Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People
Dirt Nap City is the podcast about history's most interesting dead people. In each episode, Alex and Kelly dive into the life of a famous person that you have heard of, but probably don't know much about. Our stories are about actors, entrepreneurs, politicians, musicians, inventors, explorers and more! We also cover things that used to be popular but have fallen out of favor. Things like pet rocks, drive in theaters, Jolt Cola, and many other trends of yesterday make up our "dead ends". But whether we are talking about interesting historical figures or past trends, the show is funny, light-hearted, entertaining, informative and educational. You will definitely learn something new and probably have some laughs along the way. Everyone will eventually move to Dirt Nap City, so why not go ahead and meet the neighbors?
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Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People
Who Was Merv Griffin?
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Merv Griffin began singing on radio at age 19 and went on to become one of the biggest names in entertainment on American television. He appeared on Broadway, he was a big band singer, and he hosted his own talk show from 1965 to 1986. Today he is probably remember best for creating two of the biggest game shows on television - Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. If ever there was an icon of 20th century American entertainment, it was certainly Merv Griffin!
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Dirt Nap City is the podcast about the most interesting dead people in history.
Subscribe and listen to learn about people you've heard of, but don't know much about.
Someday we'll all live in Dirt Nap City, so you should probably go ahead and meet the neighbors!
Hello everybody. This is Alex. I'm here with my friend Kelly, and this is another episode of Dirt Nap City, the show about interesting dead people. How are you doing, Kelly?
SPEAKER_01I'm doing great, man. Got to hang out with you just a couple of days ago.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and more importantly, we have merch. We have stickers. And uh I've uh I've been um thinking about where to put those stickers um because it's not like someone can't trace them back to us. So if I put them like on a place where I'm not supposed to put them, you know, like men's room at work or something, then uh I can get in trouble. I get in trouble. So I uh I have to be strategic about where to put those stickers.
SPEAKER_01Is that really a thing? Like the men's room at work?
SPEAKER_00That's why it would be a bad idea. Like there's no other stickers there. I probably can't even put them on my computer because it's like a state of Texas owned computer.
SPEAKER_01I've stuck a couple around the Austin airport. Um so if you're ever in the Austin Airport, um you can you can find uh dirt nap city and ready set drone stickers.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you know, some some stickers today have like QR codes, but I think most people know how to find a web uh uh uh podcast, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, GTS.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Google that stuff.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. So so uh we we kind of went on a little bit of a uh different tangent for the last two episodes. Rock and roll. Is rock and roll dead. Um, I think the determination after all that, well, if you haven't listened, go listen. But I'm not gonna ruin it by telling you. But but um, I think we agree that rock and roll is not dead. Do we agree on that?
SPEAKER_00You and I agree on that, but I've talked to some of the people over the weekend that have a uh a different point of view. Um but I think the older you are, the more offended you are by that question. And the younger you are, the more you ponder it actually being a legit question.
SPEAKER_01Or you just don't care. Or you don't care.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, we did we did get to talk to some rockers at the wedding we were at and uh definitely received some good information from them because they were quoting bands that are in our uh wheelhouse, right? They were talking about some 80s punk rock bands that we listened to. They were talking about some um some bands that are just generally awesome rock bands from from back in the day. So I didn't feel quite as out of touch as I expected.
SPEAKER_00No, it kind of surprised me that that hardcore punk kids today are still listening to hardcore punk music from the late 80s.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. The circle jerks are still a thing.
SPEAKER_00I think that's interesting. It almost reminds me of like if you if you talk to a jazz musician in the late 80s, they would know all this old stuff, you know. True, true. So I don't know. Maybe hardcore punk is the new jazz. It's it's the uh it's the new something. If you're tired of us talking about music, I got bad news for you. We're gonna talk about some music today, but not all music. I've got uh somebody right in my wheelhouse today, though. Somebody from that 20th century. Oh man, you know I love the 20th century. I do know that. I've got someone today that was born in 1925 and died in 2007, which places him squarely in the 20th century. Yeah, yeah, and I just love that. I think the reason I love that 20th century stuff is you know, it's so nostalgic for me because this is stuff that I remember uh, you know, people that were older when I was a kid, and they just really shaped um the things that we watch, the things that we listen to, the um the culture that we grew up in today. So um I wonder if people doing a similar podcast, you know, 50 years from now would probably be talking about. Do you remember it? Uh TikTok creators or something.
SPEAKER_01Right. Classic TikTok. Maybe there'll just be a channel for classic TikTok videos. Classic, classic uh vines. You remember the vines?
SPEAKER_00Oh, and Periscope.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, classic TikTok.
SPEAKER_00These are things that that lasted like a year. As they should. That weren't even around 10 years ago, but they were already come and gone. Yeah, yeah. Crazy. So um, but this person definitely and influenced uh the 20th century and born in 1925, born in 1925 in San Mateo, California, died in Los Angeles, California, which probably puts him in the what industry do you think?
SPEAKER_01Uh I'm gonna say either he grew oranges or it was in the entertainment industry, citrus or entertainment.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and so if I ruled out the citrus, you're left with the entertainment.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00I'll give you a couple of hints about I think these are good hints.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00He used to play hangman with his sister on car trips, which would make him plenty of money in the future.
SPEAKER_01Hangman with his sister on car trips, which would make him plenty of money in the future.
SPEAKER_00Um is it Alex Trebek? No, but you're close. You're close. He started his career as a singer, but you probably wouldn't know any of his songs by name.
SPEAKER_01What did he sing like uh commercial jingles or something like that?
SPEAKER_00No, no. And he died, probably it died a billionaire, but he never knew his net worth because he said it would keep him from sleeping at night.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Um hangman. So there's some sort of game aspect. Alex Trebek, did I say that?
SPEAKER_00You already guessed Bob Barker. But so so what Alex Trebek um what does that have to do with Hangman?
