From 1962 to 1986, The Merv Griffin Show flourished as one of television's most popular variety/talk shows, offering thousands of celebrated personalities from all walks of life. The Merv Griffin Show: The Inside Story takes you behind the scenes of this iconic program through exclusive interviews with the producers, writers, talent coordinators, and publicists who helped sustain Merv as a durable presence in millions of American homes. It's all here: the backstage tensions, booking challenges, conversational triumphs and disasters, and the race for ratings that are so much a part of the TV talk show realm. The book includes vivid recaps of several "lost" episodes culled from the show's remarkable history. And there's the story of Mr. Griffin himself, spanning his days as America's Romantic Singing star in the 1940s, to his amazing success as a powerful media mogul and real estate entrepreneur in the 1980s and beyond. Most of the book's nostalgic photographs are published here for the first time.