"A. Imagine Trump's library." "B. You'd have to."
August 6, 2018 3:03 PM   Subscribe

Dick Cavett, at 81, is killing it on Twitter but won't speculate on who might be the "next Cavett" on late-night TV. Most likely there never will be another one quite like Cavett, who was advised by Jack Paar not to interview his guests but to have a conversation with them. Cavett's tweet about Trump shows he can still pierce with the old dry wit. Oh, and even though a guest did die on his show, you never actually saw it on TV.
posted by briank (16 comments total) 29 users marked this as a favorite
 
Back then, even Johnny Carson frequently had authors as guests, albeit generally in the 3rd guest slot. Cavett was smart and funny and I loved staying up to see the show. It was really good tv.
posted by theora55 at 3:14 PM on August 6, 2018 [3 favorites]




I was just about to post that Baldwin clip. It's some unvarnished seriously Woke rhetoric and it thrills me to think it was broadcast throughout America in 1968.
posted by Nelson at 3:19 PM on August 6, 2018 [20 favorites]


Yes, I found that video link via Nelson - please give him any favorites instead of me :-)
posted by exogenous at 3:24 PM on August 6, 2018 [2 favorites]


I went down a Dick Cavett youtube wormhole a couple years ago and it was truly a learning experience, plus Dick is so damn sharp and witty.
posted by nikoniko at 4:18 PM on August 6, 2018 [5 favorites]


The article linked from the NYT piece on the rebuilding of their place on the east end of Long Island is pretty interesting too. From one of the captions in the photo slideshow:
"We weren't sure of the height of the upstairs windows," recalls Nye, "but we had a picture of our two little shih tzus on their hind legs looking out the windows, so we measured the dogs."
posted by exogenous at 4:36 PM on August 6, 2018 [6 favorites]


What's a "Goggle server"?
posted by humboldt32 at 4:45 PM on August 6, 2018


When I was a kid, I enjoyed his "Time Was" series.
posted by 4ster at 5:15 PM on August 6, 2018


Years ago someone told me about a moment on the Dick Cavett show when he had Salvador Dali on, and Dali was....well, being Dali. And at one point, after several moments of trying to figure out how else to respond to Dali, Dick Cavett came up with a halfway decent tactic - imitations of Groucho Marx.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:37 PM on August 6, 2018 [5 favorites]


In the first link EmpressCallipygos linked to, you can tell Cavett is at first a little stressed out by Dali’s erratic demeanor. But all I can think of is the woman sitting beside him, and whether she realized how fortunate she was. I could have had free drinks for decades on the line “Once, Salvador Dali threw an anteater in my lap.”
posted by darkstar at 7:14 PM on August 6, 2018 [6 favorites]


In the 70s his show was on at around 7 or 7:30pm I think because I can picture myself drying dishes while I watched it on our little kitchen TV. He had great guests and the conversation was interesting but even at age 15 or 16 I could see that Cavett thought pretty highly of himself. (I still watched though.)
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 9:47 PM on August 6, 2018


Cavett once interviewed Richard. Burton, and the topic turned to his friendship with Humphrey Bogart when Burton first came to Hollywood in the 1950s. The two became quite close friends, Burton said.

Burton mentioned how the two of them were in a nightclub, and someone known for cheating on his wife began dancing with some lovely. Bogart turned to Burton and said, "Richard?"

"Yes, Humphrey?"

...at which point Cavett interrupted Burton, quite surprised, and asked, "You called him 'Humphrey'? Not, 'Bogey'?"

Burton looked at Cavett, did a bit of a slow burn, and said, "I call all my friends by their full first names. Which is why I call you, 'Dick.'"
posted by aurelian at 1:15 AM on August 7, 2018 [6 favorites]


Really great post, briank. I was a little too young for Cavett at the time, and my parents we're hard core Johnny Carson fans, but I certainly appreciate him now and wish he had been on in our house growing up.
posted by Sophie1 at 7:20 AM on August 7, 2018


Craig Ferguson did a very few occasional deeper interviews (I'm thinking of the one with Steven Fry) that really went in depth but were also a bit funny and weird of course as well (and with some personal stuff of his own discussed a little bit), not the same personality but someone like him could possibly fill the role -- amusing, likes to keep things generally light and fun but also warmly interested in people and ideas... maybe not ... but seeing the occasional talk show interview really go in depth and be interesting makes me wish it could happen more often.
posted by thefool at 8:09 AM on August 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


Sheeeeeit, man, I've just never cared for Dick Cavett, and it goes to more than simply the fact that he's never stopped dining out on Groucho stories. There's just something smug, unearned and self-regarding about him, like he's possessed of an overdeveloped sense of his own inevitability.

I probably share upwards of 70% of the guy's politics, but I've always been able to see precisely what Cavett's enemies see in him.
posted by adamgreenfield at 3:05 PM on August 7, 2018 [1 favorite]




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