ENTERTAINMENT
Larry King says
he loves his work
because "I get to
meet new people,
ask them anything
I want and get
paid well for it."
After more than 30,000 interviews,
Larry King is still talking.
ELIZABETH BERNSTEIN
Special to The Jewish News
L
arry King never pre-
pares for an interview.
He never writes ques-
tions in advance. And he
never asks a question if he
knows the answer.
In his 30 years as one of
America's leading radio talk
show hosts, this approach
has served well in inter-
views with five presidents
and thousands of movie
stars, professional athletes,
comedians, politicians and
other celebrities.
Mr. King said he de-
veloped his interviewing
philosophy by accident. At
the beginning of his career,
he hosted a local radio show
from Pumpernick's Restau-
rant in Miami Beach. The
low budget operation had no
producers to book guests.
"So if an interesting per-
son walked in the restau-
Elizabeth Bernstein is a staff
writer for the JUF News in
Chicago.
rant, we would invite him
up," recalled the 57-year-old
Mr. King. "And one day
Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa
came in. There was no way
to prepare for Jimmy Hoffa
because I didn't know he was
coming. And I found that I
like the excitement of that."
But sometimes that ap-
proach doesn't work.
"Once I interviewed the
head of Apple Computer,"
Mr. King explained. "I had
him on for two hours and
didn't know until the last
five minutes that he had
fired the man who had hiired
him. A listener called in and
mentioned it, and I had
missed that somewhere.
That never would have
happened if I had research-
ed."
Even with the occasional
drawbacks, Mr. King said he
wouldn't change his line of
work.
"I don't know a thing
about it that I don't like," he
insisted. "No two days are
the same. I ask the ques-
tions. I get to meet new peo-
ple, ask them anything I
ro•••• ■ •10Wroirmseormos.00 •
want and get paid well for
it."
In 1989, the Guinness
Book of World Records
reported that Mr. King inter-
viewed more than 30,000 peo-
ple and logged more national
radio hours than anyone else
in history.
The "Larry King Show,"
"Never in my
broadcasting life
have I been told
who to interview,
what to ask, what
not to ask."
Larry King
his nightly three-hour radio
program, is broadcast to 3.5
million people on more than
355 radio stations
throughout North America
on the Mutual Broadcasting
System. "Larry King Live,"
which continuously earns
the highest ratings on CNN,
is seen in the United States
and 122 other countries. His
column, "Larry King's Peo-
ple," appears weekly in USA
Today.
"This is every dream I ever
had as a kid come true," Mr.
King said.
In fact, he told the New
York Times, he trained his
voice by announcing the
names of passing cars from
the family's Bensonhurst,
N.Y., stoop.
His parents were poor Jew-
ish immigrants from East-
ern Europe, and his real
name — which he didn't
change until half an hour
before his first radio show —
was Lawrence Harvey
Zeiger.
"When I was a kid, I
always wanted to be in
radio, and then, when televi-
sion came, I wanted to be in
television," Mr. King said.
"I never wanted to do
anything else. I didn't go to
college."
In 1957, at 23, Mr. King
started his career in Miami.
"I just knocked on doors,
and a small radio station
hired me," he said. "I did
news. I was a disc jockey. I
did sports. I helped clean up
the station. I did every-
thing."
Two years later, Mr. King
moved to a larger station,
WKAT, and began to host
his morning talk show from
Pumpernick's.
"I've been doing inter-
views ever since," he said.
In 1978, Mr. King made
his TV debut when the
"Larry. King Show" was
broadcast from Washington,
D.C., to 28 stations. In 1985,
he signed on with CNN.
"On radio, I can develop an
interview longer, I can go
more into a person's
background," Mr. King ex-
plained. "I have time. On
television, I have to jump
right in. For instance, if I
have Secretary of State
James Baker on the radio I
can go back to Texas and
trace his roots. But if I've got
him on TV, I've got to move
right to the current crisis."
He said he's done too many
interviews to have a favorite
one. But some are more
difficult than others.
"Robert Mitchum is hard,"
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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