Name: Talk Show Hosts Collection on Letterman, Part 6 of 7: Dick Cavett
Uploaded: 2021-02-07T04:08:14.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Talk Show Hosts Collection on Letterman, Part 6 of 7: Dick Cavett' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-02-07. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Talk Show Hosts Collection on Letterman, Part 6 of 7: Dick Cavett' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-02-07. Transcript available.

Talk Show Hosts Collection on Letterman, Part 6 of 7: Dick Cavett

Dick Cavett is with us here tonight.
For the past year, five years, he's had his own interview show with Public
Broadcasting.
Would you welcome him, Dick Cavett?
Dick.
David.
David.
Just ask the first question.
What is this?
I have a feeling I've missed something.
You have been doing talk shows longer than I have, Dick.
What are the rules, and what makes a good interview?
Did you know they kept me in an isolation booth backstage for this surprise?
Well, let me first say, David, I don't know why.
Why eight out of ten critics have said you're effeminate, because I don't see
it at all.
I think it's admirable the way you've borne that.
What was the question, please?
Ah, again?
Yes, something about talk shows.
You have been doing talk shows longer than I have.
Believe me.
How do you manage to make it sound like you're reading that?
Because I am.
Rosemary, I'm back.
I'm sorry.
We're doing a show out here.
Very nice job, Rosemary.
I certainly appreciate that.
Thank you for your help.
Rosemary, thank you.
Thank you.
Oh, no.
It's hard to bloat me.
You did a very nice job.
I'm always, whenever that sort of thing transpires, I'm always, not amazed
necessarily, but impressed
by her composure.
I am, too, but, you know, she goes from show to show and does this all the time.
She certainly fooled you.
You did a very nice job.
And, Rosemary, we have nothing for you.
I'm sorry.
Maybe Dick has a little something for you.
Yes.
Thank you very much.
That was darn nice of her.
Welcome to the show, Mr. Cabot.
How are you?
Oh, gosh.
You can call me Mr. Dick.
Mr. Dick.
I'm not, um...
I mean, the age gap between us is certainly not the same as between Carson and
myself, for
example, or...
What would you adjudge the age gap to be?
You know, I don't really know.
By the way, is it insensitive to use the word gap around you?
Yeah, I'm sorry.
We're almost out of time, Dick.
Amazing how it flies, isn't it?
No, you see, I don't know your...
I realize I don't know your age.
I know you're well over 20.
Well, you know my weight, and that's all that really counts in the business
that we're in.
Yeah, I guessed it once at the state fair years ago.
We go way back together.
But, uh, you astounded me by telling me that you wrote me a letter one time.
Long time ago.
I had, uh, when I was working at a local television station, I'm not sure how
interesting this is
to anyone out there, or even to us, as I tell it now, but...
We can judge from the reaction.
Yeah.
Um, uh, I wrote you a letter inquiring as to how a guy like myself could get
into big-time
broadcasting, and, uh, you were kind enough to write back and say, uh, you know,
get
a cab, pal.
Yeah, yeah.
No, it was actually a very nice letter, and I was so impressed by that that I
now also
try to do likewise when, uh, although I don't get many letters like that.
Did I send you the Dear David Letterman form letter?
I think it was, yes.
The serial number 08, it was what I got.
Well, it scared me when you started to say it, because I thought you were, of
course,
going to say, and you never answered, but, of course, I understand, and so on.
But, apparently, I did.
I'd love to look back through my files now and see if I could find that letter.
I have it somewhere, but it's been shuffled around, uh, with other mementos and
probably
gone now.
Really?
I saved all your letters.
Uh, I have, I've been a, uh, a very big fan of yours, and I loved your book,
and we
have many things to cover here this evening.
That's right.
Not the least of which is, uh, the event of the weekend passed.
Uh, suddenly, I'm waxing poetic, aren't I?
Yeah.
I hadn't noticed.
And, uh, I'm referring, you tell them what I'm talking about, and we'll get
into that
in a minute here.
Yeah, David is referring, undoubtedly, to the, to the Night of a Hundred Stars,
which is a phrase
everyone must be very familiar with by this time.
We were both lucky enough, I guess you'd say, to be there.
Um, I don't want to appear too jaded, but, uh, I thought it was pretty much
like any other
Night of a Hundred Stars.
Yeah, it was, uh, I think doing them twice weekly has kind of taken the edge
off of them.
Um, it was astounding.
It was like, I don't mean this in an insulting way to any of the people there,
like a trip
to the Wax Museum.
I mean, uh, no, I mean that because if you've been to Madame Tussauds, you know
how incredibly
lifelike and vigorous all the people looking.
Yeah.
It was really fun.
I, I did see something with my own eyes that was wonderful.
Betty Davis was standing there with that wonderful way she can plant herself so
you feel like two
strong men couldn't lift her off the ground, but she's just standing there.
And a lady approached from her right side and said, hello.
And she turned and said, hello.
And she said, how are you?
And Miss Davis said, I'm all right.
And the lady said, it's me.
And Miss Davis said, yes.
Liz.
Uh-huh.
Liz Taylor.
And it was Liz Taylor.
There were, there were a hundred funny things happened back then.
And we'll get back to cover some more of those right after this.
Good morning and welcome back to the show, as we like to call it.
So we do.
This is, of course, Mr. Dick Cabot.
And coming up later in the show, we have cut man Al Braverman and a movie maker
whom you know,
Howard Smith, put together a film a couple of years ago called Gizmo.
He'll be here with some, some of that video for us.
I suppose when they come out, I move down and then on down.
You move anywhere you like.
You can go up there and sit with Rosemary if you're a mind to.
I would love to go on talking about Night of a Hundred Stars, but let's, let's
move on.
