Merv Griffin; TV Host, Game-Show Creator

While maintaining an active recording schedule, he made numerous guest appearances on radio and television. He later told the Miami Herald that he was a "utility singer," adding: "I knew every song that was ever written. If somebody in a show got sick and couldn't do their number singing in front of a waterfall, everybody would say, 'Call Merv -- he knows all the waterfall songs.' " After a reviewer for the New York Herald Tribune found him "a glib, likable, singing emcee type," he won a job in 1958 doing just that, on the quiz show "Play Your Hunch." The show ran several years.

Mr. Griffin also managed to emcee "Saturday Prom," a short-lived NBC rival to Dick Clark's "American Bandstand" dance program, and was a replacement host for other programs.

After host Jack Paar left NBC's "The Tonight Show" in 1962, Mr. Griffin served in his place for several weeks until Johnny Carson took over. As a reward, the network gave Mr. Griffin his first self-titled chat show, a daytime program that lasted just a year because of low ratings.

In 1965, he accepted an offer from the Westinghouse Broadcasting Co. to host the syndicated "Merv Griffin Show" with Arthur Treacher, an English actor known for playing movie butlers, as his sidekick.

Mr. Griffin highlighted theater and cafe performers over Hollywood actors. He also brought on cellist Pablo Casals and Soviet diplomat Nikolai Fedorenko.

Mr. Griffin was not regarded as a tough or penetrating interviewer. Such terms as ingratiating and inoffensive were more often used to describe his style. Yet he periodically stepped into controversy during the rise of the counterculture era and the Vietnam War by inviting such guests as Bertrand Russell, the Nobel laureate, philosopher and anti-nuclear activist, who denounced the war.

Mr. Griffin also interviewed activist Abbie Hoffman -- whose American-flag shirt was deemed offensive by CBS censors and was blurred.

Mr. Griffin's show was briefly on CBS, which tried to pit him against Carson unsuccessfully on a late-night schedule.

Ever since his first talk show was scuttled, Mr. Griffin was quick to recognize that he would not always be a viable on-camera personality. This led to his increasing role as a producer of game shows. Mr. Griffin told the Miami Herald last year: " 'Jeopardy!' came after the big quiz show scandals of the 1950s. I wanted to get a game show on the air, but the networks wouldn't touch them. My wife said, 'Why don't you do a show where you give the contestants the answers?' . . . So there it was -- 'Jeopardy!' -- we give you the answer and you come up with the question."

He added that "Wheel of Fortune" was a variation of the child's game hangman, in which people have to guess letters to form a phrase. "Dance Fever" grew from a segment on disco he highlighted on his talk show. Although he said he hated the music, he recognized its audience appeal.

In 1986, Mr. Griffin sold Merv Griffin Enterprises to Coca-Cola's Columbia Pictures television unit for $250 million, and he negotiated a deal to allow him to retain some profits while maintaining the title of executive producer of "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy!" He was said to still contribute puzzles and other ideas for his game shows.

He received a Lifetime Achievement Daytime Emmy Award in 2005.

Mr. Griffin enjoyed a social life that ranged from Hollywood parties to San Francisco's Bohemian Club, a men's group whose other members have included former president George H.W. Bush, investment firm founder Charles Schwab and television news anchor Walter Cronkite. Mr. Griffin also became a major backer of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

He also had become involved in real estate investments. He bought the Beverly Hilton Hotel in 1987 for $100.2 million after losing his first choice, the Beverly Hills Hotel, to the Sultan of Brunei. The next year, he paid $365 million to Donald Trump for the Resorts International casino company in Atlantic City before the hotel's enormous debt almost led him to file for bankruptcy; he later sold the casino.

His holdings also included radio stations and closed-circuit TV systems at dozens of racetracks nationwide. He also bred racehorses and had a winery at his ranch in California's Monterey Peninsula.

His marriage to Julann Wright Griffin ended in divorce in the mid-1970s. Survivors include a son, Anthony P. Griffin, and two grandchildren.

Merv Griffin, long the escort of "Green Acres" actress Eva Gabor, refrained from discussing his personal relationships in any detail -- even in two autobiographies. In the early 1990s, he was sued for $200 million by a former male employee, Brent Plott, on palimony charges, and for $11.5 million by former "Dance Fever" host Deney Terrio for sexual harassment. Both cases were dismissed.

Mr. Griffin remained wry and jovial until recent years, at times joking about the lawsuits.

He told the New York Times in 2005 that although death was inevitable, he was happy for the time being. "I've got great energy, and I've got all of my hair," he said before suggesting an appropriate tombstone epitaph: "I will not be right back after these messages."