Dick Cavett: The Art of Show and Tell

I'm at my worst when I come out of a nap, and I can see with some kind of crystal clarity the existential absurdity of life. You can never do one-millionth of what's available. There's a sense of lassitude and emptiness about it all. And there's a clarity about it, which doesn't last very long, when I think, oh God, it isn't worth it. It's almost like seeing life from a photograph in the planetarium, where the earth is a small thing in all that space.

NO, Jean-Paul Sartre didn't say that, and it certainly wasn't Spiro T. Agnew. It was Dick Cavett. There is something curious about a $15,000-a-week entertainer who is afflicted with Weltschmerz instead of narcissism. Gloomily, he keeps wondering how it has come to pass that he is a big TV star? What's he doing there anyway?

Here he is, a star-struck Nebraska kid who still keeps his nose pressed against the show-biz windowpane, almost innocently eager to talk to all the big celebrities on his very own show. It amazes him that they even remember his name, let alone want to be seen with him; yet he harbors an uncomfortable disdain for the shallowness he finds among so many "stars." He thinks of himself as an actor-writer-comic; yet he works best as a ringmaster of conversation heightened by the prodding of an acute mind--free associating, Perelmanesque, almost surrealistic. He does battle five times a week with Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show, which claims an audience more than twice the size of Cavett's (7.7 million viewers v. 3.4 million).

In a format that has become tiresomely predictable in the hands of others, Dick Cavett at 34 has produced the best mixture of literate repartee, information, entertainment and urbane wit to be found on late-night television. Those who dig good-natured buffoonery and the chitchat of West Coast showfolk go for Competitor Merv Griffin. Viewers who want to see briskly organized quasi-journalistic interviews watch David Frost's excellent syndicated talk show, a two-time Emmy Award winner. Those who tune in Carson do so mainly to watch a consummate comedian scoring off guests who might as well be dummies, and often are. Cavett lacks Frost's effusiveness and Carson's one-man showmanship; his fans turn him on because he and his guests tend to be the most interesting.

The Dick Cavett Show gets its share of dummies too; the entire talk-show circuit on radio and TV is overloaded with people who are plugging their books, plays, movies, recordings and, if nothing else, their egos. But for the most part, Cavett's guests are intelligent, entertaining and at times controversial. Sir Noel Coward and Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne once treated Cavett's audience to an evocative and amusing evening. On a two-week series taped in London, Cavett produced an extraordinary constellation of British humorists, theater people and politicians. Fred Astaire, Jack Benny and Robert Mitchum have each received a full 90 minutes of attention, instead of sharing their appearances with two or three others. Cavett once put Black Footballer Jim Brown on with Georgia's Lester Maddox, occasioning such heat that Maddox got into his huff and walked away.

Too Late to Retreat

Recently, Green Beret Captain Robert Marasco appeared on the show to justify his killing of a Vietnamese double agent. On another program, Fashion-Model Czarina Eileen Ford got into a ranting match with two other women over whether mannequins are sexually promiscuous (some are, some aren't). Author Luigi Barzini told of the time that Mussolini, accompanied by a phalanx of officials and journalists, was motoring through the countryside. Suddenly the caravan halted and Il Duce got out and walked to a wall, apparently to gaze at the scene. Everybody else respectfully went over to share the leader's bucolic vision, only to discover that Mussolini was simply relieving himself. Too late to retreat, the entourage followed protocol to a man.

Whether dealing with Barzini on Mussolini or Orson Welles on films, Cavett lavishes upon his best guests a combination of warmth, informed intelligence and swift wit. His thought process is like a Grimes light on a patrol car, turning incessantly, flashing quips and telling comments on all manner of subject matter. When Joe Namath said that a nude scene in his latest movie had been done in very good taste, Cavett commented, "I'm sorry to hear that," then brightly switched to something more lighthearted: "Have you ever been offered a bribe?" He asked Actress Sally Kellerman, who is 5 ft. 10 1/2 in., how tall her husband is, and she placed her hand on her forehead, saying, "He comes about up to here." Cavett: "How often?" Cavett's summary of the Laotian invasion, during a discussion with TV Newsman Edwin Newman: "We're not widening the war, we're merely narrowing Asia." Then there are times when Cavett is just plain flummoxed. Not long ago, Guest Rock Hudson walked onstage, confessed amiably that he was a boring conversationalist and then proceeded to prove it. At one point, Cavett desperately started a sprightly game of twenty questions, but Rock couldn't get the hang of it.

