Late Boomers

Reba Merrill: 00:01

This is the EWN Podcast Network.

Cathy Intro: 00:15

Welcome to Late Boomers, our podcast guide to creating your 3rd act with style, power, and impact. Hi. I'm Kathy Worthington.

Merry Intro: 00:24

And I'm Mary Elkins. Join us as we bring you conversations with successful entrepreneurs, entertainers, and people with vision who are making a difference in the world.

Cathy Intro: 00:35

Everyone has a story, and we'll take you along for the ride on each interview, recounting the journey our guests have taken to get where they are, inspiring you to create your own path to success. Let's get started.

Cathy: 00:52

Hello. I'm Cathy Worthington. Welcome to late boomers. Today, we have an exciting special guest for you, Emmy award winner and international TV journalist, author, and speaker, Reba Merrell, publicist to the stars.

Merry: 01:07

And I'm Mary Elkins. If the name Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp, and Jennifer Aniston mean anything to you, they mean more to Reba. She's interviewed nearly a 1000 a list celebrities and movie stars, and her interviews have been syndicated in over 60 countries. And she's hosted 4 talk shows in Phoenix and San Diego, and she's written 2 books that tell all about her experiences. One is called nearly famous, tales from the Hollywood trenches, and the other making it, What I Got Away Within Hollywood.

Merry: 01:42

Welcome, Reba.

Reba Merrill: 01:44

Thank you. What a nice introduction. I like that.

Merry: 01:48

It's great to have you.

Cathy: 01:50

Please tell us about your background and what led you to your chosen career path. Was this something you always dreamed of doing even as a child?

Reba Merrill: 02:00

Well, what I dreamed of doing as a child from the time, like, I was 6 or 7, where my grandfather took me to the Hippodrome Theater in Baltimore, and they had a film and a stage show, and all I could think about was how to get on that stage. So all my life, I wanted to be a performer. And then as I got into elementary school in the 6th grade, I did a play. And then it and then I got into middle school, and I did a play. And then I was in high school, and I did a lot of plays.

Reba Merrill: 02:31

And so, therefore, I announced that I wanna be an actress. Mhmm. That didn't sit well with my very, rigid, strict family. My mother and my grandmother ruled my life, and and, actually, I did everything I was told to do. So at a very early age, they arranged a marriage for me, and I never and so I packed I packed it away.

Reba Merrill: 03:01

I I just said, okay. I'm that's it. I had it as a key as a teenager, and and I loved it. But now I'm going to be a wife and then a mother. I didn't have to get married, ladies.

Cathy: 03:23

That's that's an interesting start, though. But what what what was in your background that led to this career path you're you took?

Reba Merrill: 03:33

What I loved the most was English and art, and that's what I took in college. And I had no visions of doing anything when it came to the word career. I actually only worked I only worked when I was divorced from my first marriage and earned a living to take care of my 3 5 year olds, daughters, and never never used the word career, always a job. But this but then I got a sec a second marriage, and I had a a European, well educated husband who went to Dartmouth to Johns Hopkins, and he said, why don't you go back and finish your education and and think about what you wanna do? He was kind of hoping I would be a teacher, and so I did.

Reba Merrill: 04:32

It just so happens that I started at the University of Colorado, and then I switched to Sacramento State because my husband got transferred a lot of places. So I'm going to school at Sacramento State, and one of the women in my class came up to me one day and said, I'm the star of the JCPenney commercials, and I need a next door neighbor to show the specials to. I loved it. And she said, will you do it? And I said, of course.

Reba Merrill: 05:01

And all I had to do was smile, sit in a chair and smile, and guess what? They paid me to do that. And that

Merry: 05:11

Mhmm.

Reba Merrill: 05:12

Was, I like television. I think that's what I'll do. So when she left the the city, JC Penney's who had been watching me sit in a chair and spot, didn't know if I could do anything, but said, would you like to do this? And I said, yes. In fact, that's one of the things that I have to say is that when anybody asks me, would you like to do this?

Reba Merrill: 05:39

I I say yes, and then I figure it out usually on their nickel, how to do it. Wait a minute. There's an underlying theme to that model, Is that this is for my mother, and I said, yes. I can. Because she didn't think I could do anything but be a wife and mother.

Reba Merrill: 05:57

And that, I think, really pushed me as I started to evolve as a woman, as I get into the seventies, and I start reading the literature from news, from the feminine mystique. I start to change. I have a wife and mother. I have 3 children. Mhmm.

Reba Merrill: 06:18

I have a successful husband, and I wanna do something. I didn't do anything because we did travel, except I did do commercials in every city we lived in. I like that because I could buy Christmas presents without holding my hand. I don't know if women are aware that if you're not earning a living, you have to hold out your hand to your husband to get money because we didn't have a joint checking account.

Merry: 06:45

In those days

Reba Merrill: 06:46

Yes. Yeah. Couldn't even get a let me just say this. I couldn't even get a credit card without him cosigning it. That changes.