SPEAKER_01This would be the one where you guess it's gosh, um, it's not Jeopardy, it's uh Wheel of Fortune. No, not Wheel of Wheel of Fortune.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and actually it is Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune that he created.
SPEAKER_01Oh, he's not Sherwood Schwartz. He's um no, he created the Brady Bunch. Uh it's okay. He created game shows. Dude, I don't know. Merv Griffin. Merv Griffin, a Merv Griffin entertainment show, of course. Wow. And you don't hear people name Merv anymore. No, wait, is Merv short for something? Mervin.
unknownReally?
SPEAKER_00So so there's Marvin and Mervin. Yeah, and you know, the not related at all to the Mervyn's uh clothing stores, but I did a short dive on that also while I was there. And um that guy uh his name was Mervin, M-E-R-V-I-N, but changed the spelling. I think uh advertising or marketing people decided to change the spelling of Mervyn's to put a Y in there because they thought it looked more exotic.
SPEAKER_01Ah, yeah, and they could charge more.
SPEAKER_00And when you think exotic clothing, you think Mervyn's.
SPEAKER_01JC Penny and Mervyn's, where I get all my where I get my all my exotic duds.
SPEAKER_00So Mervin Griffin, um, I knew him when I was a kid from having a talk show. He had a talk show for you know 20 years. Yeah, yeah. I knew I'd like a daytime talk show. Yeah, I remember just Merv Griffin being everywhere, and then I think it was almost like a trivia question that he had almost that he had also created those game shows, but those game shows are his legacy. I mean, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy are huge. Still on the air, still on the air, and really a big part of our culture. Um and we'll talk about you know all the the ways that he uh amassed a fortune throughout his career. But this was a guy that kind of decided what he wanted to do in life and just kept on working towards it and really got good at it and made a ton of money, and um, just one of those kind of uh forces of the late 20th century that uh I think you'd be interested in hearing all the stuff he was into.
SPEAKER_01It's funny because if you think about it, the brilliance of a game show it is so repeatable and formulaic. You know, it's the same thing over and over again, but it but you know what makes it different is the way people react, the way people behave, the way people answer or don't answer. And so they have this cash cow with name recognition, you know, everything's done, and probably the production costs on those things, once you've kind of got it down, are very low compared to like shooting a series, you know, where you have locations and guest stars and all this other stuff. I mean, people come on these shows for free and then you get all the prizes donated, right?
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, and I think Alex Trebek had said one time that they they shoot a whole season in a like four, five, six weeks. Wow. Um, and then he has the rest of the year off to do, and he makes he and he, you know, when he was live, he made you know twenty, thirty million dollars a year, and he had a six week a year schedule. Wow, it's pretty sweet, right? You just they just shoot you know a number of those shows every day.
SPEAKER_01Game show host.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, it's a great, great gig. Probably pretty grueling during those weeks.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but for 20 million dollars, I could put up with six weeks of grueling. Could you? Yeah. Um, did you did were you a game show person growing up?
SPEAKER_00Did you?
SPEAKER_01I mean, not not like had to watch it, you know, Jeopardy at four o'clock every every day. But actually, it's funny. I was in Kansas City recently. My grandmother, who's 97, uh, she she got home because she wanted to watch Jeopardy. We were we were coming and she's like, oh yeah, we need to get home so I can watch Jeopardy.
SPEAKER_00Uh oh, shout out to uh Rain Man for yeah, yeah. No, now to me, there's the daytime game shows, which are a little lower rent than the nighttime game shows.
SPEAKER_01But it seems like the daytime game shows last like are they're the ones like Wheel of Fortune or the price is right have been on forever, whereas these ones that they come up with that come on in prime time seem to be like like they'll last a few seasons and then they'll go away.
SPEAKER_00No, I'm talking about the ones that come on pre-primetime, especially in the East Coast where where the prime time starts at 8 p.m. There's always they're always watching game shows at 7 p.m. like Wheel of Fortune in Jeopardy. That's a really popular set. So the big, big game shows like Wheel of Fortune in Jeopardy. But some of the ones like Card Sharks and Tic Tac Doe that we remembered growing up. Oh, yeah. Those were what I call $20,000 Pyramid, more low rent, yeah. Really cheaply done game shows. $25,000 question. And it's funny that you say that the prizes are donated because uh lately we uh have discovered that there's a channel on our TV called the Prices Right Channel, the Barker Years, and they show every single Prices Right episode in order from like 1974 to 2007. And at the end, you can see where it says copyright, you can see what year it is. So you if you just dip in, you can see what year it was from. Although, and then we try to guess what year it is. Yeah, based on the products. If you watch a couple of those in a row, you'll notice that it's the same prizes that they can't give away, you know, one day, they're giving it away the next day, like a grandfather clock, and they probably just have that in storage or something. They just have a lot of really bad um prizes, like you said, probably donated. Yeah, they don't buy those, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Grandfather clock. Well, and there was always a new car at some point and a and a furniture suite and a cruise and rice arone, the San Francisco treat. Yeah, and Turtle Wax. And Turtle Wax, yes. Big big sponsor.
SPEAKER_00So did you have a favorite game show?
SPEAKER_01Uh I I liked the prices right. I mean, I think it was one of those things that I associate that with staying home from school. You know, like if I was if I was if I was sick and stayed home from school, or sometimes during the summer, we would watch a little bit of that. Um, but yeah, daytime TV was watching reruns. You know, at the time Brady Bunch was reruns, Gilligan Island, Gilligan's Island was reruns, and then there were game shows that would come on. So price is right. Uh I do I still like Jeopardy, you know, it's kind of fun. The questions are usually pretty interesting. Um, and then wasn't there one about um wasn't there one about uh music like uh name that tune? I always thought that was pretty cool.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, name that tune. Well, I saw a commercial yesterday for the new rebooted version, and they showed somebody they played one note. Now that could be really literally be any song. And she goes, Is that Radio Gaga? And they're like, Yes, you win. I don't understand how one note you can get Radio Gaga.
