Brief Encounters Read online

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  To the readers of the New York Times online Opinion pages, especially those who have written such erudite and entertaining responses to my columns.

  If you want to leave responses to this book, you may do so at www.dickcavettshow.com I’ll read every one of them. (Five points off for spelling.)

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Foreword by Jimmy Fallon

  Dreams, Let Up on Us!

  The Windows of the Soul Need Cleaning

  Art Did the Darndest Things … to Your Jokes

  A. Godfrey: A Man for a Long, Long Season

  More of Our Man Godfrey

  Real Americans, Please Stand Up

  Dear Fellow Improbable …

  Further Improbables

  The Titan and the Pfc.

  Match Him? Not Likely

  I Wrote It, Must I Also Hustle It?

  Lennon’s Return

  A Bittersweet Christmas Story

  Sauce for the Goose? Take a Gander

  The Wrath of Grapes

  How Do You Open for a Mind-Reading Horse?

  My Life as a Juvenile Delinquent

  My Liz: The Fantasy

  In Defense of Offense

  The Week That Was

  The First Shall Be Last—or, Anyway, Second

  Waiting (and Waiting) in the Wings

  I Owe William Jennings Bryan an Apology

  Sorry, W.J.B., to Bring This Up Again

  Flying? Increasingly for the Birds

  The Great Melvino, or Our Mr. Brooks

  Tough Sell

  Up Against the Wall

  Last Nude Column (for Now, at Least)

  Deck the Halls with Boughs of Nutty

  Marlene on the Phone

  Should News Come with a Warning Label?

  Schooling Santorum

  Road to Ruin

  Groucho Lives! (In Two Places)

  They Dressed Like Groucho

  Pyramid Power, Over Me

  You Gave Away Your Babies?

  Vamping with Nora

  Comedy Pain and Comedy Pleasure

  The Fine Mess Maker at Home

  Can You Stand Some More Stan?

  How Are the Mighty Fallen, or Where’s My Friend?

  Ali, Round Two

  Back When I Was Packing

  More on Guns, with Readers

  And the Oscar Doesn’t Go to the Oscars

  Tonight, Tonight, Its World Is Full of Blight

  With Winters Gone, Can We Be Far Behind?

  Missing: Jonathan Winters. Badly.

  Hel-LO! You’re … Who Again?

  Good Night, Sweet Soprano

  As Comics Say, “These Kids Today! I Tell Ya!”

  More Sex, Anyone?

  Tough Way to Lose a Friend

  Cavett on Booze, Again

  Only in My Dreams?

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  Also by Dick Cavett

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Foreword by Jimmy Fallon

  The first time I spoke to the great Dick Cavett was the night before my very first show as the new host of Late Night. I was nervous and excited and scared and happy all at the same time. I had no idea what I was about to go through. And then, out of the blue, I got a phone call from Dick Cavett.

  I couldn’t believe it. Dick Cavett! From The Dick Cavett Show. This is the guy who interviewed John Lennon and Yoko Ono. This is the guy who refereed the classic argument between Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal. This is the guy who, when Mailer taunted him by saying, “Why don’t you look at your question sheet and ask a question?” responded, “Why don’t you fold it five ways and put it where the moon don’t shine?” And here I was talking to him. Whaaaaaaaaat?

  Well, he couldn’t have been nicer and more generous. He said he was rooting for me and wished me luck hosting the show, and I’ll never forget the advice he gave me. (I think it was about listening to people when they talk. Or something like that.) By the end of the call he had calmed me down and made me feel better. Then I asked him for his number and he told me to “write it down on a piece of paper, fold it five ways, and put it where the moon don’t shine.”

