Playboy Interview: David Frost
April, 1978
Last spring, David Frost managed to accomplish what even the U.S. Congress had been unable to do: confront former President Richard M. Nixon on Watergate and other controversial aspects of his Administration. In a five-part series of taped television interviews that he also conceived and produced, Frost doggedly but politely pursued Nixon on everything from Cambodia to cover-ups—and, in the process, England's dapper man about media once again proved he is one of TV's most able interviewers.
Although most observers expected the gushingly hospitable Frost to be in over his head against Nixon, they sharply revised their opinion when the interviews were aired last spring. New York Times TV critic John J. O'Connor wrote, "Confounding his overly hasty detractors, Frost as an interviewer proved to be thoroughly prepared, extremely effective and frequently brilliant." He even evaded the expected charges of liberal partisanship: After watching the Watergate interview, former White House speechwriter Raymond K. Price, who had helped compose Nixon's resignation speech, noted, "The Nixon interview on Watergate can be a much-needed act of healing—if his opponents will let it be." Although the jury is still out on Nixon's public mea culpa, the great majority of viewers were surprised by Frost's performance. At least one man wasn't, however. David Paradine Frost, a multitalented multimillionaire, knew all along he'd do just fine, thank you.
Born in the town of Tenterden in Kent, England, on April 7, 1939, Frost was the son of a hard-working country parson whose family of five (Frost has two sisters) had to make do on less than $50 a week. After compiling a brilliant academic and athletic record in secondary schools, he spurned a pro-soccer contract with the Nottingham club in favor of an academic scholarship to Cambridge, where he became editor of Granta, the university's major literary magazine, and ran the Footlights, the campus revue-and-cabarel society. Frost's extracurricular activities left him little time for studying and he sometimes likes to credit his honors degree in English to amphetamines. " 'Purple hearts' were very big in Cambridge at examination time," he recently told us. "In fact, there was supposed to be one guy at school who swalloiued a whole bunch of purple hearts, took an exam, thought he'd done marvelously—and was then terribly disappointed to learn he'd written his name 1758 times."
Frost's ambition was to be on TV, and after he was graduated, he became a trainee with the commercial-TV station in London. Evenings found him moonlighting as a stand-up comic; when the BBC spotted him, it quickly hired Frost to help create and star in "That Was the Week That Was." "TW3," as the hit TV show came to be known, was a weekly satirical romp that specialized in skewering politicians. An American version ran on NBC-TV for two seasons, but, as one critic suggested, its style was "more roundhouse than rapier." When England's "TW3" went off the air, Frost went right back on with a talk show called "Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life." "People, used to say it was a great show but that we should have cut 20 minutes out of the title," Frost recalls.
After that, in the 1965–1966 season, came "The Frost Report" and, the next year, while still serving as emcee of this BBC show, Frost also hosted "The Frost Programme" on the rival commercial channel. Just to keep his hand in, while both shows were on the air, he found additional time to chair "Frost at the Phonograph," a weekly BBC radio program. Since then, Frost has had what seem like dozens of shows and series on British TV that he's produced and/or starred in and, in the U.S., from 1969 to 1972, the syndicated "David Frost Show" pioneered television's first encounter with 90-minute interviews. The latest news on Frost's American TV activities is that he has just signed a long-term contract with NBC that, among other things, called for him to produce a manic version of "60 Minutes" called "Peeping Times," plus a series of six specials, to be aired on consecutive weeks beginning in May. The as-yet-untitled miniseries will contain celebrity profiles, interviews, topical commentary and humor. In reality, NBC is hoping that Frost's imagination will produce something as popular as, yet more interesting than, the banal items that currently make up TV's top ten programs. The network has made a sporting gamble.
To interview the 39-year-old globetrotter, Playboy sent one of its veteran interviewers, Lawrence Linderman, to meet with Frost in New York. Linderman reports:
"David Frost is a 5'11" dynamo who is rapidly building a far-flung media empire. He does everything rapidly—and mostly well. He conducts business on three continents, has offices in New York, Beverly Hills and London, owns a very fancy Regency town house in the Knights-bridge section of London and seems to live most of his life on jets. The man runs himself ragged, but he's so exceptionally energized, he doesn't seem to notice it. I met him for the first time in his office in Manhattan's Plaza Hotel. Frost struck me as a good guy: funny, friendly and very quick. He is a seasoned pro at interviews, so we got down to business soon after we met. His Nixon interviews, which are the subject of Frost's just-published book, "I Gave Them a Sword" (Morrow), co-authored with Antony Jay, seemed the obvious subject with which to begin our own sessions."
[Q] Playboy: Having successfully completed your interviews with Richard M. Nixon, you're now out hustling your book about them, I Gave Them a Sword. Don't you think you're milking the subject of Richard Nixon a wee bit?
[A] Frost: No, and that's not at all why I wrote the book, but I commend you for the kind thought. I really didn't decide to write anything until after the enormous impact of the interviews, and even then. I thought I'd just write an article. And that was only in response to the fact that whenever I do lectures and such, people have a tremendous number of questions to ask about Nixon and my impressions of him. So I sat down to write an article and then encountered the same problem you're about to encounter, which is that you can't write about all of my feelings about the project and about Nixon in an article. And so I realized it was all or nothing, and a book that started out to be 75,000 words ended up as 100,000-plus words.
[Q] Playboy: If there's one overriding, lingering impression of your interviews with Nixon, it may well be this: Here we had a discredited President who hadn't leveled with the American public, and suddenly, there he was on TV again, receiving a princely fee from you either to finally come clean or to extend the cover-up that had ultimately driven him out of office. Did it surprise you that many Americans felt that the money Nixon received lent an air of impropriety to your interviews with him?
[A] Frost: No, I felt that was understandable. In fact, I examined that myself, because it's an important question. Obviously, I had to analyze the question of payment to Nixon before even trying to arrange the interviews. What I realized was this: We would not be setting a precedent. Lyndon Johnson had been paid for talking about his Presidency on television, and he'd even retained a measure of editorial control. The privacy point was also important: A politician has the right to dispose of his own life in whatever way he wishes after he leaves public office. It also seemed to me that in terms of memoirs, the interviews were like a book. Since the age of the quill, we've understood the concept of the writer and his written memoirs; electronic memoirs, however, are more recent and more complex. And perhaps more testing, in some ways, for Richard Nixon wasn't merely being asked to write his own account. Instead, his account was consistently being questioned during our interviews, and for a sum that was only a fraction of what he's receiving for his book. The only precedent we set was one of total editorial control, and that was a mandatory condition, for without it, I wouldn't have done the interviews. Given all that, I therefore felt that interviewing Nixon would be a challenge, a task that had to be done in the hopes of adding to history. I thought we would probably be able to move our state of knowledge of those extraordinary years forward a bit—and I think we did.
[Q] Playboy: Nixon received $600,000, plus 20 percent of the profits for your interviews with him. Will his cut of the action come to more than $1,000,000?
[A] Frost: Taking the longest view possible, allowing for future usage and such, no, he will never make $1,000,000 from the interviews. In fact, if the over-all excess of income over expenditures turns out to be a half million dollars, well, that would be a fair estimate of the profits. And those profits will have to be shared with the investors in the project.
[Q] Playboy: Does that mean that Nixon will make more money from those shows than you will?
[A] Frost: Certainly so, yes, and that will never change. But I didn't look at the interviews as a chance to make money. One's main aim in doing them was to break even, to do a good job and perhaps make a bit of history en route. In financial terms, I pictured the project as gloom, middle road or ecstasy. Gloom was break even, and that was one's true aim. What in fact happened was that we ended up doing better than break even: We made a fair profit out of it. If you're looking at it as a purely financial investment, you would probably have to say that the risk was greater than the eventual reward. But I think that everybody who went into it didn't really regard it, any more than I did, as a purely financial transaction, but as a historical responsibility. As long as people got their money back—more than $2,000,000 had to be raised—they were going to be content. And the fact that they've done a bit betler than that—they are content.
[Q] Playboy: Just before the interviews were televised, U.S. News & World Report wrote that the only reason Nixon agreed to do them was that he "needed money—desperately and quickly." Do you think that was the case?
