101. The Dick Cavett Show (1968-1975)

By Robert Hornak

There’s a simple comfort in watching someone you like talking to anyone, even in the distancing, quasi-glib tones of the professional raconteur. This is the reliable through-line of Dick Cavett’s entire run on television. But there’s also the reliable surprise factor, like the joy of hearing an aging Elsa Lanchester call Isadora Duncan an “untalented bag of beans.” And then there’s the tightrope feeling you get when you see Cavett-turned-fanboy, welcoming guest John Huston onto the stage with the awe-struck anticipation of a high school reporter, only to watch the host’s flop-sweat drop when the great film director only wants to dole out single-syllabic blurps through his broad, cigar-puffing grin. But whether you’re watching for the love of Cavett or his guests, what you typically get is a healthy serving of smart, refined conversation, usually in doses much deeper than the pre-packaged, eight-to-ten-minute dollops served by your Carsons, Lenos, and Colberts. Especially today, in the era of YouTube clips in steady drip on a Facebook feed, all tantamount to unsatisfying sound bites, kicking your feet up for a Cavett interview is like washing your brain with a college blue book.

There were several iterations of the title “The Dick Cavett Show” over a number of networks and decades, but the flagship in his canon is the ABC show, itself broken into a short-lived morning show in 1968, another short-lived prime time version, then the late-night show that lasted from the last week of ’69 to the first week of ’75. None of it ever racked up the Nielsens like its major late-night competitor The Tonight Show, but even with the low numbers, Cavett’s ranging sensibilities acted as a zip-tie cinching together the gamut of what was already nostalgia in the early ’70s and the fleeting here-and-now of that decade. His literate energies brought together under one roof the likes of Groucho Marx from the old world of vaudeville/early Hollywood and Woody Allen from the modern, open Hollywood, and always with the same measure of respect and grace.

Through it all, Cavett’s small-town mid-America comes right on through the screen, so unencumbered by Hollywood looks or even usual talk-show-host height – at five-seven (my own height) he’s hardly formidable, save for the huge, tight skull that sits atop his slight frame like a ready T-ball. His strength is in his intellect, and he wields it with that sonorous and slow Nebraska flatness, wrapping it around a string of questions, running the gamut from precise emotion to easy chatter to cutting rejoinder, always adding a fillip of wit – a reflexive knee-jerk for the former late-night joke writer. Many times you might get the feeling Cavett’s arcane turns of phrase are for himself only, but where’s the sin? Many times you get the feeling Cary Grant’s winking charm is motivated by self-love but you love him for it just the same. For the fan of smart talk, the show offers the perfect click of watching someone working in their natural habitat.

I never watched the show in real time – I was too young, and my parents left the dial on NBC for Carson – so I’m as guilty of compartmentalizing Cavett as anyone. We don’t have the likes of Carson and Letterman clip shows drilling Ed Ames/tomahawk-like or Drew Barrymore/boob-flash-like moments into the long-term cultural memory. All we have are a handful of the better episodes on DVD, and stuffed into a thin quiver on Hulu for as long as that outfit remains, and as a not-so-bottomless trove gathered up by scattered YouTube fans. For good or bad, Cavett’s show – he himself is still going strong – will probably mostly be remembered, cause it likely already is, for a combo of the sensational moments and the long, single guest interviews. Emblematic of the sensational are the clutch of on-air walk-outs: Georgia governor Lester Maddox, who didn’t take it well when Cavett asserted he was elected by bigots; transgender pioneer Christine Jorgensen, after Cavett’s question about how she’s getting along with her “wife”; and Lily Tomlin’s early departure when fellow guest Chad Everett called his wife his property. Meanwhile, standing like totems amongst even the most egregious guest’s behavior are the long interviews, the variety of which speak to Cavett’s deep love for the artistic side of entertainment. Rock heroes like Lennon and Hendrix, film idols like Katharine Hepburn and Robert Mitchum, great directors like Huston, Welles, and Hitchcock, and literary titans like Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut, and Truman Capote colored the legacy of the show with a swath of culture where most other talk shows, their own merits notwithstanding, trucked in gaudy commerce.