Reba Merrill: 06:54

Right. It does change.

Cathy: 06:55

People don't people don't even know that.

Reba Merrill: 06:57

No. They have no idea what it was like

Merry: 06:59

unimaginable now.

Reba Merrill: 07:01

To to be a woman and set I can't speak so much for the sixties because all I was trying to do in the late sixties or mid sixties was survive. So I did have jobs Yeah. And I did take care of my kids. And once I got married, we did nothing but move. We lived in London, we lived in Sacramento, we lived in Washington DC, and then we end up in LA, and that didn't last.

Reba Merrill: 07:28

We only lived there 9 months when he got a huge, huge job in Phoenix, Arizona, and my job was to applaud. That's what I did. He didn't mind me doing commercials. That was all. He didn't want me to do anything else.

Cathy: 07:48

Good. Well, going back to the beginning of your career, tell us about how your first TV shows came about.

Reba Merrill: 07:57

Well, it came about in in Phoenix, and it came about for the simple reason is that I did a commercial. And I came home, and I was so disgusted with the words that they had put in my mouth. And so I told my children and husband at dinner that I was gonna get a talk show. And after the laughter subsided Mhmm. I made a plan.

Reba Merrill: 08:26

What I had been doing was reading, I should say this, is that because I was doing commercials, I also was doing a stand up. It was really a comedy at country clubs and I was selling I was selling a pamphlet called here's egg on your face. Because I lived in London and all my neighbors were rich and English, they didn't buy all the skin care stuff that we buy, and they made it in their kitchen, and they gave me their recipes, and I came home. And I used that about putting egg on my face to get the fashion editor of the Arizona Republic, the biggest newspaper in town, to write about beauty expert, I'm sorry it's tough to say, moves to the valley of the sun. But she was fascinated what I was doing.

Reba Merrill: 09:23

And, originally, when I would do a do it, they would ask come out of the audience, wait a minute. How do you how do you mix this and how do you do that? So then I wrote a pamphlet, sold it for a dollar, and I can and I was living in a very upscale neighborhood, and I would come home with all these dollar bills. But that's how it started. So the television stations knew who

Merry: 09:48

You must have been a huge hit with that.

Reba Merrill: 09:51

Not easy to have a fistful of dollars, but the television stations knew who I was. They didn't know much about me, but she was writing about me then the Scottsdale paper wrote about me. And I kept calling them and saying, well, I just spoke to another group and it was huge and it was this and so they would write some more. What I realized is that that publicity, which I didn't know anything about publicity at the time, was building me a reputation, And it wasn't negative. It was nice.

Reba Merrill: 10:28

And so I used the talks to build a name, and then I went to all the television stations and everybody turned me down, but the ABC station and his turn down was not yet. Now I wanna explain a yet a yet. Not yet. If you look at a yet, seriously, drop that t, and what do you have next door? An s.

Reba Merrill: 10:59

And so I held on to that yet. I went to see this

Merry: 11:04

And I bet you you've what? And I bet you went back to him. Was he one of the people who made a difference in your life?

Reba Merrill: 11:12

Tell me the first

Merry: 11:13

one. And

Reba Merrill: 11:13

I'm also talking to him for 10 months, once a week with a straight face. And finally, he says to me, okay. I'll give you a television show for 4 weeks. Once a week, Wednesday afternoons at 2 o'clock. And I will pay you Wow.

Reba Merrill: 11:34

$25 for that show. I said, great. And I did it.

Merry: 11:42

And and from there on, your career took off. Right?

Reba Merrill: 11:47

Well, it was I I wanna say this. What changed is that before the show went up, I had been collecting all the people that came to Phoenix because it was a convention town, and a lot of celebrities came. And I realized that Francois Gillot was going to be in town for an exhibit of her artwork. I had read her book. I knew who she was.

Reba Merrill: 12:12

I went to mister Liddell, the general manager, and I said, I know the set is up. I know we're not going on for 3 weeks, but could I do this interview while she's in town? And he said, yes. And he watched me. He wasn't in my eye line, just understand that, but I knew he was there.

Reba Merrill: 12:30

And, I guess you can you realize she's French. So I said, since I read the book and she put it in the book, so you slept with 2 of the greatest men of the 20th century and you're French. Are you great in the kitchen? And she said, don't be silly. I was better in another room.

Reba Merrill: 12:54

And for the audience, I said she was mistress of Pablo Picasso and had 2 children with them, and now she is married to Jonas Sosa. When it was over, he said, why don't you stay for 8 weeks? And that lasted over 2 years and I did get a 5 day a week show out of that. So that's how it started. The local television industry is everybody knows everybody else.