[A] Frost: It's certainly possible Nixon may have thought at the time that he was in need of money. But very soon thereafter, his main concern became the historic impact of the thing. I wasn't privy to his thinking then any more than I am now, but, knowing him, I believe that his main concern was history—and trying to help nudge history, in a long, forlorn battle toward a balanced judgment of his Presidency.
[Q] Playboy: There has been a good deal written about Nixon's preoccupation with his place in history. What do you think that place will be?
[A] Frost: I suspect that some years hence, his place in history will become schizoid in the sense that people will separate his foreign policy from his domestic policy. On the one hand, they will gaze at the antidemocratic instincts that pervaded his domestic policy and, on the other hand, they'll admire his grasp of Realpolitik. Now, that doesn't mean the Nixon Presidency will ever be rehabilitated domestically, because it was a very dangerous period in America. Not necessarily dangerous in the sense that Nixon wanted to destroy the institutions of American government, but he would have made it much easier for the next guy down the line to do so.
[Q] Playboy: When did you get the idea to do the interviews?
[A] Frost: The day Nixon resigned. I was in Australia at the time. His resignation speech, given about nine P.M. in Washington, was broadcast live in Australia at 11 o'clock the next morning; the East Room speech came over about 11 that night. One of the great things about Australia is that it's a very expansionist country, and I suppose it encourages you to think expansively. Anyway, I got the idea for the interviews while watching Nixon that day.
[Q] Playboy: What was your perception of him at the time?
[A] Frost: I'd always been fascinated by the enigmas of the man. And for Nixon to have gone from that extraordinary victory in '72 to where he was at that moment made him doubly fascinating for me. There are so many rich paradoxes in his life that I believe make him the most interesting of men to interview. In fact, to interview him again would be almost as interesting as interviewing someone else for the first time. His speeches that day, of course, were quite memorable. The first one was historic—that he was laying down his office, and so on, but in personal terms, the East Room speech was tremendously dramatic. Everything about it was extraordinary, from the people who were sitting there applauding madly because they thought they should, down to the people who were there thinking, Do I applaud now? Or do I look appropriately somber? By being here, will I get myself embroiled in any responsibility for what Nixon did?
[A] The East Room speech itself was very basic, very human, very mother-father, very psychological, very coarse and very intriguing, beginning with the dichotomy of Nixon's closing remark about hate: "Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself." Which was an extraordinary comment for him to make, because one would have thought it was an epitaph for the Nixon Administration. And yet it was delivered as if it were an Olympian judgment for the aid of future generations, unconnected to the man who was saying it. Right then and there, I determined to do as much as I could, as soon as I could, to make the interviews happen.
[Q] Playboy: What were the first steps you took?
[A] Frost: I waited two weeks and then called San Clemente. The reaction—I didn't get to speak to Nixon—was very much one of "Don't call us, we'll call you." Warmhearted reluctance was considerably in evidence. I continued calling about once every two months, and also tried to find contacts who could help. In fact, it took a year before I was able to get Nixon to agree. Herb Klein, who'd been director of communications for Nixon, had gone to Metromedia and acted as the main intermediary, but nothing really happened until one night my friend Clay Felker told me that Swifty Lazar, the agent who'd negotiated Nixon's book deal, was also empowered to negotiate for television rights. That was the key piece of information. After that, it became a question of the single-minded pursuit of Swifty. The telephoning turned out to have helped marginally in establishing that I was serious about doing the interviews.
[Q] Playboy: Were the negotiations themselves very difficult?
[A] Frost: The money negotiations, as such, took relatively little time. NBC had allegedly offered Nixon $400,000 for two hours and Swifty was asking $750,000 for four hours. In the end, I agreed to $600,000 for four 90-minute programs. We later added a seventh hour when Nixon requested a delay that would cost me about $100,000; and I suggested that in return for the delay he grant us an extra hour of broadcast material, and he did. I suppose the most important thing—and it almost sounds ridiculous in retrospect—was realizing that Nixon was worth more than two hours. The day after I announced our agreement, the impact of the news was such that people would have offered him ten hours of TV time. The most complicated part of the bargaining concerned when the program on Watergate should be aired. Nixon didn't want to talk about Watergate at a point when he felt he could affect the appeals of Mitchell, Haldeman and Ehrlichman, which we agreed to. Meanwhile, I was delighted that he was agreeable to the TV interviews' coming out ahead of his book, because I thought that was essential. But, most of all, I was surprised that Nixon, this most suspicious of men, agreed to let me have total editorial control.
[Q] Playboy: Was there much wrangling over that?
[A] Frost: No, none at all. There was instant realization on his part that my independent bona fides were essential to the project. Nixon, you see, had memories of being fairly edited in the 1968 interview I'd done with him as part of a series of TV interviews I'd conducted with nine Presidential candidates that year. Still, I found it remarkable that Nixon, as an ex-President, was granting me a greater editorial right than any ex-President had ever granted before, and he was the one ex-President most sure the media would never give him a fair crack of the whip.
[Q] Playboy: Have they?
[A] Frost: Well, to a certain extent, it is true that the media—television, particularly—have been critical of Nixon. But that's probably the case anywhere in the world where you have a conservative leader, because the average writer, for instance, tends to be irreverent or left of center or anti-status quo. But what's surprising, really, is that while Nixon, as President, felt he was being absolutely lacerated by television, he and Agnew were extremely successful in the campaign that they launched against TV's "instant analysis" of White House speeches and press conferences. That phrase, incidentally, was coined by the White House, yet the broadcasting establishment took it as if it were its own, agreed that the practice was intolerable and abolished instant analysis with extraordinary deference and speed. They knew, of course, who controlled—or who could control—the Federal Communications Commission, and they wanted to protect their licenses. I thought they caved in far too quickly. I believe in TV's getting the facts across and leaving people to draw their own conclusions, but I also think that exploratory, elucidatory comments after a broadcast are perfectly valid. One of the ironies of the period is that Nixon genuinely felt the media were out to get him, when, in fact, the media were accommodating him because they felt he was about to get them.
[Q] Playboy: That may have been true of the three TV networks, but obviously, The Washington Post and The New York Times were not at all accommodating to Nixon. Apart from their Watergate reportage, was there any reason he so thoroughly disliked both newspapers?
[A] Frost: I think so, yes. The Times and the Post are immensely influential among the people a President meets. They both have a tremendous opinion-forming power, and if you're President of the United States, that's where you look for your reviews, I suppose. It's not all that different from a producer who puts a show on Broadway; if his show gets slammed in the Times and the Post, he will not be assuaged by the fact that a week later, the Bergen County, New Jersey, Record gives him a rave. Both the Times and the Post are read by members of the Eastern establishment and reflect an Eastern-establishment point of view—which was never pro-Nixon.
[A] There is an Eastern establishment, you know, but I don't think it's malign, as Nixon does. Indeed, it may be the most amazing source of wisdom since the creation of man. In any case, the interesting thing is that there certainly was a group from whom Nixon felt excluded. Whatever they thought of him, however, once he became President, Nixon easily could have invited them in and reached a rapprochement with them. Their exclusion of the President was based on the President's exclusion of them. I mean, when someone becomes President, even if he's been the most unfashionable figure previously, he does manage to get invited to the odd boutique opening, you know. All resources are available to a President, and it therefore takes a determined crusade to prevent being accepted by the establishment. I suspect the reason Nixon made it a crusade is that he'd reached a point where he overestimated anything less than adulation as a declaration of war.
[Q] Playboy: At what point in your pursuit of the TV interviews did you finally get to meet with Nixon?
[A] Frost: Our first meeting was on August 9, 1974, and I announced the news of our agreement the next day. And the coincidence was, that was one year to the day after he'd left office. It was the first day I could get to San Clemente, which was about ten days after Swifty Lazar and I had agreed to the thing by telephone. Inevitably, a particular construction will be put upon anything Nixon does, but he really didn't plot and plan the announcement to be released on his first anniversary, as it were, out of office.
