Merv Griffin, the former big-band singer who leveraged his career as a popular TV talk-show host into a business empire whose foundations included the creation of the wildly successful syndicated game shows "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy!," died Sunday. He was 82.
Griffin died of prostate cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to a statement from his family that was released by Marcia Newberger, spokeswoman for his Beverly Hills-based Griffin Group.
On July 19, his company said that Griffin was being treated for a recurrence of prostate cancer discovered during a routine examination a few weeks earlier.
An entertainer-turned-entrepreneur, who sold Merv Griffin Enterprises to Coca-Cola Co. for $250 million in 1986 and recently was reported to have a net worth of $1.6 billion, Griffin presided over an array of business endeavors.
His Griffin Group includes film and television production; a luxury home development in La Quinta; closed-circuit coverage of horse racing across the country; a real estate brokerage specializing in high-end residential properties; and a stable of thoroughbreds that includes Stevie Wonderboy, the 2005 Breeders' Cup Juvenile winner at Belmont Park.
Since buying the Beverly Hilton in 1987 -- he spent millions renovating the hotel, which he sold in 2003 -- Griffin has bought and sold more than 20 hotels, gaming resorts and riverboats, including Resorts International in Atlantic City, N.J., and the Bahamas.
Although he was a TV talk-show host for more than two decades, Griffin's most enduring show business claim to fame is creating and producing "Jeopardy!" (launched in 1964) and "Wheel of Fortune" (launched in 1975). Both shows originally aired on NBC and, beginning in the 1980s, became the two most popular syndicated game shows in television history.
Both programs were included in the 1986 sale of Merv Griffin Enterprises. But Griffin wrote the theme music for "Wheel of Fortune" and the famous "thinking music" played in the final round of "Jeopardy," which continued to provide him with millions of dollars in royalties.
"I have to say that the ongoing success of 'Jeopardy!' and 'Wheel' is my biggest thrill," Griffin, a self-described "word and puzzle freak," told the Hollywood Reporter in 2005. "I mean, they're still right there at the top of the ratings -- they've never slipped. They're timeless and ageless, and in the history of TV there has never been anything like them."
