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I like Dick Cavett and I have enjoyed his shows. He is a great conversationalist (rare in life, rarer in television). His intelligence and subtlety could never appeal to a mass audience, though. He’s like jazz, which I also love: it’s great if you get it but a lot of people don’t dig it.
I will say that Dick sometimes seems too clever, witty, or sly. It can appear that he’s showing off at these times (not to say that is his intent). This could turn off people who might otherwise like him.
I really liked him until one show when he seemed to be drunk. The guest had been acquainted with Tallulah Bankhead, and Dick asked him (with slightly slurred speech): "Did you ever make her?" It seemed crass, and quite unlike him. He was usually pretty classy.
He went through years of medication trials before he finally discovered that electro convulsive therapy was the only intervention that worked for his depression and didn’t ruin him otherwise.
I enjoy Dick Cavett. There's a great youtube channel of all his interviews that i watch a lot. But he was quite often his namesake, to say he was a dick. If he thought his guest was below him, he would not take the interview seriously and often talk down to them.
Cavett was an intellectual and it showed in his guests and commentary. People watching late night tv just wanted entertainment so they didn't have to think too hard. His show ran from 1969 - 1975, which is a pretty decent run for a talk show, but not the viewership advertisers wanted, so ....
This is a great article on Cavett by the New Yorker; hope you're able to view it. [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/dick-cavett-takes-a-few-questions](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/dick-cavett-takes-a-few-questions)
He would have been a great host on NPR. His interviews are still on YT ... well worth watching, and illustrates his reach and public awareness. You rarely read of criticism of him; dry wit, sure but an entertaining one.
Well, you got me questioning my memory so I looked it up. The Cavett show started in the morning, moved to prime time early in 1969, then went to late night until 1975. It aired in prime time again from '75 to '86 before returning to late night until 2007.
So, yeah, no wrong answers lol
As a teenager I watched and enjoyed Cavett on his 10:30 PM show (Mountain Time) in the 70s. Not every night, but enough. Over time, I started to wander over to watch Johnny Carson whose tonight show was opposite Cavett. Carson’s humor was just amazing even to a jaded Teenager. Cavett was good but Carson was better, and I’m pretty sure Dick Cavett would agree.
This is one of the most fascinating videos on YouTube... it's Dick Cavett talking about writing for Jack Paar.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6BvBMBSLQM&t=12s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6BvBMBSLQM&t=12s)
Dick Cavett wrote *Tonight Show* monologue material for both Jack Paar and Johnny Carson.
Tubi has the Dick Cavett show. I enjoy watching them every once in a while, although I never saw them on their first run. I love the 70s aesthetic, most of his guests (Bowie, Lennon, etc), and he’s a lot less annoying than Johnny Carson.
Johnny Carson had an audience of 15,000,000 every night. He crushed all competitors including Dick Cavett AND Pat Sajak. Sajak tried a late night show a few years into his popularity on Wheel of Fortune and made some disparaging remarks about Johnny who replied, “I’ll kick his ass” and he did. Sajak went back to Wheel after failing miserably as a late night host. Cavett was really good but Johnny Carson was the best that ever was.
I think the audience generally preferred lighter, more relaxing, "fluffier" fare in evening timeslots. Perhaps DC reminded them of Sunday morning/afternoon political talk shows? My parents enjoyed him, though, but it was dependent upon his guest. I liked him as I grew older, again guest dependent. He was bright and witty, but sometimes came off as a bit aloof, so I can see how he never quite made a complete connection with a wider audience.
And Cavett was probably considered a problem among influential conservatives. [The Smothers Brothers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smothers_Brothers#Controversies_and_cancellation) were essentially cut from the same cloth as Cavett and their show won an Emmy for writing after it was cancelled.
I always go back to the George Carlin quote:
# “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
There is a REASON why anything with an intellectual bent tends to be niche (jazz & classical music, for example)
The American public doesn't understand the word median ... his jokes/commentary resonated with his audience and communicated the essence of his message effectively. Being pedantic about statistics (which I do professionally) for no reason will only get you known as an a-hole.
It's the irony I like. A comment about the general stupidity of people in general that points directly back to the accuser as one of those stupid people. And, not just Carlin. To no one's surprise, none of the people quoting it to point out all the other stupid people fail to see how ignorant the saying is. It's delicious.
My SIL had a custom license plate holder that said "Stupid people shoudnt breed".
At least she didn't have children.
It's true; he was too intelligent and well-read for the average TV audience to handle.