The Terrible Incongruity

Such moments are infrequent. On a talk show that really lives or dies on the quality of the conversation, Cavett conducts the chatter at a brisk tempo and with a sense of timing and effortless whimsy that can fracture a guest as well as an audience. Once Norman Mailer teased Cavett about Rival David Frost. When Mailer rose a moment later, a book fell from his pocket. Quipped Cavett: "You dropped your copy of Dale Carnegie." Last week, after Cavett Idol Groucho Marx had trespassed repeatedly on Truman Capote's attempts to complete a sentence, Cavett asked Groucho: "Do you have the feeling Truman is dominating this conversation?" The rebuke silenced Groucho for only five seconds. Even when he is off the air, Cavett is on. To a waitress who brings him a well-prepared fish dish, he says: "My compliments to the ocean." Spotting Alec Guinness' name on a marquee, he instantly visualizes an apt anagram: GENUINE CLASS.

Though he now has his doubts about the meaning of it all, Cavett seems to have been destined to become the host with the mots. In Gibbon, Neb., and later in Lincoln, he was reared on words. His father Alva, who was then a high school English-lit teacher, read Shakespeare to his son when he was a toddler. By the time he was four, Dick was reciting A.A. Milne. He was also developing a remarkably resonant and deep voice, and that, coupled with the fact that he was exceedingly short (he is now a touch under 5 ft. 7 in.) made him feel something like a freak.

"I have a feeling," says Cavett, "that about 90% of my life has been shaped by my voice, both as an embarrassment and as an advantage. There was always the terrible incongruity of this deep voice barreling out of this little body. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was aware that it was ludicrous, that it took on an importance that wasn't really there. By the time I was in the fourth grade, I sounded exactly like my father on the phone."

He was an only child and, though popular, was a loner in school as well. His mother died when he was ten (his father remarried a year later), and he recalls the pain he felt at being the only one in his class who had lost a parent. His earliest playmates were girls, and he never learned games boys play. "When we moved to Lincoln," he says, "I remember going out at recess to play baseball. They told me to play shortstop, and I thought they said 'shortstock.' It was awful."

He proved some physical prowess by becoming expert in gymnastics, but his real world was all make-believe. Like Johnny Carson, a transplanted Nebraskan, young Cavett took up magic. He gave shows in his basement, and by the time he was a teenager, he was pulling rubber chickens out of his hat for pleasure and a fee before P.T.A. groups. He had his own weekly radio drama show on the local station while he was still in high school. He was living his show business fantasies in the highest style available to a boy, but that was not enough. He was a movie addict, and he haunted Lincoln's only stage door. He once spoke to Charles Laughton and still remembers that the actor remarked upon his low voice. When Bob Hope played Lincoln, Dick trapped the comedian backstage and said, "Fine show, Bob." Hope replied, "Thanks, son." Hardly a droll exchange, but enough to thrill Cavett. He recalls: "I thought, gee, if I were famous I wouldn't have to worry about being smooth like some of the jocks in my class, or about sweating when I danced with girls. If I were in the movies, they'd all be coming to me and I'd ride in limousines."

Stage Door Dick

He graduated second in his class and won a scholarship to Yale. He majored in English and graduated with a B average. His other major was New Haven, where Broadway shows tried out. Stage Door Dick was soon pestering the stars at the Shubert, telling them jokes, inviting them to see the campus. Meanwhile, he was getting into the Drama School's productions and making Midwest mischief with friends--sneaking into campus buildings after dark to prowl the corridors aimlessly, or climbing onto roofs to sit like gargoyles. When he told his Chaucer professor that he planned to go into television after he graduated in 1958, the disappointed reply was "Yes. I suppose you'll make a lot of money."

