Dick Cavett

and funny. He had a knack for gently driving the conversation to the heart of the matter while keeping his guests comfortable. Again, Oh my goodness, wouldn't it be ridiculous if you didn't. Cabot show could book the brightest and often the most reclusive celebrities of that time, Katherine Hepburn, John and Yoko, Groucho, Marks Orson, Wells, Truman, Capote. Cavitt himself was as admired as his guests. Robert, if one more person at told me how many times you've terrified interviewers,

I wouldn't been able to do this. I don't feel it I terrify interviewers more or less terrifying me. W Renald, you don't mind my asking. It's that rude in Hollywood asks. Really, it's all right now you can ask me, you know, I mean, I mean my hair off, my teeth will come out. I couldn't didn't kiss me then when you came out. If I'm so well, let's see this is the third show. By the fifth show, we'll go to other A hell of a kiss when I come out. I've known Cabot for several years as a neighbor on

Long Island. I visited him at his house. They're a place called tick Hall. You might take in the Cabot's house sits on a beautiful remote cliff overlooking the Atlantics. Riley a little neurotic. He Cabot has lived here for forty three years. For our listeners, that's hound you're hearing is the rattle of the ice tea being delivered into the parlor. Very attractive employee. Yeah, that's actually his wife, Martha. His first wife, Carrie Ny, died in two thousand and six.

With the house Eddie and Puffy, Cabot got his start in show business writing for the Grates of early television. Jack Parr MERV Griffin and Johnny Carson. After a few years of this, he decided to start writing for himself, but first he had to figure out who he was. And there's a breakthrough point I had when I got what you might call a premise, and I've just refound thank god it lost letter from Grautchow saying I saw you on the MERV Griffin Show the other night and

got that old feeling. Seriously, he may have said, I think you've struck a mother load with your idea of being the Nebraska yokol at yea, and that's the card you played. Well, yes, I started thinking, what you know? Always you here writers right, what they know? Well, what's my life? What do I know? I don't have any usual large nose. I don't have fund him that short and fat. I can't play off that attic him. But I did come from the Midwest and go to the

Ivy League, totally contrasting worlds. There was no Ivy League in your family. None. All three of my parents I also had a stepmother were teachers and my dad taught high school. And and as he always reminded me, when I was going to spend some money on something, your mother and I in the depression had to decide whether it has spend a dime on a loaf of bread or if we could go to a movie with it. I can't believe that, But that's a depression there. That

was my dad. Was it a semi rural or rural community? Quite quite? We're all yes, you walk the edge of town was a few feet in every direction. I think every time I go to comstock, I tried to picture where my dad maybe lived and taught, and but he was rewarded with nine hundred dollars a year. Now, what what was your relationship to conversation? Meaning, have you've always

been the conversationalist back home in Nebraska? And then when you went to Yale and a month ago, on this table and I was going through old envelopes of stuff, I found three what do you call report cards from third, fourth and fifth grade Miss Gabus, Ms. Fuchs and Mrs Graham, And all three of them said, one might imagine how far Dick would get if he'd stopped talking. In glass, you've hit it. Dicks learned to control his talking is on two of them, and Dick mis learned to let

others talk occasionally. One of the wittier ones put down. But you were always someone who was a gift you had, apparently. And did you go to Yale undergrad? You do graduate school as well, No, undergrad only. Sometimes I referred to as a drama school graduate. I wasn't. I took three courses in the drama school while I was an undergraduate, directing Miss Welch's speech class, Stage speaking its theory and practice, and a theater history class taught by a humorless German.

If that isn't too reding. You mentioned his name when I saw what was the name? Alois Nuggler it was it was kind of good. He looked like Rex Harrison but spoke like Himmler. Who was my other favorite name? You told me the other day, Oh lah oh Orson Wells. Beautiful, beautiful girlfriend. I met in the right in that part of the plaza lobby that carry Grant pauses at in the beginning of North Benworthwest and Essential, And he said, Dick,

this is my friend Aia Palin Casha Palin Cash. And I thought, I'm gonna remember that name as long as I can. God, I'd love to know the details of his life in all those years when he'd make a film, not quite finish it, move on, live off some countess somewhere, and then his next address would be in Spain, and the next one would be in Dunkirk, and God, what a life. Mad Strange wasted gigantic amount of talent. Obviously not totally wasted, because he did a lot of films.

