to come and i hadnt seen you in a long time to begin with i thought we ought to get together and chat just talk about a lot of thingsking had never met marlon brando who was even tougher to get and tougher to interview when the acting giant asked to appear on kings show in 1994 the two hit it off so famously they ended their 90minute talk with a song and an onthemouth kiss an image that was all over media in subsequent weeksafter a gala week marking his 25th anniversary in june 2010 king abruptly announced he was retiring from his show telling viewers its time to hang up my nightly suspenders named as his successor in the time slot british journalist and tv personality piers morganby kings departure that december suspicion had grown that he had waited a little too long to hang up those suspenders once the leader in cable tv news he ranked third in his time slot with less than half the nightly audience his peak year 1998 when larry king live drew 164 million viewershis wideeyed regularguy approach to interviewing by then felt dated in an era of edgy pushy or loaded questioning by other hostsmeanwhile occasional flubs had made him seem out of touch or worse a prime example from 2007 found king asking jerry seinfeld if he had voluntarily left his sitcom or been canceled by his network nbci was the no 1 show in television larry replied seinfeld with a flabbergasted look do you know who i amalways a workaholic king would be back doing specials for cnn within a few months of performing his nightly dutieshe found a new sort of celebrity as a plainspoken natural on twitter when the platform emerged winning over more than 2 million followers who simultaneously mocked and loved him for his esoteric styleive never been in a canoe hashitsmy2cents he said in a typical tweet in 2015his twitter account was essentially a revival of a usa today column he wrote for two decades full of oneoff disjointed thoughts norm macdonald delivered a parody version of the column when he played king on saturday night live with deadpan lines like the more i think about it the more i appreciate the equatorking was constantly parodied often through oldage jokes on latenight talk shows from hosts including david letterman and conan obrien often appearing with the latter to get in on the roasting himselfking came by his voracious but nofrills manner honestlyhe was born lawrence harvey zeiger in 1933 a son of jewish immigrants from eastern europe who ran a bar and grill in brooklyn but after his fathers death when larry was a boy he faced a troubled sometimes destitute youtha fan of such radio stars as arthur godfrey and comedians bob ray king on reaching adulthood set his sights on a broadcasting career with word that miami was a good place to break in he headed south in 1957 and landed