Charles Grodin

            On Tuesday morning I woke up well rested thinking that I slept better because there were fewer bedbugs like the day before. But when I checked later there were quite a lot of them all with my blood inside. I must have just slept through all the bites this time. The two sided carpet tape I’ve been wrapping around the edge of the mattress didn’t catch many. I think I’ve got to use shorter strips of the tape rather than run it all around in one stretch because the futon doesn’t have straight edges and so the tape lifts away at certain points, which would allow the bugs to crawl under. With shorter strips I could make the tape flush with the mattress. 

            I translated the first two verses of “L’epoque légendaire” (Legendary Time) by Boris Vian.

            I worked out the chords for the first verse of “Shylock” by Serge Gainsbourg so now that I have the chorus and a verse, that should establish the pattern. I’ll find out tomorrow. 

            I weighed 91.8 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since February 17. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and it stayed in tune most of the time.

            In the early afternoon I did my laundry. I would normally wait until I was out of underwear to do that, which would have been a couple of weeks away, but I wanted to steam my bed and bedroom floor. While my things were in the wash I steamed the futon. While they were in the dryer I did the baseboards and the floor. 

            I weighed 91.6 kilos at 16:10. 

            I took a siesta and when I woke up it was too late for a bike ride. 

            I weighed 92.35 kilos at 19:20. 

            I was still five days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a piece of roast pork while watching a 1991 interview by David Letterman and a 1999 interview by Mike Wallace of Carol Burnett. 

            Paul Shaeffer plays “Oh Carol” as Carol comes out. She says she just came from getting her hair cut. Vidal Sassoon was the first person who ever cut her hair very short. She says before 1960 she’d always put rollers in her hair but when Vidal came to New York he changed her look. She says he was quite nice. Dave says, “That was the old Vidal!” 

            She says she’d been doing an anthology show, which she wasn’t happy with on NBC. That network didn’t want a variety show so she was free to move back to CBS where she feels more at home. Then she realizes that Letterman is on NBC but Dave says, “Just barely.” He shouts behind him, “Are the trucks here?” 

            Since she’s back in New York to do her new show Dave asks if she’s given up her home in Hawaii. She says she still has a home in Hawaii and goes to veg out there as much as possible. Dave asks if it’s an 8 hour flight. She says she’s on Oahu, which is where Honolulu is at the foot of Diamond Head. When she needs a city fix she goes to Waikiki and laughs at everybody. “Do you see Don Ho at all?” “He hasn’t called me in ages.” “Is he near where you are?” “Yes”. “I’ve never been to Hawaii.” “Well come on over!” “Is that a serious invitation or a talk show invitation?” “Serious.” 

            They show a clip of Carol’s new show featuring a comic musical duet with Martin Short. In the sketch they both have buck teeth. Carol says he taught her that of you use tooth white on either side of the teeth they pop out like Bugs Bunny. 

            Dave tells Carol she reminds him of his sister Jan. 

            Dave asks if the old gang has got in touch with her about appearing on her new show. She says Conway is coming on the season finale and he wants to write a Tudball-Wiggins sketch in which Mrs. Wiggins accuses him of sexually harassing her. Dave says Tim Conway is a very nice guy. 

            Dave says, “You know who was here a couple of weeks ago and we had all kind of trouble with him, a very nice guy and a man for whom I have the highest regard as an actor, Charles Grodin. Now the two of you once started a club?” Carol says, “Chuck asked me out to dinner once and said, ‘Why don’t we start a club about being friendly?’.” She asked him why and he said because most people are impolite to one another. Very rarely would one look at their waiter and thank them. Or complimenting strangers. So Carol and Charles went on talk shows and started Club Friendly. It worked for about a week and Grodin’s mother was answering mail from all over the country. Dave says, “We have trouble with Chuck because he’s psychotic.” Dave thinks he wasn’t serious about Club Friendly. He says, “This guy would die if a stranger touched him!” Carol says, “Yeah, but he’d be friendly.” 

