Approaching Guinness Book of Records territory as he files for his eighth divorce, 76-year-old Larry King still has a way to go before dethroning the champion of serial monogamy, Tommy Manville, who married 11 women 13 times in the last century.
Heir to an asbestos fortune, Marrying Manville became a cultural icon, but in those days, money alone was enough to make him appealing to “gold-diggers.” During one divorce, he uttered the only memorable quote of his life, “She cried, and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook.”
King, on the other hand, is one of the 21st century’s most prolific talkers and, more important, listeners–an aphrodisiac quality for women, according to the conventional wisdom about his grandfatherly sex appeal.
Be that as it may, King is going against the trendiness that has made him so successful by pursuing divorce in a time of recession that makes it financially painful to break up, according to a recent Washington Post report about couples “waiting out the downturn” before putting their marriages into the hands of lawyers and courts.