A King Who Can Listen: LARRY KING

Want to know how ambitious Larry King, the top banana of talk-show hosts, is? When King, born Larry Zeiger, was growing up in Brooklyn, New York, and indifferent about school, his father went to the principal and suggested that Larry's teacher install him as eraser monitor. Most kids would have been horrified. Eraser monitors come in early, stay late, get all dusty with chalk, get razzed by classmates. But little Larry Zeiger thought the job was a promotion. Sitting out there on the playground, pounding erasers together and choking on chalk dust, he thought he was on his way at last.