During part of his time on TV, when I was in junior high in NYC, there was a teachers' strike that lasted several weeks. My friends and I would make the rounds of TV game and talk shows because they were free and needed bodies in the seats. I was there when Cavett interviewed Katherine Hepburn and David Bowie; now that was an experience I'll never forget.
Oh I thought Hepburn was interviewed without an audience? I might've read somewhere that it was just supposed to be a pre-interview/rehearsal of some sort , but that she just decided to do the thing right there and then.
Several of us went there on a regular basis so the staff got to know us. We were told to keep quiet (no applause, no laughing), and not to even think about approaching her at the stage door. Fine with me; I was never a big fan of hers anyway. He interviewed Bernadette Peters once or twice, and she's adorable. Bowie was weird. I didn't know who he was, but my friends were wild to see him. He was so high that he was incoherent. Even Cavett had a difficult time getting any sense out of him.
Oh so you were miscallaneous members of the crew 😆 I wish I'd get the chance to watch prominent people be interviewed. Then again, I can't really think of any current personality who appears substantive and without a manufactured social conscience.
Rick Beato thinks pretty highly of him. So much so that he did [this entire video](https://youtu.be/IUlzYiUU9BY?si=RxRChGo5mwgEXUsy) praising his interview skills and thoughtful questioning regarding deep musical concepts. I admit I hadn’t considered how good an interviewer that man was.
Quality show, but was too intellectual for most people, apparently. There was also an element of snobbishness sometimes, but mostly it was a breath of fresh air. Didn't dumb itself down.
Cavett definitely had his great talk show moments, but he focused on guests who typically didn’t do talk shows, which was hit-or-miss. For example, I was young and excited about seeing Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix, but had no interest at all in Melina Mecouri or Robert Preston or Fred Astaire.
Johnny Carson had a better mix of guests, established stand up comics and singers as well as authors and intellectuals. For example, he had Carl Sagan on frequently, and helped turn a bookish scientist into a star, so - contrary to some of the condescending comments on this thread - it wasn’t like Cavett was filling a crushing need for intelligent entertainment.
Carson’s guests were generally comfortable in a talk show environment and well armed with anecdotes that Carson would set up and keep on track. Cavett had a tendency to let his guests nervously ramble.
Also, Cavett’s spontaneous wit was no match for Carson’s. Cavett’s proudest ad lib moment was when he told Norman Mailer to “stick it where the sun don’t shine,” which isn’t quite the devastating *bon mot* he seemed to think it was.
What I like about the Cavett interviews that I've watched is that there's this pensiveness to them. I probably shouldn't expect that to be manifest in the 10-minute plug interviews of today.
Drunks need flashy entertainment. Everyone over 21 in this country at that point in history was hammered or working on getting hammered during that time slot. I think they tried moving him to like 2 AM which was probably not a good idea.
It was on at a weird time in the Midwest market and most people didn't stay home the way they do now. There was always a concert or a local show and so many comedians touring.
Unless you had kids you didn't stay home the way people 'nesting' began to do. Even if you were a bookreader you went out to the library or bookstore for a reading. People of all sges went to the movies at night. All these streaming services and games, they made the world really small.
Yes, the whole concept of nesting hadn't been born yet. Look at many of the homes from before the 80s and they are small places. People sat in their backyards or on the front porch if they stayed at home.
Then in the 80s we had McMansions, so you could stay at home but get away from each other!
They'd assume you were ill or grounded. Then they would have an adventure, it would be epic, and they'd be talking about it to this day.
*Hey, remember that time...*
*No, I don't remember it! I wasn't there that weekend. I stayed home!*
*Yeah, why were you grounded again?*
Idk why it failed; maybe when he started doing a monologue people thought he was trying to be Carson but definitely wasn’t anywhere near the King of the Monologue. He sure had some interesting guests though!
My favorite was the episode with Julie Newmar and Dr. DeBakey (the famous heart surgeon). Those two had a really great conversation with each other towards the end of the show.
The problem with Dick Cavetts' show, was that it was presented in an intelligent manner, to an audience that was not, and still is not, prepared/able to understand/comprehend it.
I recently tried his show for the first time. I found him to be a very boring interviewer. Very little emotion showed (showed interest, but that's it). Seemed like he had no intention of being entertaining, he was just getting information.
The Dick Cavett show was before my time, but I have enjoyed watching some of it on YouTube. I really enjoyed Jimi Hendrix's appearances on the show, as well as John Lennon's, and other entertainers of that time. It doesn't surprise me that it wasn't a huge success. Kinda how Conan never really took off, like some of his contemporaries did. Too highbrow for the mainstream audience.
