Playboy Interview: Dick Cavett

Take all the talk shows in the world and place them format to format on a continuum ranging from trenchant debate to plastic escapism. Then take all the talk-show hosts and line them up lip to lip, with relentless inquisitors at one end and vacuous buffoons at the other. At the point where these, two lines intersect—somewhere near the mid-point of each—there are very few shows that carefully combine serious discussion and comic relief, and attract an audience of millions. "The Dick Cavett Show" is one of these and, as even talk-show haters concede, no one displays a better sense of balance and elegance than its facile host.

He once told a reporter, "A real conversationalist is one who builds on something that starts between people and is able to develop it, see it change and then improvise before your eyes.... I like to see somebody's mind working while he's talking and I like to come away with the sense that my mind has been engaged and stretched a bit." The mind working here is the scholarly, inquisitive, intellectual side of Dick Cavett, the side he projects in civilized discourse with such diverse guests as Noel Coward, Orson Welles, Ramsey Clark, Margaret Mead, Ralph Nader, Lester Maddox and I. F. Stone.

Born on November 19, 1936, the son of two Nebraska schoolteachers, Cavett has impressive academic credentials. After his family moved from Gibbon to Grand Island and finally to Lincoln, Nebraska, he reportedly posted the highest I. Q. in the history of that city's junior high schools, earned a scholarship to Yale in 1954, appeared on the dean's list his freshman year and coasted to a degree in English, literature.

Still a conscientious student ("At Yale, my roommates would shit when I'd finish a paper four days before it was due"), he tries to read as many as possible of the books to be discussed on his show, in addition to the three newspapers and numerous periodicals he wolfs down with his breakfast every day. Paradoxically, Cavett denies being an intellectual, explaining that he's more likely to sustain a stream of consciousness than a stream of thought. It's probably this tendency toward free association and away from logic that prompted Gore Vidal to describe him as "the James Joyce of the talkmasters, with an unconscious mind working overtime." Therein lies the essence of Cavett: intellect leavened with an irreverent, compulsive wit and frequent forays into pure non sequitur. "It's fun to ask a guest something he's never been asked before," Cavett has said. "Like the time I asked Jim Brown if he ran into much homosexuality in pro football." Among other mischievous rules for good discussion, Cavett maintains: "Do not call attention to the deformities of the person you're speaking with. Try to have a language in common. Do not leave the room during the other person's sentences."

It's this wry, dry wit, coupled with an abiding childhood ambition to succeed in show business, that's been the making of Cavett. Inspired at the age of ten by a magician he saw at a Nebraska state fair, Dick put together an act of his own and at the ripe age of 12 was earning $30 a performance; a year later, he won a trophy for the best new performer at a St. Louis magicians' convention. He made his debut as an actor at 11 in Terence Rattigan's "The Winslow Boy"—he says he was the only kid in Lincoln who could muster a convincing English accent—then went on to high school and college productions and eventually to a few seasons of summer stock in New England. But after moving to New York City, Cavett, like most young actors, found it almost impossible to break into the exclusive sanctum of regularly employed performers; his most notable roles were a bit part on "Playhouse 90" and a wounded German soldier in an Army training film.

It was at this point, in 1960, that he went to the NBC studios with an unsolicited collection of jokes he'd written for Jack Paar, whom he still considers the nonpareil talk-show host. After literally bumping into Paar in a hallway, he thrust an envelope into his hands, mumbled something about a monolog, then waited apprehensively while Paar perused it in the privacy of his office. Two weeks later, after Paar used some of his jokes successfully on the air, Cavett was invited to leave the $50-a-week job he'd taken as a copy boy for Time and to begin work as a $360-a-week writer for "The Tonight Show." When Paar quit a few years later, Cavett stayed on to write for several guest hosts, among them Groucho Marx, Mort Sahl and Merv Griffin, but then he left the show himself to write comedy for Jerry Lewis and eventually for Johnny Carson.

In 1966, encouraged by Woody Allen, a new-found friend, he decided to eliminate the middleman by performing his own material, beginning in Greenwich Village clubs, most notably the Bitter End, and then moving up to more prestigious night spots such as the hungry i in San Francisco and Mr. Kelly's in Chicago. In the next two years, his former employers Messrs. Carson and Griffin booked him more than a dozen times each on their shows, and ABC featured him as a comedian on two specials before signing him to host his own morning talk show in 1968. It got consistently low ratings and was dropped after ten months—though FCC Commissioner Nicholas Johnson had commended the show as an oasis in the wasteland. Still confident in Cavett, ABC returned him to the air as a summer replacement in 1969 with a thrice-weekly one-hour prime-time talk show whose schedule was so odd—Monday, Tuesday and Friday—that Groucho Marx complained he needed a secretary to remind him what nights it was on. Finally, in December 1969, Cavett was eased into the late-night slot vacated by Joey Bishop. In the months since his debut, Dick's audience has almost doubled to a respectable 14 percent of all switched-on set owners—about 14,000,000 viewers weekly in 133 cities—and ABC happily renewed his contract.

Today, though estimates of his salary run as high as $15,000 a week, Cavett remains relatively unspoiled by his success. He and his wife, actress Carrie Nye—they met as students at Yale—occupy a two-story Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan that was formerly owned by Woody Allen; on summer weekends, they retreat to Long Island and a late-19th Century clapboard house on the dunes overlooking the Atlantic. Once a medal-winning high school gymnast, Cavett maintains his 5'7"1135-pound physique by snorkeling and surfing whenever possible. He drinks an occasional glass of wine, never smokes, hates parties and is almost never seen at movies, plays or night clubs. The herculean task of preparing and performing his show five nights a week leaves him with little time or inclination for anything else, and most of his leisure hours are spent with his wife, reading and relaxing.

Consequently, when Playboy sent former Associate Editor Harold Ramis—now an actor and free-lance writer—to interview Cavett, they shoehorned their conversation into brief breaks in Dick's work schedule. The dialog took place in Cavett's wood-paneled office at ABC Studios. Daphne Productions—his own company, named after one of his dogs—is located, on Broadway, around the corner from the 430-seat 58th Street theater in which his show is taped. "In our first meeting," Ramis reports, "he divided his attention between me and a plate of spaghetti. The second session, it was scallops. Chicken salad highlighted our third meeting. But despite the distractions, I soon realized that Cavett is a remarkably consistent and unaffected person, virtually the same off screen as he is on—polite, honest, clever and congenial. The television industry, so dependent on superficial images, tends to package human beings and promote them like products. Cavett remains very much his own man." Expecting—and getting—an honest answer, Ramis began the interview by asking Cavett to comment on the pervasive mediocrity of network TV, present company excluded.

[Q] Playboy: It's often argued that because of the economics of the mass media, only those shows that appeal to the lowest common denominator can succeed on American television. Do you think this is true?

[A] Cavett: That's a difficult question. Must anything successful be inferior? Certainly some good things have succeeded on television. I don't think the medium is all crap.

[Q] Playboy: What percentage would you describe as crap?

[A] Cavett: Ninety-five percent. I'm sorry; that's a ridiculous exaggeration.Make that 93 percent.

[Q] Playboy: Do you agree with those critics who say that ABC is responsible for more than its share of crap?

[A] Cavett: No. ABC used to get more than a third of the blame back when they were a stable instead of a network, but their policies have changed and their programing has gotten better. I don't think you could say now that ABC is crasser than the other two networks. But as long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it. It becomes an ever-descending spiral.

[Q] Playboy:Most of the critics seem to feel that your own show is several cuts above the general level of programing. At first, though, you didn't seem so sure of that yourself, and several reviewers pointed out that you appeared to be disconcertingly nervous.

[A] Cavett: They really shouldn't review a new talk show for the first few weeks. The important thing is how you're going to do in the long run, not how you do on opening night, with network execs standing in the back and beady-eyed agents sitting in the aisle seats. I shouldn't generalize, of course; there are agents who don't have beady eyes—two, in fact. But it was very perceptive of the critics to notice that I was nervous. Probably when I trembled, turned rigid and then fell off the chair, they began to get that idea.