[A] What really astonished me about him that day was that the haggard newspaper photos of Nixon bore no resemblance to the man in front of me. I mean, he looked healthy, and it wasn't make-up. The press, meanwhile, had been filled with reports saying, "Nixon can't concentrate for more than half an hour," which turned out to be nonsense, because at that first meeting, he concentrated for six hours. Although Lazar was there, Nixon was representing himself as a lawyer, and we spent a great deal of time discussing such things as the provisions of exclusivity, how the interview payments would affect his taxability, and so on. When we finally got to the end of the contract and each page had been carried out and retyped, I had to sign a check for $200,000, which I did. Nixon quickly started to pocket it, at which point Lazar said to him, "Give it to me, if you would." But Nixon resisted and resisted, until Swifty, having pointed out that it was customary to give the check to the agent, finally said, "Give it to me, puh-leeze. " He said it very distinctly. Nixon then realized it probably was conventional to do it Lazar's way—it is—and finally handed back the check like a small boy who'd thought he could get away with a cookie before dinner. Irving Paul Lazar is a very impressive man and Nixon owes him a great debt.
[Q] Playboy: Aside from Nixon's fitness, what struck you most strongly about him at that first meeting?
[A] Frost: His extraordinary ability to say things without realizing they were double-entendres. For example, when we were talking about Brezhnev, the first thing he said was, "I wouldn't want to be a Russian leader. They never know when they're being taped." He said that absolutely straight.
[Q] Playboy: Are you sure he wasn't putting you on?
[A] Frost: I watched him very closely to see if he was joking, but I don't think he was.
[Q] Playboy: How do you handle a moment like that?
[A] Frost: As if in an interview, I suppose. You let it register inside, but you don't necessarily show it outside. Small talk, of course, is never easy with Nixon. For instance, one day, Nixon—wanting to be one of the boys—turned to me as we strolled in to start taping and said, "Did you do any fornicating this weekend?" And I just could not believe he'd said that. Quite apart from the fact that lovers use the word fornicating about as regularly as newsmen say, "Well, we've managed to trivialize matters again tonight, Henry." I mean, I just couldn't believe it. One almost had to warm to the sheer clumsiness of it all. It really did fascinate me that Nixon could have gotten through 30 years of politics, of attending countless fund raisers and such, and still be so bad at small talk.
[A] Another time, I was on my way to San Clemente and suddenly I saw that my shoes were dirty, which may or may not be unusual, because I normally never notice my shoes. Well, when I got there and went in to see Nixon, the first thing he said was, "Are those shoes Italian?" That it should be the day I'd noticed they were dirty was perhaps ironic, but the point is, he was looking for something to talk about for five minutes before we got down to business.
[Q] Playboy: Going into the interviews, were you at all worried that you might finally be in over your head—that Nixon might be too skillful a debater for you to handle?
[A] Frost: Well, it would be much more my thinking—and I can remember thinking it—that if I'm not really at my best, then I'm in trouble. Therefore, I must be at my best; therefore, I will be at my best—and on the day of an interview, I am at my best. I really don't think I'd allow myself to feel overmatched, because, in all honesty, I don't think it's part of my make-up.
[Q] Playboy: You are that unflappable?
[A] Frost: Yes, I think so. I could give you a more objective, distant answer, but I'm trying to explain my make-up a bit and the correlation I feel between self-confidence and self-criticism, and it's a very complicated balance, that balance. I suppose that I'm an optimist. For instance, when I was writing my book about the Nixon interviews, I would call up my researchers and say, "Well, chapter two has taken a little bit longer to write than I expected, but it's all downhill now," and then, days later, I would call up again and say, "Well, chapter five took a bit longer to write than I expected, but it's all downhill now." It didn't mean that one wasn't flogging away, but one was always psyching oneself to feel on top of it, I guess. Against Nixon, of course, I knew I wasn't going to just sail through, for once we began taping, I quickly realized that here was an experienced lawyer and an outstanding debater who was at the peak of his performing powers. When you interview politicians, as I have, you get used to asking them a question that starts in New York City and by the end of the answer they'll have got you to Boston—but usually, you're aware of what's going on as you leave the airport. Richard Nixon has the ability to have you checked in at the Ritz-Carlton before you can blink.
[Q] Playboy: How is he able to do that?
[A] Frost: Oh, he has incredible technique and he really is a skillful performer. For instance, when I asked him if his meeting with Henry Kissinger the night before he resigned was the most emotional moment of the thing for him, Nixon began his answer by saying, "Yes, it was almost as emotional a moment as I have ever known—except, perhaps, for my farewell visit to President Eisenhower." And he then went into seven minutes of Eisenhower, with me sitting there thinking, Oh, please, no, not that. But he did it, and he did it superbly. It was a story about visiting Eisenhower for the last time, and Nixon managed to bring into it the fact that Ike's language was pretty salty, just to give his own language a good precedent. Basically, it was about a visit made when Eisenhower was in hospital and he was bringing Ike greetings from statesmen abroad. At the end of the story, as Nixon is leaving, Ike can scarcely speak, but he raises a frail hand—and at that point, Nixon raised his own hand and acted the scene out beautifully.
[A] His technique in talking about Kissinger was also brilliant. He wanted to portray Henry as somewhat erratic and mercurial, a man who needed the fatherly strength of a Nixon to see him through. And so Nixon always started with a compliment about Kissinger, but then, as you examined the compliment, there was an underlying instability that was being pointed to. And it was all done with deftness, with an almost puckish, pixyish ability to score points. Nixon's entire essay on Henry and the terrible things Henry said about him was nothing less than a masterpiece. As he launched into it, I began logging the points Nixon was scoring. He started by saying, "To tell you the truth, when Henry says things about me, it drives my family up the wall, and it's only because it worries them that it worries me." Two points for Nixon right there: One, that Henry's a louse and he upsets poor Pat and poor Tricia and poor Julie; and, two, Nixon himself is too big a man to be upset by what Henry says. Nixon went through item after item where the reverse of what he said was true. Another example: "Oh, I used to like going to parties. Henry still likes going to parties, but you know, he'll get tired of them, too." Conclusion: Yes, Henry will grow up just like Nixon has. And throughout all these points, Nixon was scoring, scoring, scoring. To top it off, Nixon talked about the disputed "prayer meeting" he had with Kissinger the night before he announced his resignation, and in his version, Nixon is telling Kissinger he mustn't resign. And then he sees tears in Kissinger's eyes. And so, because he can't bear to see a person cry, Nixon cries, the implication being, yes, the prayer meeting did take place and we did cry; but Henry started it. It was brilliant stuff, great television—and it underlined the fact that Nixon was at the peak of his form.
[Q] Playboy: Do you know what Kissinger's reaction to that was?
[A] Frost: Yes, I do. After the program had gone on the air, Kissinger said to me, "You know, this was the eve of Nixon's departure from the White House. Yet, from his account, you would have thought the subject of our meeting was my resignation, not his."
[Q] Playboy: What kinds of ploys did Nixon use on you?
[A] Frost: During the first few days of taping, I would just study his technique. He eventually said something about Brezhnev's following the principle of Lenin, which is, "Advance with bayonet. If you encounter mush, proceed. If you encounter steel, withdraw." That was Nixon's debating strategy.
[Q] Playboy: How did he employ it?
[A] Frost: Well, I remember him making a rather obscure point about the amount of arms the South Vietnamese had in April of 1975, and he said something to the effect that, "In many areas, they were outgunned three to one." And then I made a point I wanted to bring out, that the Congress didn't lose the war by finally cutting off arms to South Vietnam. I didn't particularly want to pursue the point about whether the South Vietnamese were specifically outgunned three to one in certain areas. Nixon, of course, had covered himself the first time by saying, "In many areas, they were outgunned three to one," so that if I said—which I didn't—"No, they weren't outgunned three to one," Nixon could have said, "I'm sorry, David, but in Whack Me Knock, they were outgunned three to one." He probably had one or two areas up his sleeve that he could talk about, but since that wasn't the thrust of the discussion, I didn't pick the point up. And so he dragged it back two or three minutes later by saying, "You'd be pretty frightened if you were outgunned three to one." Now, because I hadn't picked it up the first time, he dared the second time not to even qualify it. Do you know what I mean? He protected himself the first time, and then he thought, Uh-huh, proceed with bayonet.
[Q] Playboy: He felt he was about to encounter more mush?
