Larry King has died… You probably know him as the long time interviewer on CNN… For some reason I always associate him with his weird USA Today column where he would type out a random thought followed by ellipsis and further random thoughts… I suppose it was a forefather of Twitter when he would write something like this…
Larry King’s broadcast career started on Miami Beach radio station WAHR… His first broadcast was on May 1, 1957, working as the disc jockey from 9 a.m. to noon... He was paid $50 a week… He changed his name from Larry Zeiger when told it was too difficult to remember… He got the name King from a Miami Herald advertisement for King’s Wholesale Liquor… He conducted interviews on a mid-morning show for WIOD, at Pumpernik’s Restaurant in Miami Beach and would interview random people from the waiters to whichever customer walked in that day…
In May 1960, he hosted Miami Undercover, airing Sunday nights at 11:30 p.m. on Channel 10… King was hired as a columnist for the Miami Herald in 1965… He was color commentator for the Miami Dolphins during their 1970 season and most of their 1971 season… He was fired from that gig when he was arrested for grand larceny… The charges were later dropped… He was rehired by radio station WIOD during the 1970s and hosted a sports talk-show called “Sports-a-la-King”…
A friend of mine always said his Dad could not flip past Larry King on TV without cursing King out for never paying him back money he owed him from his Miami days… Hopefully Larry King’s cameos in Ghostbusters and Contact did not ruin my friend’s dad’s enjoyment of those movies… Or the 30,000 interviews King gave on his CNN show… Or his USA Today column… Or this post… R.I.P. Larry King