SPEAKER_01It's like when you get the word right in Wordle the first time, right? Like I just that happens to be my lead word, and you know, plate. Plate is my lead word in in uh in Wordle. And and it was the word one time. Yeah, yeah, that's crazy.
SPEAKER_00All right, well, um, we're gonna we're gonna talk about uh game shows a little more in depth. Let me go back to the beginning of Merv Griffin and then we'll get to game the his game show uh career. Um, but you know, he started as a singer um on live radio during World War II. Did not do that, didn't serve in the war due to a heart murmur, and so you know, if you didn't serve, uh they were, you know, there was not a lot of guys around back then um of military age, but he was a singer. They used to have a lot of live radio and people liked him, but he was overweight, and he found that people were disappointed when they actually finally saw him.
SPEAKER_01Is that gonna be our legacy when when we do a live show of Dirt Nap City? People oh, those are the guys.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we might go, we might the YouTube version, which uh might come in season three, uh might be just a one uh one episode and out once people start uh going out.
SPEAKER_01Maybe we'll make uh we'll maybe we'll make an emojis of ourselves.
SPEAKER_00Well, he found out later in his career that the radio station tried to keep people from seeing what he looked like, actively tried to keep keep that a secret. And so then he went and lost 80 pounds in four months. Like that really devastated him.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I and I you know, my visual of him in my head is a pretty skinny guy. Oh, really? Like a thin old guy, yeah.
SPEAKER_00No, he wasn't he wasn't really that skinny. Oh yeah, I I mean I would call him overweight, but not like Orson Wells overweight. But uh when I when I remember him, he wasn't that um thin. But um, you know, he he sang on live radio, and back then uh it was I think a lot it's probably as easy then as it is now to make music, but not in the years since, you know. He in after singing for one year, so he was like 19 years old. In one year he had enough money to start his own record label. Wow. Uh he started a record label called Panda Records. Okay, and um his first record was called Songs by Merv Griffin. Great album title. Yeah, yeah, I love it. And um it was the first US record ever recorded on magnetic tape. Wow, okay. Isn't that crazy? That I think before that they would they recorded direct to some piece of wax, yeah. Yeah, for to wax, right, exactly. Um, but it was the first one ever recorded on magnetic tape. Up till then, the only you know who the most per popular person to to record things on magnetic tape was Adolf Hitler. He would record all his stuff on tape.
SPEAKER_01Wow, he was ahead of his time.
SPEAKER_00Uh he had the number one song in the country. Merv Griffin or Adolf Hitler? I'm gonna let you guess who had the number one song in the country. Alright, so that's that's I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts by the name Merv Griffin. Number one song in the country, sold three million copies. Do you think that's a double untundre?
SPEAKER_01I have uh I have lots of questions. Um First of all, do you think that's him doing both parts?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. No, it's just him.
SPEAKER_01It's just him. Okay. And then and then uh does this count as novelty or did they have novelty back then? It was all novelty. It was all new. Wow. Surprisingly catchy, yeah, I do like it. Is it really? Uh, no.
SPEAKER_00It was more rock and roll than those Hitler tapes. Yes, yes. So that's I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts. Do you think that song is a double entendre? Do you think people were sophisticated enough at that time to go, uh, I bet you that's a dirty song.
SPEAKER_01No, I don't because because it's not a lovely pair of coconuts. Right, right. If it was, if I mean if you're gonna go with that, it would be a pair, not not a bunch. Okay, you have a bunch of coconuts? Well, you should probably see a doctor about that.
SPEAKER_00Good point. Good point. All right, so yeah, maybe it's not. Uh so, anyways, he was he was you know, like 19, 20 years old. He's got the number one song in America he just that he just recorded at his own studio.
SPEAKER_01So so so let me ask where where did you find that?
SPEAKER_00Where did it was that on YouTube or was it on uh yeah, that was on YouTube, but that was it was the number one song in the country. So is there a video of it? No, there's no music video. Um that they didn't have it on MTV or anything. No, no, you know, he was a radio singer, and people so he already had some name recognition because of that. So he was singing in nightclubs, and he was actually if you say dis want to say discovered, people already knew he was, but Doris Day uh came to a nightclub and discovered him and said, Uh, I think you've got to be in the movies. So he would be in musicals, and uh he appeared in a lot of different musicals. Uh, whenever they needed some kind of you know musical singer, they'd throw him in there.
SPEAKER_01It also reminded me a little bit of a Disney song, you know, like something that would be in Beauty and the Beast or something like that.
SPEAKER_00Or like uh Mary Poppins or Bed Knobs and Broomsticks, very Dick Van Dyckish. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um he was in a movie. So he was in the movies like in the 40s and early 50s. He was in a movie called So This Is Love in 1953.
SPEAKER_01S O or S E W?
SPEAKER_00Uh S O, So This Is Love in 1953, and in that movie he opened mouth kiss a very famous actress at the time named Katherine Grayson. And that was a big deal. Um, it was the first open-mouth kiss in a movie since the Hayes Code started 20 years earlier. You know what the Hayes Code is? No. I guess in the 19 when movies first came out, they were got to be pretty raunchy, like in the 20s, when they were just experimenting with with what film could do.
SPEAKER_01And the when you say raunchy, you mean you could see ladies' ankles.
SPEAKER_00No, like it was like rough stuff, a lot of violence, sex. It was some pretty rough stuff, and it was headed even raunchier. Plus, then you had one of the uh actors of the time, Fatty Arbuckle.
SPEAKER_01There was yeah, I've heard I've heard that story.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, there were some some actors were some bad people, and the industry was really bad actors. There was a lot of vice going on in the movie industry. So somebody decided we got to clean this up if we want this industry to survive. Um and so they probably went too far with that. So they came up with this haze code, which they call don'ts and be carefuls of uh of what you could put in movies back then. And so they, like I said, they went way too far. So does it apply to podcasts today? This was no, not at all. That's the great part. And this is before the movie rating system. Okay, there was no ratings back then, don'ts and be carefuls.
