Dick Cavett Revisited

On the eighth of June 1971, Jerome Rodale, the wellness advocate, organic farmer and founder of Prevention magazine, appeared on The Dick Cavett Show in New York City to discuss health and longevity.

Following an interview in which he made statements such as “I’ve decided to live to be a hundred” and “I never felt better in my life!” – Rodale moved over one seat to make way for the next guest, celebrated journalist Pete Hamill. While Cavett and Hamill were talking, Rodale slumped in his chair and lost consciousness. Suffering a massive heart attack, he was rushed to nearby Roosevelt Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

Cavett has said that for years afterward, not a day would pass without someone telling him how they’d never forget seeing the tragic event unfold on their television. This, despite the fact the episode never aired anywhere. Ever.

The irony of the incident and false memories it inspired notwithstanding; the Rodale episode served proof that just about anything could happen on The Dick Cavett Show.

While flipping through the channel guide earlier this year, I noticed a listing for Cavett’s eponymous talk show with guests that included Muhamad Ali and Norman Mailer. It was on MeTV, a network I knew but never really watched. As a nostalgia channel, they re-run popular programs from the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s. From The A-Team to The Waltons, it’s a treasure trove of 20th Century content – most of which I’m not particularly interested in seeing. But I thought Ali and Mailer were worth the time, so I hit the record button on my DVR. A few days later when I finally watched the episode, I was captivated and immediately set my DVR to record every episode, every week night, at 9pm.

If something like Spotify’s year end recap Wrapped existed to calculate and analyze TV viewing habits, my 2022 personality would be The Time Traveler. That’s because watching Cavett is the next best thing to having your very own flux-capacitor – one that can transport you back to America anytime between 1968 and 1975.

I’m specifically referencing the ABC years in which Cavett’s show went from mornings (68-69), to primetime (69) to late night (70-75). The latter being in direct competition with his fellow Nebraskan, Johnny Carson.

As such, the show was always on the verge of cancellation. The almighty Nielsen Ratings Book hung over Cavett like the Sword of Damocles. The topic was routinely brought up by guests during conversation, especially after a letter writing campaign reinstated the program after ABC decided to give it the ax.

But there were several other stays of execution required during that time. Carson was the undisputed King of Late Night and his audience was triple the size of Cavett’s. In fact, the CBS Late Movie usually relegated Cavett to third place. His talk show was like RC Cola to Coke in a world where Pepsi didn’t exist.

Having now watched so many episodes, the reasons are apparent. Johnny Carson was a charming, funny and relatable guy. He kept the show light and firmly in the entertainment zone and his guests reflected that vibe. Carson was like an old friend. (I’d compare him to Jimmy Fallon, but that would be giving Fallon way too much credit. Carson was a unique talent).

Conversely, Cavett was not your pal. While witty, he was not particularly funny. (It did not take long before I just started fast-forwarding through his monologues). He was erudite, awkward, and often came off as a smug New York elitist that betrayed his heartland origins. Cavett ran in lofty social circles and never quite understood that how relentless name-dropping might sound to the average TV viewer. It’s one thing to have these friends, it’s another to constantly remind viewers that they do not – even if unintentional.

In hindsight, Cavett never really stood a chance going toe-to-toe with Carson. It’s remarkable he lasted as long as he did.

But what Cavett offered to a ferociously loyal fanbase was something entirely different. The Dick Cavett Show was an alternative late night talk show that embraced youth culture and the complicated issues of the day. Sure, they had tons of entertainers, but you were not going to see Danielle Ellsberg on The Tonight Show discussing the Pentagon Papers and the Vietnam War for 90 minutes. Neither would you see Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin perform and then chat about what it was like to be on stage at Woodstock.

But you would on Cavett.

Carson celebrity interviews could be viewed today out of context and be enjoyed by anyone today. The fashions might be different but the show, outside of the monologues, was essentially timeless. His late-night descendants have deviated little from his successful formula.

But Cavett’s show was time-stamped, and that’s why it may be more important.

Watching an episode without being aware of the subtext of a conversation will often render it meaningless. One needs to know what was happening at that moment to fully appreciate what’s being discussed. Cavett likely did not know it at the time, but he was creating virtual time capsules with every broadcast.

It was also pretty raw. The show’s production values were fast and loose. The boom mic was seemingly always in the shot and rarely an episode could finish without sirens blaring so loud through the studio walls it would stop people mid-sentence.

