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- Jul 27, 2010
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Yes, another dusty opinion from an old codger, but listen to me for a spell, my younger friends. When I was really young in 1970, I couldn't be bothered with any television show without action. Even if I didn't have a bedtime by 8pm at six years old, I would have been bored stiff by the following interview of actor, director, writer, Orson Welles on the Dick Cavett Show.
Cavett had been an accomplished comedic writer and personality for quite a few years by 1970. He had been a writer for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, before branching out to become Johnny's competitor on late night, on a different network. Cavett was witty and smart. Carson had a more fun show than Cavett, but I think Cavett was a better interviewer than Johnny. The thing about Dick Cavett, was that he LISTENED and was interested in a guest's responses to his questions and wasn't locked into a set of questions. He made conversations interesting, and a case in point is the interview with Orson Welles.
Orson was the grandson of Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles from the Civil War. He was a cerebral Forest Gump, well before that movie. His mother died when he was seven and his father died when he was fifteen years old, but he knew people that you wouldn't guess. He knew Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt as a young boy and as a young adult. He backpacked through Austria and Germany as a young lad and by chance saw Adolph Hitler at a Nazi rally, when the Nazis were an insignificant backwater group. He sat right next to Hitler on the dais, but could remember nothing about him. He described Hitler as as a colorless, empty suit. This all came out in an interview that lasted almost 60 minutes without commercials, on a show that lasted 90 minutes when it originally aired. What a fascinating man Welles was!
Do yourself a favor; pour yourself a drink and watch the first 15 minutes of this video and I would wager that you would end up watching the whole show. I am a historian and so I am fascinated by his first hand stories concerning important people of his time and some other stories from those you wouldn't know but were even more interesting than the famous ones! I have the patience now to thoroughly enjoy a show like this one, now that I am older. What experiences do you value now, but couldn't when you were young?
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NTOSevzp4w
Cavett had been an accomplished comedic writer and personality for quite a few years by 1970. He had been a writer for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, before branching out to become Johnny's competitor on late night, on a different network. Cavett was witty and smart. Carson had a more fun show than Cavett, but I think Cavett was a better interviewer than Johnny. The thing about Dick Cavett, was that he LISTENED and was interested in a guest's responses to his questions and wasn't locked into a set of questions. He made conversations interesting, and a case in point is the interview with Orson Welles.
Orson was the grandson of Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles from the Civil War. He was a cerebral Forest Gump, well before that movie. His mother died when he was seven and his father died when he was fifteen years old, but he knew people that you wouldn't guess. He knew Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt as a young boy and as a young adult. He backpacked through Austria and Germany as a young lad and by chance saw Adolph Hitler at a Nazi rally, when the Nazis were an insignificant backwater group. He sat right next to Hitler on the dais, but could remember nothing about him. He described Hitler as as a colorless, empty suit. This all came out in an interview that lasted almost 60 minutes without commercials, on a show that lasted 90 minutes when it originally aired. What a fascinating man Welles was!
Do yourself a favor; pour yourself a drink and watch the first 15 minutes of this video and I would wager that you would end up watching the whole show. I am a historian and so I am fascinated by his first hand stories concerning important people of his time and some other stories from those you wouldn't know but were even more interesting than the famous ones! I have the patience now to thoroughly enjoy a show like this one, now that I am older. What experiences do you value now, but couldn't when you were young?
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NTOSevzp4w