Reba Merrill: 13:26

I had an agent from LA driving me crazy, but I couldn't move. I'm a wife and mother, and I was gonna stay in Phoenix for the rest of my life. But then they decided to end the show because they said it was too expensive, and I was replaced by black black and white cartoons. But at the same time, I had interviewed somebody from San Diego who was on the San Diego show and said you're looking for a woman co host. So I sent a tape.

Reba Merrill: 13:57

I'm gonna tell you, my comment was the tape came back so fast. The ink wasn't dry. So I figured, okay, they're not interested. But out of the blue, they called me and said, could you send another tape? And this time, I I didn't send a tape of all the different interviews.

Reba Merrill: 14:17

I sent a tape of one interview I did with Art Buckwal, who's a very famous satirist for the Washington Post. And it that didn't come back. I'm gonna say something. It's not easy, but I had breast surgery because I had a lot of cysts in my breast. And after the show was off the air, I couldn't heal.

Reba Merrill: 14:50

I mean, I had the surgery after the show came off the air, and then I just couldn't heal. And I realized that a lot of it had to do with what was going on in my head because I felt like I was an utter failure. I I couldn't get well, I didn't try too hard because I wanted to stay in Phoenix. But I have good friends and one of them said to me, I'm taking you to LA because I have a lover out there and I'm going out anyway. This is how my friends talk to me.

Reba Merrill: 15:22

And I said, oh, I can't do that. I have no place to stay. I can't. And she said, no. Remember that lady who was on your show wants you to come out?

Reba Merrill: 15:30

I called. She said she'd be thrilled. I knew nothing about LA. I must admit that. And so I came out and I called the agent that had been calling me for 2 years, and he said to him, what are you doing?

Reba Merrill: 15:44

And I said, I have a tape out. He said, how many? And he said, one. And he says, where is it? And I said it at CBS in San Diego.

Reba Merrill: 15:53

And he said, what are you doing about it? And I said, nothing. He writes a script, dials the number, and I get to talk to the program director, much bigger station than the ABC station. And I said to him, Jules, I'm going to be in San Diego on Thursday, do you think I could stop by and say hello? And he said yes.

Reba Merrill: 16:21

And I said, maybe we could even have lunch, he said no out of the question. I said, that's okay. Well, I only flew down to see him. And I went in and in the old days, the CVS station was right by the airport. It wasn't a big deal.

Reba Merrill: 16:35

He had no idea that that's the only reason I flew down. And so I met and we talked and we talked and we talked. And then he says to me, let's grab a bite to eat, and we kept talking. And then he came back and he said to me, I want you to interview me, cold, which I did. When it was over, and I was going back to LA, he said, oh, by the way

Merry: 17:00

Did he give you great advice?

Reba Merrill: 17:02

No. He said you're in the finals. The great advice I got came from the first TV show because I told you that Phoenix collects a lot of celebrities and Hugh Downs was still doing 2020 with Barbara Walters, but as soon as the show was over on Friday, he flew to Phoenix and spent 4 days in Phoenix and then went back to do the show in New York. So I had him on the show. And I realized at that time that my questions were better than his answers, that I had researched so much of it that in a way, my gut told me they were flat.

Reba Merrill: 17:46

And so I put my clipboard away.

Merry: 17:48

By the way, I thought the only way to do

Reba Merrill: 17:49

a talk show, you had to have a clipboard, but that's another story. I put my clipboard away and I said, you've been an interviewer your entire life. Teach me. And he did. And he it it's the stuff that they teach in college, but I didn't take that in college.

Reba Merrill: 18:07

I took English lit. Yeah. So but he but one of the things that that he said

Merry: 18:16

ask you. For for some for somebody that, for for somebody that, didn't know what their career was going to be and didn't care about a career, you seem to have a lot of drive. So where did this drive come from that you have?

Reba Merrill: 18:31

From my mother. I'll show you what I can do. I I I'm sorry. I wish it was more profound, but but it isn't.

Cathy: 18:39

Oh, you mean motivated motivated by by her to show her what you could do.

Reba Merrill: 18:46

Exactly. It was always watching

Cathy: 18:48

her do something. My mother did nothing.

Merry: 18:51

You you felt she didn't believe in you?

Reba Merrill: 18:55

But it wasn't Well, tell us

Cathy: 18:57

what was your biggest surprise interview. What was the biggest surprise you had as an interview?

Reba Merrill: 19:04

Well, it takes place in San Diego. Actually, it took place in LA, but for the San Diego show, it was, this young actor that I had no idea who it was, and he was in a movie that I had seen. It this is on a press jocket, and it was a movie I'd seen the night before, and I wasn't a big fan of it. I was in LA to do other actors, not this one. This was an extra that they asked us a favor, and I sat down.

Reba Merrill: 19:34

Had I sat down and couldn't even remember his character's name. That's that's how much I was not not not happy about it wasn't that I wasn't happy about the movie. It just didn't talk to me. And so we do this interview, and I I had researched as much as the, studio had given me. And it turns out to be a young man loaded with marijuana, who was very open and charming.

