Dick Cavett
Author and Host of “The Dick Cavett Show”
The host of The Dick Cavett Show (which aired on ABC from 1968 to 1975 and on public television from 1977 to 1982), Dick Cavett is the author of Brief Encounters: Conversations, Magic Moments and Assorted Hijinks (2014). He is also the co-author of Cavett (1974) and Eye on Cavett (1983) and author of Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets (2011).
Dick Cavett was born in Gibbon, Nebraska in 1936. Growing up in Lincoln, Nebraska, Cavett won local fame as a teenage magician. In 1954, he earned a scholarship to Yale University where he majored in English and drama. At Yale he appeared in numerous radio and stage productions- while spending his summers working at the Oregon and Stratford, (Connecticut), Shakespeare Festivals.
In 1968 ABC signed Cavett as the host of a morning talk show, which eventually lead ABC to give Cavett his own late night program opposite The Tonight Show. The Dick Cavett Show ran on ABC until 1975. From 1977 until 1982, The Dick Cavett Show appeared five times a week on Public Television. In 1986, he hosted the first two seasons of Faces of Japan, a thirteen part series for PBS. The Dick Cavett Show was aired for six seasons on CNBC.
He made his Broadway debut in 1977 playing the leading role in Otherwise Engaged, a British comedy by Simon Gray. During the summer of 1988, Dick Cavett returned to Broadway in the role of the narrator in Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. From October 2000 through January of 2002 Cavett appeared as the narrator in the Broadway production of The Rocky Horror Show. He has made guest appearances on television programs as Cheers, The Edge of Night, and The Simpsons, as well as in Beetlejuice and Forest Gump.
Cavett spoke at The Common Good alongside Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville, with moderator Alex Witt, in 2015: Screening and Discussion on "Best of Enemies" - July 13, 2015.
Twitter: @TheDickCavett
