Word: cavett
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Manufacturers of personal computers have been using readily recognizable people for some time to make the slightly intimidating machines seem warmer and more empathetic. Apple has Dick Cavett for its commercials, Texas Instruments recruited Bill Cosby, Commodore has William Shatner, and Atari just hired Alan Alda. None of these living celebrities, however, has had the impact of the Tramp. The character has starred in three widely seen television commercials, plus more than 20 print ads. He has won numerous advertising-industry awards...
Cottle, who spent four years in analysis, usually begins each interview with an exploration of his guest's childhood. He inquires of an aloof Dick Cavett what it was like to lose his mother at an early age. His eyes dew up as Jerry Lewis describes the ache he feels for a departed grandmother. From the past, Cottle shifts (after the obligatory commercial) to the present. He wants Elizabeth Ashley to recount the horror of a back-alley abortion. He leans forward and demands of Daniel Travanti whether he has "the courage to fall in love" with his sultry...
...Carson will smile and bob his head and smooth his tie while the audience laughs. If the joke flies wide or falls flat, the audience will groan and Carson will look wounded, then drop some self-deprecating aside that, like a slow fuse, will finally ignite the gag. Dick Cavett, who worked for Carson as a writer, recalls that Carson "made a point of bombing and making it funny. Sometimes you'd write strictly for that. You'd set up one baddie, just for the saver." A lot of comedians have done this, but none has raised...
This image, which has received wide circulation, seems always to have rankled Carson and somewhat baffled his associates, past and present. Such diverse hands as Cavett, professional Wild Man Pat McCormick and Writer-Director Marshall Brickman, who all put in typewriter-time at the Carson Stables, speak not only of his considerable editorial skills but of his ease as an employer. If Carson, on camera, suggests simultaneously a verbal glibness and an emotional reserve, that is usually considered Midwestern; it is the same reserve that is the core of his charm and longevity. His audiences derive from Carson not only...
Carson's precision-tooled comedic skills owe much, as Cavett points out, to certain illustrious forebears: Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Bob Hope-"and Oliver Hardy-that burn, that long look into the lens." Surely Jonathan Winters was the inspiration for such Carson characters as the garrulous Aunt Blabby, the right-wing dimwit Floyd R. Turbo, even the huckstering greaseball Art Fern. Carnac the Magnificent is Steve Allen's Answer Man in swami's drag, and the Mighty Carson Art Players are Fred Allen's Mighty Allen Art Players with unreliable props. Carson's borrowings...