It took a while. There was some summer stock, bit parts on TV, and then long months on the Manhattan misery-go-round of casting offices. At times he became so depressed he refused to leave his bed for days at a time. He read Henry James. Then he read William James. He finally decided to take a steady job as a copy boy at TIME--a position that enables many an agile young man to devote most of his working hours to private pursuits. Cavett's was comedy. He had studied the greats and their techniques. One day he wrote a comedy monologue, slipped it into an imposing TIME envelope and took it to NBC's The Tonight Show host, Jack Paar. That night Paar used a couple of the gags. Within two months, Cavett was writing jokes full time for the king. He still retains the uncertain distinction of having dreamed up Paar's boffo introduction of pneumatose Jayne Mansfield: "And here they are! . . . Jayne Mansfield!"

Sour Night at The Bitter End

Once established, jokesmiths become itinerant peddlers. Cavett worked for Merv Griffin's CBS daytime show, then served a profitable ($1,200 a week) but stultifying four-month term as gagwriter for Jerry Lewis' abortive TV show in Hollywood. "In this profession," he says, "it was the equivalent of having been on the Hindenburg." He returned to New York City and went to work as a writer for Johnny Carson, who had taken over the Paar show.

Still, the performer in Cavett was pining for a chance. Comic Woody Allen persuaded him to put together a stand-up comedy act. After some characteristic procrastination, Dick opened at the Bitter End in New York, where he quipped into 20 minutes of dead silence. The disaster served only to propel him; after two and a half years of playing small clubs, he began to build a name. He was the hayseed Nebraskan who had won his S for sophistication at Yale, and some of his jokes were pretty good: "What can you say about a school that has a song with the phrase, 'For God, for country and for Yale' and is worried about the billing?" Or: "I knew it was cheap caviar because it came with photos of baseball players."

That sort of arch humor cast around the country brought Cavett TV offers. He played the game shows and appeared on the Carson and Griffin programs. ABC television tried him in a couple of not-so-special specials. A morning talk show did not sell but won an Emmy Award; then came a thrice-weekly summertime program. In the winter of 1969, ABC dropped Comic Joey Bishop and sent Cavett into the spot opposite Carson. Now he rides in a limousine, and that's show business.

For a while, Cavett played an active role in the selection of guests for his show, but he has now given that responsibility largely to his executive producer, John Gilroy. A staff of 29 people--many of whom seem to be merely decorative, but very decorative, young women--put the show together. Gilroy meets with his staff each morning to discuss the booking of guests. In his office there is a huge display of file cards listing the guests' names; the cards are shuffled constantly to produce the best mix ("A good dinner party," says one staffer). "Talent coordinators" are then assigned to prepare brief dossiers on the guests. At one time, Dick demanded considerable solid research, but he found that it worked against him: he was referring too often to his notes while the conversation got ponderous. He now requires less material and feels that this helps make for spontaneity. It also produces awkward silences when a subject runs dry unexpectedly.

Cavett arrives at his office in the late morning and consults with Gilroy and others. If an author is scheduled to appear, Cavett will have made an attempt to read his latest book. His four writers have been working on Cavett's standard six-minute opening comedy monologue; in midafternoon, Cavett edits their material and types notes for cue cards. These monologues are frequently less than successful, since the best of Cavett's humor is sparked by verbal confrontation with his guests. Taping before an audience begins at 6 o'clock, but the show does not go on the air until 11:30 p.m. Eastern and Pacific time (10:30 Central). By then, Cavett's limousine has long since deposited him at home, where he can relax and watch the show just as his fans do.

Questions, Questions

Cavett and his wife, Actress Carrie Nye, live in a handsome six-room East Side apartment. Carrie Nye, now 33, is a willowy Mississippian who met Cavett when both were at Yale and married him in 1964 after a sporadic court ship. She says: "Dick thought I was Zelda Fitzgerald, and I thought he was the squarest person I ever met. I remember thinking that he was attractive but what a pity he was such a bore." She pauses, then adds in a voice as sultry as a hot night on the old plantation: "In the intervening years he became more interesting and I became a bore. We sort of dwindled together."