SPEAKER_01So the don'ts and be careful is I'll give you a sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00Sounds like a Mary Poppins song. I'll give you some don'ts.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and the don'ts are the don'ts because you don't do them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there you go. Uh poignant profanity, either by saying them or even lip lip reading them. So this includes um any connection with God, Lord, Jesus, Christ, hell, damn, any of that stuff. And then any so any bad words, um, any nudity suggested or real nudity, and even in silhouette. Um, and even if another character noticed nudity, they couldn't like you couldn't show people looking through a peephole or anything like that. Okay. Uh nothing about drugs, nothing about sex, nothing about white slavery, no romantic scenes or marriages between people from different races. This is where the the haze code's going a little off the rails here. Nothing about uh sex hygiene or venereal diseases, odd. Yeah. Um no scenes of actual childbirth, even in silhouette.
SPEAKER_01Well, how would you do how would you do like a nativity movie? You would just cover it by the donkey, I guess. Hashtag cover it by the donkey.
SPEAKER_00Uh you couldn't ridicule the clergy and you couldn't show any offense, any willful offense, willful is the key there, any willful offense to any nation, race, or creed. So you couldn't even say anything bad about another country. Those were the don'ts. Wow. And then the be careful is there was a huge list. I'm not gonna read them all out of those of those, but like they couldn't show men and women in bed together. Is that is that why they always were in separate beds, yeah. You couldn't have you couldn't sh even have any reference or be careful, any references to like prostitution at all. Uh any reference to arson or uh any guns. You couldn't have any any sympathy for well, be careful about any sympathy for criminals. You think about the the the the TV shows that have come out in the last 20 years, those are all sympathy for criminals, right? I mean, yeah, you couldn't have Tony Soprano, for example, or Walter White, you know?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they have to be bad guys, clearly.
SPEAKER_00There was a lot of these kind of things. This was the Hayes Code, and Merv Griffin kind of broke that open in 1954 when he open mo kissed uh open mouth kissed a woman, um, and then which led to re-evaluation and then eventually the rating system which we know today of the PG and R and that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01So he did the he did the first um the first magnetic recording and broke the Hayes system.
SPEAKER_00First open mouth kiss. Wow. And you know, when I say open mouth kiss, um it probably I haven't seen it. I I uh looked for that on YouTube and couldn't couldn't find that. I didn't want to know when you when you when you type in open mouth kissing on YouTube, yeah, you don't know what I mean. Be careful about your search history, yes. But you know, that stressed him out, these movies stressed him out. He didn't like doing movies, and TV was what was big coming up big in 1950 in the 1950s. So he bought out his contract because he had his uh coconut money, right? And he started concentrating on TV. So he bought himself out, and then he's he he went over to TV and he started being a host. So he hosted the first show he hosted was a show called Summer Holiday. And this is a it sounds like a really dumb show, but it was a show where they would have it with live music with two singers and they would pretend that they were on vacation somewhere in the world, and that I think gave them a chance to sing that coconut song.
SPEAKER_01I think the whole plot of the show, yeah, yeah, because there's a lot of vacation spots for coconuts.
SPEAKER_00They'd say, You're going to Hawaii, and you go, Oh, perfect, I got a song for that. I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts. And then the next week, I bet they went to Tahiti, and he'd say, Oh, that's great. I have a perfect song for that. And the next week they would go to Israel, and he would have I just got a per he probably sang that song every week as a yeah, North Pole, coconuts. Yeah, and then he just started going on other like game shows, like you said, are very cheap to make, and probably in the early days of television, they were probably fun to watch because you then you when you think of the reception, probably wasn't very good. You weren't watching things, and I mean, not only not only was it not in HD, it wasn't in color, and it wasn't even really in focus. So you remember you remember watching black and white TV. Oh, yeah, yeah. We're we're old enough to remember black and white TVs.
SPEAKER_01I do I actually my parents bought so we had one TV, we had a color TV, I think it was like a 19-inch color TV, and then my parents bought a second TV, um, which was really you know scandalous, and and we all kind of fought over it because we wanted to each put it in our bedrooms, but it was a black and white. It was like a little you know six-inch, eight-inch screen with black and white as an antenna.
SPEAKER_00And if you're trying to watch like a UHF channel and uh and uh in a black and white screen, you know, you can't see great. A lot of that stuff is snowy. People, yeah, young people today don't even know what that means, like a snowy TV.
SPEAKER_01Well, I remember actually watching uh Harold Lloyd on it. Oh, yeah, probably on PBS. It was Harold Lloyd and then the goodies on PBS in Houston.
SPEAKER_00I used to watch the exact same stuff. I would call Harold Lloyd a poor man's Charlie Chaplin, wouldn't you?
SPEAKER_01Oh, he was not a poor man's anything. He was a he was a wealth of comedy.
SPEAKER_00So he started hosting these game shows and he hosted a show called Play Your Hunch, and that show was created by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman. Oh yeah. Goodson Todman production. Exactly. And then he would just fill in like on The Price is Right, which they also created, and a show called To Tell the Truth. And then now we're getting into the 60s, and he had a show called Word for Word. And like you said, these premises have to be kind of simple for game shows to work, right? Yeah, this was just they would give you a big word, and you'd have to make as many words out of that as you can. I think there's a game on the New York Times site, like where they do Wordle that is similar to that now. Oh, there's a ton of there's a ton of games like that now, and any of those games were probably attempted as a game show at one time. Yeah. The early game shows they were kind of two kinds. They were the kind where you would have to do some kind of wordplay, or they would have some where a person would come out, you'd have to either guess what they did for a living, or guess what their secret was, or guess Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Was that to tell the truth? It was it was like one person, right?