            In 2001 CBS aired a reunion of The Carol Burnett Show and 30 million people tuned in. More than the finales of The West Wing or ER. 

            Mike Wallace asks Carol why audiences are so drawn to her. She says people come up to her and say “You remind me of my sister” or You remind me of my aunt”. One lady said, “I just love you! You’re so common!” 

            There’s a clip from one of Carol’s Q and A shows when an audience member asks Carol what three things she’d like to accomplish before she dies. Carol answers, “Mel Gibson, Mel Gibson, and Mel Gibson.” This was back when everybody loved Mel Gibson. 

            Carol’s autobiography was called One More Time. 

            The only happy people she knew were in the movies. 

            Her grandmother would have Mary Baker Eddy in one hand and a phenobarbital in the other.

            After Carol started performing in college everybody wanted to be her friend. 

            Mike asks Julie Andrews why everybody adores Carol. She says because she’s courageous and vulnerable at the same time. 

            Beverly Sills says she had a nice long career but the happiest moments were spent with Carol onstage at the Metropolitan Opera. 

            On her third marriage to a man 23 years younger, “If it’s good enough for the guys it’s good enough for the gals.” 

            Tim Conway says Carol is annoying because she’s so nice. She doesn’t gossip and doesn’t say anything bad about anybody. “Would you wanna go to dinner with somebody like that?” 

            Carol earned her sixth Emmy for playing Helen Hunt’s mother on Mad About You. She says she’d like to die on stage. 

            Charles Grodin made his uncredited film debut in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in 1954. He studied with Uta Hagen and Lee Strasberg before making his acting debut in the anthology series Decision in 1958. He made his stage debut on Broadway in 1962 in Tchin Tchin. In 1966 he co-wrote and directed Hooray It’s a Glorious Day and All That on Broadway. In 1969 he directed his first TV special Songs of America. He starred in The Heartbreak Kid, 11 Harrowhouse (for which he wrote the adaptation), Beethoven, and Beethoven’s 2nd. He co-starred in Sex and the College Girl, Sunburn, It’s My Turn, King Kong, The Great Muppet Caper, The Incredible Shrinking Woman, Taking Care of Business, Seems Like Old Times, The Lonely Guy, Midnight Run, The Couch Trip, Clifford, The Humbling, and The Comedian. In 1977 he hosted Saturday Night Live deliberately playing himself as unprepared to host. He won an Emmy for co-writing The Paul Simon Special in 1978. He co-starred in the soap opera parody Fresno. He starred on The Charles Grodin Show from 1995 to 1998. He became a commentator on 60 Minutes II from 2000 to 2003. He appeared in 5 episodes of Louie. He was often deliberately belligerent on talk shows and verbally attacked the hosts to make himself a more interesting guest. His 1989 autobiography was called It Would Be So Nice If You Weren’t Here. He directed the original Broadway production of Lovers and Other Strangers.

James Stewart

            On Monday morning I only found one live bedbug and it was dark and greasy inside with no fresh blood. So maybe my efforts are paying off. 

            I posted the lyrics for “Bonnot’s Childhood”, my translation of “L'enfance de bonnot” by Boris Vian on my Boris Vian Facebook page and my personal Facebook page. 

            I worked out the chords for the fifth line of the first verse of “Shylock” by Serge Gainsbourg. I would have done the rest of the first verse and perhaps even more but I discovered that yesterday I’d posted two of my Christian’s Blog posts on my Christian’s Translations blog, so I had to copy the mis-posted blogs to their proper place and delete the ones that were misplaced. 

            I weighed 91.4 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since February 17. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the last of two sessions and it went out of tune on every song as usual. 

            I weighed 92.65 kilos before lunch. 

            I took a siesta and slept longer than I expected. It was too late for a bike ride downtown but I rode to Ossington and Bloor. 

