It Isn't As Easy As It Looks

To discover firsthand what it must feel like to be Dick Cavett, TIME arranged a turnabout show before an audience that had gathered to watch one of his regular programs. This time Cavett himself was the sole guest. His host was Correspondent Jesse Birnbaum, who has since become insufferably stagestruck. His report:

WHAT we in show business learn first is to READ THAT CONTRACT! The contract said, for example, that I ("hereinafter called Performer") must permit the producer to use my biography, likeness, name and sobriquet for publicity purposes. I suggested that "Rock" had a nice sobriquetish ring to it, but was persuaded to go with "Jess."

I arrived a bit early--about three hours early. A makeup girl laboriously tried to "play down" what she called a "big nose" and then sent me backstage to stew. Anxiety clawed at my chest. "I had hoped that a taxi would knock me down on my way to the studio," I said to Dick Cavett. He replied laconically, "That's New York; you never can get a taxi when you want one." Running a talk show, Cavett and his staff had warned, was not as easy as it appeared. But I was prepared to try, and had memorized all the instructions:

Look into Camera No. 3. Keep an eye on the stage manager's hand signals and cue-card directions. Watch the TelePrompTer for commercial messages. Look into Camera No. 2. Resist the impulse to check your zipper. Look at the guest while talking to him. Keep an eye on the clock. Smile. Ask interesting questions. Don't cover your face with your hand. Listen to the guest's conversation and ask other interesting questions. Say funny things. Don't mug. Ignore Camera No. 1. Keep the conversation going. Don't make vulgar gestures or remarks. Try not to look at your notes. Resist the impulse to glance at your guest's zipper. Keep an eye on the producer, who is pointing desperately at the stage manager, who is waving his hands wildly at you in an attempt to direct your attention to Camera No. 3, while you are trying to figure out a way to interrupt the guest, who may be drunk or stoned or both, and who is probably saying something obscene or slanderous or both about his exwife, or yours.

Suddenly came the blast of a fanfare and the cry of an announcer: "It's the Jesse Birnbaum Show! Starring Jesse Birnbaum! Tonight, Jesse's guest--Amateur Magician Dick Cavett! Ladies and Gentlemen--Jesse Birnbaum!" Applause thundered. Music swelled. Performer nauseated. Assistant stage manager shoved him onstage.

The next moment was magic. The few hundred people in the audience were smiling encouragement, clapping loud and hard. They were, it was true, responding to a flashing APPLAUSE sign, but who cared? Awash in the sound, I was transported into indescribable ecstasy. Instantly I understood what it felt like to be Dick Cavett or any other entertainer: not a few hundred but countless millions of unfamiliar humans seemed to be lavishing affection and approval, yielding themselves totally to my presence. Anxiety fled. I announced that I had come to play Dick Cavett's role. Then, peering squarely into the wrong camera, I said:

"Our only guest tonight is a well-known comedian, actor, show-and-tell star, and a real human being in his own right. He has starred in several G.I. training films, such as How to Disassemble the M-l Rifle, and its sequel, How to Assemble the M-l Rifle. And now, will you light the APPLAUSE sign, please, for Dick Cavett!"

It was the audience that lit up as Cavett strolled onstage, obviously to have a good time. Much of that good time would be purchased at my expense, which was only right. Cavett's purpose was to ensure that I would suffer all the shocks, surprises, pitfalls and confusions that afflict the host five shows a week. He succeeded. No sooner did Cavett sit down than he tossed a zinger:

D.C.: So you're Jesse Birnbaum. I'll be darned. [Laughter.] I've seen you night after night, and you look so wonderful. [Laughter.] And here I see you in person, and it's amazing what the camera does to people. [Laughter.]

J.B. (RIPOSTING): You did make G.I. training films?

D.C.: Yes, but not the ones you mentioned. I made one called How to Avoid It. It was a medical film, actually. [Laughter.] In another, I played a Nazi--a show about what they did with prisoners. I got the part because I had memorized an obscene German limerick somewhere in high school, and I recited it as an audition. [Laughter.] And I said it at some point in the movie, and to this day, when that movie plays in Stuttgart, the audience breaks up. [Laughter.]

J.B. (CONFIDENTLY): But you do speak German fluently, don't you?

D.C. (LYING SMUGLY): No. [Laughter.]

J.B. (THAT SINKING FEELING): You--don't--speak--German. . . ?

D.C. (DIABOLICALLY): I don't know where you got that idea.

J.B. (DESPERATELY): Well, you were interested in show business as a youngster. You did magic tricks in your basement and that sort of thing? How did you get started with that?

D.C. (PLAYING DUMB): I dunno. [Laughter.] I started and then that was it. It went on for a while and then it stopped. [Convulsive laughter.] I'm waiting to see perspiration pop out on you.

