Merv Griffin

Early Life
Merv Edward Griffin Jr. was born on July 6, 1925 in San Mateo, California. Merv Griffin as most people know him was actually very lucky because do to certain health problems he wasn't allowed to go into war, but he was eventually deemed healthy enough however he was over the age of 26. And if you were wondering which Wars he was not in because you somehow don't remeber timelines, it was the Second World War and The Korean War.

His Career
Apparently he started singing when he was just 19 years old which at the time would be very young. He was also overweight when he was an adolescent, and apparently that made some of his fans very angry (we also call the fans that got angry douche-bags). He actually became really fucking embarrassed about it and decided to loose the weight, and honestly good job for him but it's actually really sad. He was able to loose like 80 pounds in 4 months so yay! He toured with this guy for 4 years and his name is Freddy Martin. Eventually he got enough money to form a record label with Panda Records (Best fucking name ever, and im not even joking). In 1947 he had his own 15 minute singing program on a radio show. In 1953 he was also in a musical called So This Is Love.

Between 1958-1962 he was a host of the game show known as Play Your Hunch. The show was on three networks however it mainly appeared on NBC. In 1963 NBC gave him the position to host a game show he helped produce known as Word For Word. I honestly don't know whether or not he actually accepted this offer.

 Griffin actually got his own Talk Show in 1962, but it was canceled in a year later. Two years after his first talk show got cancelled he launched his own show called The Merv Griffin Show. In the show he had kind of a sidekick character which was played by a man named Arthur Treacher. His sidekick left the show in 1970 and then Merv just kind of took over for everything that he did. According to Entertainment Weekly the show ran for 21 years, and that is actually a really long time for a talk show.

In 1969 CBS actually gave him a Late Night Talk Show  however a few months later CBS had fired him. The funny thing is that he a new show which aired it's first episode on the following Monday and it actually ran all the way into the mid 1980's. 

 Although he did have a very successful time in all the other careers he had Merv Griffin actually produced shows such as Jeopardy! in 1964 and Wheel of Fortune in 1965.  in 1965. Jeopardy! was actually originally called Whats The Question and it aired for about 11 years before it got canceled. Wheel of Fortune also know as "Wheel" barely escaped being canceled in the 1980's.

Death 
Sadly, Merv Griffin died in 2007 from prostate cancer. He had had it for many years and his treatment began in 1996. AS sad as his death was he was actually very successful considering people still talk about Jeopardy! and other things he did and was featured in.