  Anyway, it was also during that phone call that he first told me he was writing these stories that would eventually become this book. Funny and poignant stories and essays about his life, his career, family, politics—it’s all here. So intelligent and witty and charming and innocent. Kind of like Dick Cavett himself. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this book. I know I did. I mean, I love books. Don’t you just love books? I love the way they feel. The way they smell. Of course, I read them mostly on a Kindle now. But I still miss the smell of books. Hey!—I just thought of something. Maybe they should invent a candle that smells like a book. That way you can light the candle before you start reading your Kindle, and it’ll smell like you’re reading in a library. They can call it the “Kindle Candle.” Wow! That’s a great idea. Can I trademark that??? Holy crap. I’m gonna be rich!!! I have to call my lawyer.

  Okay, enjoy Brief Encounters. And Dick, if you’re reading this, let me know if you want in on the ground floor of the Kindle Candle™ thing. Either way, call me. I haven’t heard from you since my first show five years ago.

  JIMMY

  Dreams, Let Up on Us!

  Will Shakespeare told us, in that line always misquoted with the word “of”—even by Bogey in The Maltese Falcon—that “we are such stuff as dreams are made on.” If they’re in fact what we’re made on, it’s a mixed blessing.

  We know that much of Freud’s work has been repudiated and disparaged by the psychiatric world. Particularly his dream symbolism. But I’ve seen dream analysis work. When “in treatment”—that lovely euphemism for getting your head shrunk—with the brilliant Dr. Willard Gaylin, I would come in with a mishmash of a dream and, feature by crazy feature, he would elucidate it. It was—and can we now retire this word for at least a decade, young people?—awesome.

  Some people claim they never dream. There are times when I wish I were one of them.

  There are two types of dream that rate, for me at least, the word “nightmare.” The buggers are the Actor’s Dream and the Exam Dream. If you’ve never endured either of these, count yourself lucky. Maybe I’m getting your share.

  The question I can never find an answer to is the one that makes dreams so mysterious. When you watch a movie or read a story you don’t know what’s coming next. You’re surprised by what happens as it unfolds. You know that someone wrote the book or made the movie.

  But who in hell is the author of the dream? How can it be anyone but you? But how can it be you if it’s all new to you, if you don’t know what’s coming? Do you write the dream, then hide it from yourself, forget it, and then “sit out front” and watch it? Everything in it is a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant. And, unlike a book or film, you can’t fast-forward to see how it comes out. So where does it come from? And who “wrote” it?

  (I apologize if I’ve led you to think I have the answers.)

  What shows you the dream and at the same time blinds you to its source? The mechanism has to be ingeniously complex to pull this stunt off. But it seems that the complexity of the human brain is too, well, complex for that same brain to understand.

  A nice puzzle.

  I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who hasn’t had the Ex
am Dream. (Do people who haven’t been to school get this dream, or are they immune to the torture?)

  There you are in the classroom, trying desperately to get a peek at someone else’s paper, but they’ve just turned the page as you writhe in the realization that you forgot to study.

  Why, this far from one’s education, does one (or at least I) still get the damned dream?

  Once I awoke in a sweat from it, walked around a little to shake it off, calmed down, and went back to sleep, only to be blindsided that same night by the Actor’s Dream.

  Every actor gets it, even people who have only been in the school play. You’re backstage, about to go on, and desperately trying to find a copy of the play to get at least your first line or two, but no one has a script. How did you get to opening night and fail to learn a single line?

  You’re plagued with “How did I do this to myself?” and “Am I even wearing the right costume?” and “Do I go out there and try to ad-lib a part I don’t know, maybe getting a few lines right by chance?” and “In a moment I’ll step out there and make an ass of myself, let down and embarrass my fellow actors, and probably be fired on the spot as they give people’s money back.” It goes on and on and won’t let up on you.

  The merciful release at the much-too-late-in-coming realization “Oh, thank God, it’s a dream!” leaves you limp.

  Freud, “the Viennese quack” (Nabokov), is said to have pointed out that the mental agony of an excruciating dream is always far worse than the real situation would be.

  It’s true.

