Jay and I hit it off and we became friends.
The fascinating stories that Jay would tell me about his years as Senior Vice President, Senior Executive Producer Sports and Event Programming at Showtime led me to pen an in-depth article on Jay’s career.
Larkin began his career at Showtime in 1986 after being solicited by a headhunter. Having been an actor in soap operas and commercials, it wasn’t long before Larkin joined the programming side of the network.
How he became the head of Showtime’s boxing program is quite another story.
After Bob Arum convinced Showtime to get into the boxing business as a competitor to HBO, Larkin, his boss, and some other people who had seniority over him were sent to Las Vegas to help prepare for the network’s first fight, “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler vs. John “The Beast” Mugabi.
But Larkin was the only one who knew anything about boxing.
As they were standing in the arena watching the ring being built, a person familiar to Larkin walked by. “Hey look,” Larkin exclaimed, “that’s Billy Conn!”
Larkin’s boss looked at him and asked, “You know who Billy Conn is?”
“Sure!” Larkin said, as he proceeded to tell his boss all about Conn and some of the fights Conn was in.
Larkin’s boss stared at him for a minute and said, “Congratulations, you are the new head of Showtime’s boxing program.”
Shortly thereafter, Larkin was convinced that his career as the head of boxing for Showtime was going to be over before it really got started after Jay signed Donald Curry, said at the time to be the new “Sugar” Ray Leonard, to a long-term multi-fight contract, only to see Lloyd Honeyghan come over from England and starch Curry in the first fight of that deal.
But, fortunately for us, it was not the end of Larkin’s career and over time, his philosophy became “No contracts, just great fights.”
And he brought us plenty of those.
Perhaps the real reason that Larkin was so successful as a boxing programmer was because he was a true boxing fan and, as a fan, he wanted to see the same fights all the other boxing fans wanted to see. To the best of his ability, he put those fights together.
But Jay was also in charge of event programming and some of his funniest stories involved big events that he programmed, featuring the biggest stars of the day.
One such event was called, “Frank, Liza, and Sammy,” starring Frank Sinatra, Liza Minelli, and Sammy Davis Jr.
“Liza and Sammy were a lot of fun,” Larkin explained. “They would join the crew for lunch and breaks had just had a great time with everyone.”
“Now Frank,” Larkin continued. “Well, Frank was Frank and he had his own way about him. For instance, no one could talk directly to Frank. He had a right-hand man named Jilly and if you had something to say to Frank, you had to say it to Jilly and Jilly would say it to Frank.”
On the afternoon of the show, Jay observed Frank and Jilly standing next to each other on the stage and he thought it would be a good time for Frank to do his sound check.
A lot of planning and hard work had gone into the event and now that everything was in place, Larkin was at ease and felt a little mischievous and playful as he approached Frank and Jilly.
“Excuse me Jilly,” Jay asked, “would Frank like to do his sound check now or should I just go f**k myself?”
Without missing a beat, Jilly turned to Frank and said, “Hey Frank, da kid wants to know if you wanna do your sound check now or should he just go f**k himself?”
Sinatra, who had been standing right next to Jilly and who had heard the entire exchange, thought about it for a minute and said, “Nah, tell the kid to go f**k himself!”
Of course, Sinatra did his sound check and the show became one of Larkin’s greatest successes.
Another performer who gave Larkin a run for his money was Jackie Gleason.
After the lost episodes of “The Honeymooners” were found, Larkin wanted to make a big event out of airing them.
Larkin took a shot and reached out to Gleason, who was not always the easiest man to deal with but Gleason bought into the project.
Larkin explained what happened.
“OK,” Gleason says to me, “I’ll give you one day. “I travel first class and I only stay in five-star hotels. During that day, I will do whatever you’d like as far as promotion goes and at the end of that day, you are to lose my number and never contact me again.”
“Deal,” Larkin answered.
“So,” Larkin continued, “we bring in Jackie and his lovely wife and we schedule a very long day of promotion. We had print media, TV crews; you name it; they were there. It was a big deal!”
“So we set Jackie up in front of the media at a very long table and he comes down from his room with a large tumbler that he kept filling with scotch and a little water. As the day went on, it became obvious that Gleason was getting rather tipsy and his wife began making his drinks for him, adding more and more water and less and less scotch.
“But I must say,” Larkin confided, “Gleason was a consummate professional throughout the entire day and if you weren’t aware of how much liquor he consumed, you’d never know how loaded he was.”
At least until the end of the day.
After the promotional event ended, Larkin and a few of his assistants accompanied Gleason and his wife to the elevators.
As Larkin was thanking Gleason for the wonderful job he did with the promotion, Gleason leaned against the elevator doors.
“All of a sudden,” Larkin explained, “the doors opened up and Jackie fell into the elevator and landed flat on his back.”
“And that’s the last time I saw Jackie Gleason,” Larkin continued, "flat on his back on the elevator floor, with his wife standing next to him smiling, as the doors slowly closed.”
Jay Larkin was one of the nicest guys any of us will ever know. He was funny, witty, extremely intelligent, and he gave the boxing community many fights that will live on in the memories of those who saw them.
The last time I spoke to Jay Larkin, he was talking about taking his kids to Disneyworld. It was something he never got to do during his heyday because of his crazy schedule and now it’s too late.
Maybe that’s a lesson we can all learn from.
As did George Horowitz, Jay suffered in silence as he battled a brain tumor but that would be his way. Most of us who knew him didn’t even know he was sick and that makes it hurt all the more.
And as it is with anyone who passes on, time eventually numbs the pain, and life returns to normal.
So, next week, we’ll all get back to whether or not Floyd Mayweather is going to sign with Don King, or whether or not he’ll ever fight Manny Pacquiao but when we lose a man as great as Jay Larkin, that all pales in comparison.
At least for a moment.
We’ll miss you Jay. Godspeed, my friend.
Allan Scotto can be reached at boxingriter@aol.com
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