When watching reruns of The Dick Cavett Show, you can literally hear New York City slip further into its decades’ long decline.

Cavett had two primary formats. The less frequent was a one-on-one interview with a guest that warranted such special focus – these were usually entertainment legends like Orson Welles, Bette Davis, Fred Astaire, Marlon Brando or Alfred Hitchcock. Some of these conversations were excellent (Welles), while others not so much (Astaire). But one-on-one was not where the show excelled.

The Dick Cavett Show was at its best with multiple guests freely interacting with one another. The thing I find most interesting about Cavett was that he wasn’t a skilled interviewer. With his papers sprawled out in front him, he wasn’t very efficient nor adept at extracting information from his guests. That’s why the quality of one show versus another is entirely dependent upon the guests. If they were interesting and choose to be so that night, the show was great. Otherwise, everyone would suffer through Robert Mitchum droning on with some boring story because Cavett didn’t have an exit strategy.

But this weakness may also have been the show’s greatest strength. Because of his social status, Cavett had an ability to attract an eclectic mix of individuals and a willingness to allow them to engage in an environment of conversational exploration. The contrasting composition of some of his panels was often wild.

The more random the assortment of guests, the greater the odds of witnessing the surreal. To get a sense of the hodgepodge, here are some of my favorite lineups, in no particular order:

• Sandy Duncan, Ralph Nader & Bobby Fischer
• Salvador Dalí, Lillian Gish and Satchel Paige
• Liza Minnelli, Robert Klein, Pete Seeger & Gale Sayers
• Robert Downey Sr., Gwen Verdon & Jimi Hendrix
• Richard Attenborough, Patty Duke, Redd Foxx & James J. Kilpatrick
• Joe Namath, Joan Rivers & Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
• Paul Simon, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford & Marcel Marceau
• Bill Russell, Michael Caine & Philippe Cousteau
• Ethel Merman, Agnes Moorehead & The Harlem Globetrotters
• Jim Brown, Lester Maddox & Truman Capote

This last lineup resulted in one of the more infamous moments in the show’s history, when the greatest running back of all time-turned movie star, Jim Brown, asserted in a question to then Georgia Governor Lester Maddox, that his supporters were bigots. It touched off a bizarre exchange with Cavett that resulted with the Governor storming off the show.

One of the better episodes I watched this year was originally broadcast on January 22, 1973. After introducing film producer John Foreman, joining a panel consisting of Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward and journalist Oriani Fallaci, Cavett informed the studio audience that former President Lyndon Johnson had just died.  Watching these five people process the news and provide their immediate, conflicted and unfiltered thoughts about the meaning of LBJ’s death in real time is fascinating.

But my all-time favorite show originally aired on June 24, 1970 when actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr. asked recently retired newsman Chet Huntley about objectivity in journalism. The conversation turned to the state of discourse in the country and the polarization of the American public. Raquel Welch and Janis Joplin get into an unexpected and animated exchange on the topic that is much better seen than described.

Beyond the bizarre juxtaposition, many of the exchanges from half a century ago – like Welch vs Joplin – resonate with me because they are often the topics we still wrestle with today. The main difference being you just don’t see such differing viewpoints sharing the same stage anymore.

The free speech of the early 1970s sure seemed a lot freer than the version we have in 2022. As turbulent as that era was, and despite the radical change the country was experiencing, that sort of tolerance level for being challenged is unimaginable today.

And we are worse off because of it.

The last episode of The Dick Cavett Show on ABC aired January 1, 1975. There were six subsequent iterations to follow – most notably PBS (77-82), USA (85-86) and CNBC (89-96).

MeTV does sprinkle in these versions of the show – and they do have value. For one, Cavett is a better interviewer in subsequent years and he still could bring in big names. But while the conversations are often revealing, it’s just not the same.

When you see Cavett on USA Network or CNBC, you feel sort of bad for him. It’s like watching a former all-star suit up for Old Timer’s Day. You might enjoy seeing him, but he is no longer relevant. It breaks your heart a little.

It’s those ABC years that have all the magic and truly capture the zeitgeist of what it was like to be alive in America during the Vietnam War and Watergate.

The show may not have been appropriately appreciated at the time, but Dick Cavett deserves a great deal of credit for this sublime gift to the generations that followed.