Reba Merrill: 20:04

And the film was called Star Wars, and the actor was Harrison Ford. Harrison Ford. Wait. Wait. Wait.

Reba Merrill: 20:13

Wait. Wait. It was just

Merry: 20:14

a nobody then.

Reba Merrill: 20:17

That interview has survived. Don't ask me how we don't know. And so it's on my website. And when you get to Hollywood, you realize he's got all that

Cathy: 20:28

Yeah. That's

Reba Merrill: 20:29

He has all that pot and shit. He thought I was his best friend.

Merry: 20:34

Oh. He was he was stoned during the interview. Yeah. And he was I can

Reba Merrill: 20:41

guarantee you, he

Cathy: 20:42

was the part of the show. I saw Star Wars first time I saw Star Wars, I was blown away by the the new tech stuff and all the stuff that we had never seen before. What was your most fun interview then? What was the most fun one?

Reba Merrill: 20:58

Well, it was the probably the first interview I did with Cher. Not the second one, but the first one. Oh. Oh, the second one was brutal. Okay?

Reba Merrill: 21:07

Because she had won an Oscar, and she was different. But on the first one, it was, as far as the world was concerned, her first big movie. She had done Silkwood, but it hadn't been released. So nobody really knew Cher except as a big deal singer. And Sure.

Reba Merrill: 21:26

She, we shot this in a photographer's studio because she was being shot for the cover of Us Magazine. And I had an hour, and she told me everything. She told me how much Sonny controls her. She told me that the biggest thing that scared her was leaving Sonny and that once she left him, she was never afraid to do anything again. And it just blew me away.

Reba Merrill: 21:58

Sad. And she talked about the rejection, and she talked about how much money she made in Vegas, but she couldn't get she couldn't get an agent, a theatrical agent to give her a chance. And all of her life, she wanted to be an actress. It was I'm sitting there and I'm saying, because I just asked all the questions that I wanted to ask. I was waiting for them to say, okay.

Reba Merrill: 22:19

You've had enough. So yes.

Merry: 22:22

Oh, that's interesting. I have to ask you. I know that you interviewed Jack Lemmon, and you had a wonderful story about him. Would you tell us a little bit about that?

Reba Merrill: 22:33

Well, Jack Lemmon was my first interview for Universal. I had been I had worked for somebody, and then I got to do an electronic press kit for somebody else. And then all of a sudden, I meet the a VP at Universal who is a woman, and in those days, it's 1984, they didn't have many women VPs in Hollywood. And she was and I walk in Mhmm. And she says to me, you don't remember me.

Reba Merrill: 23:08

And I didn't. But she had been on my San Diego show. So she gives me the Jack Lemmon interview, and she says the following. I'm sticking my neck out. If you fail, please have the courtesy not to come back.

Reba Merrill: 23:20

The movie was called Mass Appeal. It was all about homosexuality in the Catholic church. Don't talk about the movie. Do a movie star interview, which was exactly what I wanted to do. And this is all I could pay you, which was more money than I had seen in a year working for CBS.

Reba Merrill: 23:37

Okay? And so she gives me a phone number and I call and it's his office, And they said you can come to his office on whatever. And I said, well, no. My viewers wanna see him at home. I didn't have viewers.

Reba Merrill: 23:53

I forgot that I wasn't doing a talk show. But he made it happen, and we had an hour. And he says to me after the interview, he says, see, this is the most fun I've had in 30 years. And I said to him, do you mean that? He says, yes.

Reba Merrill: 24:11

I said, will you send me a note? And he did. Where that question, would you send me a note come from, I cannot tell you. I cannot tell you who that lady was. Okay?

Reba Merrill: 24:26

She was scared still scared even though I had done Robert Redford. I had interviewed Robert Redford. I had interviewed Paul Newman. And then I get to Jack Lemmon. And it it changed everything because then I called his office and I said, can I show the note to the studio?

Reba Merrill: 24:49

And they said, yes. And what happened in true Hollywood fiction, I was the unknown interviewer, and then I got moved to the top.

Cathy: 25:00

Well, out of your interviews, you've done so many interviews, but you did Jimmy Stewart, you did Cher, you did Johnny Depp, you did Merle Streep, Tom Hanks, Robin Williams. Who among those is a good story that you could tell us about?

Reba Merrill: 25:14

Well, I think Robin Williams is really great is that I interviewed him 5 times, and his job Five times. Was to make me laugh. Now you I I I should let you know, Jenny, that no one ever saw me. These are now I'm working in Hollywood. I'm doing electronic publicity even though I must say this.

Reba Merrill: 25:43

You introduced me as a publicist, and I've never been a publicist. I was a producer, but I I had to be in the I had to be in the publicist's guild to get on a film set. So but that's okay. I don't care what you call me. So the thing is that you never saw me and you never heard me because the interview went out to 60 countries.

