Here's the AP article on Merv Griffin.

LOS ANGELES - Merv Griffin, the big band-era crooner turned impresario who
parlayed his "Jeopardy" and "Wheel of Fortune" game shows into a
multimillion-dollar empire, died Sunday. He was 82.
Griffin died of prostate cancer, according to a statement from his family
that was released by Marcia Newberger, spokeswoman for The Griffin
Group/Merv Griffin Entertainment.

From his beginning as a $100-a-week San Francisco radio singer, Griffin
moved on as vocalist for Freddy Martin's band, sometime film actor in films
and TV game and talk show host, and made Forbes' list of richest Americans
several times.

His "The Merv Griffin Show" lasted more than 20 years, and Griffin's said
his capacity to listen contributed to his success.

"If the host is sitting there thinking about his next joke, he isn't
listening," Griffin reasoned in a recent interview.

But his biggest break financially came from inventing and producing
"Jeopardy" in the 1960s and "Wheel of Fortune" in the 1970s. After they had
become the hottest game shows on television, Griffin sold the rights to Coca
Cola's Columbia Pictures Television Unit for $250 million in 1986, retaining
a share of the profits.

"My father was a visionary," Griffin's son, Tony Griffin, said in a
statement issued Sunday. "He loved business and continued his many projects
and holdings even while hospitalized."

When Griffin entered a hospital a month ago, he was working on the first
week of production of a new syndicated game show, "Merv Griffin's
Crosswords," his son said.

In recent years, Griffin also rated frequent mentions in the sports pages as
a successful race horse owner. His colt Stevie Wonderboy, named for
entertainer Stevie Wonder, won the $1.5 million Breeders' Cup Juvenile in
2005.

Griffin started putting the proceeds from selling "Jeopardy" and "Wheel" in
treasury bonds, stocks and other investments, but went into real estate and
other ventures because "I was never so bored in my life."

"I said `I'm not going to sit around and clip coupons for the rest of my
life,'" he recalled in 1989. "That's when Barron Hilton said `Merv, do you
want to buy the Beverly Hilton?' I couldn't believe it."

Griffin bought the slightly passe hotel for $100.2 million and completely
refurbished it for $25 million. Then he made a move for control of Resorts
International, which operated hotels and casinos from Atlantic City to the
Caribbean.

That touched off a feud with real estate tycoon Donald Trump. Griffin
eventually acquired Resorts for $240 million, even though Trump had held 80
percent of the voting stock.

"I love the gamesmanship," he told Life magazine in 1988. "This may sound
strange, but it parallels the game shows I've been involved in."

In 1948, Freddy Martin hired Griffin to join his band at Los Angeles'
Coconut Grove at $150 a week. With Griffin doing the singing, the band had a
smash hit with "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Cocoanuts," a 1949 novelty song
sung in a cockney accent.

Doris Day and her producer husband, Marty Melcher, saw the band in Las Vegas
and recommended Griffin to Warner Bros., which offered a contract. After a
bit in "By the Light of the Silvery Moon," starring Day and Gordon MacRae,
he had a bigger role with Kathryn Grayson in "So This Is Love." But after a
few more trivial roles, he asked out of his contract.

In 1954, Griffin went to New York where he appeared in a summer replacement
musical show on CBS-TV, a revival of "Finian's Rainbow," and a music show on
CBS radio. He followed with a few TV game show hosting jobs, notably "Play
Your Hunch," which premiered in 1958 and ran through the early 1960s. His
glibness led to stints as substitute for Jack Paar on "Tonight."

When Paar retired in 1962, Griffin was considered a prime candidate to
replace him. Johnny Carson was chosen instead. NBC gave Griffin a daytime
version of "Tonight," but he was canceled for being "too sophisticated" for
the housewife audience.

Westinghouse Broadcasting introduced "The Merv Griffin Show" in 1965 on
syndicated TV. Griffin never underestimated the intelligence of his
audience, offering such figures as philosopher Bertrand Russell, cellist
Pablo Casals and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer-philosopher-historians Will
and Ariel Durant as well as movie stars and entertainers.

He was also a longtime friend of former President Reagan and his wife,
Nancy. When the Reagans returned to California in 1988 after eight years in
the White House, Griffin and Hilton threw a $25,000-a-table homecoming gala
for the couple.

With Carson ruling the late-night roost on NBC in the late 1960s, the two
other networks challenged him with competing shows, Griffin on CBS and Joey
Bishop (later Dick Cavett) on ABC. Nothing stopped Carson, and Griffin
returned to Westinghouse.

A lifelong crossword puzzle fan, Griffin devised a game show, "Word for
Word," in 1963. It faded after one season, then his wife, Julann, suggested
another show.

"Julann's idea was a twist on the usual question-answer format of the quiz
shows of the Fifties," he wrote in his autobiography "Merv." "Her idea was
to give the contestants the answer, and they had to come up with the
appropriate question."

"Jeopardy" started in 1964 and the more conventional game show "Wheel of
Fortune" was begun in 1975.

Mervyn Edward Griffin Jr. was born in San Mateo, south of San Francisco on
July 6, 1925, the son of a stockbroker. An aunt, Claudia Robinson, taught
him to play piano at age 4, and he soon was staging shows on the back porch.

"Every Saturday I had a show, recruiting all the kids in the block as either
stagehands, actors and audience, or sometimes all three," he wrote in his
1980 autobiography. "I was the producer, always the producer."

After studying at San Mateo Junior College and the University of San
Francisco, Griffin quit school to apply for a job as pianist at KFRC radio
in San Francisco. The station needed a vocalist instead. He auditioned and
was hired.

Griffin attracted the interest of RKO studio boss William Dozier, who was
visiting San Francisco with his wife, Joan Fontaine.

"As soon as I walked in their hotel room, I could see their faces fall," the
singer recalled. He weighed 235 pounds. Shortly afterward, singer Joan
Edwards told him: "Your voice is terrific, but the blubber has got to go."
Griffin slimmed down, and he spent the rest of his life adding and taking
off weight.

Griffin and Julann Elizabeth Wright were married in 1958, and their son,
Anthony, was born the following year. They divorced in 1973 because of
"irreconcilable differences."

"It was a pivotal time in my career, one of uncertainty and constant doubt,"
he wrote in the autobiography. "So much attention was being focused on me
that my marriage felt the strain." He never remarried.

Besides his son, Griffin is survived by his daughter-in-law, Tricia, and two
grandchildren.

The family said an invitation-only funeral Mass will be held at a later date
at The Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills.

___

Associated Press writers Beth Harris and Jeff Wilson contributed to this
story.