  Logic tells you that in waking real life you probably wouldn’t get into the situation you lie there suffering and blaming yourself for. The rich variety of hateful anxiety dreams can be about anything: not having studied; having lost your passport in an unfamiliar land; getting hopelessly lost in the woods; being late for and unable to find your own wedding; having let your pet get lost; and the myriad other sleeping torture plots the mind is heir to.

  The psychic pain is acute. And even if these things did happen, awful as they would be, why must the psychic pain be ten times more excruciating in the dream than it would be in real life?

  Who does this to us? Who or what is the sadistic force operating on us here? It’s hard to admit, but doesn’t it have to be ourselves?

  Then why are we doing it to ourselves? What did we do to deserve it? And does it all stand for something about us that’s so awful it has to be disguised as something else in the dream?

  Please have your answers to these questions on my desk by Friday. Neatness and clarity of presentation will count, and five points will be taken off for spelling.

  Time for a laugh here. I just remembered that the great Robert Benchley wrote, somewhere, a piece about that aspect of dreams that’s common to most of them—that nothing is quite itself as you know it. “It’s my house but it’s not my house. It’s my gray suit but it has wheels on it.”

  Should you deem this subject worthy of a return visit, I’ll expose the specific anxiety dreams I collected for a time from some famous people: Laurence Olivier, Rudolf Nureyev, others. (Or you can just tell me to shut up about it.)

  APRIL 30, 2010

  The Windows of the Soul Need Cleaning

  I’m bowled almost over by how many readers replied so intelligently, and revealingly, on this subject: the mystery of dreams and dreaming.

  I asked a learnèd friend about this: Dr. Jay Meltzer, the legendary physician to whom I went for medicine until he retired and to whom I still go for his culinary gifts and for education and tutoring on tough subjects.

  He said that this whole area—the workings of the brain—is the next great frontier of discovery, following upon such achieved milestones as the genome, molecular biology, Darwin and evolution, etc. (Some, not fully grasping the subject, might add to the milestone list the microchip, video games, and Viagra.)

  Meltzer talked about the super-miraculous validation of the fact that the myriad separate circuits of the brain talk to one another. And without our being in on the conversation. Probably just as well that we can’t hear what they say about us.

  This plays into my question last time to which so many readers responded, about how a dream can be, so to speak, written and produced and “played” before us without our being in on its creation. If we’re just the viewer, who is the dream’s author?

  Meltzer tied in with this the fascinating distinction between the thing that makes us human creatures unique—consciousness—and simple awareness. A dog is not conscious. He is aware, but only we are conscious. (You’re tempted to say some are more conscious than others, but let that pass.)

  Hearing an intellectual shtarker like Meltzer talk about such stuff makes me want to go back to school. He’s greatly interesting about how we all have two brains: the rational brain and the irrational brain. Not to get sidetracked from dreams here, but for an oversimplified example: the rational brain knows not to smoke.

  Philosophy’s heavy hitters have also addressed this subject, calling attention to the nature of dreaming and its kinship with madness. I’ve been haunted since college by Baudelaire’s—wasn’t it?—“I have felt the wind of the wing of madness pass over me.” Insanity and dreams share many things, among them disordered thought and, of course, hallucination. As Artie Schopenhauer (so I’m a name-dropper) had it, “A dream is a short-lasting psychosis, and a psychosis is a long-lasting dream.” Could Soupy Sales have put it better?

  Does anything show the complexity of the miraculous brain more than that weird curiosity, the sleep-protection dream? In Freud’s native tongue, probably something like Schlafschutzentraum.

  In my day, Yale still had the torture of the 8:00 a.m. class. At that age everything in you is opposed to early wake-up, and I would either be late for class or miss it completely—by dreaming I was there. Nice of the dream mechanism, letting you sleep, except for the consequences. The complex mechanism is so proficient and intricate in its work that that specific dream can even defy rigorous testing. In the dream itself, and even in class, I would ask myself if this were the dream—or the class.

