Larry King, original name Lawrence Harvey Zeiger, died January 23, 2021, Los Angeles, California after testing positive for Covid.
Larry King grew up in Brooklyn, where he remained for several years after high-school graduation. In his early twenties King left New York for Florida in the hopes of breaking into radio. He worked as a disc jockey in South Florida, honing his conversational interview style doing on-location interviews with random citizens. In 1960 he broke into television with a Miami-based talk show. Larry King also wrote for a number of Miami newspapers during that period.
From 1978 to 1994 King hosted the popular national radio talk show The Larry King Show, and from 1985 he hosted the television talk show Larry King Show on CNN, then a young network. The program was television’s first live phone-in show with an international audience. It became known not only for King’s off-the-cuff interview style (he prided himself on doing very little research on his guests) but for its popularity as a platform for political candidates.
Over time King became an internationally recognized figure, as famous as the celebrities, news makers, and world leaders that he interviewed. In December 2010 Larry King Live ended its run, after 25 years on the air. British tabloid journalist Piers Morgan was chosen to take over for King. King resumed interviewing notable personalities on Larry King Now, a talk show that premiered on the Web site Hulu in 2012, and the following year he added the talk show PoliticKING with Larry King.
King appeared as himself in a number of television shows, including 30 Rockand Sesame Street, and in such films as Ghostbusters (1984). King also did voice work in several of the animated Shrek films (2004, 2007, and 2010) and in Bee Movie (2007). In addition, he participated in documentaries, including 1989: The Year That Made Us (2019) and Dispatches from Quarantine(2020). After suffering a heart attack in 1987, he wrote books on heart disease. His autobiography, My Remarkable Journey, was published in 2009. In 2011 he received a News & Documentary Emmy Award for lifetime achievement.