SPEAKER_00And they'd and they would and and they would each kind of lie, two of them would lie about things, and you had no idea what they looked like because you couldn't Google it. Right, yeah, yeah. In fact, um I saw one when I was researching the Dr. Seuss episode, I believe, where Dr. Seuss was one of the and he said, My name is Theodore Giesel. Right.
SPEAKER_01Um, and then there were two other actors doing the same thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and they would and he would talk about being a cartoonist, and they try to get you on questions. They'd you know ask questions that only that person would know.
SPEAKER_01So now, now by that time, I guess the Hayes Act didn't have the rule about not lying about who you are on TV, right? Because that's a that's a be careful.
SPEAKER_00No, the Hayes were Hayes uh was just for movies. Oh, okay. But yeah, no, people were pretty uh professional on on television. He hosted a game show in 1965 called Let's Play Post Office. What do you think that the premise of that game was?
SPEAKER_01Is it like sort of like let's play doctor? No, it was not. It was not.
SPEAKER_00So do you have any idea what let's play post office? Terrible name for a show.
SPEAKER_01I guess I guess maybe you had to like it was a geo geography show? Like you had to know like state capitals and zip codes. Did they have zip codes back then? Uh maybe, but no, or was it one of those things where telephone where you say you tell somebody something and then they tell somebody something like that? That would be a good one.
SPEAKER_00That wasn't that, but that would be a good idea for a game show. No, and this one, so the set looked like a post office, and the contestants' podiums looked like the stamping window, and then the game board was shaped like a giant envelope. And and then somebody would come out and they would read a letter that a celebrity letter writer might have written. So kind of like our uh podcast here, yeah. Where they would pick a person kind of from the past and they would say, you know, uh, they would read a letter that that person might have written, and then the more lines from that letter that they read, the less money that you get before you.
SPEAKER_01And you have to guess who wrote it. Right, or who would have written. They weren't real letters. So it was it was just written in their style, like, you know, I was at the Battle of Gettysburg, I suffered an injury.
SPEAKER_00They they were like that, but I think they were even more like they would have puns in them.
SPEAKER_01By the way, just just quick aside, did you see the uh Saturday Night Live with George Washington? Oh, that was great. Yeah, it was Napar Gettysburg. It's perfect metric system. Yeah, perfect, yeah. Pretty awesome.
SPEAKER_00They also hate he also hosted a show called One in a Million. Um, what do you think that show is about?
SPEAKER_01Well, if it was Austin, it'd be about tacos. Oh one in a million? Oh, no, no. That's a real place. I don't know that place. One in a million.
SPEAKER_00Now, this was one where you would uh have uh people would have a story that made them like one in a million and unique, and you'd try to guess which of the four people were that like hit by lightning seven times.
SPEAKER_01That's obviously the guy with the the big burns on the side of his head.
SPEAKER_00Right. That's a variation of to tell the truth, right? Yeah, yeah. They're all they all had similar variations.
SPEAKER_01It's like a similar, a similar construct, but just different premise.
SPEAKER_00So in 1964, his wife said, I have an idea for a show. She said, Well, how about a show? Everyone's always trying to guess the answers, but how about a show where somebody tried to guess the question? Hmm. Obviously, this became Jeopardy. But I think Jeopardy isn't really like that anymore. Even though you have to say it in the form of a question, I don't think the actual clues are really questions anymore.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's almost like they're giving you the definition and you have to give the word.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but it's kind of annoying how they say you have to, you know, you it you have to pose it in the form of a question, but that's the format. But like in the early days of Jeopardy, maybe a clue would be 5,280.
SPEAKER_01What's five thousand two hundred and seventy-nine plus one?
SPEAKER_00No, no. That would be so that's maybe that's why I'm not gonna do that.
SPEAKER_01That's right, that's correct, though.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. So maybe that's why they don't do that. Would I would I get that? If would I've I mean it's it's it's more accurate to say how many feet are in a mile, probably, but um No, it's uh that is not more accurate at all. Well, then that's probably why they don't do that.
SPEAKER_01Those are both very accurate statements.
SPEAKER_00But what if I said five thousand two hundred and eight times ten? Which one of us got the right? Then they're both right. There's there's more than one answer, is the thing. So then every answer you could say who isn't dead or who isn't is dead, and there you go. Yeah, yeah, true. Well, that would have been the end of Jeopardy. Yeah, well you never know the movie.
SPEAKER_01Maybe we should have got on the show and and uh bucked the system. It sounds like we could have won.
SPEAKER_00Well, during all this time, he was still recording music and releasing music, and he wrote a song, he wrote a lullaby for his son Tony at the time called uh Time for Tony You notice anything about this song though?
SPEAKER_01Oh, does this become the Jeopardy theme?
SPEAKER_00That's right, this became the Jeopardy theme. It took him 30 seconds to write this song. The Jeopardy theme. What's great about this song is exactly 30 seconds, which is the time limit that they have to do the final Jeopardy, right? And it kind of has a TikTok, so it's a sense of urgency, but also laid back. Like if you said write a song that that gives you a sense of urgency but doesn't seem stressful, right? It's like a laid back, right?
SPEAKER_01And there's almost like a clip clop of a horse in it.
SPEAKER_00Clip clop, yeah, a little wood block, yeah, action. That song took him 30 seconds to write the the time for Tony. He made a hundred million dollars in royalty.
SPEAKER_01I guess being being a um a musician and a game show dude kind of comes in handy.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Can you imagine? He wrote that song. Now that song is just like that's just one of those songs. It's yeah, happy birthday song. Just time for Tony. Everywhere, right? So that's Time for Tony. 100 million bucks he's made off of that song, right? Wow. So when Jeopardy came out in 1964, the host was Art Fleming. Do you remember any of the Art Fleming episodes of Jeopardy?
