Larry King, a longtime CNN talk-show host whose soft style of questioning landed him high-profile interviews with world leaders, celebrities and star athletes for decades, has died. He was 87.
Mr. King died Saturday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to his production company, Ora Media. No cause of death was given, but CNN, where he worked until 2010, reported earlier this month that he had been hospitalized with Covid-19.
Mr. King weathered numerous health problems over the years. He suffered several heart attacks, including a major one in 1987 that required quintuple bypass surgery and led him to create the Larry King Cardiac Foundation. Once a heavy smoker, King was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2017, underwent an angioplasty and suffered a stroke in 2019.
Mr. King was married eight times to seven women and had five children.
Known for his rolled-up shirt sleeves, suspenders and pompadour hairstyle, Mr. King’s gravelly baritone gave off an authoritative, no-nonsense air, but his reputation for softball questions made his show, “Larry King Live,” the go-to destination for anyone embroiled in controversy.
“On many of these shows, the guest is a prop for the host, and that’s not my kind of broadcasting,” Mr. King told CNN in an interview when he ended his program in 2010 after 25 years on the cable-news channel. “I hope it comes back to information rather than yelling, and the guests are given a chance to finish a thought.”
In a career that spanned over 50 years—with decades spent in radio before he landed at CNN in 1985—Mr. King estimated he conducted over 30,000 interviews, including with seven sitting U.S. presidents. Mr. King won two Peabody Awards and an Emmy for lifetime achievement.
Over the years, Mr. King’s show was the scene of some notable moments in contemporary history. In 1992, Ross Perot announced his third-party bid for president live on the show. Mr. King also provided running commentary for CNN’s coverage of the famed televised police chase of O.J. Simpson’s white Ford Bronco in 1994.
In 2000, when Mr. King asked Vladimir Putin what had happened with a nuclear submarine that had recently exploded, killing 118 seamen, the Russian president deadpanned: “It sunk.”
A 2007 interview with Jerry Seinfeld nearly went off the rails after Mr. King asked whether the comedian’s runaway smash sitcom had been canceled. “I went off the air. I was the No. 1 show in television, Larry! Do you know who I am?” Mr. Seinfeld shot back.
Mr. King was born Lawrence Zeiger in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Nov. 19, 1933, to Orthodox Jewish parents from Eastern Europe. He took King as his stage name in 1957 from an advertisement for King’s Wholesale Liquor that he saw when he landed his first radio gig at WAHR in Miami Beach, Fla.
He later established himself as a local television personality and became a color commentator for Miami Dolphins games on a talk radio station.
Mr. King’s career was sidetracked in 1971 when he was charged with grand larceny for allegedly stealing $5,000 from a business partner. The charges eventually were dropped, but Mr. King lost his broadcast jobs and turned to freelance writing and public relations work before returning to radio in Miami in 1978.
His late-night radio broadcast, “The Larry King Show,” would eventually become nationally syndicated and, in 1982, Mr. King began writing a regular column for USA Today, which ran until 2001.
In 1985, “Larry King Live” premiered on CNN, then a fledgling cable-news channel. After ending his run on CNN in 2010, Mr. King continued his show on Ora TV, an on-demand digital channel he created with Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. The show was later broadcast on the Kremlin-financed, English-language news channel RT.