[A] Frost: That's right, because I hadn't challenged him. It was actually a detour, though. He couldn't realize I was sitting there and thinking, Boring, boring, and that the material would be edited out. The point is, I knew from those very formative moments that Nixon was a killer in debate if you let him be. I recognized early on that if he encountered mush in the Watergate questions, he would proceed. In fact, if he found a chink in our armor, he would drive a truck through it. Really, I was aware that he had the ability to do that and I had to know how to combat it when we got to Watergate. Although we telecast that program first, we hadn't taped the Watergate material until our eighth session.
[Q] Playboy: Was a tough exploration of Watergate the underlying aim of your Nixon interviews?
[A] Frost: I thought it would be the most spectacular part of the interviews and, in a sense, would be the touchstone of the interviews' success. I remember once moderating a round-table discussion about marriage, and on the subject of sex in marriage, one of the psychiatrists present said, "If it's right, it's only 30 percent; if it's wrong, it's 90 percent." Likewise, one could have said that if the Watergate interviews had been wrong, they would have been 90 percent of the project. Since they were right, they probably became 50 percent, because once Watergate had been ventilated in a way that demonstrated the seriousness of the project, people were prepared to listen to discussions of other subjects, such as foreign policy. But if Watergate hadn't worked, then somehow a terrific story about Brezhnev would have been less acceptable.
[Q] Playboy: How did you prepare for your Watergate interview with Nixon?
[A] Frost: I realized I had to get across a complex set of points in such a way that not only would 17 devoted Watergate scholars know that I made them but the public would, too. And so I worked hard to be able to present those complex points with clarity.
[A] I also made lists of things about Nixon and Watergate that I felt I could or couldn't prove. Some of the "couldn't proves" were circumstantially strong. For instance, Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon's lawyer, raised funds to be used as hush money for the Watergate defendants. Now, would an Ehrlichman or a Halde-man have dared use the President's lawyer for such a task without OKing it with the President? It seems unlikely, but we couldn't prove that that money was transferred by Kalmbach with Nixon's approval. And so, if I questioned Nixon about that, he could just say, "Well, I didn't know anything about that." Along the same lines, prior to the Watergate break-in, would Mitchell have held meetings with Liddy to discuss massive intelligence plans without OKing it with Haldeman—and without Haldeman's OKing it with Nixon? Again, unlikely, but, again, we couldn't prove it. What I had to look for was direct involvement, so that I could put questions to Nixon in a way that he couldn't reply, "Well, I didn't know anything about that."
[A] And, of course, I had to study the tapes. I mean, it was Nixon's life, but I knew those tapes as well as he did, and better in some cases. We also had important new tapes that Jim Reston, a staff member on the project, had discovered through sheer diligent research. Jim found them by reading through the records of the Watergate trial. Anybody could have done the same thing, but no one did. Everyone assumed that what was in the records was what was played at the trial; it turned out that what was accidentally left in the records were some extra conversations between Nixon and Colson. They were never played in court, because Colson copped a plea and, therefore, it wasn't relevant to play them. But they were in the records, and they were quite revealing. [Reston's account of his discovery of these and other key documents appears on page 93.]
[Q] Playboy: Exactly what did they reveal?
[A] Frost: On the afternoon of June 20, 1972—just three days after the Watergate break-in—Nixon showed a remarkable knowledge of what had gone on. In that conversation, I think, he says things like, "We've got to have lawyers who can delay" and "Hunt's a hard-line guy." It was a conversation that portrayed a grasp of knowledge on June 20th that Nixon was not known to have had. Nixon claimed that the first time he learned about the cover-up was on March 21, 1973, from John Dean, but on February 13th and February 14th, in conversations with Colson, he was using the word cover-up and saying, "It's the cover-up that's the main thing," and all of that. A month ahead of when this revelation was supposed to have struck him. And so one or all of those were crucial conversations.
[Q] Playboy: More crucial than the famed "smoking gun" tape of June 23, 1972, in which Nixon acquiesced in Haldeman's plan to have the CIA block the FBI's Watergate investigation?
[A] Frost: Well, it was clear from the smoking-gun tape that Nixon knew he was blocking the FBI's probe in order to protect the identities of some people involved in the Watergate break-in rather than for national security. When that tape was released, it was enough to do the trick; Nixon left office four days later. If the June 20th tape had been released instead, I think it would have had a similar impact. In other words, it was a very key conversation, indeed.
[Q] Playboy: You obviously did your homework before challenging Nixon on Watergate. Do you feel he was as ready for you as you were for him?
[A] Frost: I really wouldn't want you to think I wasn't daunted by the scale of the challenge; I was. After our first seven sessions, I realized the odds were by no means in our favor, but I also felt that Nixon might be going into the first of our two Watergate interviews a little overconfident, perhaps. As he looked over our transcripts, he would see only isolated periods when I'd confronted him, for in our early conversations, I followed a policy of not confronting him for the sake of confrontation. I'd challenged him on Cambodia and Chile and on some crime statistics, but Nixon might well have underestimated the difference in nature between Watergate and the grain deals with Russia or his nomination of Harrold Carswell for the Supreme Court. I'd mentally edit out sequences I knew we couldn't use, and so, instead of interrupting Nixon, I'd let him finish his point.
[A] But the Watergate program had to be different. For one thing, we'd always agreed that we'd take a total of six hours to cover the complexities of Watergate, which meant that I'd have to keep a tight hold on the proceedings. For another, I felt that while the interview was not a trial as such, when we got to Watergate, it had to be conducted according to those kinds of disciplines. And if Nixon adopted a stonewall defense, which is what occurred, I felt I would have to use the same sort of adversary procedure one sees in a trial. Which also meant that I had to find a way in conversation to be tough but polite; I had to make sure that I wasn't counterproductively rude and therefore moving sympathy over to the other side. It's one thing, you know, to say what you think of Nixon privately; it's another to find the right way to express it face to face without stunting the dialog. In any event, when we began discussing Watergate, the tape of June 23rd was the first real crunch in nailing down that on that date he became guilty of an obstruction of justice.
[Q] Playboy: There's no doubt in your mind about that?
[A] Frost: No doubt whatsoever. And no doubt, either, in the minds of people who watched it that his guilt was established. But I think it came as a considerable shock to Nixon. Having settled on a highly legalistic defense, I think he was surprised that we could puncture it and make the point that an obstruction of justice is an obstruction of justice, whether it's for five minutes or for two weeks. And that, by definition, if he gave orders that limited culpability to the five people already arrested—and prevented others whom he knew to be guilty from being arrested—that, per se, was an obstruction of justice.
[Q] Playboy: Had that argument never been raised before?
[A] Frost: Well, I don't think it had ever been raised to him. I don't think he'd ever argued it with someone who could argue it back and win. I think Nixon believed that going the legalistic route would suffice and that he'd be able to prevail by saying things like, "Well, you probably haven't read the obstruction-of-justice statute." But I had. That was the kind of thing he thought he could get away with and didn't.
[A] Basically, he was doing a classic Nixonian defense, in the sense that he was saying more than one thing at the same time. He stated that he was not doing anything criminal, because his only concern had been—well, it wavered, what his only concern had been. For instance, his only concern had been that the FBI investigation of Watergate might get into areas that would embarrass the CIA, and since the CIA agreed, perhaps the CIA would step in and stop the FBI investigation. But his actual instructions to the CIA were, "Stop the investigation, period." He didn't issue a genial invitation over a drink for them to go along if they happened to agree. The key point was that whatever Nixon's motive, it was irrelevant. Motive is an adjunct to establishing a crime, not an essential. I then made the point about the March 21st tape in which he effectively condoned blackmail payments to Howard Hunt. I used a list of 16 points from that tape to show that the one or two points Nixon had pulled out of the conversation to justify his point of view were overwhelmed by the weight of the evidence the other way. The main point of his defense was that he hadn't actually approved the payment, but my point was that he hadn't stopped it and, indeed, had positively encouraged it. He tried to take a remark he'd made about clemency for Hunt—"No, it's wrong, that's for sure"—and use it as proof he was saying no to the blackmail payments, but that was real nonsense. There were two kinds of nonsense in that. First, when he said it would be wrong, in context it was clear that he was making a tactical rather than a moral decision about clemency. Secondly, he argued that because he ruled out clemency, he must have been ruling out blackmail, and that makes no sense whatever. The day ended very soon after I cited the 16 points that people seem to remember so clearly. Nixon's response to them closed out the session—and it was a very muted response in terms of any degree of convincingness.