SPEAKER_01I don't. I don't. I've heard the name, but I can't really tell you much beyond the state.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I remember vaguely of him. Um, but obviously we know Alex Trebek um from you know from I I think he started in uh like 74 or something, and then um took it for many years. Yeah. Um, and then of course, um there was the the the kids' version of that show called Jepp. Do you remember Jepp? No, no. Jepp with an exclamation point, which is almost exactly like the Jeb Bush Jeb with an exclamation point. Right. His his uh his campaign signs, right? So then do you remember Rock and Roll Jeopardy? No. So this was a show on VH1 that I used to love. It was on from like 1998 to 2001. And the thing about Rock and Roll Jeopardy was the host of that show went on to be kind of a Merv Griffin himself. His name is Jeff Probst, the host of Survivor, who ended up, you know, kind of he didn't create Survivor, but he's definitely the only person that's ever hosted it. And he owns that show now and makes tons of money off of it. Uh play an E. This is the theme to Rock and Roll Jeopardy. Let's get you in the mood for some rock and roll questions. So so versatile. Shredding, dude. It's gotta be. What's it exactly 30 seconds? No, it's a little longer. There's this guitar solo. When do you ever get to this part though? There's no way they played this on the show.
SPEAKER_01Well, this is the closing credits. Oh yeah. You're right. They probably played it to warm up the crowd, too. Uh, it's true.
SPEAKER_00He's really shredding though.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Got Kirk Hamlet to do the guitar solo on that. This is Randy Rhodes. Randy Rhodes. He just finished his session of uh Crazy Train and came over to do this.
SPEAKER_00In 1975, he came up. Uh his wife said, or maybe his wife didn't say this, but he thought, yeah, I used to play Hangman with my sister growing up. Let's make a show out of that. And they came up with Wheel of Fortune.
SPEAKER_01No nobody actually liked to watch people hang anymore.
SPEAKER_00So right, right, yeah, that was a bad idea. So they decided to take the uh the letter part of that game. Yeah. There's two ways you could go with that game, right?
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00They decided to go with the letter guessing part, which was a great idea. Yeah. And um, the first host of Wheel of Fortune was actually Chuck Willary.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I remember Chuck Willary. He he later went on to do the dating game, right? No, he went on to do Love Connection. Love Connection. Yeah, I knew it was something to do with relationships.
SPEAKER_00And now Chuck Willary ha is um an angry mega uh tweeter. Really? And all he does is tweet angry things about the government.
SPEAKER_01So um he got called out in a Beastie Boys song years ago.
SPEAKER_04Stop food, stop footer.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. But Pat Sajek took over in 1983. Okay. Um, and then Merv Griffin wrote the song to the Wheel of Fortune, too.
SPEAKER_01And it's got a level of vibe. Is this rock and roll? Uh it's more roll than rock. Sorry! Gavin McLeod. That's Captain Stoopy.
SPEAKER_00The kids' version of that show was called Wheel 2000.
SPEAKER_01They always had a kid's version of these shows?
SPEAKER_00Because I didn't know that, I guess. So, yeah. Just right to the adult version. I was I I went on a little dive about game shows, and I think my favorite game show that I didn't watch, but I wish I knew was out there. I think you would have liked this show. It was called That's My Dog. What do you think this what do you think this show is? That's my dog? That's my dog.
SPEAKER_01Um maybe they brought three dogs that all look alike and you had to guess which one is yours.
SPEAKER_00That would be awesome. Wait, that's my dog.
SPEAKER_01If you had three German Shepherds, if you had three German Shepherds, you know, it's kind they're kind of hard to tell apart if they're the same breed, right?
SPEAKER_00Your dog would be the one trying to run to you, though, right? And the other would do it would just be standing there. That's my dog. Well, I don't know. I don't know. I love that idea. That's a good idea. No, it would be, but you're close. I I it it uh it is about dogs. It's uh uh teams of family members and their dogs participated in events. So like you would have maybe a dog going through a maze, but then the the uh then the people would have to answer dog-related questions, and then they'd have the dog go through an obstacle course.
SPEAKER_01What year was this on?
SPEAKER_00I think this was recently, like in Oh, really?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I don't and it was like on I don't know, Animal Planet or what do you think about um those physical game shows versus versus more um cerebral game shows? Meaning that you know, because there's these ones where Fear Factor, you mean yeah, yeah, where you where you have to, you know, or what's the one where they have to run across um I mean there's even like American Ninja Warrior, right? Which is sure, which is kind of kind of a game show, you know, it's like people competing. Wipeout, wipeout, that's what I was thinking of. Yeah, are these are these game shows or are these more?
SPEAKER_00I think they are game shows. I mean, um although I don't know if you watch the challenge.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, but that you know, I've been watching the challenge non-stop since it came out. I I love Road Rules, I love real world, I love the real world rules challenge and everything that's come after that. I don't think that's a game show.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00Uh that's almost a sporting event. Um because they're not I think, but I think wipeout is kind of a game show. It's different contestants every week. Yeah, they're doing stupid things, they're doing stunts. Um now there was a show called 101 Ways to Leave a Game Show. Have you ever heard of that? No, never seen that one. This was I I I think it was either on Fox, or if it wasn't, it should have been. It was I was on actually on ABC and it only ran for six episodes, but every week when somebody got eliminated, they would get eliminated in a different way. Like the contestant with the wrong answer was put off on a biplane, had to walk on a wing of a biplane. Um or wait, wait, you mean you mean if you if you lost, you had to do whoever has the wrong answer got pushed off of a moving truck, or you'd strap people to a rope, and then the person with the wrong answer um got like sent off on a zipline, you know, or you would have everybody sits under a box of explosives, and then you the person with the wrong answer they would light the fuse, and the person would, you know, and it was Wiley Coyote. It's funny, it says that there's only six episodes on Wikipedia, but there's actually 24 episodes that are listed. So maybe some of these didn't get aired because I mean some of these it says release the hound was episode 18. Dressed in safety gear, the contestant with the wrong answer runs off being chased by a hungry pitnip bull named Twinkie.