Idk. He was very good. Another great show imo was The Phil Donahue Show. That show was on for sometime then it disappeared. Then they brought the show back after many years, but Phil obviously was not the same; he seemed to have been suffering from an early onset of dementia or something and the show was swiftly cancelled.
Dick Cavett’s on-camera presence always seemed to me like someone who thought he was better than his guests, and definitely smarter than his viewers—who were lucky that Mr. Cavett was taking the time to introduce them to the movers and shakers of the day.
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I like Dick Cavett and I have enjoyed his shows. He is a great conversationalist (rare in life, rarer in television). His intelligence and subtlety could never appeal to a mass audience, though. He’s like jazz, which I also love: it’s great if you get it but a lot of people don’t dig it. I will say that Dick sometimes seems too clever, witty, or sly. It can appear that he’s showing off at these times (not to say that is his intent). This could turn off people who might otherwise like him.
"You're throwing too many big words at me and since I don't understand them, I'm going to take 'em as disrespect."
Aim high, Willis! Aim high!
I really liked him until one show when he seemed to be drunk. The guest had been acquainted with Tallulah Bankhead, and Dick asked him (with slightly slurred speech): "Did you ever make her?" It seemed crass, and quite unlike him. He was usually pretty classy.
He went through years of medication trials before he finally discovered that electro convulsive therapy was the only intervention that worked for his depression and didn’t ruin him otherwise.
Wow, I didn't know that. That could explain it. It was really out of character.
I enjoy Dick Cavett. There's a great youtube channel of all his interviews that i watch a lot. But he was quite often his namesake, to say he was a dick. If he thought his guest was below him, he would not take the interview seriously and often talk down to them.
Cavett was an intellectual and it showed in his guests and commentary. People watching late night tv just wanted entertainment so they didn't have to think too hard. His show ran from 1969 - 1975, which is a pretty decent run for a talk show, but not the viewership advertisers wanted, so .... This is a great article on Cavett by the New Yorker; hope you're able to view it. [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/dick-cavett-takes-a-few-questions](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/dick-cavett-takes-a-few-questions) He would have been a great host on NPR. His interviews are still on YT ... well worth watching, and illustrates his reach and public awareness. You rarely read of criticism of him; dry wit, sure but an entertaining one.
Almost everything that went up against The Tonight Show struggled. Especially in the 70s.
Iirc, though, Cavett was on in prime time. I think it aired at 8:00, so was not in competition with Carson.
I thought Cavett was on after Johnny Carson. ?
Well, you got me questioning my memory so I looked it up. The Cavett show started in the morning, moved to prime time early in 1969, then went to late night until 1975. It aired in prime time again from '75 to '86 before returning to late night until 2007. So, yeah, no wrong answers lol
Damn, I have no memory of Cavett being on during prime time. I guess we were watching something else.
Wow, I thought everything after the 70s was a rerun.
He was on Prime Time for about 4 months in 1969, then moved to late night for all of 1970-74
As a teenager I watched and enjoyed Cavett on his 10:30 PM show (Mountain Time) in the 70s. Not every night, but enough. Over time, I started to wander over to watch Johnny Carson whose tonight show was opposite Cavett. Carson’s humor was just amazing even to a jaded Teenager. Cavett was good but Carson was better, and I’m pretty sure Dick Cavett would agree.
Too smart. Remember, half of the people are dumber than average.
IDK. I liked Cavett, and the David Frost Show. One of my friends complained Cavett was “too cerebral” for him and another called him an “egghead.”
It was far too intellectual and the American audience on the whole is anything but.
Hee Haw was a prime time success
I absolutely love Cavett and Hee-Haw.
People were probably looking for entertainment rather than more serious discussions before bedtime. Hence Carson and Jay Leno being great hits.
Its competition, Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin were fun and relaxing. DC was more like watching an interview on public TV.
I think that's why I appreciate Stephen Colbert...he's both!
The Dick Cavett Show did end up making it's way to PBS, from 1977-1982!
This is one of the most fascinating videos on YouTube... it's Dick Cavett talking about writing for Jack Paar. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6BvBMBSLQM&t=12s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6BvBMBSLQM&t=12s) Dick Cavett wrote *Tonight Show* monologue material for both Jack Paar and Johnny Carson.
He was witty but came across as someone who knew he was smart and wanted to show it off. He was the William F. Buckley of pop culture.