But in a doctor's office, I picked up a national, a New Republic, and it was an article that began. Someday theater historians will have to deal with the problem of what Marlon Brando and Orrison Wells did to their bodies. Any parallels their two careers, the wastedness, the bad choices, contempt for the business that they loved to express. When I was going to do a television show, I was ten years too old for the part. I was forty, and they want me to do Brick in Cantadahun Tim Roof.

You were ten years too old to forty and bricks should be you know, hovering around thirty late twenties. So they wanted me to do this for CBS and have Brando played Big Daddy. So I contacted him and he says, when would you like to get together? I said, I'd like to get together with you this week, quite frankly, because I'm leaving for Africa, And he said, sure, come

over the house on Thursday at one o'clock. I went to his house and I went to Mulholland Drive and had lunch with him for nearly four hours at his house. Talk about people who talk, and he talked about his weight gain and his physical problems. He talked about it like it was an air bag, like it just like one day, and it wasn't until he was morbidly obese did he say, well, maybe I'm not doing so well.

But when you did the show with him, because I watched so many of your shows, he wasn't very terribly fat there. He had a gut. Yeah, he was a little blocky. But the funny think about him is there's later Brando, you know, the very end, and there's him with Larry King, and he's very playful and he's very childlike. But with you when he was on, he seemed very fueral on the show. Was he that way off camera?

He seemed like he was going to throw a punch any minute now I know, And and the alternating with that million dollar grin that admitted he couldn't cut away from to do a reaction shop. Evenso in typnotized by that fabulous grand is uh, he seemed to other people said the show it seems like pulling teeth, and how do you bring the dreary Indians one forward? And all

the stuff. It was a very difficult evening. And if I had it to do again, I didn't resist him any except at one point, well, I got a laugh that he didn't get until he heard the audience laugh. It looks like when I've seen it back, which was what about the success of the movie Godfather? And and he said, uh, we'll talk about movies, and the audience laughed. That's one thing he would talk to a big movie star.

But he said, and then he grinned. He gave through that anomalous grin, like I know what that's must mean to you. So then I said, how about the book The god Father? And he knew to laugh before. And the other one was his belittling ice tea rattling belittling ever the of the art of acting. And now you know anybody can do it. You know, once he said to me, you know your mom said, who pete on the toilet seat? And you said I didn't do it.

You're acting then. Yeah. I come into his house and he says, he says, and we're sitting there and I'm completely Numbah. He comes in the first you are. He comes in in a mumu and we're in his house. It's a very host senatory moment for me. He looks me and says, uh, you and I are like two

dogs sniffing each other right now. And he says, I'd like to make an arrangement with you, in agreement with you, where you say whatever you want to say and ask me whatever you want to ask me, and I'll say whatever I want to say, and I'll ask you whatever I want to ask. You will just talk about whatever we want to talk about. Little make us feel that that is so him. Did he ever do any of his little upsmanship things like saying, why are you holding

your left hand and your right hand like that? I say, I don't know, well, why did you move your head and to the side of your head like that? But I know what you mean. When you first mate him, if you can stop the voice in your head saying, Jesus Christ, this is Marlon Brando that I'm sitting with and he's so aware that my first talk with him was on the phone where we are now. In fact, he called I've told you what at a certain time, and we talked with the sun about fifteen degrees above

the horizon until well after the moon had risen. With him as an example, who are the ones who you were surprised the way it went? Oh? Good or bad? Yeah? The bad. The good was of course always welcome. And I had no reason to think that James Mason would be the first person I ever had on the show in my daytime show who was so enchantingly charming, talking without any sense of putting on the charm that I

missed all signals to go to commercial. And it was the first time that I broke through reading my notes off to the guest, barely able to hear what they were saying for reasons of nerves and signals that I just missed over their shoulder, And oh my god, someone led her to card and took it back, and oh god, the guests lips have stopped moving. Um, do you have

any hobbies? When it goes badly, it goes. The ones who went badly were invariably not manny, fortunately, and nobody just died on me, except whoever the lout was, who was the male lead in the movies A Brisky Point and his non verbal girlfriend who were inflicted on me once however, many years ago. As a brisky Point came out, he was monosyllabic and maybe thought it was funny. So I don't know if it's a good movie or not.

Probably funny. Getting desperate and I said, I said, wait, I read that you've got in a fight backstage with somebody, first fight in a television studio. Yeah, we do you want to know about? I said, details, forcing him to talk a little later. Now, when this sort of thing happens is one thing he must always do. Be sure you have mel Brooks sitting there. Brooks was here and it was uh. One day we were we found a uh the guy says, we found a a bread box something. No, Melaniell.

