The new movie about Alfred Hitchcock reminds me of a clip of a
Dick Cavett show I saw a few months ago on TCM. It was fairly
common practice for people to call Hitchcock "Hitch," but not Cavett;
it was "Mr. Hitchcock" (which I might also have been inclined to call him).
By the same token, I remember when Agnes Moorehead was Cavett's guest.
It hadn't been too long since her set-to with Joanna Barnes on the latter's
talk show, "Dateline: Hollywood," but Cavett couldn't have been more respectful,
calling her "Miss Moorehead" and not attacking her for playing Endora, or whatever
it was that triggered the row with Ms. Barnes.
Just goes to show that in my book Cavett was a class act and I'd hope to be the
same way if I had a talk show. And by the way, I love what he did to Timothy Leary,
who maintained that the Bible "was written by a bunch of people on an acid trip."
Cavett's rejoinder: "Dr. Leary, you're full of crap." The audience was clearly on Cavett's
side on that one. Off-topic but it reminds me of my other favorite celebrity put-down:
During his "swooner phase" in World War II, Frank Sinatra never made trips to entertain
the troops--until the war was over in Europe. He came back, saying that the USO "was
just for hacks." One columnist said, "Mice make women faint, too," but it was Marlene
Dietrich, who had performed in harm's way many times, who got in the putdown I rank
with Cavett's of Leary: "After all, you couldn't expect the European theater to be like
the Paramount (where Sinatra had performed to screaming girls in New York)."
Dick Cavett show I saw a few months ago on TCM. It was fairly
common practice for people to call Hitchcock "Hitch," but not Cavett;
it was "Mr. Hitchcock" (which I might also have been inclined to call him).
By the same token, I remember when Agnes Moorehead was Cavett's guest.
It hadn't been too long since her set-to with Joanna Barnes on the latter's
talk show, "Dateline: Hollywood," but Cavett couldn't have been more respectful,
calling her "Miss Moorehead" and not attacking her for playing Endora, or whatever
it was that triggered the row with Ms. Barnes.
Just goes to show that in my book Cavett was a class act and I'd hope to be the
same way if I had a talk show. And by the way, I love what he did to Timothy Leary,
who maintained that the Bible "was written by a bunch of people on an acid trip."
Cavett's rejoinder: "Dr. Leary, you're full of crap." The audience was clearly on Cavett's
side on that one. Off-topic but it reminds me of my other favorite celebrity put-down:
During his "swooner phase" in World War II, Frank Sinatra never made trips to entertain
the troops--until the war was over in Europe. He came back, saying that the USO "was
just for hacks." One columnist said, "Mice make women faint, too," but it was Marlene
Dietrich, who had performed in harm's way many times, who got in the putdown I rank
with Cavett's of Leary: "After all, you couldn't expect the European theater to be like
the Paramount (where Sinatra had performed to screaming girls in New York)."
