Larry King (born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger; November 19, 1933 – January 23, 2021) was an American TV and radio host, author and spokesman. He was a WMBM radio interviewer in the Miami area in the 1950s and 1960s. Beginning in 1978, King gained national prominence as host of The Larry King Show, an all-night nationwide call-in radio program heard over the Mutual Broadcasting System. From 1985 to 2010, he hosted the nightly interview television program Larry King Live on CNN. King hosted Larry King Now from 2012 to 2020, which ran on Hulu, Ora TV, and RT America. He hosted Politicking with Larry King, a weekly political talk show, on the same three channels from 2013 to 2020. King conducted over 50,000 interviews on radio and television.
King was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish parents who immigrated to the United States from what is now Belarus in the 1920s. He studied at Lafayette High School, a public high school in Brooklyn.
During his career, King also appeared in television series and films, usually playing himself. He remained active until his death in 2021. His awards and nominations include two Peabodys, an Emmy, and ten Cable ACE Awards. King was also awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 32nd Annual News and Documentary Emmys.
King was born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger on November 19, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were Orthodox Jews who immigrated to the United States from Soviet Belarus in the 1920s.
He was one of two sons of Jennie (née Gitlitz), a garment worker who was born in Minsk in the Russian Empire in present-day Belarus, and Aaron Edward Zeiger, a restaurant owner and defense-plant worker who was born in Pinsk (also in modern-day Belarus). During his early childhood, the family lived in a rowhouse in a section of the borough alternatively characterized as part of Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Brownsville or Ocean Hill.
King attended Lafayette High School, a public high school in Brooklyn. When he was nine years old, his father died of a heart attack. This resulted in his family receiving government assistance. Greatly affected by his father's death, King lost interest in his schoolwork. Throughout King's adolescence, his family lived in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn.
After graduating from high school, King worked to help support his mother. From an early age, he desired to work in radio broadcasting.
A CBS production supervisor, James F. Sirmons, suggested he go to Florida, which was a growing media market with openings for inexperienced broadcasters. King went to Miami. After initial setbacks, he gained his first job in radio at a small station, WAHR (now WMBM), in Miami Beach, hired him to clean up and perform miscellaneous tasks. When one of the station's announcers abruptly quit, King was put on the air. His first broadcast was on May 1, 1957, working as the disc jockey from 9 a.m. to noon. He also did two afternoon newscasts and a sportscast. He was paid $50 a week.
He acquired the name Larry King when the general manager declared that Zeiger was too difficult to remember, saying it was "too German, too Jewish and not showbusiness enough". Minutes before airtime, Larry chose the surname "King", which was inspired from a Miami Herald advertisement he saw for King's Wholesale Liquor. Within two years, he legally changed his name to Larry King.
King began to conduct interviews on a mid-morning show for WIOD from Pumpernik's Restaurant in Miami Beach. He would interview whoever walked in. His first interview was with a waiter at the restaurant.
Two days later, singer Bobby Darin, in Miami for a concert that evening, walked into Pumpernik's having heard King's radio show; Darin became King's first celebrity interview guest.
King's Miami radio show brought him local attention. A few years later, in May 1960, he hosted Miami Undercover, airing Sunday nights at 11:30 p.m. on Miami television station WPST-TV.
King credited his success on local television to the assistance of comedian Jackie Gleason, whose national television variety show was being taped in Miami Beach, beginning in 1964. "That show really took off because Gleason came to Miami," King said in a 1996 interview he gave when inducted into the Broadcasters' Hall of Fame. "He did that show and stayed all night with me. We stayed till five in the morning. He didn't like the set, so we broke into the general manager's office and changed the set. Gleason changed the set, he changed the lighting, and he became like a mentor of mine."
During this period, WIOD gave King further exposure as a color commentator for the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League, during their 1970 season and most of their 1971 season.
On December 20, 1971, he was dismissed by both WIOD and television station WTVJ as a late-night radio host and sports commentator following his arrest for grand larceny by a former business partner, Louis Wolfson. Other staff covered the Dolphins' games into their 24–3 loss to the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl VI. King also lost his weekly column at the Miami Beach Sun newspaper. The charges were later dropped. King was later rehired by WIOD. For several years during the 1970s, he hosted a sports talk-show called Sports-a-la-King, featuring guests and callers.
On January 30, 1978, King began hosting a nightly coast-to-coast radio program on the Mutual Broadcasting System, inheriting the talk show slot that had begun with Herb Jepko in late 1975, then followed by "Long John" Nebel in 1977. King's Mutual show rapidly developed a devoted audience, called "King-aholics".
The Larry King Show was broadcast live Monday through Friday from midnight to 5:30 a.m. Eastern Time. King would interview a guest for the first hour, with callers asking questions that continued the interview for the next two hours. At 3 a.m., the Open Phone America segment began, where he allowed callers to discuss any topic they pleased with him, until the end of the program when he expressed his own political opinions. Many stations in the western time zones carried the Open Phone America portion of the show live, followed by the guest interview on tape delay.
Some of King's regular callers used pseudonyms or were given nicknames by King, such as "The Numbers Guy", "The Chair", "The Portland Laugher", "The Miami Derelict", and "The Scandal Scooper". At the beginning, the show had 28 affiliates, but eventually rose to over 500. King occasionally entertained the audience by telling amusing stories from his youth or early broadcasting career.