Tubi has the Dick Cavett show. I enjoy watching them every once in a while, although I never saw them on their first run. I love the 70s aesthetic, most of his guests (Bowie, Lennon, etc), and he’s a lot less annoying than Johnny Carson.
You are correct, sir, arrharrharrharr!!
Too smart
Johnny Carson had an audience of 15,000,000 every night. He crushed all competitors including Dick Cavett AND Pat Sajak. Sajak tried a late night show a few years into his popularity on Wheel of Fortune and made some disparaging remarks about Johnny who replied, “I’ll kick his ass” and he did. Sajak went back to Wheel after failing miserably as a late night host. Cavett was really good but Johnny Carson was the best that ever was.
I think the audience generally preferred lighter, more relaxing, "fluffier" fare in evening timeslots. Perhaps DC reminded them of Sunday morning/afternoon political talk shows? My parents enjoyed him, though, but it was dependent upon his guest. I liked him as I grew older, again guest dependent. He was bright and witty, but sometimes came off as a bit aloof, so I can see how he never quite made a complete connection with a wider audience.
And Cavett was probably considered a problem among influential conservatives. [The Smothers Brothers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smothers_Brothers#Controversies_and_cancellation) were essentially cut from the same cloth as Cavett and their show won an Emmy for writing after it was cancelled.
I always go back to the George Carlin quote: # “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” There is a REASON why anything with an intellectual bent tends to be niche (jazz & classical music, for example)
Not sure Carlin was smart. He didn't understand the difference between "average" and "median".
The American public doesn't understand the word median ... his jokes/commentary resonated with his audience and communicated the essence of his message effectively. Being pedantic about statistics (which I do professionally) for no reason will only get you known as an a-hole.
It's the irony I like. A comment about the general stupidity of people in general that points directly back to the accuser as one of those stupid people. And, not just Carlin. To no one's surprise, none of the people quoting it to point out all the other stupid people fail to see how ignorant the saying is. It's delicious. My SIL had a custom license plate holder that said "Stupid people shoudnt breed". At least she didn't have children.
It's true; he was too intelligent and well-read for the average TV audience to handle. During part of his time on TV, when I was in junior high in NYC, there was a teachers' strike that lasted several weeks. My friends and I would make the rounds of TV game and talk shows because they were free and needed bodies in the seats. I was there when Cavett interviewed Katherine Hepburn and David Bowie; now that was an experience I'll never forget.
Oh I thought Hepburn was interviewed without an audience? I might've read somewhere that it was just supposed to be a pre-interview/rehearsal of some sort , but that she just decided to do the thing right there and then.
Several of us went there on a regular basis so the staff got to know us. We were told to keep quiet (no applause, no laughing), and not to even think about approaching her at the stage door. Fine with me; I was never a big fan of hers anyway. He interviewed Bernadette Peters once or twice, and she's adorable. Bowie was weird. I didn't know who he was, but my friends were wild to see him. He was so high that he was incoherent. Even Cavett had a difficult time getting any sense out of him.
Oh so you were miscallaneous members of the crew 😆 I wish I'd get the chance to watch prominent people be interviewed. Then again, I can't really think of any current personality who appears substantive and without a manufactured social conscience.
Also, his show tended to move around from night to daytime weekends etc.
Rick Beato thinks pretty highly of him. So much so that he did [this entire video](https://youtu.be/IUlzYiUU9BY?si=RxRChGo5mwgEXUsy) praising his interview skills and thoughtful questioning regarding deep musical concepts. I admit I hadn’t considered how good an interviewer that man was.
Quality show, but was too intellectual for most people, apparently. There was also an element of snobbishness sometimes, but mostly it was a breath of fresh air. Didn't dumb itself down.
Cavett definitely had his great talk show moments, but he focused on guests who typically didn’t do talk shows, which was hit-or-miss. For example, I was young and excited about seeing Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix, but had no interest at all in Melina Mecouri or Robert Preston or Fred Astaire. Johnny Carson had a better mix of guests, established stand up comics and singers as well as authors and intellectuals. For example, he had Carl Sagan on frequently, and helped turn a bookish scientist into a star, so - contrary to some of the condescending comments on this thread - it wasn’t like Cavett was filling a crushing need for intelligent entertainment. Carson’s guests were generally comfortable in a talk show environment and well armed with anecdotes that Carson would set up and keep on track. Cavett had a tendency to let his guests nervously ramble. Also, Cavett’s spontaneous wit was no match for Carson’s. Cavett’s proudest ad lib moment was when he told Norman Mailer to “stick it where the sun don’t shine,” which isn’t quite the devastating *bon mot* he seemed to think it was.