[Q] Playboy: You're obviously less nervous now than you were then.

[A] Cavett: Sure, but it varies from night to night. The best thing to do is tell yourself that it doesn't show one eighth as much as you feel. If you're a little nervous, you don't look nervous at all. If you're very nervous, you look slightly nervous. And if you're totally out of control, you look troubled. It scales down on the screen. Anybody who appears on talk shows should always remind himself that everything he's doing looks better than it feels. In straight performing, I don't think that holds true. If you think it's lousy when you're doing it, chances are that it is—although again, not as bad as you think. Your nervous system may be giving you a thousand shocks, but the viewer can see only a few of them. So the camera lies in your favor in spite of all the platitudes you hear about its showing up the phonies. If the camera really showed up the phonies, this business would fold in about three weeks.

[Q] Playboy: Who are the most prominent phonies?

[A] Cavett: I'd tell you, but some of them are my dearest friends.

[Q] Playboy: Why is there so much tension involved in doing the show?

[A] Cavett: In actually sitting there and doing it? Your mind is split in about six or more ways at all times. To the viewer, it looks like all the host—that sounds so much folksier than "star," doesn't it?—has got to do is follow the conversation. But you're not only doing that; you're thinking ahead, wondering whether to change the subject or pursue it, trying to decide whether there's time in this segment to start something new, dying inside when the guest launches into a long story and you know there's less than a minute left before the station break and that the guest will be thrown and the story ruined if you interrupt, thinking that his last story may involve the show in a lawsuit and wondering if you should say something that might help or let it pass, knowing that an upcoming guest has said, "If that schmuck is still out there when I come on, I'll leave," wondering what it was he told you not to forget to ask him and trying to decide, of five things you wanted to get to, which two to leave out, since time is running out, and wondering why the audience seems restless and what signal the stage manager just gave you that you missed. Usually these things all come together about the time you've just decided your fly is open and that's what the ladies in row E are whispering about and why the stage manager signaled. It's a wonderful job for people who have never had a nervous breakdown but always wanted one. It all has to do with the built-in artificiality of trying to have real conversation with all those imposed time limits. It's the tension you get when someone is telling you his life story on a subway platform and your train is coming.

[Q] Playboy: Some other talk shows are done without a studio audience and seem much more relaxed. Does the audience contribute to the pressure?

[A] Cavett: They're an enormous force sitting there and they pull you in several directions. It's the audience that makes a host push for laughs, because you're aware of those hundreds of people who haven't been heard from in several minutes, and you feel obliged to keep them entertained. I'm always aware of wanting to end a segment on a laugh—a strain you don't feel in real conversation. You have to learn to play the studio audience and also forget them, because the home audience is your big audience and they don't care if the people in the studio are bored as long as they're interested. And one of the things you learn—too slowly—is that due to some mysterious process, the face and voice that may be putting you and the studio audience to sleep may be hypnotically fascinating to the home viewer. Remember that, dear reader, when you host your own talk show. And most of you will, from the looks of things.

[Q] Playboy: Johnny Carson often goes for laughs by reacting with facial takes to the camera. Do you think that's fair to the guest?

[A] Cavett: If I don't do it, it may be because I'm aware that Carson does and I don't want it to seem like I'm imitating him. But I think it's very effective. I've learned to play to the camera more than I used to because I think my reactions should register somehow. A lot of mine used to be lost because I didn't know which camera was on me. When I started out, I did some very funny takes to the studio clock, which I thought was a camera.

[Q] Playboy:Do you think some of your guests may find it irritating when you interrupt with a joke to the audience?

[A] Cavett: I'm aware that it can be disturbing at times if I do it in the wrong way, but that's a chance I'm willing to take.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever been reprimanded by a guest for your flippancy?

[A] Cavett: I think I have a fairly good instinct for when a laugh is permissible.If my "flippancy," as you so quaintly call it, has annoyed anyone, they haven't told me. I continue to think of myself as a comedian, and if anyone expects me to not try to get laughs, that's their tough luck. I don't want the show to look like it's on the educational channel at three P.M. on Sunday, and although I have certain admirers who would prefer it that way and think it's cheap when I get a laugh, I would never think of changing that. When people say, "Why lower yourself to Carson's level?," I think that's pukey snobbism on their part. First, by their assumption that I think Carson is some sort of lower form, and second, that laughs are crass. Wrong on both. I say what I think is amusing and what I think will amuse the viewer, whenever I think it fits.

[Q] Playboy: Are there any guests with whom you wouldn't go for a laugh?

[A] Cavett: No, I can't think of a subject where some kind of humor isn't possible. If you want rules, they're: (1) Follow your instincts and (2) Don't ask an archbishop if he ever balled a pig.

[Q] Playboy: Like other talk shows with a studio audience, yours employs an Applause sign that's flashed on and off when you come out for your monolog. Isn't that almost as artificial as canned laughter?

[A] Cavett: Though they always punch the Applause sign, I don't think they keep it going after my entrance. But even when applause isn't cued, I feel a little silly standing there, because I've never exulted in applause or gotten the kind of kick you're supposed to get from it. There are some nights when 1 catch a few grinning faces in the audience and it seems like those people are genuinely glad to see me; that can help. But you can always find some conventioneer looking walleyed or nodding off. Any applause that's clearly artificial bothers me, though. I remember one period on Carson's show when there was an irritating use of the Applause sign. I think Carson finally had it stopped after one night when Skitch Henderson said that the acoustics in the Buffalo Auditorium were so good that any musician would be glad to play there. The audience responded with a "spontaneous" burst of applause for those acoustics.

[Q] Playboy: If you're not that interested in the applause, why don't you take the sign down and let the audience decide for themselves when to applaud?

[A] Cavett: It's not a serious problem; I'm sure we don't use it during conversation. At the end of a segment, it makes a kind of dissolve that's nice; but when acoustics start getting electronically cued applause on my show, I will personally shoot the damn thing down. It's almost as bad as the kind of applause the phonies on panel shows get with any sentence that ends on a positive, Norman Vincent Pealeish note, or one that ends with something like, "If parents would paddle a few more fannies, this country would be a better place to live in!" For this kind of thing, there should be another electric sign that says Fart!

[Q] Playboy: The major talk shows vary little in general format. Have you or your producers considered any innovations for yours?

[A] Cavett: When a talk show starts, there's always a discussion of how this one is going to be different. People say things like, "Maybe we'll have people sit on blocks of ice," or something. And I've wondered how it would be to do the show with everybody standing. But there's very little you can do with conversation that would be significantly different. The quality can be different, but that's a mysterious thing I can't be too specific about. It's an atmosphere. You want the audience to sense that there's something about you or your show they might not get from watching someone else's show. I think this was certainly true with Paar. I used to watch him no matter who his guests were because there was some kind of tone in the conversation that pleased me above and beyond the specific personalities. This is increasingly important, because with so many talk shows now, certain celebrities appear so much that they become devalued currency.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think many people watch your show regardless of who you have as guests?

[A] Cavett: Yeah, a lot of people write in and say they watch the show every night.

[Q] Playboy: Why? What is it about you?

[A] Cavett: I think it's the way I cross and uncross my legs in a sensuous and provocative manner. People of both sexes have confessed to being driven to the brink of madness by it.

[Q] Playboy: Seriously.

[A] Cavett: Seriously, I haven't the slightest. They get to know you, I guess, and get in the habit of liking to spend some time with you. That and maybe the show having a tone they like, which should involve a certain amount of the unexpected. Like in a serious interview with Wernher Von Braun, after he had told how a Nazi informant had gotten him into trouble with the Gestapo and Himmler, I suddenly lapsed into German and then said in English, "You don't remember, do you?"with a German accent, pretending to be that informant. His expression and the laugh that followed are the kind of thing I, as a viewer, would like to see now and then on this kind of show.So I might watch every night even if I weren't on it.

[Q] Playboy: Is there any other host you'd consider watching every night?