SPEAKER_01Why why do they got to do that to pit bulls? That's my thing.
SPEAKER_00Why does it why does it matter if the pit bull's hungry?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's not like they're gonna be more likely to kind of a tie into the Simpsons, right? Release the hounds.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you're not gonna be more likely to bite a person if you're hungry, are you?
SPEAKER_01Do you remember there's an episode where Homer uh Homer's running and for some reason he has these Sausage links in his hand, you know, like three or four links, and he's and the dogs come running after him, and he says, Woo! And like he has an idea. Then he says, These wieners will give me the energy I need to escape. And he eats them as he's running instead of throwing them back.
SPEAKER_00Uh my favorite game show growing up was well, it wasn't it was when I was in college, and I didn't even watch that much television. But do you remember a show called Remote Control?
SPEAKER_01I do.
SPEAKER_00It was on MTV, right? Yeah, and that show launched the careers of like Adam Sandler, for example. Yeah. Really? Ryan Seacrest, maybe? No, he wasn't on um, he wasn't on Colin Quinn, though, was yeah, yeah. Um, I tried out for that show in college. Really? Yeah, I did. They came to different campuses. They did. They came to Austin and they were doing casting for the real world and for remote control. And real world wouldn't start for another few years, but um but come to find out they were hosting for both of us. And I made it to like the I don't know, the second round or third round or something, but it was a lot of interviews, but then there was like you had to go in front of people and just do whatever you wanted to do, like and they tied you to a biplane wing and you had to ride. Yeah, they were looking for personality, and apparently I wasn't I didn't have enough. Oh, I I auditioned, I got really far later on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, though. I got really far on the auditions for that. Wow. In fact, I made it through, like they gave you a bunch of tests, trivia tests, and then so they started with like thousands of people and then hundreds of people, and then it was like down to like an yeah, like dozens of people, and then they were down to like I don't know, 30 people or so, and then it came for an interview. I was really like this was one of the last parts, right? And uh, all it was they didn't care how smart you were anymore, they just wanted to know if you were like person had personality. Funny. Well, it's funny the I you could hear the other people doing the interviews, or you could see them, and this was the syndicated version, not the one with Regis, but it was like the syndicated version with Meredith Vieira. Okay, and the person beforehand, they asked her, they said, What have you always wanted to tell Meredith Vieira? And the person goes, Who's that?
SPEAKER_01Is that a good answer or a bad answer? That's something you would say, probably. I don't know who Meredith Vieira is, so yes what you'd say, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um, on me, they said, Uh, what do you want us to know? And I I was like, I'm a stay-at-home dad. And they go, Well, where's your kid right now? And they totally busted me. I was a stay-at-home dad, but my kid didn't stay home with me. He was at school. Like he was, I stayed home and my kid was at school. So I was just a stay-at-home guy.
SPEAKER_01You should have you should have just acted surprised and been like, I don't know. Where's it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh, I think I actually might have done that, actually. Yeah, might have tried to play that as a joke and go, Oh my god, do you have you seen him? And I didn't think they liked that. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I was just a stay-at-home man. Yeah. Just not a stay-at-home dad. Um, but I didn't get it. Oh, they were like, I didn't move on to the next. Or I think after that, people got on. So I came very close to getting on that show.
SPEAKER_01You did pass the audition to be co-host of Dirt Knap City. So you were you were saving it up for this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm glad I passed that audition. You remember that audition? That was a tough one. Well, they you because I knew who you were. The person before me, they said they said, What would you tell Kelly Shores? And the person said, Who's that? And they got knocked down. Who the hell is that? Yeah, yeah. Well, congrats. So we haven't even talked about the talk shows, but I at the beginning of this, I told you that Merv Griffin was the host of a the Merv Griffin show for 21 years. If that's all he ever did, he would have been a big deal. Yeah. One day he was hosting play your hunch, and Jack Parr, who was the host of the Tonight Show at the time, just kind of accidentally wandered on the set. And I think shows were live back then. And Merv Griffin got him to sit down and he interviewed him, and nobody really interviewed Jack Parr that much back then. It was a great interview, and it got him to host to guest host the Tonight Show. He was the most successful guest host of anybody that guest hosted the Tonight Show at the time. Well, so he got his own daytime show. And here's this was kind of great is that Jeopardy and even this um talk show they would get canceled by the networks, but then they would get syndicated. And then so Merv Griffin started the Merv Griffin production company that would sell these syndicated shows. And you know, just like with Oprah, you can make a lot more money for yourself syndicating these shows and selling them to all the local channel uh channels than you could being on a network where you could get canceled all the time. So these syndicated shows, they would just each market would put it on a time slot wherever it fit in. So sometimes it'd be at night, sometimes it'd be late night, sometimes in the morning, wherever the local market wanted it. And the nice part about that is those station managers knew when it would be the most successful. So you can really and you can make so much money off of syndication, and that's what he did. You know who his his sidekick was somebody you may or may not have heard of, and this depends if this where you grew up, probably. But his sidekick was a guy named Arthur Treacher. Is that name Ringabelle to you at all?
SPEAKER_01No, never heard, never heard of it.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay. So when I grew up, there was a place that was kind of like Long John Silver's called Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips. Oh, wow. Okay, he was like a British. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01Arthur Treacher.