[Q] Playboy: How did you feel about the way the interview had gone?
[A] Frost: I was euphoric, because that was the toughest confrontition of them all. We conducted the interviews in a private home in Monarch Bay, near San Clemente, and when we finished taping that day, Nixon went into the kitchen to talk to some of the people who'd been watching. Bob Zelnick, who headed our editorial team, had been filled with a terrible sense of foreboding about the Watergate material a week earlier, but when he came Up to me, he was just ecstatic. Meanwhile, Nixon's aides, a very honorable group of men, were talking with John Birt, my coproducer. Jack Brennan, who'd been Nixon's military aide in the White House, was saying, "What a mistake, what a mistake. We didn't want him to go that way." And Ken Khachigian, who was acting as Nixon's head researcher, was saying, "Yes, the President of the United States made himself look like a criminal defendant with David as prosecutor. This was the one subject we couldn't talk to him about. It was just too personal." Right about then, Diane Sawyer walked by. She'd been in charge of providing Nixon with Watergate research for his book, and she said, "He hasn't reached the Watergate part of his memoirs yet, so none of us knew what he was going to say." Which is mind-boggling, because they were preparing Nixon for the interviews in the same way our researchers were preparing me, yet none of them knew what he would say about Watergate. Obviously, to use a Nixon phrase, he had decided to "tough it out"—or to try to tough it out. But it hadn't worked. It hadn't worked at all.
[Q] Playboy: Had you anticipated that kind of result?
[A] Frost: I only expected—and this was my big expectation—to be able to make our case. I thought our case would come through as the dominant case by the end of the proceedings, but I really didn't expect to win each exchange, to win each rally. To put it in tennis terms, I never expected to beat such a tough opponent 6-0; maybe 7-5, but not 6-0. Oddly enough, I usually tend to talk about Nixon's not having won rather than my having beaten him, but I suppose that's British understatement. Rather like the rich man in England who said to his chauffeur, "Drive over that cliff, James. I've decided to commit suicide."
[A] I guess the reason I felt on a cloud at the end of that day was that I knew—and Nixon knew—that on Watergate, in the last resort, it was him or me. It was really like that. And it didn't matter that Nixon was a former President and a lawyer and all of those things. If I couldn't establish our case, then I'd be seen to have suffered a massive defeat. Anyway, that was the first stage of the Watergate program.
[Q] Playboy: What was the second?
[A] Frost: Something happened to Richard Nixon during the two days we had between Watergate tapings. I still wonder what those two days were like. For the second Watergate taping, Nixon arrived late. He'd always been punctual to the minute, and the one day I'd been a little late, he'd made a passing reference to it, saying, "I always allow for the possibility of traffic jams." The Presidential punctuality showing through. And then he arrived 17 minutes late, looking five years older than he had two days before. Who knows, perhaps he'd really confronted Watergate for the first time in those two days, because normally, no one was franchised to interrogate him the way he'd just been interrogated. And to the extent that what eventually emerged on the second day was the product of the debacle he'd suffered on the first day, well, I don't really know. I do know, however, that he came prepared to go further than he had the first day. It was a question of my pushing him and pushing him to do it.
[Q] Playboy: How did you get him to that point?
[A] Frost: We began the second Watergate session by talking about Nixon's coaching of witnesses, the phony Dean report and the fact that the next man Nixon appointed to discover the "truth" about Watergate was John Ehrlichman. I said to him, "That's a bit like asking Al Capode to produce a report on organized crime in Chicago." I then asked him, "Nevertheless, whatever else you say about March 21st, the whole point was—why didn't you call the cops? At the very least, that should have been done." By then, Nixon was ready to start volunteering, and as a result, the next hour and a half was filled with extraordinary emotion and electricity. I told him he needed to go further than merely admitting to mistakes and misjudgments. I told him the public wouldn't accept that. One felt almost a sense of awe or disbelief that one was placed in the position of having to enunciate that.
[Q] Playboy: Had you planned that in advance?
[A] Frost: No, I hadn't, but in reading it again, I don't' think I'd change a word of it. We'd just taken a breather, and when we came back, I said, "Now, won't you go further than 'mistakes,' this word that just doesn't seem enough?" And then Nixon said, "Well, what word do you suggest?" That was the most heart-stopping question I'd ever been asked. And I responded with a three-pronged answer. First of all, he ought to go further than mistakes, because there might, indeed, have been a crime committed. Two, in terms of abuse of power, he'd abused his oath of office. And, three, I said I thought he needed to apologize to the American people for putting them through two years of needless pain. By then, one was able to say something as wrenching as that, firmly but conversationally, which was the point we'd reached. I would never have envisaged until that minute that one could say something like that. And I went on to tell him, "Those are the three things I think you need to say and if you don't, I think you'll be haunted by it for the rest of your life."
[Q] Playboy: How did Nixon react to that?
[A] Frost: It was almost as if the breath had been driven out of his lungs. There was a long pause, and then he started slowly, as he often did, and for the next 20 minutes or so, with appropriate nudges from me, he addressed himself to what I'd said. The climactic three or four minutes were triggered off when Nixon said, "And now, how do I feel about the American people? Let me come to that." By then, it was no longer Nixon versus Frost; it was Nixon versus Nixon. How much of his own conduct could he confront? There was finally a moment where Nixon just caught his breath—and I remember catching mine, as well—and he then said, "Yup, I let the American people down, and I have to live with that for the rest of my life. My political life is over."
[A] We had reached a peak, and when he finished, I said something like, "You said this was a burden you'll have to carry with you for the rest of your life. I think it may be a little lighter after what you've just said." Nixon answered, "Oh, I doubt it. People will go on harassing me." And then there was the sort of decompression period divers go through when they come back up to the surface or climbers go through when they come down from the mountaintop. We were at the end of the session and I thanked him and said, "You know, we seem to have been more through a life than an interview." And that was it.
[Q] Playboy: Your work on the Nixon interviews was obviously much better than most media observers thought it would be. Newsweek, for one, noted that your "reputation as an obliging foil for comics and crooners on American TV" raised doubts about your ability to pin Nixon down. Did that sort of criticism disturb you?
[A] Frost: Well, I think it's kind of funny how selective people's memories can be. Ironically enough, I think memory spans are sometimes shorter among one's colleagues in media than among the public. For instance, after I pioneered That Was the Week That Was in England and was about to do a talk show in the U.S., I read in the newspapers that "satirist David Frost is about to do a talk show"—as if I hadn't been doing interviews in England. And then, having done the talk show, I became "talk-show-host David Frost," as if I'd never done That Was the Week That Was. And in the course of The David Frost Show here, one had done Spiro Agnew debating three of his leading student critics, one had confronted Adam Clayton Powell and done a lot of other serious programs, which is why we won an Emmy. But, nevertheless, people remember what's convenient, and that's OK. I don't criticize them for that. If they feel they must give me the shaft, as Nixon would say, I won't hold it against them! Not me!
[Q] Playboy: That's very magnanimous of you, David. Still, many people do have an impression of you as a smiling, self-ingratiating, perhaps even smarmy character who's all surface charm and glibness.
[A] Frost: Well, I don't know that I would characterize it exactly like that, thank you. I do know, however, that one sometimes pays a certain strange, illogical and absurd price for versatility—for what is sometimes referred to in articles as "a multiplicity of careers." Now, I think a multiplicity of careers is the way to stay fresh, to stay alert, to keep on one's mental toes. But, yes, I sometimes sense a mild resentment among, say, television critics in England over the fact that, in addition to being a TV performer, I am also a businessman. And among financial editors, there may be a mild resentment that I am also an interviewer.
[A] People, you see, like to pigeonhole you, which is why, when my interviews with Nixon were announced, there was talk about, "Well, he's not a full-time journalist. He does other things. He interviews Julie Andrews and Jack Benny. He does the Guinness Book of World Records shows. He's a book publisher. He produces films and TV series. He gives lectures." Well, I love that mixture. I like the fact that I can appear before audiences and make people laugh. I like putting together a group of people and making a film. I like variety, and so I have always fought against categorization. I mean, "Methodist minister's son" would do just as fine or better for me than "satirist" or "talk-show host" or "producer."