Reba Merrill: 26:05

And within the 60 countries, any television show that wanted it. So even if you're a a small city and had a television show, you could get it. So I was playing on over 3,000 television shows in the world. And so

Merry: 26:22

Mhmm.

Reba Merrill: 26:23

What was difficult with Robin is that he wanted to make me laugh. And if I laughed, I would room the audio track where those stations would put in their language, and their anchor would follow the script that we sent to say the words. And so we had this game.

Cathy: 26:47

Oh, yeah. They called

Reba Merrill: 26:48

me. Me to laugh. Yeah. And so what I would do is I would walk into the suite, and I'd say, excuse me. I have to go to the bathroom.

Reba Merrill: 26:57

I'll just use your bathroom. And I did that 5 times because what he was doing to me was making me laugh, and I was suppressing it. And so I didn't have any I didn't have any accidents, but he worked me overtime. But in the process, I learned a lot about him, and I liked it. The thing is that Robin used his humor to hide his depression, to hide his sadness.

Cathy: 27:28

Mhmm.

Reba Merrill: 27:29

He started Mhmm. Telling and amusing his mother who was sick, and that's who he was performing for. Oh. And I have to say that I found an interview when I was looking for my 3rd reinvention of what I was doing. I I'm now in my second working in Hollywood.

Reba Merrill: 27:51

And I found this interview which I even forgotten I've done and he said, now that was another good one. And so I realized that we had this relationship and it was also blessed because his publicist and that's the one thing we didn't talk about is the power of the personal publicist. And if I did something wrong or if I said something, I would never work again in Hollywood. And I did work over 23 years. And his publicist laughed right

Cathy: 28:24

with Excellent.

Reba Merrill: 28:27

Well, I'll tell you this.

Cathy: 28:28

It's interesting. You know, people think that once you've people think that once you've landed a great job on TV or in films, your next job will be an important one and an easier one to land. Has that been true for you? And and what about some of the people you've interviewed? What have they said about, about that happening?

Reba Merrill: 28:50

Well, you didn't ask me if I have a regret. And the only regret I've had in this fabulous career Oh, ah. Is that I was fired from the CBS show, the the hour number one show in San Diego in the morning because of my age. I was replaced by somebody 22. Trust you.

Reba Merrill: 29:15

Trust me. I wasn't 22. I was actually

Cathy: 29:20

And what was your can you say what your age was then?

Reba Merrill: 29:24

I wasn't in my

Cathy: 29:26

Can you say what your age was?

Reba Merrill: 29:27

In my forties. I was in my forties.

Cathy: 29:32

And now look today at the anchors the anchors we have now

Reba Merrill: 29:36

Clarissa Theodore got a show at 60. Out there. It was I I was so ecstatic. I would love to get another television show, but nobody's gonna hire anybody like me at this age. I know that.

Merry: 29:49

Well, they might.

Cathy: 29:51

How to not be is

Merry: 29:52

In di diversity. Diversity is age 2. Well, god, how do you you look fabulous.

Reba Merrill: 29:57

Help me

Cathy: 29:58

find it

Reba Merrill: 29:58

because, I I'll tell you the one thing I have going is this is still working even though I might not have known Cher's movie. I could have looked it up for you. I did. You could

Merry: 30:09

look Oh, yeah. Alright.

Reba Merrill: 30:10

But the thing is you asked about Yeah. If you ever think you're gonna work again. My whole idea in the beginning of when I got the show in San Diego is that they let people in local television work for a long time, get older, and it's okay, and that was my dream. That we bought a penthouse, my husband moved from Phoenix to live with me in San Diego, and I was in a state of shock because the big shock came after they fired me. I got 17 rejections, which said, you will never work on camera again.

Reba Merrill: 30:46

So when I decide to come to LA, it's out of desperation, and I'll tell you why. They're just starting, this is 1982, to do behind the scenes of movies and to do not just press junkets, but to go on film sets and interview stars. And I said to my husband, I'm going to LA. He thought it was foolishness. Ah.

Reba Merrill: 31:11

I'm gonna just I'm gonna just spill it. I did I wrote about it so I can say it. The one thing he knew what to do.

Merry: 31:19

So so dealing with rejection, you basically reinvented yourself by moving on.

Reba Merrill: 31:25

Yes. Do you wanna know how I did it? I Yeah. You have to understand that. I didn't have anybody to talk to.

Reba Merrill: 31:33

I had a gorgeous big mirror, a framed mirror in my bedroom, and I went to that mirror and I said, okay. Cut the crap. What can you really do well? And I don't want you to lie to me. And I said, I didn't I'm I know.

Reba Merrill: 31:52

I'm a good interviewer. I had just had Irvin Mansfield cry about his wife who wrote Valley of the Dolls and and and she was the character with cancer and refused to have breast surgery. And he's telling this story, and I thought, that's what I'll do. You don't have to see me anymore. I must defend everybody by the way I look.