[A] Cavett: I can remember being really obsessed with the Paar show. I watched it every night; it was about all I lived for in those days. It was one of those neurotic years in an actor's life: You're making the rounds at all the agencies, but nothing's happening and you think you're getting mononucleosis again, so you'd better stay in your apartment for three weeks and read. You wind up sleeping 14 hours a day, but you're still tired and you don't want to go out or see anybody.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you think you weren't getting acting jobs?

[A] Cavett: I couldn't interest an agent in me. I didn't seem "commercial." Like most actors, I blew a lot of money on glossy photos; but when I got to an agent's office, I never looked like I did in the photos. They'd say, "Oh, I thought you were a leading man. You look taller and heavier in your photographs." I had one set of pictures that made me look like some sort of swarthy East Indian type. I swear it looked like I had dark skin. I think Sidney Poitier borrowed those pictures and got his first job with them.

[Q] Playboy: You hadn't been acting too long before you were hired by Jack Paar as a writer. Were you reluctant to give up your acting career?

[A] Cavett: No, not really. I was never one of those people who feel that if someone cut off my legs and moved me to Ogden, Utah, I'd act in my wheelchair. I never had that burning drive. I did have an unfocused desire to be in show business, though, and I realized after I wrote that first monolog for Paar that I had done it not to start a writing career but simply to meet him. I'd been doing temporary work as a typist, getting dressed up on cold, dreary mornings and going down to Wall Street to type labels all day. I'd sit there and actually try to figure out ways to get on the Paar show. Then I got the job as a copy boy at Time and that led to—No, I can't tell the story again about Paar and the monolog. It's a matter of public record in about 34 places. In any case, even after I got the job writing, I still had a modest ambition to be a guest on the show. I was sure that if I got out there, they'd see that I could really talk and get laughs. I can even remember writing down funny things to say on the show and stashing them around my apartment.

[Q] Playboy: Did you simply want to be a celebrity?

[A] Cavett: That's possible. I haven't thought of it that way. But I do remember having the desire to be recognized. When I was a kid, Bob Hope came to Lincoln, Nebraska, and I remember the adoring crowds watching him get into his car.I thought, "God, it must be wonderful to live the kind of life he does!" I had the same feeling about Fred Allen. I'd been to see What's My Line? at the studio one night and afterward I saw him standing under the marquee outside. No one was asking him for his autograph, which I found strange, and he started walking toward Broadway, and I just sort of followed him, thinking, "Jesus, that's Fred Allen." As he approached the corner, two bums stepped out of the shadows and said, "You're the greatest, Fred. You're funnier than Milton Berle." He said, "Ah, my fan club is gathering." Then he handed some envelopes with money in them to the bums and walked down to the subway. I thought, "Shit! Should I talk to him? Should I follow him onto the subway?" I'll always regret that I didn't.

[Q] Playboy: Were you as impressed by Jack Paar once you started working for him?

[A] Cavett: Yes. I didn't have that much direct contact with him, but there was always a kind of adrenaline pumping when you worked around Paar that affected his whole staff. He had a kind of emotional quality on camera that everyone in the press talked about, and there was an assumption that he couldn't be that emotional and still be terribly bright. It's another kind of snobbism I've seen before and since. Actually, he was funny, quick-witted and really smart. He used to read an awful lot and he made a terrific effort to compensate for what he considered a lack of education. Because of his great respect for learning, he'd tend to overrespect people he thought were smarter than he was. Very often, they weren't.

[Q] Playboy: Why haven't you had Paar as a guest on your show?

[A] Cavett: I'd love to and I've asked him, but he says it would create certain problems for him that he'd rather avoid. I still hope he will someday. He changes his phone number more than a callgirl with a will to fail. He's one of the oddest, most interesting and likable men I've ever met. I wish I saw him more often, but I guess nobody does. I'd give anything to see about a month of kinescopes of the old Paar Tonight Show. I guess they're gone forever. It's a shame.

[Q] Playboy: After Paar left The Tonight Show, you wrote for a number of people who subsequently hosted the show. Which of them impressed you most?

[A] Cavett: I suppose Groucho was the most fun to write for because he'd always been a great hero of mine. I knew his style and it was a thrill to hear him say my lines. I even wrote a couple of things that Mort Sahl used when he did the show, which I would have thought was impossible, since Mort's style is so tied up in his personality.When I was doing my act, I used to say that one of my first jobs was writing dirty little remarks and selling them to children who wanted to get on the Art Linkletter show.

[Q] Playboy: What prompted you to start performing your own material?

[A] Cavett: I'd had some sort of unformed desire to do it ever since my magic-act days, but the hard thing is finding out how to start.Where do you go to be a comedian? Then, when I was working for Paar, I was sent to the Blue Angel to look at a comedian who used to write for Sid Caesar. He was about my age and just getting his act together. It was Woody Allen. We talked a lot and became friends, and I watched where he went and how he did it. I learned that the easiest route was to go from Greenwich Village clubs to television. So then, when I was working for Carson, I started writing my act and began to appear in clubs.

[Q] Playboy: What was it that you liked so much about Woody Allen's work?

[A] Cavett: I thought every joke was brilliant and perfectly suited to his personality—his look, his shape, his size and all of that. I suppose, when I first sat down to write my act, I was influenced by what I thought he'd write. But it wasn't easy for me, because I don't have a role as clear as his to play.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have any trouble breaking in your act?

[A] Cavett: Well, my first night at the Bitter End was a disaster. An unmitigated flop. Twenty minutes of concrete silence. Larger laughs have been heard in a total vacuum.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of material were you doing?

[A] Cavett: I'd love to know now. Only under the deepest hypnosis could that 20 minutes come back. It's been wiped from my conscious mind. It must have been a satiric look at the Hanseatic League or a behind-the-scenes, tongue-in-cheek spoof of the Council of Trent. All I remember is standing up there with perspiration pouring over my eyebrows and into my eyes. I knew that if I reached up to wipe it away I'd only call attention to it. I thought, "Maybe it isn't just me. Maybe it's really hot in here and everybody's sweating." I saw the owner of the club discreetly leave during my act and I was sure that later he'd say to me, "Gee, I'm sorry I missed your act. I hear some of it was fine." But afterward, Jack Rollins, my manager, said to me, "I know this is going to surprise you, but it wasn't as bad as you think. He thought the best thing to do would be to perform again, so I did. I went on at the Improvisation for a few nights and all the things that hadn't worked on my first night started to get laughs. Of course, there were still a lot of dismal nights after that; it was agony sometimes. But there were other nights when I thought, "Now I have it. I know how it works now. I'll never do another bad show."

[Q] Playboy: Did it get any less painful when you did?

[A] Cavett: Well, sometimes the fact that I was bombing struck me as hysterically funny. Once I got an audience I'll never forget at a place called the Duplex. A bus drove up and deposited what was obviously a tour. All of the men looked like potato farmers from some Baltic country and the women were indistinguishable from the men. It was such a small club, I could see all of them clearly, and every face looked like a fish's profile. When I say the silence was audible, I mean it. There seemed to be not just silence but an eerie kind of endless intake of breath. I was dying so utterly that it was hilarious to me and I began to smirk, giggle and finally laugh aloud at the silences following my jokes. The bartender was strangling with suppressed laughter to the point where he nearly asphyxiated himself on his own carbon dioxide. When I finished, I said, "This is where you applaud, and I want to congratulate most of you on looking remarkably lifelike," and left the stage in utter silence. I don't think a performer has ever enjoyed an audience so much.

[Q] Playboy:Did you begin to enjoy the work consistently once you became more self-assured?

[A] Cavett: Sometimes it was very, very exhilarating. I'd think, "This is a wonderful way to make a living. 1 feel sorry for people who don't do this as a profession." But that feeling can disappear rather suddenly. Sometimes it was terrible to think I'd have to come back the next night and do the same crap all over again. And it could be almost as depressing to do a good show as it was to do a bad one. I'd come off the stage and think, "What have I got? It's not on film or on tape. Only a couple of hundred people saw it. Yeah, they laughed; but now they're talking among themselves about other things and soon they're going to file out and a whole new group is going to come in and I'll have to start the whole goddamned thing all over again." Then, if the second show didn't do as well as the first, I'd think, "How can I prove to these people that I really was funny an hour ago?"

[Q] Playboy: You must have convinced somebody. Didn't you think you'd finally made it when you began to appear in 1967 on such new-talent specials as Where It's At?

[A] Cavett: I thought they were calling it Where It Sat. That's the only reason I agreed to do it. As we all know, to advertise oneself as "in" is to immediately put oneself out. I did another show for NBC, by the way, that was completely forgotten and never seen on the air. It was called The Star and the Story and it was ingeniously put together by Woody Fraser, my first producer. It was a cross between This Is Your Life and a talk show. We'd take a star and tell his life story in five half-hour episodes. They used Van Johnson for the pilot I made. Somehow, it didn't jell, to put it mildly. Whereas most pilot shows are "in the can," this one went down it. You may remember on the Emmy show when I was caught on camera running upstage to examine the celluloid streamers festooning the set. I thought they might be my pilot for The Star and the Story.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have any misgivings when ABC signed you to do your morning talk show?

[A] Cavett: It was more a feeling of: "I'm not sure it's what I want, but I'll try it. Maybe I can do it."

[Q] Playboy: What other formats might you have preferred?

[A] Cavett: Well, I had an idea for a talent-scout-type show called Out You Go!, where the losers have to leave the business. It would be a good way of nipping in the bud tomorrow's lousy singers, cruddy comics and witless impressionists, of which we have such an endless supply today. Instead of "Where will tomorrow's talent come from?," its motto would be, "Let's tell today's dreck where to go!" The gifted and improvable ones would, of course, be given subsidies for the rest of their careers. If this had happened years ago, there might be less TV, but more people watching what there was.

[Q] Playboy: Did you use any of your comic heroes as a model for your new role as talk-show host?

[A] Cavett: I'm sure, at given moments, I modeled it after everybody I've ever seen. I'm a good mimic. As in writing, it has to do with hearing their voices in your inner ear. It affects you in performance. At times, I sit there and think, "I don't know what I'd say, but I know what so-and-so would say." So I'll react as Paar or Groucho or Carson would. I think everybody does this to some extent. Maybe not. No, some people wouldn't. They would be totally original and react only as themselves. I guess it's an identity problem.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think you've established your own identity by now?

[A] Cavett: If I have one, it's a kind of dimpled winsomeness masquerading as sophistication, a sort of cross between Robert Mitchum and Peter Pan, a wisdom beyond my years, concealed in the body of a cherub, a combination of wit and earthiness, as if Voltaire and Jane Russell had had a child! How the hell can a person describe his identity? That's for others to answer, your Honor.

[Q] Playboy: What qualities of yours do you try hardest to repress on the air?

[A] Cavett: Snappish temper. I've failed several times. Sometimes it's directed at the guest, but quite often it's some disturbance that I consider inexcusable.

[Q] Playboy: Are you ever simply in a bad mood?

[A] Cavett: I've been fairly lucky on that. I don't seem to be prone to mood swings of an extreme nature, as they call them in the trade. Occasionally, though, I go into a show loathing it and my job, but once I'm out there, I'll come storming out of that mood and be up for several hours after the show. Every performer has this experience and nobody can really explain it adequately. Of course, there are other nights you go out feeling bad and then sink with it.

[Q] Playboy: Are you ever bored while doing the show?

[A] Cavett: I wouldn't call it boredom, because I'm always on edge one way or another. I'm not likely to fall asleep. But I do find myself acting interested in a hell of a lot of things I'm not really that interested in. I just can't think of a gracious alternative—something to do when I'm not interested. Maybe I could say, "Go ahead and talk. I'm just going to finish this article in Reader's Digest."

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever wish you were the guest instead of the host?

[A] Cavett: It's easier and harder to be a guest. Easier because you do your thing and you're through, harder because you have less time to do it and you're not back tomorrow to redeem yourself. The comedy guest in particular has to score quickly. Also, there are times when someone with a fascinating story tells it badly and I think I should have told the story and let him nod to verify it. But the guest is at the host's mercy in so many ways that maybe it's easier to be the host. Come to think of it, the best thing is to be the viewer.

[Q] Playboy: How are guests selected for the show?

[A] Cavett: The staff and the producer do it. I'd go berserk if I tried to do that, mainly because I'd find objections to everyone who's suggested. I've found that I'm much better off having the guests selected for me. I've done wonderful shows with people who'd never have been on if it had been up to me. No names, please.

[Q] Playboy: Does the network ever suggest guests for the show?

[A] Cavett: Yeah, people they have an interest in because they're on other ABC shows. Some I've had on and some I've vetoed because I thought they'd be too boring.

[Q] Playboy: Can the network veto your guests? Censor your tapes?

[A] Cavett: I can honestly say the network has never insisted someone not be on. They can, of course, censor. I've won some fascinating arguments on that, and so have they. But there's very little censorship, which is as it should be. Censorship feeds the dirty mind more than the four-letter word itself would. If a guest says, "He was standing there absent-mindedly fingering his crotch ..." and it's censored to "absent-mindedly fingering his—," well, you see what happens. What's appalling is that a local station manager can take out all of Margaret Mead's remarks and leave in all of Ronald Reagan's—or vice versa—if he wants to, on the grounds that one "isn't good for his community." When this has happened, I've gotten outraged letters from people hip enough to know it's the local station's doing and not the network's. I wish people would let me know—with details.

[A] But you do have to think about wounded sensibilities. If someone says, "The Pope's a pimp" or "The Queen sucks eggs" or worse, I don't mind losing it, although I could argue for leaving it in on the grounds that the viewer has been cheated of forming his own opinion of the speaker, and that it wouldn't do any lasting harm. It's the pornography cliche, "No woman was ever ruined by a book." But even that may not be true. I did hear of an eccentric old crock back in Nebraska who boiled and ate a Bible, bit by bit, on the grounds that the Holy Writ would somehow shine through her. They say it played hob with her digestive tract and she was never again able to eat anything but tapioca. So there's a woman who was ruined by a book. So there are no absolutes. Have you ever played hob? It's a shame it went out of style.

[Q] Playboy: Are you generally satisfied with the guests who are booked?

[A] Cavett: Yes, but I think there are ways of planning shows that haven't been tried yet and I'd like to try some of them. There might be more thought put into bringing the guests together on a subject. Usually there isn't time, but often there's a feeling that the show is coming together at the end. and that if we had another hour of tape we could do a more interesting hour than the first one. But it's hard to do that as much as I'd like, because often it's just a case of who's available. You schedule your abortion show for Thursday, but then you find out that two comedians from your "Salute to Broadway" show will have to be inserted into the abortion show. That's the kind of trouble you run into with subject-matter shows.

[Q] Playboy: Two or three of the talk shows will often have the same guest on within a short period of time, usually because he or she is on a promotional junket of some kind. How do you feel about the fact that you're often the second to get such guests?

[A] Cavett: Griffin has gone to California and changed that picture, but I've had a number of people first and so has Carson. People may watch both shows to compare the two appearances, so you may get some viewers who wouldn't have watched otherwise. In that way, it may be an advantage to have a guest second.

[Q] Playboy: Is there anyone you'd like to have on the show who's refused to appear?

[A] Cavett: Oh, sure. I'd love to get Katharine Hepburn and Greta Garbo—or maybe Edmund Wilson. On second thought, forget Edmund. He wouldn't do it anyway.

[Q] Playboy: Do you often have personal friends on the show?

[A] Cavett: I'm friendly with some people in the business, but there aren't many faces I see on the show that I also see across my dinner table. And there are some guests I'd rather go to a slaughterhouse than run into off the show. Of course, you want to know who they are. Since my choice of words is so pungent, I don't think I ought to mention them. Wise viewers can tell who these people are by the little things that happen around my mouth and my eyes while I'm talking to them. I don't want to spoil the game for the audience.

[Q] Playboy: If you dislike these people so much, why have them on?

[A] Cavett: I've had a couple of people on whom I consider pigs—not in the current sense of the word—and I think it broadens the spectrum. I'm also curious to see how I'll react to them. For some perverse reason, I'm often extra nice to a person I really despise. Of course, I don't want people to think that I despise everyone I'm nice to—or vice versa.

