RIP the Shockingly Young Larry King
When Larry King died recently I was shocked to discover that he was a mere eighty-seven years old at the very end. I cannot remember a time in my life when I did not look at Larry King as a very old man.
Being old was a huge component of Larry King’s persona, of his brand. It was right up there with getting divorced and being on television. That’s how I have historically known King: as a very old man who was constantly getting divorced and being on television.
On that level, the television icon died as he lived: in the midst of a messy divorce with a much younger woman.
I could be wrong but it sure feels like Conan O’Brien has been doing jokes about Larry King being ancient for at least two decades, if not longer.
That means that when Conan started doing jokes about how Larry King is so old that he took his date to the prom on a Brontosaurus two decades ago, King was only in his mid sixties.
It’s not like people made jokes about Larry King being old because he seemed feeble and ancient, a worn-out husk of a man. On the contrary, King was a robust man of a certain age who was seemingly on television all the time right up until the very end, kibitzing with newsmakers of the day and celebrities and popping up in countless movies and TV shows as some version of himself.
Larry King’s Old Jewish Guy energy was so off the charts that they needed to make new charts to account for it. King was always in on the joke, always a good sport willing to do whatever it was he was asked to do.
King was a savvy old pro who understood that if people were making jokes about him being old and getting divorced a million times they were at least talking about him, and keeping his name in the cultural conversation, even if it was as an easy, popular punchline.
King as an anthropomorphic bee.
King wasn’t that old when he died. He was even younger when late night wisenheimers first decided to make his name synonymous with old age. How did King become the butt of so many old jokes despite being, in the grand scheme of things, not that old?
There are some folks who are old professionally, which is to say that being old has always been so central to their essence and how people see them that it can feel like they were never young.
Wilford Brimley epitomizes the concept of the Professional Old Person. Even when he was a young man, Brimley seemed very old. When he exploded onto pop culture in The China Syndrome, Brimley already cut a distinctly grandfatherly figure. He seemingly skipped directly to the “Santa Claus” stage of his development without ever being young first.
Larry King was another Professional Old Person. That’s why it was jarring seeing him pop up for one of his signature cameos in 1997’s Mad City playing a more aggressive, high energy, fictionalized version of himself.
King looked so much younger than I had remembered. That’s because King was much younger when he made a movie released twenty-four years ago but also because King was always younger and more dynamic than his status as a Professional Old Person would suggest.
Mad City was the first film I’d seen since King’s death to feature a brief appearance by a man who rivaled Stan Lee and Jay Leno as the Cameo King in his prime.
Like Lee, I suspect that future generations will know King largely through his cameos in everything from The Exorcist III to Bee Movie to Shrek the Third.
The movies King graced briefly with his presence will endure. King lives again every time we hear his voice in Ghostbusters or Lost in America or see his instantly recognizable visage in Primary Colors or Bulworth orPrimary Colors.
In death it’s entirely possible that a man known during his lifetime for ostensibly being older than God will instead be more accurately known for being way younger than people thought, and, to a much lesser extent, all of the various television and radio shows he hosted over the course of his extraordinary and long, but not that long life and career.
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