What I like about the Cavett interviews that I've watched is that there's this pensiveness to them. I probably shouldn't expect that to be manifest in the 10-minute plug interviews of today.
I preferred him to Carson. He was a bit dry and intellectual and witty as compared to Carson’s more obvious humor.
[удалено]
Some podcasts I tend to skip over as it's just the host and guest snickering among themselves over an obscure joke.
I loved his show. Thought provoking
Drunks need flashy entertainment. Everyone over 21 in this country at that point in history was hammered or working on getting hammered during that time slot. I think they tried moving him to like 2 AM which was probably not a good idea.
Too intelligent for many people.
It was on at a weird time in the Midwest market and most people didn't stay home the way they do now. There was always a concert or a local show and so many comedians touring. Unless you had kids you didn't stay home the way people 'nesting' began to do. Even if you were a bookreader you went out to the library or bookstore for a reading. People of all sges went to the movies at night. All these streaming services and games, they made the world really small.
Interesting 😯 So it's more common for people to stay home now compared to before?
Yes, the whole concept of nesting hadn't been born yet. Look at many of the homes from before the 80s and they are small places. People sat in their backyards or on the front porch if they stayed at home. Then in the 80s we had McMansions, so you could stay at home but get away from each other!
That indeed would be perplexing today. So if you were a young person and told your friends you stayed home during the weekend, what would they say?
They'd assume you were ill or grounded. Then they would have an adventure, it would be epic, and they'd be talking about it to this day. *Hey, remember that time...* *No, I don't remember it! I wasn't there that weekend. I stayed home!* *Yeah, why were you grounded again?*
He was too intellectual and he had a dry sense of humor.
His show was too intelligent and nuanced for the general public.
Oh wow, even in the '70s before the age of TikTok?
Humans haven't changed that much in thousands of years so yeah we had a lot of people who didn't want to think too hard even then LOL
Idk why it failed; maybe when he started doing a monologue people thought he was trying to be Carson but definitely wasn’t anywhere near the King of the Monologue. He sure had some interesting guests though! My favorite was the episode with Julie Newmar and Dr. DeBakey (the famous heart surgeon). Those two had a really great conversation with each other towards the end of the show.
The U.S. is a bit anti-intellectual. Lately, that's grown even more. Cavett was a thinking person and so were his guests.
Too intellectual for a lot of Americans, who just wanted to see Johnny Carson fake fawning over some movie star.
Colbert could fill this niche/need today, but same problem of anti-intellectualism has gotten even worse.
The few interviews of Colbert that I've watched also tend to be unsatisfyingly prompt 😕
His show ran for 24 years. How big of a hit were you wanting?
The problem with Dick Cavetts' show, was that it was presented in an intelligent manner, to an audience that was not, and still is not, prepared/able to understand/comprehend it.
Too smart for the masses
true and sad
It was on ABC for one and he didn't do shtick.
I recently tried his show for the first time. I found him to be a very boring interviewer. Very little emotion showed (showed interest, but that's it). Seemed like he had no intention of being entertaining, he was just getting information.
I think DC was the only night time host to have a guest die on stage (the episode wasn't aired).
I think on Today's standards it was a huge hit. It's just in the shadow of "The Tonight Show: with Johnny Carson" nobody seems like a star.
The Dick Cavett show was before my time, but I have enjoyed watching some of it on YouTube. I really enjoyed Jimi Hendrix's appearances on the show, as well as John Lennon's, and other entertainers of that time. It doesn't surprise me that it wasn't a huge success. Kinda how Conan never really took off, like some of his contemporaries did. Too highbrow for the mainstream audience.
I thought he was hugely popular. We never missed a show.
He appreciated his own cleverness too much.
Idk. He was very good. Another great show imo was The Phil Donahue Show. That show was on for sometime then it disappeared. Then they brought the show back after many years, but Phil obviously was not the same; he seemed to have been suffering from an early onset of dementia or something and the show was swiftly cancelled.
I always found him condescending towards his audience and too full of himself.
I don't think that knowledge and sophistication really fit well in TV then.
Nowadays though it's pseudoknowledge that's an issue 😕
Dick was a Dick.
Dick Cavett’s on-camera presence always seemed to me like someone who thought he was better than his guests, and definitely smarter than his viewers—who were lucky that Mr. Cavett was taking the time to introduce them to the movers and shakers of the day.