[Q] Playboy: Do you expect the audience to like a guest you personally don't like?

[A] Cavett: They obviously do, because some of these people are quite popular with the public. If you're asking whether or not my feelings about the guest influence the audience's feelings about him, I haven't thought about it. God, I'm shallow in a lot of areas. I can't pose as profound on subjects I haven't given any thought to. What do I mean I can't? I often have. I mean I shouldn't.

[Q] Playboy: Can you think of any guests who've been particularly informative to you personally?

[A] Cavett: I like to think that I'm capable of seeing the truth in a statement, whether it's made by a Black Panther or by Bill Buckley, but I'm rarely relaxed enough when I'm on the air to go through an actual learning process. Maybe when I'm watching the playback of the show I'll learn something, but it's less likely to happen on the air.

[Q] Playboy: Did you learn much from Orson Welles during his two 90-minute appearances on the show?

[A] Cavett: Welles was, and I hope will continue to be, a rare treat for me and the audience. When asked, "Who would you like that you can't get?," I always used to say, "Orson Welles, to name a few." Now I can't say that anymore. But that's one of the most gratifying things about doing this kind of work. I'm glad for the benighted soul I met who had never heard of Welles and was thrilled by him, and for the kids who said they'd never seen the Lunts except on my show and thought they were "a groove." Or the people who said, when Fred Astaire got up and danced, that they felt their scalp tighten. Or when Sir Ralph Richardson is the comedy hit of a show, talking about his beloved motorcycle—it all becomes worth it. Or Groucho killing an audience he thinks is too young to remember him. On those nights, it seems like the best job in the world.

[Q] Playboy: Who else would you consider as a solo guest?

[A] Cavett: I don't think there are that many people worth doing 90 minutes with. Pierre Trudeau might be fascinating. Robert Morley certainly would be. Maybe Marlon Brando. De Gaulle would have been great.

[Q] Playboy: Are you awed by people like these?

[A] Cavett: The word awe doesn't describe anything I feel. And reverence has a rather corny, pseudoreligious ring to it. But I do thrill to great talent. I think great talents should have anything they want. Talented people should always get their way, up to the point of making it impossible to continue a project or production. Talent should be humored to the breaking point.

[Q] Playboy: Do you include yourself?

[A] Cavett: Yes. And let me clarify this. Any performer knows that what looks like egocentric nitpicking on his part really isn't. An actor knows that a minor change in his or her costume or setting a prop wrong can ruin a performance. I know that a guest's appearance can be thrown by seeing his name spelled wrong out front and I get furious at the person who misspelled it. Talent is a gemlike thing, but performance is fragile and can be wrecked by a tiny irritation. If a $10,000-a-week singer fires her lady valet for bringing the wrong eyelashes for a TV appearance, it sounds cruel; but even if she looks the same out front, she may think she looks lousy and g;ve a lousy performance and shorten her career. And it's easier to get lady-valet jobs than it is singing careers. This sounds like the worst kind of aristocracy but it's justified. Of course, there are performers who enjoy being swinish to their underlings for no reason. I hate that, too. But the fact remains that only a performer knows what makes it possible for him to perform, and you just have to take his word for it. Or hers.

[Q] Playboy: It sometimes seems that one of the prerogatives of talent is to appear on talk shows drunk or stoned. How often do your guests appear in that condition?

[A] Cavett: Twenty-three percent of the time. I don't know. I've had some people on who I was pretty sure were one or the other or even both, but some people are that way without introducing any chemicals, legal or otherwise, into their bodies. Some just have jet fatigue. I had Judy Garland on once in the morning and I was definitely aware of something, but it was hard to tell with her by that time. In any case, I found her very appealing. I got the feeling I'd known her for a long time. She really seemed like an o'd friend. She was able to make that convincing. I don't think she was acting, but it's a quality that some actors have.

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever find yourself sexually attracted to female guests?

[A] Cavett: Yes. On my show as well as on other people's.

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever act on it?

[A] Cavett: Act on it? With the censor sitting right there? How far would I get? By the time I had her blouse ripped, the (continued on page 170) Playboy Interview (continued from page 78) stagehands would be on top of us and her agent would have thrown down his mangy gauntlet and it would be pistols at dawn in the Bois. Of course, if the show were live, it might be worth it anyway, just to see if there would be a jump in the ratings—as it were. The sad fact is, I'm often unaware of how sexy a guest is until I see the show at home and notice she was stunning. As I've said, there's a lot on your mind while you're doing the show—so much that your biological urges and responses are somewhat dulled, I'm sorry to report. Then there are times I've thought a lady guest fancied me, as the English say, only to find that, as I went to say goodbye backstage, she could scarcely place the face. It was all an act. My naivete is touching, isn't it?

[Q] Playboy: You said a few years ago that it was difficult to find interesting women to interview. Is this still true?

[A] Cavett: Maybe less so now. but it's been a perennial problem with these shows. I don't know why. There may be fewer interesting women, but maybe that's because they've been oppressed so long that they haven't had a chance to develop their skills. Or maybe they've been oppressed so much that we don't really look as hard for interesting women as we do for interesting men. because interesting men are taking up all the positions that interesting women could be occupying. But I do think an interesting woman is much more interesting than an interesting man. Isn't that interesting?

[Q] Playboy: You've joked about women's lib on your show. Do you really dislike the movement?

[A] Cavett: I dislike the screeching harpies who have attached themselves to the movement. Some people are cursed with personalities that disqualify them for anything except strident movements and, when one comes along, they tune up and howl. Did you ever read that really hateful essay about women by Schopenhauer? You know, the one where he said that to call this "broad-hipped, short-legged race the fair sex is ludicrous"? And went on to say they have no appreciation of the fine arts and only pretend to dig them in order "to please"? I expect he's burned daily in effigy over at Lib Central. But, of course, women have been oppressed, are being oppressed and are criminally wasted by being condemned to domestic traps. They've made me realize this—but I can still joke about the movement in the same way you can joke about anything and still take it seriously.

[Q] Playboy: Is your wife liberated, in the Kate Millett sense?

[A] Cavett: In the Millett-ant sense? As far as I'm concerned, she is. She supports herself as an actress when she isn't retired. She's played just about all the classic heroines, most Williams characters and all the good Restoration comedy roles at Stratford, Connecticut, at Yale, on Broadway, off-Broadway and on television. John Simon said, "She's one of the few actresses in America with intelligence, beauty and class," or something like that. He left out "liberated."

[Q] Playboy: Did you live together before you got married?

[A] Cavett: I love talking about these intimate, personal things. I was taken to a brothel in Paris by Gore Vidal, who was looking for locations for a film about the life of Marshal Petain, and met my wife there. I asked her to leave her tawdry profession and marry me, as I was planning a career combining the best aspects of podiatry and fortunetelling. She said that hers seemed a more honest trade, but she told me to keep in touch. A year later, she appeared in New York, married to a UN delegate, and we had a brief liaison in chambers I kept for that purpose at the Hotel Alamac. Her husband was recalled to Paris by a combination of international tensions and chronic gastroenteritis and eventually forgot her, so I married her. That's as much as I care to reveal, since certain aspects of the affair, as you can see, are of a delicate nature.

[Q] Playboy: According to your network biography, you met at Yale while she was in the drama school, played in stock together and got married after that.

[A] Cavett: That's the version I give out to preserve my image.

[Q] Playboy: Are you ever propositioned by female fans?

[A] Cavett: Yeah. I was walking down Broadway with another guy who works on the show and. when we got to the corner, three very cute, attractive whores said lo us, "Do you want to have some fun?" I said, "What did you have in mind?" And one of them screamed and said, "Oh, my God, it's you! Can I have your autograph?" She said she just came up from Memphis and couldn't wait to tell her aunt she'd met me. I was vaguely insulted that she never mentioned the original subject again. Whores are not my only female fans, however.

[Q] Playboy: Would you ever consider accepting some of these propositions?

[A] Cavett: From a whore?

[Q] Playboy: Or from an average nonprofessional girl.