The disappointing guests were writers. Now I loved having writers on. I did Boys dream Some boys dreams up taken Chiever on the same show, Chiever separately, Updike separately, saw Bellow. I had them, I started to say, I had them all who didn't cut it as a talk show, but The thing was that, Yeah, you couldn't believe that this semi articulate person having trouble with vocabulary, seemingly and just outlandish, unbelievable thing had written that glorious prize winning prose that

you read. Now. The exceptions were, of course, Manny and Truman, Capodi, questionably accurate but entertaining guests. At all times. You had Olivia on the show. Correct. Yes, it was a ninety minutes show in London. And then I did him again in New York, um in the Windham Hotel with with lady Olivier John playwright, and so I got two with Olivier. Um, I was that well it was it was fine. He what was so interesting about meeting was fine. It was the opposite of bad, I think was what I was drinking.

He can't pick on a guy's choice of words. I swore to God recently that I would never say the word awesome in my life. And if we could only make that true everyone in the world, that would be swell. That can go along with iconic and um closure and like of course and a few others. Amazing. We all are saying amazing all the time. Now I got five amazings and watching morning television for about forty minutes the other day. Amazing guests, amazing guest we have, It's amazing script.

It's just amazing. I was amazed. But but Olivia was terrific, and he was such a clown afterwards, not on the air. He could have done so more on the air and it would have been wonderful. I think I was probably a little too in. I didn't say awesome to get all the fun out of him that I later learned is in there. This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to here's the Thing coming up more from my conversation with Dick Cavitt. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to

Here's the Thing. I'm sipping iced tea and chatting with Dick Kevin. Who were the people today that you sit there and say, God, if I was doing it now, that seemed like it could be fun. I almost wish you hadn't asked me there, because here's how that thought occurred to me. I was on a radio show plugging the Book of It was Mark Simon, and he said this, you must get cabots DVDs. Uh, there's one called Hollywood Grates and and may he may have said, tell us

who's on it? And I thought, put a dirty trick. I won't be able to think of two of them now. But I had it sitting there on my messy table, and here's who's on it. It has all of Katherine Hepburn, Betty Davis, fred As Stair, Kirk Douglas, Lucille Ball, Frank Capra. No coward, coward isn't on that one. Damnit? That needs a zeppelin to Robert mitchum Orson Wells, John Houston and Marlon Brando. And I looked at this that I mentioned

Lucille Ball, and I thought two things. Um ay am I the only one in this cover of this box who's alive? No Kirk Douglas is. But what I really thought was who are their counterparts? Now? What list of today's grades would include that many redwoods? Even in politics, politics writing? Are there anybody authors? And I think we live in an age of increasing mediocrity? So you don't sit there and say, I would love to have Richard Holbrook on. I'd love to have Oh there are some,

There are plenty of people. Yeah, God, yes, Meryl Streep belongs to anybody's list of grades soon and and and, but I don't think quite so many achieve. Maybe you can't be big in the way those people were, these giant people, who are do they grow redwoods anymore? Do they just grow with smaller Sequali is the finest cobas converse. Yeah. Well, the media is like a train, you know. I mean it used to be a train was a glamorous, gleaming

thing that wasn't up. Now a train is a filthy That's when you get in when you can't raise the question completely outside show business. But when I was a kid at marveled that Japan had a two hundred mile an hour the Shinkuns and bullet train, and we still have the Long Island Railroad. And I'm fifty years older. Yeah,

it's a great country though, wasn't it otherwise? America? Yes, you, um, you obviously have had your difficulties and you've talked about I know we're looking over your shows like that's somebody else. And I know for me, when I was getting divorced and I was in the the real native of the whole experience, I feel horrible. Everybody gets down, everybody has the blues. Everybody suffers losses. You can not only have

a bad game, you can have a bad season. But then when do you decide that you need help from someone clinically? Since memory is affected by depression, there are details like that. They're not absolutely sure, but I know. The one time I knew was that when I boarded the concorde and realized I'm not going to be this sick in another country and got off and I called my shrink and he said, well, you can either get

on the next plane or go to Colombia. And my staff was already over there, and I just said, I can't go away feeling this horrible. A stewardess took one look at me and said you want to get off, and I said yeah, I mean she saw whatever it was, it was clear that'll bring it. Me ask you this, Did you work during any of this? Were you able to work? I had to work to work. And I can tell you a quickie that involves two people we've

already named. I was at the Brand Residents you might have just left one day and I told him about taking a show with Olivier in the Window hotel or PBS, and I said, I was so depressed while doing it, and it's being Olivier made me realize how depressed I was, because when I got to the hotel and they took me to a room and we were going to tap in the room up above, I thought, Laurence Olivier is one story above me, and I don't give a damn. I just want to go home and get under the rug.