  Once, I knew full well I was in class, but tested it anyway. There’s Cecil Lang, the professor. (One said “Mr. Lang” at Yale.) Here’s Chris Porterfield at my right elbow, there’s Dave Greenway in the back, and this is my desk. I gripped it solidly and it passed the test. I felt silly. And sillier a moment later. When I woke up. In bed.

  This shook me. (Is there any chance I’m dreaming I’m typing this now?)

  A number of readers reported that awful thing where you’re trying to escape something, physically, and you can’t get going. The muscles have turned to jelly and your nerves are shot. Tell me ASAP, what is this dream protecting?

  And does each profession have its own style of anxiety dream? Does the trial lawyer in court, embarking on cross-examination, look down to find that instead of his notes he has brought a book of Sudoku? Does the brain surgeon find in midoperation that instead of his scalpel he is holding a limp stick of Bonomo’s Turkish Chewing Taffy? (Phallic symbolism?) Feel free to submit examples from your own particular trade.

  Lest I forget, I teased you last time by promising a couple of specimens of celeb anxiety dreams I’ve heard. (I know you can’t slander the dead, but do I dishonor them by revealing their dreams? Let’s say no.)

  Laurence Olivier’s punisher was particularly cruel:

  “It’s not, dear boy, that I don’t know my lines. It’s far worse than that. I’m standing backstage, waiting for my cue. I hear it and open the door to make my entrance.

  “But the door doesn’t lead to the set. It leads instead to a room full of tools. And two more doors. I open one. It leads to another pair of doors.

  “I frantically fling one open. Good God! It leads to a whole row of doors. I am soaked in sweat.

  “As I keep flinging open one damned door after the other, I can hear my fellow actors out onstage, desperately ad-libbing and wondering where the hell I am.

 
“My wife says I wake up screaming.”

  Olivier’s story may have been, as they say, “in conversation.” (Even if not, what fun it is to say that.) Rudolf Nureyev’s nightmare was told either on my show or over his nightly after-show steak tartare in the formerly great Russian Tea Room.

  Poor Rudolf’s dream (Traum, appropriately, in German) contained the standard ingredients of the devilish one in which one is poorly prepared and horribly confused. In his case, he is on the great stage, dancing, and suddenly realizes he’s lost and doesn’t know the rest of the choreography.

  He desperately tries to recall rehearsal but can’t. “Was I even at rehearsal?”

  He is fumbling the steps. Panicked, he begins to sweat, and hears laughter from the audience. The performance grinds to a stop and his fellow dancers “—and George Balanchine!—are glaring at me.”

  Then comes the punch line:

  “Pouring out sweat, I look down. I am wearing my street shoes!”

  MAY 14, 2010

  Art Did the Darndest Things … to Your Jokes

  The voice of the editor wondered if, instead of the column I would have handed in this time, I might want to do a short, quick appreciation of Art Linkletter. My only reluctance in accepting the mission is that what I have to offer may not be everyone’s idea of an appreciation.

  I wrote for Linkletter for a week for the same reason that I wrote for a lot of famous people for a week or two only. My boss-to-be, Johnny Carson, was canny enough not to replace my then former boss Jack Paar immediately upon Jack’s exit from The Tonight Show in 1962. There may have also been a contract obligation elsewhere that kept him from doing so. Even if so, the wise thing for Carson was not to appear to jump into Jack’s chair while people were still lamenting Jack’s departure.

  My guess is that the gap between the two stars was bigger than most anyone remembers. Following Jack came a kind of summer stock season for Tonight. Entertainers of all kinds, shapes, and degrees of talent hosted the show. I recall Robert Cummings, Donald O’Connor, Mort Sahl, Merv Griffin (a newcomer), possibly a Gabor, Steve & Eydie, Jack E. Leonard, Jack Carter, Sam Levenson (smashing), Jerry Lewis, and two memorable weeks of Groucho.