It was popping, and profusely, too. Mercifully, the stage manager signaled me to break for a commercial. Then:

J.B.: I do want to ask you about your career as a gymnast.

D.C.: Yes, I had an astonishing career as an athlete. People are astonished to hear that I was an athlete in any sense, but I really was a gymnastics champion in high school, on the side horse, which some people confuse with the hobby horse in an attempt to get a cheap laugh. [Cheap laughter.] It is a very difficult piece of athletic apparatus, and I worked it simply because it was the only piece of apparatus that our team could afford. And if you ever saw me on the side horse, you'd come to scoff but remain to pray. [Laughter.] . . . Jesse, I have to run. I'm very busy. And I'll tell you, I have an opening across town. I'm sorry. [Hilarity.]

J.B. (STRUGGLING): You do have a pastime I know about: snorkeling. Where do you snork? [Laughter.]

D.C.: I snork in the privacy of my home. [Laughter.] I don't see anything wrong with snorkeling at all. I think snorkeling between consenting adults is a very fine thing and should be encouraged. [Laughter and applause.]

J.B.: What do you actually do when you're snorkeling?

D.C.: You play cards. [Laughter.] No, you just simply enjoy the bliss of being under water, especially if you're in the tropics, where there's a lot of coral and that sort of thing. It's just a dream experience. It isn't like anything else. You get your face down in the water and you feel like you're back home again. Maybe I'm related to a fish. I knew a guy who could trace his family tree back to the original lungfish that crawled out on land. Very snobbish fellow, by the way. [Laughter.]

Another commercial, and then:

J.B.: We're talking to Dick Cavett--

D.C.: How do you pick your guests, anyway?

J.B. (LAMELY): Oh, I have a staff that takes care of that. . . I see this is really an easy sort of thing to do, Dick.

D.C.: Oh yeah?

J.B.: Speaking of talk shows: most of us think of television as being something for spectacle; yet there are two or three popular talk shows where several people just sit and talk as they would in their own living rooms. Can you account for this immense interest on the part of the television audiences?

D.C. (PAUSING A BEAT): Uh-uh. [Laughter.]

J.B. (ZINGER AGAIN): You can't. (SIGHING.) I see. . . Well, moving right along. . .

D.C.: No, I have thought about that. You see, I have this theory that television doesn't do as many things well as a lot of people think it does. I think one of the things it does very well is come in on a face and let people talk, and it gives people at home the feeling, often the illusion, that they know the person who's talking.

J.B.: Do you think people have this feeling that they need contact with other human beings--especially lonely people at night?

D.C.: Yes, I've heard people say with great conviction, "I really wait to see you," or Johnny, or whoever it may be. I don't know who this Johnny is they refer to. [Laughter.]

J.B.: Do you get letters from lonely people?

D.C.: You do. You get some very strange letters that you ought to forward to a psychoanalyst. Not that you would, but I mean very, very bizarre letters from people who tell you how you occur in their dreams. Maybe it's because you are the last thing they see at a kind of psychologically vulnerable time of night.

J.B.: Do they say, "Meet me at the second phone booth from the left at Grand Central Station after the show"--that sort of thing?

D.C.: Yes, they do. And of course, naturally, what can you do with a thing like that?

J.B.: A phone booth? [Laughter.]

D.C.: Well, I mean, you can only accept four out of five of these things or you'd go crazy. [Laughter.]

J.B.: By the way, in the past you've removed your shirt on this show. Do you have a compulsion about being bare-chested all the time?

D.C.: That's a strange thing. When I was in college, whenever I had a problem on my mind, I would start talking to one of my roommates, and I would start taking my shirt off. I was not aware that I was doing it. What's really weird is when I take other people's shirts off, and I'm not aware that I'm doing it. [Laughter.] As you're about to find out. [Laughter.]

J.B.: If you didn't have this TV show, would you be doing stand-up comedy work or writing for other comics?

D.C.: I'd probably have to earn an honest living, which would be a startling thing to have to do. [Laughter.] It is hard, though, to do it. It looks easy. I mean, here we are, sitting and chatting, and people say, "They get paid to do that?" And in a sense they're right. But it is tough. I mean, you probably feel worn down now, just at the thought that I might suddenly embarrass you, or clam up on you, or that I might have come out here drunk. . .

J.B.: That's right.

D.C.: You don't seem to be under too much . . .

J.B. (SQUIRMING): No, no, I'm fine, I'm fine. . .

D.C. (PRESSING): I'm easy, aren't I? I'm just folks?

J.B.: You really are, much easier than some of the people you've had on your show.

D.C.: Yes, I've had some lulus, some real clucks, and real oddballs, and some weirdos, and some very bad people. [Laughter.] The fact that many of them are friends of mine makes it easy. [Laughter.]

