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Larry King, the American broadcaster and cable interviewer to celebrities and public figures, has died at the age of 87. He had been hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles with symptoms of the coronavirus.
A declaration on King’s social media accounts confirmed the news on Saturday.
“For 63 years,” he said, “and across radio, TV and digital media platforms, Larry’s thousands of interviews, awards and world-renowned are testament to his talent. unique and durable as a diffuser.
With his trademark suspenders, gritty Brooklyn accent, and ill-prepared questions – he’s often said he’d rather go into an interview not knowing more than his audience, so he could ask the questions they were going – King is became, over the course of six decades, one of America’s best-known media personalities. At its peak, his flagship show on CNN, Larry King Live, which he hosted for 25 years, drew 1.5 million viewers per night.
“While that was his name appearing in the show’s titles,” the statement announcing his death stated, “Larry always regarded his interview subjects as the true stars of his programs and himself as a mere impartial conduct between guest and audience. Whether interviewing a US President, a foreign leader, a celebrity, a scandal-ravaged figure, or an ordinary man, Larry loved to ask short, simple questions.
The broadcaster, known for his gentle interview style (“If you approach [an interview] combatively you get a defensive stance and you don’t learn much, ”he told The Guardian in 2015), has conducted more than 30,000 interviews during his career, according to CNN, including interviews with public figures such as Yasser Arafat, Nelson Mandela and Vladimir Putin, all presidents from Richard Nixon to his friend Donald Trump and celebrities from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga.
Born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger on November 19, 1933 in Brooklyn to Orthodox Jewish immigrant parents – his father Aaron, a restaurateur, was from Austria and his mother Jennie, a garment worker, from Lithuania – the award-winning Peabody broadcaster grew up dreaming of ‘a career in radio. He got his hiatus as a morning DJ in Miami Beach, Florida in 1957, and expanded into national broadcasting in 1978, as he cultivated a dedicated following with his curvy interviews and personal digressions.
The nascent cable news network CNN granted King a prime-time show in 1985, which he hosted until he was controversially replaced by British TV personality Piers Morgan in 2010.
King continued to host specials for the network until 2012, when he left CNN to start a production company, Ora TV, with Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. King has been criticized in recent years for his work with RT (formerly Russia Today), a Russian state broadcaster which resumed its political and talk show programs in 2013.
King, who has been married eight times to seven wives (his last marriage, to Shawn Southwick, ended in divorce in 2019) had survived a major heart attack in 1987, lung cancer in 2017, angioplasty and stroke in 2019, as well as the death of two of her five children – her son Andy, 65, from a heart attack, and her daughter Chaia, 51, from lung cancer – within five weeks August 2020.
The award-winning Peabody broadcaster told The Guardian in 2015 he was most proud to be the father of his five children and his many awards, including an Emmy. “I hope I have brought fun and knowledge to people by being an intermediary,” he said.
The statement announcing his death, released by Ora Media, said that King’s interviews “will continue to be part of the historical record of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.”
The statement also contained “condolences to her surviving children Larry Jr, Chance, Cannon and the entire King family”, and said funeral arrangements and a memorial service “will be announced later in coordination with the King family who are asking for their lives. private at this time. “.
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