[A] I also think the fact that one doesn't do the same thing all the time probably makes one fresher for each task one approaches, whether it's a week on radio in Australia, or presenting a Neil Diamond tour to Australia, or writing a book, or producing a TV series called Jennie that starred Lee Remick, or producing a film like The Slipper and the Rose, which was England's Command Performance Film of 1976, the equivalent of an Academy Award for best picture of the year. You see what I mean? Although one keeps a lot of balls in the air, one has the ability to concentrate on one project at a time. For instance, I like emceeing, but I'd hate to be only an emcee. I love interviewing, but I'd hate to be only an interviewer. I like organizing things, but I'd hate to be only an organizer. Actually, there are only two sorts of categories in my life. One is the category of "making things happen," as a producer or organizer. The other is taking on personal projects that one wants to carry through every stage of the way by one's self, like the Nixon interviews. But I'd hate to be in either of those categories all of the time.
[Q] Playboy: You may well abhor being categorized, but in this country, at least, people are far more familiar with your work as an interviewer than as a satirist, author, lecturer, producer, publisher, music promoter and whatever else you do to avoid indolence. In fact, there are some U.S. TV critics who now willingly concede that you might just be the best interviewer around. Do you agree?
[A] Frost: I certainly enjoy reading those kinds of articles more than some others, but, obviously, I'd run a mile from claiming that. But I must say, I don't mind reading it.
[Q] Playboy: How would you define what you do as an interviewer?
[A] Frost: Well, I think that I'm in the information business rather than the opinion business. And that my job is to draw out other people. To draw out their opinions and their feelings, rather than to state my own. I think that once you make the decision to be an interviewer, you're also making the decision not to editorialize, particularly. One's job, in essence, is to act as a catalyst rather than as a campaigner. If you want to be a campaigner and a crusader, stating your own opinions and editorializing, then you become a columnist rather than an interviewer. But nobody gives you five nights a week, 90 minutes a night, to spout your own opinions, you know. By definition, that is not what the airwaves are for. And, therefore, I think that you make that conscious decision. Which doesn't mean that you're not still a reformer at heart or that you don't still want to bring out the facts. You want lo bring out the facts, all right, but you also want to let people draw their own conclusions, rather than you looking into the camera at the end of an interview mid saying, "And so, of course, you realize that my guest tonight is a fink, a complete snerd." I think you have to forgo that role if you are an interviewer.
[Q] Playboy: By doing all that, do you find that you muzzle yourself? There are, after all, a number of other interviewers—Mike Wallace comes to mind—who adopt a far more outspoken stance than you do.
[A] Frost: But not necessarily on public questions. Mike Wallace's techniques are Mike's and mine are mine, and I happen to think he's extremely good. But I must say, I have no idea what Mike's position is on abortion or capital punishment, or, indeed, how he even voted in the last three Presidential elections. And I think in that sense, Mike Wallace and I are probably very similar, in that neither of us makes a platform out of our views. In general, I don't think it's consistent with one's role as an interviewer to endorse a political party in an election. On the other hand, I've never wanted to endorse a political party, because I've never felt a pulsating faith in any I've seen in England, Australia or America. I'm a genuine independent, so it's not been a particularly great sacrifice. But on individual issues—aftercare for prisoners, capital punishment, and so on—I have declared myself. I think, however, that it would be very difficult for an interviewer to be known to have a party line that covers a whole series of issues. An interviewer should remain independent and should approach each interviewee with an open mind, but not an empty one.
[Q] Playboy: If you had to choose one quality that has enabled you to become an adroit interviewer, what would it be?
[A] Frost: An innate sense of curiosity. When I first went to Australia in '72, one of the TV channels there followed me around and did a documentary about me that they called What Makes People Tick Fascinates Me. That sums up what I feel about interviewing, and I think that's at the root of why I enjoy it so. But all interviewing—particularly television interviewing—is also an almost physical thing involving eye contact and a certain mutuality. It may be mutual rapport or mutual admiration or mutual respect, or sometimes mutual caginess or mutual wariness, but there has to be a kind of meeting place between the two people involved.
[Q] Playboy: Do you feel there's a great deal of technique involved in interviewing?
[A] Frost: I think the most important interviewing technique of all is simply, A, to listen and, B, to respond by thinking on your feet. I mean, I've been interviewed by people who I knew were not listening, so I know what that's like. Not long ago, in fact, I was interviewed on radio by someone who wasn't listening to me at all, so, for my own amusement, I ended an answer by saying, "And then, of course, I married the Pope's first wife." And the guy still said, "Yes, yes, Mr. Frost, but what about the Common Market? Do you think butter tariffs will eventually increase?" Aside from listening and thinking on your feet, there are, of course, a number of other techniques one is conscious of.
[Q] Playboy: Such as?
[A] Frost: The value of silence, for example. If you pause when a person thinks he's got to the end of what he has to say, he'll often enough carry on and volunteer something important. Sensing when a person is ready to go, so to speak, is quite important. There are many things you have to be aware of, you know. I mean, there are times when you'll be interviewing some of the most powerful men in the world and you'll suddenly realize that they're extraordinarily nervous. I remember that was true of Hugh Cudlipp, who was then the most powerful publisher in Britain. I would have expected him to be immensely relaxed, but seconds before we started a live TV interview, I realized that he was nervous as a kitten. So I just changed the first question to a very relaxed first question and we were able to go on from there.
[A] One really has to suit technique to the occasion. I said before that an interviewer's job is to act as a catalyst, but one must also step in when facts are being done a disservice. That was the case when I interviewed Enoch Powell, the racist British Member of Parliament who's a very brilliant man but one who perverts the facts. At one point in our interview, he said, "In the year 2000, Britain will have 7,500,000 blacks," or new members of the Commonwealth or whatever the euphemism was. That was a very controversial overestimate, in any case, but what Powell neglected to add was that Britain's population had been calculated to rise from 50,000,000 in 1968. when he said that, to 75,000,000 in 2000—and he was making that 7,500,000 figure of his seem applicable to Britain's population as of 1968. It was a willful distortion, for no intelligent person does such a thing accidentally. At moments like that, you step in and become a principal.
[A] On another quite different occasion, I remember interviewing Baldur Von Schirach, a Nazi war criminal who, as head of Hitler Youth in the Thirties, was responsible for the corruption of young minds in Germany before being appointed Gauleiter Reichsstatthalter of Vienna in the Forties. I interviewed him at his home in Trossingen, Germany, just after he'd finished serving 20 years in Spandau. In talking to him before the interview, it was clear that if I just sort of accused him in terms of what the Nazis had done, I'd get a brief, terse, spurious apology. He really had no comprehension of the enormity of what the Nazis had done, and so another technique had to be found. I decided it would be much more telling to try to underline his total lack of awareness and contrition, and so I focused the interview that way. You know, when you ask someone like that, "What's the one thing future generations in Germany should know about Adolf Hitler?" there's only one answer to that question: The genocide of 6,000,000 people. Well, when I asked Baldur Von Schirach that question, he replied, "Za wonderful way zat he dealt with unemployment in za Thirties." His answer made its own point much more chillingly than a brief, spurious apology.
[Q] Playboy: Thus far, we've heard only about your triumphs. Can you recall any fiascoes?
[A] Frost: Not really, though I'd say that an interview I once did with Idi Amin served as a good example of an occasion where the barriers of language impeded learning a great deal about the person. That was done five years ago, when it was clear that Amin was a micromonster but not yet clear he was a macromonster. In other words, he was then thought to be wreaking havoc as opposed to carnage. Anyway, in our interview, Amin's unfamiliarity with English compounded the impression that he was insane. I remember his saying, "And I had a dream that I should expel all the Asians, and I had a dream that I should expel them in the middle of the night," And so on. Interestingly enough, the acting British High Commissioner in Kampala told me that Amin had little choice but to expel the Asians; they'd set themselves up as such a hated ghetto of wealth that their fate was almost inevitable. So if, instead of talking about a dream, Amin had merely said, "I woke up in the morning with the idea," he would have sounded slightly less insane. At another point in our interview, he said, "And so, I think we were very lucky to kick the Israelis out." One can imagine that if he'd had a year or two of training in diplomatic language, Amin might have said, "And so, I think it was very fortunate that we could release the energies of the hard-working Israelis to return to their own green and pleasant land, there to fertilize the soil and build a new state." In any case, Amin struck me more as a cunning man than an insane one, though I walked away from that interview with a sense that he probably was a loose can on the deck. But because of his difficulty with English, I also walked away without knowing what makes Amin tick.