And there are some cue cards. What do they say, I'll start it over again? How can they be so cruel to get me out of bed and to do this? And sitting there with the Olivier's having read it Pumpter cue card introduction, the chat started and I had some notes off him, but I thought, this is awful. They're going to come over any moment and say, Dick, it's all right. We'll send them home, or we will send you home and their home. You know, we'll get them

back on another day. This is obviously not a good day for you. They thought. Rushing through my head was they can see I am nuts. My brain is cracked. They can see it. I must be taking twenty second pauses and when they speak until I do, and I must be just hanging there my head A better lips raised my head a little and Olivier is quite quite smart enough in the psychology of performing and so on to know that he's kind of ding bad on his hands,

and this is just yeah. I hope Rob and my my producer, will come over and say it's all right. But I realized I had finished it, and I was telling Brando that, and he said, I said, how awful was And he said, to the genter sly that show. I said, oh god, you're kidding. No, dont me a favor, go home and look at it, Saffy year later, well longer. I was well then, So I went home and looked at it, and I was fine. There were no pauses. And I saw him again and reported that to him.

I said, how did you know what is that? I didn't have hesitations. I came right in. I looked interested, which I wasn't. My eyes were sparkling, which I were no reason. And I looked like I was having the best time with the Olivier's anyone could have with anybody. He said, the automatic pilot. I've heard the resort to it A lot takes over. So had I stayed at home that day and not taped the Olivier's, I would have stayed in bed and could not. If I had

been taped there, I have looked good. But some part of us who are in the business something won't let you, some crazy way be a total mess while you're working. Well, there's two of us, Yeah, we have too, so those two sides. I saw it with Judy Garland, who was I think on my show for her last television appearance, the sixty eight daytime show. ABC erased them all used them to tape. Let's make a deal. It might be there's somebody has a bumpy home tape of that. She

was so wonderful. You talk about these tapes, by the way, I want to get back to the you know whatever. You talk about these tapes and you got the rights to the ABC. There's some several versions of what really happened. I just remember being told one day, Dick, they they're going to either reuse the tapes or erase them or dump them. When you see what tapes that once to the the ABC show and you can have them if you want to, for sixty dollars each. And I thought, well,

that's a ludicrous amount of money. And a guy on my staff unfortunately, but he did it quite well. I went through them and eliminated those he thought would never be of any interest again. And it turned out some of them would have been. But I have most all of them. Thank god he didn't rely on you for that choice, because you would have said him, well, you can get rid of the Olivier because I was zunks throughout. Yeah, the throw out that one I was fine for the

first they be able. When you talk about those ABC tapes, I in my mind visualize the guys throwing the sled on the fire, you know, burning. I see these guys with a box attempt. What are we supposed to do with these tapes? Charlie? Yeah, somebody said, I don't know that the Cabin show. I mean, what the hell is that? Ray said, throw it in the fire. You're too realistic? Loss, you know, the Cent of Bitches erased most of Johnny Carson's New York shows years of the number which I

was on. I'd love to see them. What's your relationship to television now we really have it? You watch is real than you like? Yeah, and so I don't associate television with entertainment very much. Um and total three hundred and sixty degrees. When we got television in Nebraska. I watched it every evening. I could tell you now CBS, NBC and ABC schedules for every night of the week. Back then, I watched everything, and a lot of it

was good. I wasn't just watching crap. I watched Studio One, I watched Robert Montgomery, Philco Theater, the Web, of course, Gleason and variety shows that in his orchestru Les Brown and his band of renown, and now here's the star of our show, Bob ho Bad and I got Goose pumples even now. But then, not only did I watch it, I from Nebraska, but I got to a l and I went down to New York and every all the

other man went to Vassar, Smith and Wellesley. On weekends, I went to TV and theaters and studios in New York, and I took a CBS envelope that I pulled off a CBS truck. Some guy left the CBS high on it, and I put something in that. And I walked into the stage door of the Jackie Gleason Show and said, how's it going today? Okay? And got into the theater and hid in there until showtime and watched And when the June Taylor dancers performed a v up to the

upstage and Jackie came down through it. I know my hair stood up. You can read Dick Cavitt's blog A word he admits he had to look up before he started writing one on the New York Times website. How would you rank me so far? How am I doing? If you had to use one word, what would it be? Wow? Thank you you wo w. I thought you were gonna say awesome. No, I would. I would not say awesome for anybody in any prize. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing