Just a few weeks ago I got the chance to meet Dick Cavett on the 2016 TCM Classic Cruise. There were onboard interviews with him, he introduced several movies, and he also told amazing stories of Hollywood that spanned the decades. Recently, the Decades network started replaying his old talk shows from the sixties, seventies, and eighties, so even today’s generation may have heard of this fantastic interviewer, writer, and talk show host. If you’re hip to the man, there are a lot of gifts you might want to give or get this holiday. Meet me after the jump for… Dick Cavett!
Dick Cavett had the dubious pleasure of having a talk show in each decade of the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties (on seven different networks), and being serious competition at times with his old friend and boss Johnny Carson. Cavett’s controversial and conversational interview style made him one of the best in the business. He got political when other contemporaries would not, and he often mixed guests together that would naturally not get along, trying to stir the pot, one might say.
For the readers out there, two recent books, by Cavett, Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets from 2010, and Brief Encounters: Conversations, Magic Moments, and Assorted Hijinks from 2014, tell stories of his adventures in New York and Hollywood, and many of the stars of those days gone by he’s encountered, including Carson, Parr, Stan Laurel, Richard Nixon, Bette Davis, John Lennon, Mel Brooks, and his good friend Groucho Marx, among others.
For those who would rather watch than read, there are a variety of DVD collections available of his shows on different topics.
First up is Rock Icons which features interviews with and performances by Janis Joplin, David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Sly Stone, George Harrison, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, and the Rolling Stones. There are nine uncut commercial free episodes of Cavett’s show as it was presented back in the day, so you also get to see these performers interact with other guests such as Gloria Swanson and Raquel Welch.
Other DVDs available of Dick Cavett’s talk shows include collections with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Comic Legends, Hollywood Greats, and a terrific time capsule where he interviewed those being questioned on national television every day at the time for the Watergate hearings.
Check it out, and Merry Dick Cavett Christmas!