Dressed in white pants and a navy blue pullover, Mr. Griffin, 79, looked ready to spend an afternoon sailing. Instead, he sat at a table in his sprawling hotel suite overlooking Central Park and dusted off tender memories. There was the 90-minute interview with Charles Schultz, the creator of the "Peanuts" comic strip, and his chat with Salvador Dalí, who brought along paintings to Mr. Griffin's show. "I said, 'Mr. Dalí, I don't understand your work,"' he recalled, "and he said: 'Yes, that is it! Dalí is confusion!"' While interviewing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., he said he thought, "Wow, this is the most peaceful man I've ever spoken to."

Dinner with Marlon Brando at Sardi's: "That's the only time Walter Winchell ever said hello to me." A cheesecake dessert with Elizabeth Taylor at Lindy's: "All the women that walked by on their way to the restroom bumped her so they could say, 'I touched Elizabeth Taylor."' John Wayne, Lana Turner, Sophia Loren, Woody Allen. Controversial characters like Bertrand Russell, Spiro Agnew and Richard Pryor. Mr. Griffin had stories about them all.

Of the estimated 25,000 people he has interviewed, Orson Welles was the most fascinating, he said. "He allowed no pre-interview and no questions about his past at all." In 1985, Welles, once married to Rita Hayworth, approached Mr. Griffin moments before the show: "He said, 'You know all the wonderful gossipy things that you've always wanted to ask about my past?' And I said, 'Yes, but I'm not allowed to ask those.' And he said: 'Well, tonight you are. I'm feeling very expansive.' He said, 'Ask me anything,' and I did, and then he went home and died two hours later."

Imminent death wasn't the only way to make a guest feel "expansive." Apparently cocktails worked, too. "If we knew they were stiffs, we'd get 'em a little stiff," Mr. Griffin said with a wink. "I remember a producer saying, 'Get her a shot,' and it was for Bette Davis, and boy did she go after that."

The bug-eating, wife-swapping, home-improving world of reality television does little for Mr. Griffin. "Bachelors and spinsters and people collecting uninteresting people, I don't know what that stuff is," he said with a dismissive wave. It comes as little surprise that Mr. Griffin, who began playing the piano at 4, is a huge fan of "American Idol." "They have talent and they actually perform," he said. "I love that show."