[Q] Playboy: In trying to discover what makes you tick, we'd be interested in knowing if there are any vast differences between the public Frost and the private Frost.
[A] Frost: Oh, I'm very much myself when I'm on television. I think it's important to be as natural as possible and to forget all about the lights and the rest of the equipment out there. Which, of course, is impossible to do. But I don't really think there's that much difference between the private Frost and the public of Frost. Now, whether there's a difference between the private Frost and the public perception of Frost is something else again. Unless you work at it, when reading about yourself, one tends to react rather like the woman who gives you two ties for Christmas. To please her, you put one on and she then says, "What's wrong with the other one?"
[Q] Playboy: Earlier in our conversation, you gave us a litany of your many careers, yet you overlooked the fact that you started out as a stand-up comic.
[A] Frost: True enough, but when I was doing cabaret, I was already working for television. I went from Cambridge to a year's traineeship with the commercial-TV station in London, Associated Re-diffusion, a really dashing name. And I got out of the traineeship as quickly as possible—within a few months, actually—and started doing programs. At the same time, I did cabaret in the evenings at the Royal Court's Theater Upstairs and then the Blue Angel in London. And while I was appearing at the Blue Angel, the BBC was toying with the idea of a late-night Saturday satire show. Ned Sherrin had been appointed putative producer of that epic and one night Ned came to the Blue Angel when I was performing.
[Q] Playboy: Don't tell us: He saw your act, realized how brilliant you were and signed you on the spot.
[A] Frost: Close, but not quite. He was impressed, however. At the end of my act, I would do an ad-lib press conference as Harold Macmillan, and I'd begin by saying something like, "Right, you can all ask me questions on any subject you want." That night, I remember, someone shouted, "What about the queen?" And I said, "The queen is not a subject." Anyway, I fielded a number of questions and it led to Ned and me having lunch together a week later. We very quickly cooked up That Was the Week That Was and did a pilot of it. When the people at Rediffusion heard about the pilot I'd done for the BBC, they said, "Well, we'll offer you a satire show here if you'll stay." I told them, "I believe in That Was the Week That Was and that's what I want to do!"
[A] The BBC, however, had by no means decided to put That Was the Week That Was on the air. After higher-ups at the BBC looked at the pilot Ned and I had made, they decided that they simply didn't want that sort of seditious filth on the BBC. They really were decided against putting this foul satire on the air when, quite by accident, something changed all that.
[Q] Playboy: What happened?
[A] Frost: There had been one item in the pilot in which a very brilliant journalist named Bernard Levin confronted a group of people he hated. That's what he eventually did in the series: Each week, he'd attack a group of people he hated, and they'd attack him. When we did the pilot, Levin confronted a group of Conservative ladies. Conservative, not with a small C but with a bloody great big C, the kind of women who wear flowered hats and buttons that say, Bring Back Flogging. They kept saying things they didn't realize were double-entendres. One woman kept saying, "Mr. Macmillan has always satisfied me! " And the audience would laugh at her, and then she'd say it again.
Anyway, the women complained about their treatment to the Conservative Party's central office, which, in turn, complained to the BBC. Now, an official complaint from one of the two major parties is obviously a serious matter, and so a higher higher-up in the BBC had to see the offending pilot in order to reply. He saw the program, loved it, thought the complaint was absolute rubbish and put the show on the air. If not for that, That Was the Week That Was would never have made it off the shelf. Those Conservative ladies with the flogging buttons made all the difference.
[A] Eventually, the show became a milestone in television outspokenness. That Was the Week That Was was frank in a way that people didn't then imagine was possible. I mean, it was as frank in England in 1962 as Saturday Night is in America in 1978.
[Q] Playboy: Aside from politicians, did you have any other favorite targets?
[A] Frost: Organized religion sometimes suffered at our hands. Every Monday, the newspapers would print a kind of sports Scoreboard of complaints to the BBC about the show, and there was just an immense outcry after the fifth or sixth week, when we did a Consumers' Guide to Religion. The idea behind it was that the churches were getting more concerned about their worldly image, and therefore they must expect to be judged by worldly standards. So we did a Consumers' Guide to Religion on the basis of what they are, how much they cost and what you get out of it. We examined Judaism, the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England, Islam, Buddhism, and we also included communism, though I can't really recall why. In the end, the best buy turned out to be the Church of England, because it gave you a jolly faith with very little guilt for a very moderate outlay. We also did lighter Biblical satire; for instance, an Old Testament newscast. I recall starting it by saying, "This is BBC-BC, here beginneth the news. The seven elders of the seven tribes have now been abiding in Sodom for seven days and seven nights. There seems little hope of an early settlement. News in brief: At the weighin for the big fight tonight, David tipped the scales at 13 stone, 4 pounds, and Goliath at 14 stone, 4 pounds. David's manager later said, 'The odd stone could make all the difference.' " In England, obviously, the stone is a belter. Oh, and then a thing about, "Now for a look at the weather. We've got a plague of locusts coming in from the north-northeast and they should be at about the Tyre-Sidon area about lunch time tomorrow. Farther south, Egypt. Well, Egypt's been having it pretty badly lately, hasn't it? Ten days ago, it was lice, followed by flies and a murrain on the beasts." And finally a theater review: "At the opening tonight of the Gaza Strip, Samson, this year's Mr. Israel, brought the house down. Thank you very much."
[Q] Playboy: Super stuff, David. Are there any other TW3 routines you care to dredge up from your memory?
[A] Frost: Well, one I particularly liked—I promise to stop after this—was a piece about royal commentators. The fact is, no matter what's going on, royal commentators are determined to be unctuous and reassuring and they'll always comment in the same saccharine way. And so, speaking very softly, I would say, "Now the queen is stepping aboard the royal barge, which will take her out to the Britannia. And now, as the barge moves slowly away from the quayside, it is becoming clear that something has gone wrong. The royal barge is, as it were, sinking. The sleek royal-blue hull of the barge is sliding gracefully, almost regally, beneath the waters of the Pool of London. And there I can see Prince Philip saying something. And now the queen, smiling radiantly, is swimming for her life. She's wearing a pale-blue taffeta dress with matching lace. And there I can see Lord Snowdon and the Duke of Gloucester and both have rushed to the edge of the quay to get a better view. Lord Snowdon has just taken a color photograph."
[A] Anyway, the show was great fun. We had people like Kenneth Tynan and playwrights Peter Shaffer and Tom Stoppard contributing beautifully, elegantly written pieces, and they did it only because there was just nothing else quite like it on the air. I was 23, and part of an enormous success: Our audience went from 1,500,000 the first week to 12,000,000 in six weeks. And we could just get away with all kinds of things. We'd been the last program of the night our first year, but when we started our second year, the BBC put on reruns of The Third Man, starring Michael Rennie, after our show was over. With all the arrogance of youth, we decided it was outrageous that anything should be allowed to go on after us. So I got somebody to find out the plots of those Michael Rennie things and at the end of our program, I'd say, "Coming up next is another edition of The Third Man with Michael Rennie. In this week's episode, it looks at the beginning as though Miss Anderson is the villain. She is the secretary under suspicion. But toward the end, you will learn, to your surprise, that the murder was, in fact, committed by Dr. Laidlaw. Hope you enjoy it. Good night, everybody."
[A] We did that for six consecutive weeks, and then the BBC took off The Third Man, because after I told the plot, the audience went straight into the toilet. And the BBC let us do that. I mean, they should have been outraged, but they weren't.
[Q] Playboy: If TW3 was such a success in England, why was it pulled off the air before completing a second season?
