Cavett / Snyder DVDs

For a trip down memory lane the DVD set The Dick Cavett Show: Hollywood Greats plays more like a walk through the halls of institutional memory of American pop culture during the years when said contribution could be called golden. Astaire, Brando, Capra, Hepburn, Hitchcock, Huston, Mitchum are a few but not all of the great names and moments to be found in this 4 DVD collection.
Of the names assembled only Kirk Douglas, Mel Brooks, Robert Altman, Peter Bogdanovich and Debbie Reynolds are still living. If the others were alive maybe Orson Welles would be directing films with money he made selling wine and making iPod commercials and Marlon Brando would certainly be swashbuckling alongside Johnny Depp. The cult of celebrity embraced these personalities thirty years ago (the interview shows were recorded in the early 1970s), but their appeal was based on their cumulative talent. So unlike the nipple slips that pass for entertainment news today.
Consider that Cavett was the third rated talk host after Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin, although his cool factor boosted his karma quotient. Cavett was on ABC from 1969, and periodically throughout the 1970s, although the round robin style interview show would constantly shift time slots. Sometimes in prime time for an hour, mostly ninety-minute shots after prime. When Katherine Hepburn did her first ever television interview Cavett scored. That would be tantamount to Jack Nicholson going on Jimmy Kimmel to stump for The Departed (ain’t gonna happen).
Sure stars promoted their projects back then, but the emphasis was on conversation and where tangential ideas can lead. Brando’s appearance stands out due to his adamant refusal to talk about The Godfather while also co-hosting a handful of Native American speakers. Mitchum answers direct Cavett questions like “Do you think you have a drinking problem?” with “It’s other people who have a problem with the amount I can drink.” Of course while sipping Scotch and smoking cigs. Bette Davis honestly parries to Cavett’s thrust: “Bette, how did you lose your virginity?” Some of these segments are also running in September on cable channel TCM.

Perhaps not so odd, in 1968 when Salvador Dali produced a TV Guide cover, and titled it Today, Tonight and Tomorrow, NBC did not yet have a Tomorrow show. That show premiered in 1973 with Tom Snyder. Snyder was a bit over the top and the imitation Dan Aykroyd did on Saturday Night Live actually was what Snyder could be like when he launched into guffaws of self-congratulatory commentary. Snyder never came off as essential as Cavett but he had his moments, although those don’t include the interview with Charlie Manson. That ep will probably never be issued on DVD. But Tom Snyder’s Electric Kool-Aid Talk Show has been. A compendium of different Tomorrow episodes, the single disc DVD includes The Grateful Dead with Ken Kesey for one entire show (the Dead play four songs – On the Road Again, Cassidy, Dire Wolf, Deep Elem Blues), and segments with Tom Wolfe and Timothy Leary. These shows were originally broadcast in 1979 through 1981, and capture the ambiance of that transitional time. A quarter of a century later the dialogue still rings relevant. Snyder, at one point talking to Leary, makes a joke and looks like he’s imitating Aykroyd imitating him. That’s a strange brew.