J.B.: But what would you do without this show? A nightclub act?

D.C.: I hope not. I didn't enjoy doing it except one evening in Detroit. Once, for some reason, I got a big laugh during an act, and I thought "Gee, this is a great way to make a living." It happened twice out of months and months of doing it. It's not a good thing. . .

J.B.: What is it that you don't like?

D.C.: That dumb feeling that you come out and you do your act, and they love you. If they love you, and they leave, they go out and they have fun and go home, and another audience comes schlepping in, and you've got to start all over from zero with them. It's not down on film, it's only seen by a couple of hundred people. And if they hate you, it's boring. If they love you, you've got to start from zero anyway. And it's not a good way to pass your time. It's very hard on you, too. You go home to your lonely little hotel room, you eat a stale TV dinner and drink a quart of gin and go to bed. [Laughter.]

J.B.: At least the talk show is unpredictable. You never know what your guest is really going to say.

D.C. (MISCHIEVOUSLY): That's right. You never know. They can lean over and pull your tie out (LEANS OVER AND PULLS PERFORMER'S TIE OUT) . Does it bother you very much when I touch you? [Laughter.]

J.B. (LYING): No, no, it's all right.

D.C.: Because when guests touch me, when they start doing like that (GRABS PERFORMER'S ELBOW), or touch your leg or something (HITS PERFORMER ON THE KNEE), I figure they're trying to bug me, they're just trying to bug me. [Laughter.] They're trying to see if I'm buggable.

J.B. (BUGGED): But I'm sure that wouldn't ever happen to me.

D.C.: No, I wouldn't do that to you because you're a very dignified person from a prominent magazine. [Laughter.]

J.B. (GULPING): That's right. [Laughter.] We both may lose our jobs after this.

D.C.: I see your eyes glazing over, are they signaling you?

J.B. (UNGLAZING): Oh. (READING FROM TELEPROMPTER): "We'll return right after this message of interest from our local stations."

A minute later.

J.B.: We're talking to Dick Cav--

D.C.: They can't tell you're crocked . . . oh, are we on? [Laughter.]

J.B. (READING THE STAGE MANAGER'S HAND SIGNALS): We have only a few minutes left. Just one thing: You're a very private person, and you guard your privacy closely. Don't you find it curious that you should be exhibiting yourself to masses of audiences five nights a week, 36 or 40 weeks a year?

D.C.: I don't see anything odd about that (BEGINNING TO REMOVE HIS TIE). It seems to me that the fact a person would go into this business probably means (UNBUTTONING HIS SHIRT) that he has a certain desire to exhibit himself. [Laughter and applause.] But the thing that I find unusual about it is that you go into a business like a talk show and find yourself talking to people about things (THE SHIRT IS COMPLETELY UNBUTTONED) that you wouldn't talk about in real (BARING HIS CHEST). That's the irony it ... [Laughter and wild applause.] I'm sorry.

J.B. (GLAZED AGAIN): That's all right, Dick.

D.C.: I've had one of my spells.

J.B. (HELPLESSLY): But you didn't answer my question.

D.C.: I did, but you weren't listening. [Laughter.] The answer is that show business is full of paradoxes, and one of them is that shy people go out into the spotlight.

J.B. (AS STAGE MANAGER IS POINTING FRANTICALLY AT THE CLOCK): That about wraps it up. I want to thank Dick Cavett for being our guest this evening . . . (SUDDENLY THE STAGE MANAGER PRODUCES A HASTILY MADE CUE CARD; THERE'S NO RECOURSE EXCEPT TO READ IT.)Tomorrow my guests will be Greta Howard Hughes, Charlie Chaplin --and Bozo, the Wonder Chimp! [Applause and laughter.] Say good night, Dick!

D.C.: Good night! Good night!

For Cavett and the studio audience, show is over--but not for me. Gliding offstage, I felt powered as if by bottomless reservoir of adrenaline. The program had sped by much too fast. Smitten, I hungered to go back. Missed cues, memory lapses, technical distractions, the guest's curve balls, the occasional fumbling efforsts at easy conversation--all these had brought terrors, but they they were terrors shared by dare-devil drivers and talk-show hosts alike: they only heightened the thrill. I understood, too, the performer's need for approval. I accosted total strangers backstage, demanding of them line-by-line opinions of the program, insistently playing back to them my own version of my triumph.

I was still aglow a few days later when the mail brought a check from the producer. It was very disappointing, so I rang him up. "Is that all I get--a lousy $290?" I asked. The producer testily explained that this was the customary fee given to all the artists who appear on the Cavett show. "That's what we paid Sir Noel Coward, Alfred Lunt and Sir John Gielgud." Well frankly," I retorted. " I don't see why people like Noel, Al, Jack and I should--" He hung up.

Producers think they own artists.

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