[A] Frost: The BBC took it off in December of 1963 because an election year was coming up and they thought we might influence the results of the '64 elections. Which in one sense was a great compliment but in another sense was ludicrous nonsense—election year is the year when more lies are told than at any other time. Ironically and tragically, we did our most acclaimed program ever after it was announced our show would be going off the air. The Kennedy assassination occurred at seven P.M. on a Friday in England, and we immediately tore apart the show we'd planned for the next night. We realized that there was no other week apart from the assassination, so we dropped all of our sketches and just did a very elegiac, 23-minute program on John F. Kennedy. The program had enormous impact and the BBC shipped it to the States and it was played on NBC four times that weekend. We were requested to do a record of it and all of us knew we couldn't re-create the way we felt when we'd done it, so we said no. However, a sound track of the program was released and it sold more than 300,000 albums, with all the performers giving their royalties to charity. After that, we had three or four more programs—very hard-hitting programs—and the show then ended in a blaze of glory, with everyone saying it was a disgrace to take it off the air.
[Q] Playboy: What was your connection with the American version of TW3?
[A] Frost: Well, NBC bought the title from the BBC and started its version in January 1964. I was sort of a visiting fireman and a semihost of the show during its first season. I really started commuting from London during TW3's second season here. I was doing Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life in England on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. I'd fly to New York on Mondays, do TW3 on Tuesday, work on the following week's TW3 show on Wednesday and then leave Wednesday night for London again.
[Q] Playboy: Did that run you into the ground?
[A] Frost: No, I loved it! Airline travel has never bothered me at all. In fact, when I had a talk show in the U.S.—from 1969 to 1972—I flew more than 1,000,000 miles between New York and London during those three years. I'd do single shows in New York on Mondays and Tuesdays, two shows on Wednesdays, one show on Thursdays, and then I'd fly to England on Fridays and do shows there on Saturdays and Sundays. It was hectic but quite enjoyable. You may or may not be pleased to know that this year I won't be taking more than 20 round trips between London and New York. I'll be spending most of the first part of this year in the U.S., working for NBC-TV. My contract with them calls for not fewer than 12 and not more than 117 specials during the next three years. NBC is a very understanding employer. In the event of death, I have no further obligation to them whatever.
[Q] Playboy: That just may be the only way you'll ever get any rest. Have you ever figured out why you push yourself so?
[A] Frost: Yes, I have. I'm a great believer in the old Puritan work ethic and I guess I feel we have a duty not to waste our time and whatever talents we may have been given but, instead, to use them to the fullest. And I do.
[Q] Playboy: Without putting too fine a point on it, you seem to have a well-earned reputation as a great womanizer. But with the schedule you keep, do you have time for sex? Is there something happening on those 747s that we don't know about?
[A] Frost: No, British Airways claims in its ads to "take good care of you"—but not that good. Actually, I suppose that someone who gets as much fulfillment from his work and who does as much work as I do does have very little time off. And so, gazing at it that way, you might think, God, he doesn't have very much time for a private life. But I think that most terrific women would much rather have a man who is fulfilled in his work than someone who's miserable about his work or who is escaping from his work. I mean, was it Erich Fromm who said, "I need you because I love you, not I love you because I need you"? No, it wasn't. It must have been Milton Berle.
[Q] Playboy: Sounds more like Werner Erhard to us, but we won't worry about it. Or even think about it, beyond noting that you might be right. You've been linked romantically, as they say in fan magazines, with a succession of terrific women, among them Diahann Carroll, Liv Ullmann, Bibi Andersson, Carol Lynley, Charlotte Rampling and your present ladyfriend, Caroline Cushing. David, what have you got that all these women want?
[A] Frost: Modesty forbids. I never really discuss my private life; I just enjoy it. The press, I must say, has exhibited a great fascination about my private life, but I've managed to keep a few things secret. As far as myself and women, let's just say that I've been very lucky.
[Q] Playboy: Others might say luck has nothing to do with it.
[A] Frost: Well, women are very important in my life, and I guess they realize that I like women and I like their company and their conversation. Also, I have a fairly straightforward European attitude, in the sense that I believe a woman should be free to do her own tiling. But when she's with her man, she wants the man to supply a bit of leadership. I find it difficult to explain, but long may it continue.
[Q] Playboy: Any particular reason you haven't been married?
[A] Frost: No, but I think I will get married before I have children. I'm probably still that much of a traditionalist. I enjoy women enormously, but I've always believed that marriage is forever and I've never really felt, finally, that this is forever. Nearly have once or twice, though. I have a curious sort of belief in (concluded on page 222)Playboy Interview(continued from page 92) marriage as an eternal institution, you know.
[Q] Playboy: Is it possible for a woman to carry on a successful relationship with you if she isn't addicted to airplanes?
[A] Frost: Any woman who suffers from travel sickness, I think, is out as far as I'm concerned. Obviously, the stresses of travel have to be negligible as far as the ladies in my life are concerned. But that doesn't mean they have to go on every trip I make. If I go off on a lightning, whistle-stop tour of four cities, it wouldn't be very enjoyable for someone to tag along, so I probably wouldn't suggest she come along, because it wouldn't be much fun for her. But, on the other hand, if one's going to Australia for two weeks, that's a very enjoyable trip. And so that works out fine.
[Q] Playboy: Does all this hard living and hard working have a purpose? Do you have any concrete goals above and beyond immersing yourself in your own constantly rising media mix?
[A] Frost: There's a phrase that Robert Kennedy used in the interview I did with him about making a contribution that I think is a very good phrase, because it's terribly difficult to answer your question without sounding officious or pompous or whatever. But I think the phrase making a contribution pictures it at the right sort of level, in the sense that it's a phrase that pictures it modestly but can mean a lot without having to say a lot. God, I don't know how to put it other than saying, in my case, I hope it's making some sort of contribution in terms of awareness or information or understanding. Also, one of the most satisfying things I've ever found to do with my life is to give other people some of the opportunities I've had, people who've been said no to in terms of doing the thing they believe in. I mean, writing the thing they believe in, performing the thing they believe in. There was a whole area of humor in England that I was able to help make happen simply because I took the responsibility of giving those people their own shows and took the blame if they were wrong. They've gone on to great success, and it would be too much to say that it gave one a greater pleasure than doing it oneself, because that would be exaggerating, but it gave one as much pleasure, really. You know, I've been very fortunate. I've had a lot of opportunities and I've tried to seize them with both hands, but without a bit of luck, probably nobody can make that advance. Now, I don't think there are a lot of unsung Tennessee Williamses or unsung Mort Sahls or unsung whoever else one cares to name around the world. But I think there are some people who haven't been given the opportunity they ought to have been given. And anything one can do in that area gives one enormous pleasure.
[Q] Playboy: Do you find yourself moving more and more in that direction—having been a performer and suddenly enjoying your role as a producer?
[A] Frost: I do enjoy it enormously, but then, I really like getting my teeth into so many things. Sitting down and really working on the Nixon book was an extraordinarily satisfying experience. I've always wanted to do more writing and I haven't yet found the time for it. I've wanted to write about the Dutch Resistance for the past 15 years. Now, I doubt I will ever get around to that, but I might, because I'm a great believer in the reverse of Parkinson's Law; Parkinson's Law is that thing about your job expanding to fill the time allotted for it. I think your time expands to allow you to cram in as many things as you're sufficiently determined to cram in. I look at the number of things I do now and I know I'm doing more things than I did five years ago, so I have found time for the extra things, you know. I think it's a question of determination. It's also a question of adrenaline, for if something you do really excites you, you can find the time and energy to do it.
[Q] Playboy: But you really have no idea—five or ten years down the road—what will excite you?
[A] Frost: No, I haven't. I mean, I know it's new challenges and new frontiers and new opportunities, obviously, but what they will be—no. I don't proceed with a carefully mapped-out long-term plan. However, I can discern in my conduct a number of sort of overriding principles of things I do and things I don't do. I don't do things that I don't believe in, because I know that, one, I wouldn't do them well and, two, they wouldn't give me the pleasure and adrenaline I'd need from them. So I don't know what I'll be doing a dozen years from now. At the age of 50, I might want to be prime minister or I might be running a leper colony. I have no idea, but I'm keeping every option open.
"Nixon finally handed back the check like a small boy who'd thought he could get away with a cookie before dinner."
"Nixon was a killer in debate. I recognized that if he found a chink in our armor, he would drive a truck through it."
"And then Nixon said, 'Well, what word do you suggest?' That was the most heart-stopping question I'd ever been asked."
"Amin struck me more as cunning than insane, though I walked away with a sense that he probably was a loose can on the deck."
"A dozen years from now, I might want to be prime minister or I might be running a leper colony"
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