Maybe we can come back to it.
Anyway, when I first knew you, I, I, uh, or knew of you, I started reading
everything I could about you.
And you, uh, there was this wonderful story in Time Magazine about how you were
hired as, uh, from a copy boy to the Jack Parr staff.
Yes.
And, and it was true.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, it sounds improbable, but it happened about 28 feet from here, I would
think, outside that door.
I think there's a plaque there now.
Yeah.
And they, and they spelled one of our names right, uh, by the way, Jack Parr's
star is spelled wrong.
One of the many misspellings on, on the Avenue of stars, you know, in Hollywood,
with the double R.
But, uh, I was a copy boy over there.
I shouldn't tell this story, and you'll see why.
Okay.
And you'll, you'll do it already.
Uh, and, uh, I saw in a column, Jack Parr worries more about his monologue than
the whole rest of the show.
Mm-hmm.
So I thought, that's strange.
I got about an hour or two.
Why don't I write a Jack Parr monologue just to see what it's like?
And if it turns out all right, I'll take it to him.
I did.
I put it in a time envelope, thinking that might impress him, whereas they
might throw me out otherwise.
And I got in the underground from the Time Life building over there into this
place, came through the turnstile.
And I remember thinking, it's the only time in my life I've thought this, this
is a turning point, perhaps, in my life.
Upward or downward, I wasn't sure which, but a turning point.
And I came out, and with the luck that you only have in a bad script, I ran
into Jack like that, getting off the elevator.
And I said, I rewrote, it must be like rewrote, a monologue for you.
And he looked at me very suspiciously and sort of said, okay.
And then he said, oh, time.
And I didn't want to say I'm a copy boy at time, because to be on the custodial
staff has more prestige than to be a copy boy.
And so I said, yes, I'm with time.
And he took it in his room, and then I heard him saying to his secretary, Mitsumi
Travers, is this funny?
And he read out a couple lines, and fortunately, she laughed.
Bless her.
And I saw him in the elevator afterwards, contrived again.
They'd be in the same elevator with him.
And he said, you ought to do that again, pal.
I mean, that was really, that was, so.
Yeah.
To make a long story even more tedious than it's likely to be, yeah.
I did, and I got a job with Jack, writing many, many jokes.
Was he fun to be around?
That must have been a very exciting show.
He was, and he was scary to be around, because he has a nervous intensity that
was half of his great charm and intrigue on camera.
What Kenneth Tynan called that sense of danger in par that made you think you
might see a breakdown on camera of some sort,
or didn't know what was going to happen next.
And so I always had butterflies, because I admired him so much and didn't want
to disappoint him.
You know, as your writers feel.
I haven't gotten any sense of that yet.
Well, at least I have butterflies.
Whether they're their own or not, I don't know.
But it was exciting.
And, of course, there I was within grasping distance of all these legends that
would appear on the par show.
First time we went to California, there was Skelton and Hope and everybody I'd
ever dreamed of being anywhere near.
Yeah.
There they were.
We're going to find out more about there they were and who they were and why
they were there, as a matter of fact,
and other non-pertinent information.
We have to pause.
All right, we're back with Dick Clark.
Dick Clark.
And we're getting ready to rate a record, so, um, uh, Dick Clark.
This is not the first time this has happened to me, by the way.
You know why that happened? Because you leaned over to me and made a reference
to the ball, and I can remember this is the night of the hundred stars seeing
Dick Clark there.
There was Dick Clark.
Dick Clark goes there.
Yeah, it happens all the time.
I'm awfully sorry.
Now, I, I know how you, how you feel, Bill, because you're probably very
worried.
There's, uh, I got 90 different things here I want to ask you about.
I think what I'm going to do here is, uh, tell me about your early days as a
stand-up and, uh, how you met, uh, Mr. Allen right in there.
Anything there?
I have nothing to tell you about either one of those things.
Okay.
How did you vote in the last election?
Uh, but seriously, uh, did, what, did you, you didn't have to go through that,
did you?
You didn't have to, you didn't go to, I mean, in New York, in the Grimm's
Village and that kind of thing, where you, where you went to the Bitter End and
then the Village Gate, and if between those two, they'd let you go on at the
Candle House or whatever, you'd do your thing there.
But, uh, years ago, I, I went through that because I had seen Woody Allen go
through it, and I thought, that inspired me, and so I thought I'd go down and
do that.
And it was murder.
I remember my first night at the Bitter End, uh, I can remember the sensation
of sweat, I believe it's called flop sweat in our business, damming up over my
eyebrows as I delivered what I thought was my comedy act.
And occasionally it would, uh, the surface tension would break, and it would
come down, and there'd be a saline solution in my eye.
And I went on, one lady found it very moving, she said afterwards, and, uh, and
somebody, somebody said, congratulate the young man who lectured.
And I've never, ever forgotten that.
Uh, people who don't know it, and there's no reason that they should know it,
it is the worst embarrassment a human can suffer, I think.
I know, if there were only a way around it, if only you could think, I'm going
to go out there and hope I bomb, because, and try to see the humor in it.
Yeah.
Because what person in his right mind would force himself on a group of people
into the most brightly lighted part of the room.
Drunks, usually.
And presume to amuse them.
Yeah.
Yeah, in their inebriated state.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I loved, I was very good at ad-libs.
I loved that.
I got into an ad-lib session with a lady who went on for about 15 minutes one
night at the Bonsoir.
Because, you know, they, they yell out, uh, you know, things like, um, you're
not funny.
Right.
You know.
And then.
Subtleties.
Yeah.
And then, I, see, I'd seen that happen to Noel Coward once, and I, and, uh, and
he came right back with, up yours, Baldy.
And, you know, it was rea