SPEAKER_00A really unfortunate name. Arthur Treacher, and he was like the stereotypical butler. Like in every show, he'd be the butler. And he was, I think he even had a show called Mr. Jeeves. Like he was the prototype for ass Jeeves. Yeah, he was just an English butler kind of guy. Um, when he left, the sidekick left, Merv Griffin did his own announcing of himself, and he would just say, And now, here I come. And he would just introduce himself. This show ran for 21 years and he won 11 Emmys. He was a big deal, and he would book, even though it was like an afternoon show for mostly, you know, women that did stayed at home, um, what they call it housewives back then. Uh, he was booking some kind of controversial people like George Carlin or Richard Pryor or some of the stars of the day that were maybe opposed to the Vietnam War. I mean, he kind of did things that he might not have been able to do on network TV. He put as his as the guy to run his production company the guy that was his best friend since the sixth grade. And he became producer and the president of Merv Griffin Enterprises. Um, he was just kind of a good good chap like that, to his uh kind of loyal to his old friends. He finally sold that production company to Columbia Pictures, and and just in kind of a typical um corporate America thing, Columbia Pictures at the time was owned by Coca-Cola. Oh, wow. He sold them for 250 million, but retained the title of creator of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, so he's still making money off of those. Then after he got that money, he went on a spending spree and went, bought a bunch of hotels. Do you remember Resorts International? Uh, yeah, yeah. So I think he bought that from Trump. That was Merv.
SPEAKER_01Merv Griffin.
SPEAKER_00Merv Griffin and Donald Trump were like the real estate guys of the 1980s that were just buying these big, uh, lavish properties. Um, like I said, when he when he died, he was worth over a billion dollars. He was married uh from 1958 to 1976, but there was a lot of um rumors and probably more than rumors about um him being gay. When asked about his sexuality, Merv would say, I tell everybody I'm a quarter sexual, I will do anything with anybody for a quarter. Okay. So you can use that line if you want.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's um not great for a married guy. He was sued by Denny Terrio. Do you remember Denny Terrio? I don't. He was the host of Dance Fever. Do you remember Dance Fever?
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, I remember Dance Fever.
SPEAKER_00That was also a Merv Griffin production. And Denny Terrio was the host, but he sued him for uh sexual harassment, and um there was there was a couple of guys that would sue him and settled out of court. Um, he was also a constant companion of Ava Gabor, she was the one from um Green Acres.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh so they were never romantic, but they were like constantly around. I don't know if they lived together, but they were like uh inseparable in the 80s. He was a friend of Nancy Reagan's.
SPEAKER_01Uh did he come up with Green Acres? Was that a Merv Griffin show?
SPEAKER_00He didn't he didn't do any scripted shows that I know. Seems like more of a Sherwin Schwartz show. Yeah, they were all um no look, no, no, no, look, I am a huge Green Acres fan, and Sherwood Schwartz couldn't touch Green Acres. So in the first few episodes of Dirt Knapp City, we talked about we got away from this, but we started talking about these people's funerals. Remember, we talked about how Matthew McConaughey spoke at the Evil Kin Evil's funeral.
SPEAKER_01Jim Jim Henson's, they all they all yeah, we talked about how Bob Costas yeah, and Bob Costas hosted Howard Costell's, but this was like one of the premier funerals.
SPEAKER_00This was 2007. We're talking Nancy Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Schriver, Pat Sajak, Vanna White, Alex Trebek, Dick Van Dyke, Jack Klugman, Dick Van Patten, basically all the people that would have been on that battle of the network stars that I told you about. Right. Ellen DeGenerist, Ryan Seacrest, who is kind of the closest thing we have today to Merv Griffin, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, but you're gonna love this. His gravestone, he had this plan a long time before. He used to talk about this. I think he even mentioned his book. His gravestone, and he's buried among all the celebrities in uh in uh LA there. His gravestone says, I will not be back after this message. Classic. What a great, what a great TV guy gravestone. And now nobody else can do that.
SPEAKER_01Like he Yeah, once you once you've called that, once you've uh you know, once you've got that on your gravestone, you've you've called it. Nobody else can do it.
SPEAKER_00Like the best Ryan Secret can do now is Secret Out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And that's not even as good as I will not be back after this message.
SPEAKER_01I wonder, you know, they have that um they had that movie with uh Vince Vaughn and I think uh Luke Wilson or Owen Wilson called uh wedding crashers. Yeah. I wonder if there's if there are funeral crashers. You know, if you if you go go to a if people go to funerals that they're not invited to and eat the food. Why would you oh to eat the food? To eat the food. I mean, generally, you know, who's everybody's sort of in a really uh they're they're not in a really alert state of mind, you know, what would you think that did that?
SPEAKER_00Like if I told you that, oh, I have a friend who goes pressure and just eats free food for at funerals, what would you what would what um what would you say about that person?
SPEAKER_01I mean, I was just thinking about that funeral of Merv Griffin and and how cool that sounds, you know. And and I mean, everywhere you've been hearing about Matthew Perry's funeral, you know, and all the all the stars that were there. I mean, wow, if you could, if you could pull that off, you'd be standing there right in the front row with Phoebe and Rachel and Ross.
SPEAKER_00I think a lot of people try to pull that off. I think a lot of like I think the paparazzi tries to do that, you know. I think it's kind of gross too to see like helicopters flying over oh yeah, funerals. I mean, these are people, you know. I mean, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01No, I guess I was thinking more from the perspective of like a witty movie like Wedding Crashers, you know, could part two, funeral crashers.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, why don't you write that up and send it to Ryan Secrest and see what it's like?
SPEAKER_01Or or or we make a game show out of it, you know. Let's say let's say if you can get in, then you you win the prize.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think without a doubt, if Merv was alive today, he would be hosting a podcast. There's a hundred percent chance he would be hosting a podcast, and it would probably be really well done.
SPEAKER_01And he'd probably be a fan of this podcast.
SPEAKER_00He probably would have, yeah. And we would be talking about a lot of people that he intersected with. At least I would be.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Not me, though. I mean, you you don't always do 20th century. True.
SPEAKER_01True.
SPEAKER_00So that's Merv Griffin, Kelly.
SPEAKER_01Merv Griffin with the great not pear, but bunch of coconuts.
SPEAKER_00So I hope you learned a little bit about somebody that has had a huge impact on kids of the 20th century.
SPEAKER_01Thank you very much. Enjoyed it. Secret out.
SPEAKER_03Make one small one, something as big as a man. Give them a twist, give them a wrist. That's what the shellman said.
