Word: cavett
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...fans clearly do delight in the absence of jackass antics on the show. His nightly 90 minutes of generally intelligent conversation may not really be a cause for soul searching: they assume the shape of an intellectual peak partly because the rest of the TV schedule is so flat. Cavett himself has at times fumbled badly, by letting his guests run away with the show, by standing too much in awe of their prestige, or by being unprepared. He can also be a little less than sophisticated when he feels the spirit. Radical Jerry Rubin moved him to say "Politics...
...Cavett sometimes seems to be in the same state of unresolved dialogue with himself. He has been known to let his temper flare over a staff member's goof, despite his own wild disorganization and vagueness about money matters. He says he is apolitical and generally avoids taking firm positions on the air; yet once, faced with a guest who defended U.S. policies in Viet Nam, he ignored the rest of his guests and argued against the war. In his most publicized flap, he succumbed to pressure from ABC and the White House and put an SST proponent...
...Cavett arrives at his office in the late morning and consults with Gilroy and others. If an author is scheduled to appear, Cavett will have made an attempt to read his latest book. His four writers have been working on Cavett's standard six-minute opening comedy monologue; in midafternoon, Cavett edits their material and types notes for cue cards. These monologues are frequently less than successful, since the best of Cavett's humor is sparked by verbal confrontation with his guests. Taping before an audience begins at 6 o'clock, but the show does...
...Cavett and his wife, Actress Carrie Nye, live in a handsome six-room East Side apartment. Carrie Nye, now 33, is a willowy Mississippian who met Cavett when both were at Yale and married him in 1964 after a sporadic court ship. She says: "Dick thought I was Zelda Fitzgerald, and I thought he was the squarest person I ever met. I remember thinking that he was attractive but what a pity he was such a bore." She pauses, then adds in a voice as sultry as a hot night on the old plantation: "In the intervening years he became...
There are times when Cavett envisions taking over The Tonight Show if Johnny Carson should ever retire. Then there are occasions when Dick feels like buying a long-term Eurailpass to oblivion. Running his show, he says, "is really like an actor being in repertory but where in one day?one performance?you do scenes from a drama, a farce, a low comedy and a tragedy. It's a satisfaction in one way in that you get to use all the arrows in your quiver, or strings in your bow, or bats in your belfry. But it's also very...