Reba Merrill: 32:13

So I tell them my husband, I'm going to LA. He does the only thing he knows how to do in this marriage, he turned off the money. He totally underestimated me. Had all that unemployment money, I saved it, and what he didn't know is I had 2 diamonds from my grandmother from a long long time ago. And and I and the next thing I did was ask for help.

Reba Merrill: 32:35

I didn't know anything about LA. Nothing. But I had met a man from New York who was a consultant to CBS, NBC, to Fox, to Paramount. He was just whatever, and he came to San Diego twice to bring really important people down. By the way, you know what they did in that show in San Diego?

Reba Merrill: 33:03

I should tell you. You have to understand, Simon. This is the late seventies. Is that before they would send the big stars to New York to do the Today Show, The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, whatever. They came to San Diego to do a live show where they're not used to doing because they do somebody's words, and we were the test market for them before they sent them to New York.

Reba Merrill: 33:31

So I got to interview a lot of people in San Diego. And so I met this man and didn't see when I got to LA, he was so I called him up and I said, can you help me? Where did that come from? No different than asking Jack Lemmon. But I was pushed against the wall and I thought to myself, okay, you can't do this.

Reba Merrill: 33:52

What are you gonna lose by asking for help? It was just like you can't you what did I have to lose by asking Jack Lemmon to write it? No. Same thing. And I said to him, I wanna come to LA.

Reba Merrill: 34:04

And he says, okay. I'll get you I'll get you an interview at a studio and a and a place to live. I needed a place to live, and he did that. And I went to the studio and they showed me the beginnings the beginnings of the electronic press kit, which is how they did video publicity, and they wanted that publicity to go to local stations time to the release of the film. I didn't say anything.

Reba Merrill: 34:32

I watched he showed me everything. This was a precedent of a division at a major studio. He said to me, I want to lay out all the films, what's in production, what's in preproduction, and what's going into production later. Could you join me for dinner? And I can give you the all the films and what's happening.

Reba Merrill: 34:52

I said, yes. And I know I have no idea where I went, but I know it was in Beverly Hills, and I know it was expensive. And when we got to dessert after we had talked about the movies and I told him I could do 4 at a at a time, He said to me, well, all you have to do is have sex with me. I didn't think people talk like that, and I wasn't a kid. Okay.

Reba Merrill: 35:19

I wasn't a kid. So I left. I thought it was a joke. He calls me a week later, and he said, like, code, are you coming to work for the studio? And I said no.

Reba Merrill: 35:31

And he had the pleasure of because he was very powerful. He had powerful friends in other studios to keep me from working for 8 years. Oh.

Merry: 35:43

But so 8 years.

Reba Merrill: 35:45

Yes. I called my gosh. But that's okay. There were other people. There were women now hiring me.

Reba Merrill: 35:50

And more interestingly, there were gay men hiring me. He couldn't get to gay men. Okay? He got to old white men like people. So the thing is that I called

Cathy: 36:02

Yeah. Milton Yeah.

Reba Merrill: 36:03

Name was Milton, back, and I tell him what happened. And he said, oh my god. What can I do for you? Now this time, what I asked for, I don't know where this came. I do know where it came from.

Reba Merrill: 36:16

I couldn't get anybody to studio to pay any attention to me, and I realized that Reva Merrill was worth nothing to them. I had no television show. But what would happen if Reva Merrill had 50 television shows or 10? Then she would be worth something. So I said to him, can you get me in another studio?

Reba Merrill: 36:38

He said, yes. I said, this is what I want. I can't believe what I'm doing, but it is I want a room for 5 days. I want a phone, and I want a book of television stations, and I did that. And he ends up getting me in 20th Century Fox.

Reba Merrill: 36:55

Nobody saw that I was there, came in, did my thing, left, and I came out with my own television network of affiliate stations. No channel 97. All 2, 4, 7, 5. Just big ones. 55 committed committed to running my interviews, weight that I didn't have.

Reba Merrill: 37:23

Now what do you wanna know?

Cathy: 37:25

I I just wondered if you had any more exciting Hollywood Hollywood stories. Like, what would your like, who are your favorite people or your least favorite people?

Reba Merrill: 37:34

Well, first of all, on the vein of did I think I'd ever work again, I sit down with Meryl Streep. Now I went to upstate New York for the movie Iron Moonied. She starred opposite Jack Nicholson, and I was shooting behind the scenes, and I was doing an interview. And I had a crew. I traveled with a crew to 6 foot 4 guys, really nice.

Reba Merrill: 37:59

And we were given a time that we were gonna interview Meryl and we're all set up, and I guess her publicist working on the film forgot to tell her it was video. And she comes in with wet hair, no makeup, and glasses. Meryl's not a beauty to start with. This is awful. And I said, do you really wanna do this interview?

