cover image Tell It to the King

Tell It to the King

Larry King. Putnam Publishing Group, $16.95 (285pp) ISBN 978-0-399-13244-5

""The King'' was a Dodgers-worshipping kid from Brooklyn who went on to star in his own TV and radio call-in talk show. In this capacity he has had the opportunity to chat with baseball greats Jackie Robinson, Stan Musial and Joe DiMaggio, as well as with notables of stage, screen, politics, finance, law, organized crime, literature, etc.thousands of names spanning the world of celebrity. King attributes his success to the curiosity he expresses in an interview situation: ``What made you decide to . . . ?'' From more than 30 years' accumulation of interviews, the authors here assemble a host of anecdotesilluminating, embarrassing, hilarious, poignantinvolving the likes of Lenny Bruce, Don Rickles, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Jacqueline Susann and Judith Krantz (``a little mouse''). King retains a boyish admiration for an earlier broadcaster, his acknowledged mentor Arthur Godfrey, about whom he says, ``The best thing he did was that he did himself.'' The same can be said for the King. First serial to Playboy and Ladies' Home Journal; BOMC alternate. (May)