Larry King is bracing himself for a bad trip down memory lane with the upcoming publication of “Junkman Genius,” a book about his old friend, Louis E. Wolfson.
Written by Louis’ daughter Marcia and Harry Hurt III — the biographer of Donald Trump and the Hunt brothers — the book will detail how Wolfson tried to destroy King over a bad debt.
Marcia told me Wednesday she hopes King will grant an interview for the book, which is now being pitched to publishers. “We get along,” she said. “We’re not on bad terms at all.”
Wolfson was a boxer and a college football player, a millionaire by the age of 28 and America’s first corporate raider.
After financing “The Babe Ruth Story” in 1949, he began hobnobbing with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe, and romancing Hollywood actresses like Hedy Lamarr, Deborah Kerr and Debbie Reynolds.
In 1971, he filed a complaint against King, then a Miami radio host, for pocketing $5,000 — part of a $25,000 payment destined for New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who was investigating the JFK assassination.
“King was the bag man who kept the contents of the bag,” Hurt said.
King was arrested for grand larceny, but got off because the statute of limitations had run out. His mug shots pop up when you Google Wolfson’s name.
Wolfson got King fired after urging his bosses at WTVJ (a Miami TV station) and WIOD-AM to pay for King’s “treatment in a mental institution for six months so he can do no further harm in this community or any other.”
It took many years for King to revive his career and finally become a star on CNN.
Meanwhile, in 1968, Wolfson co-financed “The Producers” by Mel Brooks and bred a long string of four-legged athletes, most prominently Affirmed, the last horse to win the Triple Crown.
He died in 2007 at age 95. So Larry can have the last word.