Cavett’s impeccable sense of humorists
Dick Cavett, the erstwhile talk show host, has been releasing the fruit of his salad years on DVD. The latest edition, the four-disc, 12-episode “The Dick Cavett Show -- Comic Legends” is being released today by Shout Factory, and joins “Rock Icons” and collections dedicated to Ray Charles, Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Drawn from Cavett’s 1969-74 summer replacement and late-night broadcasts for ABC, it’s a remarkable set, a who’s who of mid-20th-century American humor, featuring Groucho Marx, Jack Benny, Bob Hope, George Burns, Jerry Lewis, Lucille Ball, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Bill Cosby and the Smothers Brothers in mostly extended conversation.
For much of its run, Cavett’s was a 90-minute show, and he would sometimes devote a whole episode to a sole guest. Even factoring in the amazingly frequent commercial breaks -- “Already?” gasps Jack Benny as Cavett announces the first cutaway -- these interviews have a luxurious thoughtfulness almost entirely absent from current promotion-mill talk shows. The emphasis here is not on performance but memories and ideas and, indeed, what’s most remarkable about “Comedy Legends” is how little emphasis there is on laugh-getting. (Though there are some extremely funny moments -- Cosby’s story about his teenage debut as a jazz drummer has co-guest Benny literally doubled over, and Allen’s two appearances are almost all comedy, including a clarinet solo through which he mugs brilliantly.)
And unlike other DVDs culled from talk shows, the Cavett collections feature not brief highlights but entire shows, which means that, while they are not without their dull patches and do not always show the host at his quickest, they have a natural flow and at times, when other guests are present, fascinating cultural context. Allen shares the stage with Ruth Gordon; Mel Brooks with Rex Reed and the inarticulate stars of “Zabriskie Point”; Groucho Marx with Truman Capote and an animal handler; Benny and Cosby with Joe Frazier, who had his heavyweight crown taken by George Foreman. Frazier’s relaxed and even self-deprecating appearance here after a defeat seems a sign of how times have changed.
At the same time, the footage, on the transparent medium of videotape, is so vivid and unblemished that these episodes seem more than a window on a past world -- they make the past seem utterly present, notwithstanding the space-age furnishings, shag carpets, archaic turns of speech and odd “women’s lib” joke. Cavett himself, who favors suits of a classic cut, never looks out of time (except for his ties, maybe). And so it’s something of a shock to see his current self -- he’s 69 now -- introducing each episode, and to consider how many of his guests have permanently left the building, so perfectly alive do they seem here.
In the sense of extended conversation, Charlie Rose is, among now-working TV interviewers, probably the closest to Cavett. And like Rose, Cavett can seem distressingly self-involved -- in one episode in the “Comic Legends” box, he screens film footage of himself guesting on the TV western “Alias Smith and Jones.” In another (the Paul Simon episode contained in “Rock Icons”), he gathers Jerzy Kosinski, Anthony Burgess and Barbara Howar to discuss his own recently published memoir. He also insists on singing with Carol Burnett -- not once, but twice -- a thing for which he has no talent at all. (Though, to be fair, he also shows the rehearsal tape in which Burnett’s first reaction to his voice is a burst of helpless laughter.) He also likes the audience to know when his relationship with a guest is more than professional -- he can somehow drop the name of a person sitting right across from him.
But where Rose’s is essentially a news program, Cavett’s was based on the idea that interesting people were interesting anytime. And it was always about entertainment: The host was a comic and a comedy writer who valued a bad pun as much as a penetrating insight. An intellectual with an Ivy League education, he was always at heart a star-struck boy who (like fellow Nebraskan Johnny Carson) had once been a magician and dreamed of a life on the stage.
It’s hard to say whether Cavett’s guests are more themselves here than elsewhere, but they seem so. The segments with Hope and Lewis and Ball especially open new windows on familiar faces. Some are too old to be anything but honest; they are past shtick. (And honesty, too, was a hallmark of the time.) In any case, questions like “Are your feelings easily hurt?” as Cavett asks Ball, or “Which one of you lost your virginity first?” to the Smothers Brothers, are not ones they would have been likely asked on any other talk show.