[A] Cavett: Yes, I would consider it—and then reject the idea.

[Q] Playboy: Would your wife mind if you accepted?

[A] Cavett: You'd have to ask her, but knowing her as little as I do, I suspect she would.

[Q] Playboy: Is it her disapproval that would stop you?

[A] Cavett: Is this the part of the interview where I'm supposed to say that, since psychoanalysis, I realize that I have a cock and two balls and I'm not ashamed of it anymore? Well, I can't say it because I haven't been in analysis. I can only half subscribe to that.

[Q] Playboy: Does that mean that you have only one ball and half a cock?

[A] Cavett: Don't fool with it.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever felt the need for psychotherapy?

[A] Cavett: I'd love to be in analysis, but an hour a day is a lot and I'd rather spend the time on dance lessons. I've never felt the need, as you put it. but I feel the curiosity. I mean I'm not subject to any debilitating psychic hangups that I'm aware of. Actually, I'd like to watch someone else's analysis, because I find the process fascinating. Come to think of it, maybe I do need analysis—to cure me of my voyeuristic desire to spy on people in analysis. Maybe I'll put an ad in Screw: "Young man, nice build, early 30s. likes to watch head shrinking, either sex. Write Ron: Box 243." Naturally. I wouldn't use my real name.

[Q] Playboy: Could all this be an elaborate rationalization for avoiding analysis—saying you "find the process fascinating"?

[A] Cavett: I've worried about that so much, it's practically sent me into analysis. Seriously, if I ever feel the pressure, I'll pop myself onto a couch tout de suite. Right now, I'd be taking up some poor suffering devil's space. I'm afraid.

[Q] Playboy: Speaking of hang-ups, are you as sensitive as you seem to be about your height?

[A] Cavett: Shut up! I mean no. I felt I needed some physical comic device. Since I'm not extraordinarily fat or thin or hideous, I decided on shortness. Though I grew to be nearly 5' 7", my predicted final height when I was young was around 5' 3", so analysis might reveal certain tensions with girls because of early shortness affecting my later life.

[Q] Playboy: How did this tension with girls affect you?

[A] Cavett: It manifested itself in the form of sweating, bursting collar buttons, bushing until I thought my eyebrows would singe off from the heat, rigid and ungainly dancing. All the usual attributes of the poised young man from Nebraska. I wonder what all that tension comes from. It's not all sexual tension, but a lot of it is. I mean, at 14, I remember being only partly conscious of the fact that while trying to improvise lighthearted banter with Barbara about Mr. Scott's history class, while shifting from foot to foot, what I really wanted to do was pull her pants down. But how? Where? When? What would I do when I got them down? The thought that I never would—or worse, that someone else might—used to send me into Dostoievskyan gloom.

[Q] Playboy: What was your solution?

[A] Cavett: I took up magic. It wasn't the most satisfactory answer, but it started me performing, and here we are today, aren't we? Ha-ha, Barbara!

[Q] Playboy: Because of your height and your puckish appearance, you've been described in the press as "a Charlie Brown type" and as "someone out of Our Gang." Would you call those characterizations accurate?

[A] Cavett: I've never seen myself as Charlie Brown for a second. I don't know what the hell people are talking about. James Brown, maybe.

[Q] Playboy: Then you're not vulnerable and boyish?

[A] Cavett: Not in my own mind. Maybe that's an indication that I am without knowing it.

[Q] Playboy: Then are you still the innocent kid from Nebraska?

[A] Cavett: Partly that and partly a lot of other things.

[Q] Playboy: What other things?

[A] Cavett: I can't begin to answer the question, "What are you?" I've never given the subject a moment's thought and I think I'd be just as happy keeping it that way. It ain't my style.

[Q] Playboy: Do you agree with those who feel that you hide your opinions from the public?

[A] Cavett: I'd rather not say. No—they're right. I do it constantly. On all subjects. I just don't see the show as a means to exploit myself or push my views. I don't have any terrific sense of mission.

[Q] Playboy: Are you afraid to risk offending people with your attitudes?

[A] Cavett: I'm not aware of being afraid. And many times my attitudes and opinions have been explicitly stated. I think I could offend just as many people by being a bland asshole. Pardon me. I shouldn't have said bland.

[Q] Playboy: Your mail seems to indicate that some people consider you a secret hippie. Are you?

[A] Cavett: How would I know if I were? And how did you get into my mail?

[Q] Playboy: No comment. Have you ever smoked pot?

[A] Cavett: As I told Jerry Rubin on the show, yes. but I didn't inhale.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever gotten high?

[A] Cavett: I do not, as they say, "use" marijuana. One would find it hard never to have encountered it in one's—ahem—widely traveled existence. One suspects one has, and concluded that the experience is finally an undesirable one from one's own point of view. But that was long ago and far away, he said, retreating again behind a veil of mystery.

[Q] Playboy: Woody Allen has.said that he turns on with St. Joseph Baby Aspirin. Have you ever tried it?

[A] Cavett: No, nor would I try to top his joke. I know Woody Allen to be practically puritan on the matter of tampering with his unadulterated consciousness, even to the point of refusing to wear sunglasses because they produce someone else's version of the real world. Some years ago, we both got smashed on half a glass of beer in a German restaurant and directed a number of highly witty insults at the host regarding the Sudetenland. It's a wonder we weren't found years later in a meat freezer in Yorkville. We have never drunk publicly together again. My capacity has increased to where I can handle a bottle of beer all by myself now, whereas he can still get loaded on a teaspoon of the foam. But then I'm an inch taller than he is.

[Q] Playboy: People also wonder why you dress so casually offstage and so conservatively onstage. They feel you're copping out for television.

[A] Cavett: Who are these people? And why do they assume this is the real me? Maybe how I dress on television is the real me and this is an act. Maybe they're both an act. Do you have the name of a good analyst?

[Q] Playboy: Others have written in to say that your hair's too long. Have you considered getting it cut shorter?

[A] Cavett: My hair is a big drag. Every day it's in a different mood or pointing in a new direction. As for its length, that is determined by when I feel like getting a haircut and not by those who write in saying I look like a hippie or the earlier Merv Griffin. You can't judge a book by its cover, and some people can't even judge one by its contents. Where this is all leading is that those who are upset by my hair may either continue to watch—as often as they can stand it—or piss off. In an orderly fashion, of course.

[Q] Playboy: Are you sensitive to press criticism?

[A] Cavett: No, I don't mind the criticism. If I think the critic is wrong, it's a little irritating, but if I think I can learn something from a critic, I may even get pleasure out of a certain amount of knocking. It seems to make your image a little more interesting.

[Q] Playboy: What valid criticisms have been or could be made of you?

[A] Cavett: "Could" is easier to answer. There are times when I don't feel as articulate as I'm alleged to be, and times when I let something pass on the show that should have been followed up on, or failed to respond in a way that a guest needed at that moment. The criticisms that have been made are usually about the handling of some guest who, according to a critic, I should have shut up or should have let talk more, depending on the critic's prejudices.

[Q] Playboy: What criticisms would you offer your competitors?

[A] Cavett: God. I'd hate to. So many things have to be considered.

[Q] Playboy: What do you like about them, then? How about David Frost?

[A] Cavett: I'm just coming home when his show is ending, but I must say I like the end of his show, which is what I've seen most often. I've never seen a whole David Frost Show, but I saw part of his interview with Adam Clayton Powell and part of his show with Orson Welles. I think Frost does an excellent job of interviewing. He's alert and he picks up on those things in the middle of an answer that are very easy to let pass. As I said, I let them pass at times and it drives me nuts.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think about Johnny Carson's work?

[A] Cavett: I'm very uncomfortable talking about my competition. I see nothing wrong with The Tonight Show. If Carson has a theory about how to do the show, and if he's been true to that theory, then fine. I think he's good, I think he's consistent and I don't really want to talk about it.

[Q] Playboy: Why not?

[A] Cavett: Because I only want to say nice things about my competitors. There are things I like and things I don't like about them, but I don't think there's any great virtue in discussing other people's shortcomings. I'd rather discuss my own.

