his seven marriages to six women. Father: Eddie Zeiger (restauranteur; b. 1900, d. 1944)
Mother: Jennie Zeiger (garment worker; d. 1976)
Brother: Irwin Zeiger (b. 1926, d. 1932)
Brother: Marty Zeiger
Wife: Frada Miller (high school girlfriend, m. 1953, annulled 1953)
Wife: Alene Akins (Playboy bunny; m. 1961, div. 1963, m. 1968, div. 1971)
Wife: Mickey Sutphin (m. 1964, div. 1967)
Wife: Sharon Lepore (math teacher; m. 1976, div. 1983)
Girlfriend: Angie Dickinson (actress, dated mid-1980s)
Wife: Julia Alexander (m. 1989, div. 1992)
Girlfriend: Rama Fox (minister; engaged 1992, broke up 1994)
Girlfriend: Deanna Lund (engaged 1995; broke up 1995)
Wife: Shawn Southwick (TV personality; m. 5-Sep-1997)
High School: Lafayette High School, Brooklyn, NY
USA Today Columnist 1982-2001
Academy of Achievement (1996)
Afghanistan World Foundation Celebrity Committee
America-Israel Friendship League Board of Directors
Friars Club Abbot
Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame
Hollywood Walk of Fame 6616 Hollywood Blvd (television)
Radio Hall of Fame
Endorsement of Hilton Hotels 1999
Bankruptcy 1971
Heart Attack 1987
Heart Bypass Operation 1987
Angioplasty Sep-1997
Roast: Bob Schieffer (2004)
Grand Theft (grand larceny) Miami, FL 20-Dec-1971
Russian Ancestry
Risk Factors: Diabetes, Smoking
TELEVISION
Larry King Live Host (1985-)
FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
Swing Vote (20-May-2008) Himself
Bee Movie (28-Oct-2007) [VOICE]
Shrek the Third (17-May-2007) [VOICE]
Mr. 3000 (08-Sep-2004) Himself
The Stepford Wives (6-Jun-2004) Himself
Shrek 2 (15-May-2004) [VOICE]
John Q (15-Feb-2002) Himself
America's Sweethearts (17-Jul-2001) Himself
The Contender (10-Sep-2000) Himself
The Kid (25-Jun-2000) Himself
Enemy of the State (16-Nov-1998) Himself
Bulworth (15-May-1998) Himself
Primary Colors (20-Mar-1998) Himself
The Jackal (14-Nov-1997) Himself
An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn (29-Sep-1997) Himself
Contact (11-Jul-1997) Himself
The Long Kiss Goodnight (11-Oct-1996) Himself
Open Season (3-May-1996) Himself
We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (24-Nov-1993) Himself [VOICE]
Dave (7-May-1993) Himself
The Exorcist III (17-Aug-1990) Himself
Crazy People (13-Apr-1990) Himself
Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives! (18-Aug-1989)
Ghost Busters (8-Jun-1984) Himself
Rotten Library Page:
Larry King
Author of books:
Larry King by Larry King (1982, memoir)
On the Line: The New Road to the White House (1993)
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