Reba Merrill: 38:23

It's gonna last a long time. Shouldn't do it. And we did. And I came and I didn't couldn't interview Jack Nicholson because in his career, in his contract, it said that he does not have to be, you know, that he will not interview. What Jack doesn't know, and I'm waiting till he passes, I have the footage of him working.

Reba Merrill: 38:46

You did not know you were shooting that. Sorry. I'm I told you I'm not such a nice person. I do things like that. So after that

Cathy: 38:56

Oh, but

Merry: 38:56

it's fun.

Reba Merrill: 38:57

They hired a consultant for the movie, and Meryl and they came back to me and said, Meryl will only do 2 things, Look Magazine and Reebok. They sent me back to New York. They hired Roya Collin, who made her missus Thatcher and won the Oscar. He made her beautiful. We sat in a hotel.

Reba Merrill: 39:17

They repaid me and paid for a crew, and I started talking to her. 2 things happened. I'll do the first because I'm gonna save the second because you wanna hear it. But the first was after spending $1500 to get hair and makeup, she goes like this in the interview when she's talking and Rex or look, I keep my mouth shut. In that interview, she said I said to her, my god.

Reba Merrill: 39:45

You've done everything you have to. She said, do you know that sword hung over my head that I never thought I would work again? And when somebody like Meryl Streep says that, it it it took my breath away. She also said something else that I'd like to quote her. She said to me, I am happy, wrapped in a world of words.

Reba Merrill: 40:16

She liked doing it. Interesting. Yes. So that that was amazing because

Merry: 40:22

You know, I I wanted to ask you I wanted to ask you some of the best insights you received from celebrities or advice they gave you that you took to heart, and that kind of is, something that might be one of them.

Reba Merrill: 40:36

Well, there is a theme that was running through the interviews as far as not so much the words, but I got to interview a lot of people just starting out, and they all wanted the fame, And then when they got it, they won't it anymore. They said, oh, I've lost my privacy. Oh. You know, nobody said, listen, once it comes out of the toothpaste tube, you can't put it back in. But that was one thing that I saw in all of them.

Reba Merrill: 41:13

I also saw that the pressure of working for studios, especially if you're creative. And let's face it, actors, directors, writers, they're creative. And in a way, we're fragile. We wanna be loved. We swallow a lot of things because we don't wanna hurt people's feelings, so we suppress them.

Reba Merrill: 41:42

And a lot of the people that I interviewed dabbled in alcohol and drugs. And I know that that's how I got involved with sugar. I I do not drink. I I don't like the taste of alcohol. There was so much pressure put on me.

Reba Merrill: 42:05

I mean, it was different than working on a television show. First of all, I worked for everybody. So each one had their own style, studios, publicist, whatever. And I I have to say this. Oh god.

Reba Merrill: 42:21

First of all, I never admitted that that I was a good interviewer once I got to Hollywood and did it. I kept saying, oh, was I lucky? Look what Jack told me. Look what Meryl told me. And it went on and on and And I never said I was the puppeteer pulling the string.

Reba Merrill: 42:48

I never acknowledged that. And so therefore, once I got a taste of honey, and I'll translate the honey, is that they bathed me quite well. I don't wanna give it up, and I was scared. I walked in to do an interview. I wasn't scared.

Reba Merrill: 43:06

It was dealing with the studio and the ramifications of this, that, whatever, that I turned to the only thing I knew, which was chocolate covered peanuts. You thought you were interviewing a classic

Cathy: 43:21

Oh, I was

Merry: 43:21

I was chocolate covered peanuts.

Cathy: 43:23

I was I was just gonna ask you because we know at the height of your career, you began to have a weight problem. Weight. You found out that you had a sugar addiction.

Reba Merrill: 43:32

Yeah. It's so strange.

Cathy: 43:33

What did this craving do to you and to your business?

Reba Merrill: 43:36

Oh, the the

Cathy: 43:37

craving overcome that? What how'd you Well, I

Reba Merrill: 43:40

went into a 12 step program created by AA, but dealing with sugar, and I'll tell you why. In AA, they dry them out and give them a cake, and then they get heavy. And so then they had to have a program to show how to take it off. And I was in the take off plan, but the thing is it was wonderful. I didn't know what a portion looked like, but I also knew something else.

Reba Merrill: 44:08

The sugar controlled me. When I wrote in my book, I felt that the sugar held me hostage and that it made me want to eat more. There were days because my husband, we had a commuting marriage, he still worked in Phoenix, I lived in Malibu, I spent 4 days alone and I would lay on that couch eating chocolate covered peanuts and pass out, pass out like I was a drunk. I didn't think even though I was fat, and, you know, I I wear makeup. I didn't acknowledge the gyms.

Reba Merrill: 44:45

I didn't acknowledge the belly. I just wore big flowing clothes and pretended nothing was there. And then

Merry: 44:55

Because the sugar was more important for you.