[Q] Playboy: Go right ahead.

[A] Cavett: Why did I start this? It's tempting to lay out a few in order to appear modestly self-critical, but it's another of those things I don't think much about. I'd rather go to a movie. And why should I knock myself and let Carson, Griffin and Frost come off well in this interview? Are you mad, man?

[Q] Playboy: Let's try an oblique approach. Do you agree with those who think Merv Griffin's show tends to be frivolous—that it lacks serious talk?

[A] Cavett: That isn't necessarily bad. I've never felt that the standard of excellence is serious talk. It immediately sounds pretty dismal. If you told me there was going to be a good serious talk on television tonight, I doubt that I'd watch it. If I want serious talk, I'll have it myself. Or I'll read something; you can read much faster than you can listen. All I can say is that I try to do an entertaining show that may include more topics than the concept of entertainment usually encompasses. Entertainment usually suggests a comedian or a sketch or a funny interview—all good things and things that I like. On the other hand, a certain amount of the serious talk I've had on the show has put me to sleep. Of course, some of it is more entertaining and often funnier than the comedian who stands center stage.

[Q] Playboy: Many people feel that your show has a much stronger political orientation than the other talk shows. Do you try consciously to provide substantial political content?

[A] Cavett: No, but then I don't think in those terms. Certainly not everything we do is political. Politics isn't the end of life and I don't think everything has to be concerned with it. Even during wartime, some people are still going to write idyllic poetry.

[Q] Playboy: Be that as it may, don't you get a good deal of political feedback from your letter-writing audience?

[A] Cavett: Yes, because we live in a terribly politicized age. But I'm sick of hearing from people who try to pose as representatives of pressure groups and warn me that if I don't get with their kind of thinking, they're going to bring me to my knees financially. It's very irritating, because many of them get outraged at one thing out of a thousand things I say. It's as stupid as condemning a whole art museum because you don't like one painting. I wish someone would give these people a lesson on how to use the channel selector. Tune me out forever, but spare me your mail. Let me make it clear that I'm not mad at everyone who writes in and complains about something. I enjoy reading that mail. I'm talking specifically about people who not only say they'll never watch the show again, but who go on to say that it should be taken off the air. Unless it's actually menacing the health of the country, they should admit that somebody might like it.

[Q] Playboy: Last October, the black Jazz and People's Movement lodged a complaint by disrupting your show. Had they attempted to meet with you before the confrontation occurred?

[A] Cavett: I'm a little vague on some of it, because this thing had been going on for a while before I heard about it. They'd already disrupted Griffin and demonstrated in Carson's corridor, and I got a call from their organization saying that they were going to have to disrupt our show. Equal time, you see. We knew what night it was going to be, since they had alerted the news department themselves, but I didn't know what I was going to do. I figured I'd wait and see what form the disturbance took, maybe stop tape and then talk to them and try lo find a way to work it out. As it turned out, they got an unexpected cue from Trevor Howard, who happened to say about New York, "Jazz is gone." They blew in unison on deafening police whistles—very painful to the ear. So we stopped tape for 70 minutes and went into a big mob scene on the stage. People were running from group to group and it was all mixed up, since they weren't very well organized and we weren't very well prepared. The whole thing was totally unprecedented. We eventually did give them time on one show a week later, but I'd like to make it clear that everybody who disrupts a network show isn't going to get on the air.

[Q] Playboy: The Jazz and People's Movement claimed that true black jazz has been arbitrarily excluded from American television. Do you feel it's your responsibility to make sure that all elements in society are represented?

[A] Cavett: Heavens, no! I've never thought about my responsibility to society. I just don't think that way. I had six students on right after the Cambodia–Kent State ghastliness because it seemed right at the time and I resented the idea that a certain image of the campus was being used for unfeeling political purposes. But don't come to me for theories on my responsibility to society. Or heavy political rapping. When I shocked some of my fans by telling Jerry Rubin that politics bored my ass off, I meant it in the sense that the subject has become tiresomely obligatory It's fashionable, and I resent the fact that some show folk feel they have to rap on politics to show that they're responsible members of the community. If they know what they're talking about, like Robert Vaughn does, for example, fine. Otherwise, spare us. Politics, like any subject well handled, can be endlessly fascinating—even to me, a performer who knows he isn't a commentator or the nation's conscience. But when the people who used to come on the talk shows to tell funny experiences about getting their dog through Customs feel they have to do a political number, when you've already had the subject handled nicely by John Kenneth Galbraith the night before, yeccch! In other words, because I've had some superb political guests on, I don't want the show to become one where people who can be fascinating on other subjects feel they have to discuss the emerging Republican majority in order to be popular with me or my audience.

[Q] Playboy: Who do you think uses politics in that way?

[A] Cavett: It would be presumptuous of me to single anybody out. I just don't want every other actor, actress or singer coming on and talking about Vietnam to prove they're "concerned."

[Q] Playboy: You've said on the show that no one thought much about politics when you were in college. What were the burning issues of the day on your campus?

[A] Cavett: There were none. It really was a totally tranquil time.

[Q] Playboy: How about the McCarthy hearings?

[A] Cavett: Those I remember dimly as very exciting television. Everyone would come in to watch them and I remember some people saying, "He's really giving it to those Commies," and others getting furious and saying, "Don't you realize that he's Hitler?" You see, our hometown newspaper was very slim and I hadn't the slightest interest in it. When I was in grade school, I remember thinking that everybody will grow up and go to fight on Iwo Jima, just like they did at the Saturday matinee. I couldn't imagine life without the Second World War. Then, when the War ended, everything seemed relatively placid to me. I got through high school knowing vaguely that left and right had something to do with the French parliament.

[Q] Playboy: How do you decide whether or not you'll invite an adversary to debate with a political guest?

[A] Cavett: It depends on the guest. Some are better unopposed. Other times you have to make theatrical or philosophical choices. Conflict may be a cheap and easy thing to provide, but it makes for good television. And if you match two brilliant people, you might also learn something in the clash.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel any obligation to challenge incorrect or misleading statements made by your guests?

[A] Cavett: Jesus knows you can't clarify and distill everything that might be interpreted in a certain way by a certain segment of the public. Everybody watches the show with his own thermometer stuck into it. All I can say is I do it sometimes and not others. If anyone has a workable rule on this, I wish they'd send it to me.

[Q] Playboy:Why were Administration officials allowed to appear unopposed on your show?

[A] Cavett: The 90-minute show with Mitchell, Klein, Finch and Garment? That came about in an odd way. Back when we started, I had some Fridays off in the schedule, so we invited some unusual hosts, including Herb Klein, to substitute for me. Then I decided not to take those nights off because of the show's newness. I think the Administration felt we had promised, I felt we hadn't, and they suggested this alternative, and my producer said OK—but only if they would bring Agnew or Mitchell with them.

[Q] Playboy: How do you feel you handled them?

[A] Cavett: Considering that I disagree with so much of what they stand for, I think I did a fairly objective job.

[Q] Playboy: Please elaborate.

[A] Cavett: I mean I did what I always try to do: Make the guests comfortable, keep it as interesting as possible, let the guests be seen for what they are and get a laugh whenever possible. When Mitchell said that in a year or so, a study would be completed proving marijuana dangerous, I asked in what sense it's a study if he already knows the outcome. I could have gone on to say that there are three possibilities: You know the outcome, in which case you're wasting our money continuing the study, or you're stating as a fact what you hope the outcome will be, or you've influenced the outcome. But I thought the point had been made.

[Q] Playboy: In retrospect, would you rather have had them on with one or more spokesmen for the opposition?

[A] Cavett: It might have made a more interesting show. But you have to be careful with "clash" shows. With a group like that, you may get a lot of overlapping sentences that you can't hear. And sometimes you hate to go for the obvious confrontation. Are Democrats the only people opposed to Republicans? Communists might also oppose their position, or people who think all politics is corrupt, or the Minutemen, or four poets. What's weird is that I had a later show on which I. F. Stone, Ramsey Clark and Joe Califano appeared in response to the Administration, and afterward furious wires came in saying, "We demand equal time for Republicans!" And the Democrats had been on only for half as long as the Administration. You can't win.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think the Nixon Administration is unnecessarily uptight about crime and political dissent?