Wandering Among the Dunes

Contrasting their personalities, Carrie Nye says: "I honestly don't think Dick has an insecure bone in his body. He's a balanced man. I do things to excess. I am volatile and temperamental, and Dick is not. He's reasonable. It bothers him and me the way people always have to categorize. They see him walking around with long hair and in dungarees and they think he's a hippie. Or they see him on TV in those J. Press suits and think he's Ivy League, they find out he went to Yale and immediately assume he thinks a certain way. But he is a genuinely witty man. He is a questioner, really. You ask him a simple question and he employs the Socratic method for 45 minutes. It drives me absolutely crazy."

In the course of her acting career, Carrie Nye has lodged some fine credits (Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams). While Dick is ambitious but unobsessed with his work, she is not driven at all. She spends most of her time reading, and by choice has not acted in two years. She prefers loafing at the Cavetts' old, ramshackle house at Montauk, on the eastern tip of Long Island. "I like falling-down dilapidated houses, unrestored and unregenerated," she says. "Maybe we're the Snopeses."

The Cavetts' relationship allows for a kind of respectful distance. In town they see only a small number of friends at home and rarely go out together. Dick, who used to enjoy partygoing, now much prefers privacy and books. Carrie Nye will often spend a week alone at Montauk ("It's like taking your brain out of your head and laundering it"). Dick, too, will take a weekend there alone, wandering among the dunes. A friend calls it "tactful withdrawal." At the same time, both see a wry absurdity in the outward aspects of their marriage. Sometimes they play a talk-show game of their own:

Host: Tell me, Miss Nye, what do you think of the failure to communicate in our marriage?

Miss Nye: I think it's terrible.

Host: I see.

Miss Nye: Yes . . .

Cavett sometimes seems to be in the same state of unresolved dialogue with himself. He has been known to let his temper flare over a staff member's goof, despite his own wild disorganization and vagueness about money matters. He says he is apolitical and generally avoids taking firm positions on the air; yet once, faced with a guest who defended U.S. policies in Viet Nam, he ignored the rest of his guests and argued against the war. In his most publicized flap, he succumbed to pressure from ABC and the White House and put an SST proponent on the air unopposed. But with skill, and unconcealed anger, he fenced off his argumentative guest's attempts to turn the program into a full-fledged debate.

Perhaps his greatest conflict is between his intellect and his show-biz passion for a commercially successful program. He says: "I always feel torn between viewers who call or write and say they're so grateful to be able to switch away from yakking actresses and the necessity of having the yakking starlets for the ratings. It would be an awful lot easier to just not give a damn. It's such a drag. I sometimes wish I had made a clear decision that I was going to be strictly commercial or that I was going to provide a radical alternative. But either would have been a false decision. I'm not all that enthralled by show business, and I'm not that much of a highbrow. I hate the idea that acting like a jackass is beneath me, that I'm some kind of cultural uplifter."

Many of his fans clearly do delight in the absence of jackass antics on the show. His nightly 90 minutes of generally intelligent conversation may not really be a cause for soul searching: they assume the shape of an intellectual peak partly because the rest of the TV schedule is so flat. Cavett himself has at times fumbled badly, by letting his guests run away with the show, by standing too much in awe of their prestige, or by being unprepared. He can also be a little less than sophisticated when he feels the spirit. Radical Jerry Rubin moved him to say "Politics bores the ass off me." He once cut off an LSD sales pitch from Timothy Leary with "You're full of crap."

There are times when Cavett envisions taking over The Tonight Show if Johnny Carson should ever retire. Then there are occasions when Dick feels like buying a long-term Eurailpass to oblivion. Running his show, he says, "is really like an actor being in repertory but where in one day--one performance--you do scenes from a drama, a farce, a low comedy and a tragedy. It's a satisfaction in one way in that you get to use all the arrows in your quiver, or strings in your bow, or bats in your belfry. But it's also very wearing. Your transmission begins to wear out from all that shifting."

Is it really that difficult? It doesn't appear to be. In fact, it looks like a snap. But then how does one know until one has tried? One did: see following story.

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