Reba Merrill: 44:58

I I couldn't get out of the sugar. I couldn't stop. It seemed like it owned me, and I didn't realize how much until I got in the program and I got a sponsor. By the way, I just wanna say this, I picked a sponsor who wore false eyelashes so that she would judge wouldn't judge me. I like to wear makeup.

Reba Merrill: 45:20

Okay. But as I go through it, the 1st 30 days you give up alcohol and you give up sugar and you give up white flour. You give up everything that's connected with sugar. I don't know how to say this. This is I'm this is I didn't know the word detox.

Reba Merrill: 45:43

I never thought I was an addict. I I'm a nice lady working in Hollywood and I don't even drink. 21 days after I ate my 3rd weighed and measured meal, which is all I could do, I had to get in bed, pull the covers up, and never get out because I was starving. That's what the sugar was doing to me. Mhmm.

Reba Merrill: 46:09

Wow. And then on the 22nd day, it went away. And I realized that I had been detoxing and getting it out of my system, and it never came back, by the way. I have kept all the

Merry: 46:21

time you look fabulous.

Reba Merrill: 46:23

I well, I I I'm very careful what I eat. I just Do

Merry: 46:28

you eat sugar at all?

Reba Merrill: 46:30

Occasionally, but but I'm smart enough to know that I can have sugar coming out of fruit. That sugar, I I can. It doesn't own me. Do I sit down with bags of candy? No.

Merry: 46:42

Right.

Reba Merrill: 46:43

Do I take a bite? Yes. But intellectually, it doesn't own me anymore.

Merry: 46:52

Oh, that's great. You know, you've said that happiness is an inside job. How and when did you discover that for yourself, and what did you do to create more joy for yourself?

Reba Merrill: 47:06

Well, I guess it goes back that I didn't realize what a career was gonna do for me, and it really made me happy. I didn't need a person to make me happy. It was coming from me to what I was putting out and maybe what I was receiving. It certainly wasn't based on money. It was based on passion, and I realized I was happy.

Reba Merrill: 47:40

I was £209, but I was happy. Mhmm. So it had to come from inside. I can't tell you how. Mhmm.

Reba Merrill: 47:53

I I just realized that that's where it was coming from. It wasn't coming from the outside, but it had a lot to do. And I do envy everybody that started a career in 20 where I was busy raising my children. I had to wait till I was Mhmm. 30s to start.

Cathy: 48:12

Yeah. What would and, Reba, what would you like our audience to have as a takeaway today?

Reba Merrill: 48:18

There isn't anything you can't do if you're willing to accept that you're scared, but work with it, that it's not terrible

Cathy: 48:27

Mhmm.

Reba Merrill: 48:28

To ask for help. And being tenacious and going back even after you've got a no or even a not yet doesn't hurt. They don't see. They the people that you went to don't think less of you because you took the initiative to go after something you want. Mhmm.

Reba Merrill: 48:49

We set up so many walls Excellent. If we just take and look at what's out there, I think my best advice, if there's a passion within you that you wanna do, throw it out there. Try it and see what happens. The worst thing that could happen, it won't. But you'd be surprised.

Reba Merrill: 49:10

Things happen if you make an effort, if you ask for help. The thing that I found interesting about asking for help, I just wanna share this, is if they can't help, which is the first guy in Hollywood couldn't help me, but he gave me somebody else and said I think he could, is that when they can help you, they feel really good about it. And then when you become successful, they can't wait to tell the world that they were the ones that started your career. So the thing is there's a lot going if you accept the fear. Accept it and just run with it.

Merry: 49:49

I love that. Thank you, Reba. Our guest today in late boomers has been Reba Merrill, a woman who has helped to brand many of the most iconic films and celebrities of all time. Capture when she's speaking at an event and read her great books. Nearly Famous takes tales from the Hollywood trenches and making it what I got away with in Hollywood.

Merry: 50:15

And you can contact her at our website, rebamerell.com. Thank you so much, Reba.

Cathy: 50:21

Oh, listen. We wanna thank our listeners for subscribing to our podcast and checking us out on YouTube and recommending us to your friends. We appreciate you. We'd love to have you give us a 5 star review, and we wanna hear about your experiences with late boomers and what gets you inspired. We are on Instagram at I am Cathy Worthington and at I am Mary Elkins and at late boomers.

Cathy: 50:46

Thank you for listening, and thanks again, Reba. I loved

Reba Merrill: 50:55

it.

Cathy Intro: 51:00

Thank you for joining us on Late Boomers, the podcast that is your guide to creating a 3rd act with style, power, and impact. Please visit our website and get in touch with us at lateboomers.biz. If you would like to listen to or download other episodes of Late Boomers, go to ewn podcastnetwork.com.

Merry Intro: 51:22

This podcast is also available on Spotify, Apple Podcast, and most other major podcast sites. We hope you make use of the wisdom you've gained here and that you enjoy a successful third act with your own style, power, and impact.