[A] Cavett: I'm afraid I'm very bad with that kind of question. Does "unnecessarily uptight" imply that there is such a thing as "necessary" uptightness? And how do crime and political dissent go together? And even if you do tell me what the question means, I can only answer with some generalization, since I'm not an expert on politics, and generalizations are almost as suspect as politicians and, like politicians, can be counted on only part of the time. Would you like to see a card trick?

[Q] Playboy: We just did. Are there any generalizations you can accept?

[A] Cavett: Yes, two. I try to obey the golden rule and avoid salmon croquettes.

[Q] Playboy: A great deal of conflict has been generated by those who accept the generalization that political violence is justified when all other forms of dissent have been unsuccessfully tried. Would you agree with that?

[A] Cavett: I can't think of any circumstances in which I'd bomb someone else's property.

[Q] Playboy: Can you see why others do it?

[A] Cavett: Yes, at the risk of being misunderstood, I can see why people resort to violence when it seems that nothing else can produce change. I feel it's wrong, though, because I doubt that in most cases every means short of violence has been tried. There's also the danger that lives will be lost in these acts of violence and I really don't know anyone who can prove that any cause is worth killing for. I know you can feel very strongly that it may be justified, but I can't shake off that last bit of doubt. How many lives is the freedom of Southeast Asia worth? Maybe none.

[Q] Playboy: Would you like to see a revolution in this country?

[A] Cavett: I don't know. I'd like to see a lot of things changed, but that's so fatuous it's hardly worth getting into. It's so easy to say. Everybody knows there's a lot of injustice and we'd like to see it changed.

[Q] Playboy: Why is it fatuous to say those things?

[A] Cavett: It's impossible to discuss these great matters quickly and spontaneously. Thought is a very difficult, slow and unfamiliar process to most people, including me. There are too many catch phrases. What do we mean by law and order? Does order mean the same thing law does? Do we want our laws enforced? Yes. Do we think they're sometimes unjustly enforced? Yes. Are the laws misunderstood by the people who enforce them? Yes. Sometimes. It's just too easy to generalize.

[Q] Playboy: Are such statements any less fatuous when spoken by our elected leaders?

[A] Cavett: No, it's just as easy for Nixon to be fatuous as it is for me. Easier, in fact. I can say exactly what I mean, but a President rarely can. He has so much more power and so much less freedom.

[Q] Playboy: Were you impressed by Mr. Nixon when you met him at the White House?

[A] Cavett: If you mean jolted at the instant of meeting, no. I'd been around him before, so I didn't get that sudden kick most people experience when they see a face that's been part of their lives for many years. He was on the Paar show once when I worked there and I'd seen him in the studio. He's not a very charismatic figure to me anyway, so I didn't get the jolt I felt when I first saw John Kennedy. I saw Mr. Nixon in the receiving line and he asked me who was doing the show that night. I told him it was Joe Namath. He said, "How're his knees?" I said, "Not too good," and we talked about Namath's legs for a bit. I did see what they mean when they say he's more appealing in person than on television. He seems to take some sort of starch pill before going on TV. It always reminds me of an amateur actor who's trying to play Seriousness. His voice is even affected by it. But in person, that isn't there and you're aware of how he must not trust himself to go on TV as he is. Then I spoke to Mrs. Nixon and to Nicol Williamson, who was the entertainer that evening. I was standing around for a while after that and a lot of middle-aged ladies rushed over and said, "We came tonight just to see you. Our children won't let us go home without your autograph." I felt very funny autographing at the White House. I wonder if there isn't some sanction against it. It's not in the Constitution.

[Q] Playboy: You said on the show that your wife once saved Nicol Williamson's life. How?

[A] Cavett: He was bombed one night and decided to go swimming in a dangerous cove and she went in and pulled him out. I held the light. We'd all been to several waterfront bars and someone thought it would be cute to go swimming in the pitch dark, which is a stupid thing to do in the ocean. You can lose a cherished part of your anatomy, either to a rock or to an irritated sea-dwelling creature. Suddenly, there was Broadway's current Hamlet, who swims like a lead piano, foundering in the briny. I grabbed a flashlight and ordered my wife into the water—she swims and dives like a porpoise—assuring her I'd run for help if she got in trouble. She hauled him out and earned the unwitting gratitude of many a theatergoer. I ran to the house and made hot tea for myself, having caught a chill from the cold flashlight.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you choose a secluded house on a beach near the tip of Long Island? Were you reacting against the years you spent living in the heart of Los Angeles, when you wrote for Jerry Lewis?

[A] Cavett: Not really. I lived in one of those places with two-story apartments around the pool, with the palm trees lighted pink and blue and yellow—something nature never thought of; but I didn't find myself turning into a piece of cheese or getting weird from living in California. I used to love driving around and I hung around Paramount Studios. I used to go out on the lot and walk the old Western street and the old New York street.

[Q] Playboy: Do you go to a lot of movies?

[A] Cavett: Yes, and I wish I could start screening them at home. If I go out to ascreening, I have to tell people what I thought of the film right afterward and I don't like that. And if I go to a regular theater, I go insane standing in line because so many people talk to me. If I get there early, I feel like Marie Antoinette being led past the people waiting behind the ropes.

[Q] Playboy: It sounds as if you're not too happy about being a celebrity.

[A] Cavett: Well, I don't like being recognized that much. At times, it's pleasant to be recognized, but other times it's a pain in the ass, especially when you're walking along and you've managed to forget for a moment what it is you do.

[Q] Playboy: Would you like to forget your job for a while?

[A] Cavett: It is a rat-race. You finish one show and the next one hits you in the face. Like everyone else, I wonder if I'm getting enough out of life. In a sense, it's a very limiting job, because I'm concerned with it all day—although I guess it's less limiting than the drudgery most people have to do.

[Q] Playboy: You're also paid well for your work. Are you a millionaire yet?

[A] Cavett: I don't know. I might be. It doesn't affect me much one way or the other. I don't think about money very often. I was never miserable when I didn't have it and I'm not that ecstatic now that I do.

[Q] Playboy: How do you spend your money now that you've got so much of it?

[A] Cavett: I don't have any expensive habits. My wife doesn't dig jewelry and furs and I don't, either. I like to eat well, which in New York is expensive. But there just aren't that many material things I've got the hots for. Aside from the major portion of my income going to keep the Pentagon humming, I don't know where the rest goes. When a show-business salary fattens, your expenses seem to rise at a discouragingly corresponding rate. It's uncanny. For all I know, I may have to hit you for a five for dinner.

[Q] Playboy: How long do you think you can keep doing the show?

[A] Cavett: I don't think I want to spend 20 years doing this.

[Q] Playboy: How about nine years, like Johnny Carson?

[A] Cavett: I don't think I'd want to do it that long, either. I think I'd go berserk. I'd like to be in a movie when this is finished. I think it would be satisfying in ways that this isn't.

[Q] Playboy: In what ways?

[A] Cavett: I can't tell you for sure until I do one. The obvious superiority of movies is that you do something well and it's there for ages to come. This must be particularly satisfying to the actors in stag films.

[Q] Playboy: How will you know when you've had enough of being a talk-show host?

[A] Cavett: Everybody wiio's done this kind of show has called it a prison of one sort or another. Certainly it's quite a challenge to be interested, charming, witty and presentable five nights a week. I don't know what the proper perspective on this job is, but I'll try to sum it up for you. I feel I have one of the most difficult jobs in America, though hardly the most important. I suppose it takes an outsize ego to have gotten into such a position, and at the same time a certain tempering of it to do the job attractively. If you try to concentrate on the fun of it and forget the unbelievable strain and tension that goes into making it look like fun—if you don't worry yourself sick over the fact that you have to fill 450 minutes of air time every week, during any one of which you might commit some humiliating boo-boo in front of millions, a blunder so embarrassing that you won't be able to go out of the house for weeks—you can almost enjoy it. I say almost. What's on the Lale Show tonight?