            I weighed 92.35 kilos at 17:55. February 16 was the last evening when I crushed the scale so hard. 

            I was still about five days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a piece of roast pork while watching a 1979 interview by Johnny Carson and a 1986 interview by Dick Cavett of Carol Burnett. 

            Johnny says Carol has just been nominated for an Emmy for her dramatic performance in Friendly Fire. She also has a series called Carol Burnett and Company that airs for four Saturdays.

            Carol comes out and tells the audience that she and Johnny were at a party last night for the 30th wedding anniversary of Jimmy Stewart and his wife. The party was full of people she idolized as a child. She was watching Loretta Young dance with Gregory Peck, she was sitting next to Cary Grant, and James Stewart asked her to dance. Johnny mentions that Irene Dunn and Henry Fonda were there. Cary said to her, “I watch your show every week” but she was so nervous all she could say in response was “You are a credit to your profession!” Johnny says, “That’s second only to my first meeting when I was out here. I only had a local show and I met Clark Gable. He stepped out of his car bigger than life. He said ‘Hello kid.’ I froze in my tracks and all I could say was, ‘Howahma!’” Carol says she was sitting there for no reason cutting Cary’s food for him. Johnny says when he first met Jimmy Cagney, Cagney told him, “I catch you whenever I can”. Johnny responded, “That’s very good!” because it sounded like someone doing an impression of Jimmy Cagney. Both Carol and Johnny do impersonations of Jimmy Stewart. 

            Johnny tells Carol that the first time he ever saw her was on The Ed Sullivan Show singing “I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles”. Carol says she also sang it on Jack Paar’s Tonight Show, then she says “Sorry”. Johnny says, “That’s perfectly all right. Jack’s off somewhere talking to a moose in Maine.” 

            Carol says her grandmother was married six times. 

            She says she thought of changing her name to Carol Creighton but decided to keep Burnett because she wanted Tommy Tracy to know if she was ever successful because she’d had a crush on him for six years through junior high and high school. She stands up and shakes her hips to mock Tommy.

            The other night someone from Texas asked her to do the Tarzan yell but with a southern drawl. She does it and then just adds, “You all!” 

            Carol is thinking she’d like to do four reunion shows every summer. 

           Johnny says Tim Conway is not only a great performer but he’s also a great writer. He’s currently in a movie called The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again and in October he’s starring in a film which he also wrote called The Prizefighter. 

            Tim Conway comes out and hugs Carol. He says Carol’s new show is easy to work because you do 4 weeks and you’re off 48 weeks, which gives him a lot of time to do whatever he wants. He says he wasn’t invited to last night’s party and in fact he’s never been to a Hollywood party other than at Carol’s house. Carol says those were just kiddy birthday parties. He says he went to Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé’s anniversary party. Carol says she wasn’t invited. Tim says that night his car was stolen. He pulled up and a guy in a red jacket asked, “Can I take your car?” I said, “Yeah. I asked if I needed a ticket and he said, no. And that’s the last I saw of my car.” They found his car 28 days later. 

            Johnny says, “You made a movie and you wrote one…” Tim says, “Yeah, down in Tijuana called Peggy and Her Pony, which… Oh! You mean the one for Disney!” He says the movie that’s out now is with Don Knotts and the other one is also with Don Knotts and I”. Carol corrects him that it’s “Don Knotts and me”. Johnny says, “If it’s a subject you use Don Knotts and I but if you use “with” it’s Don Knotts and me”. Carol says, “What you do is leave out Don Knotts and say “with me”. So then Tim says, “Don Knotts and me are in this picture”. It’s called The Prizefighter. Tim plays the world champion and Don plays his trainer. It has little pieces of Rocky, Main Event, and Champ. Johnny says he’s heard that Tim really did box in school. Tim says he did. He was a champion one year and the next year he has a picture of himself getting knocked into the third row. 

           They show a clip from The Prizefighter. It’s a takeoff on Rocky eating raw eggs while training. Don cracks several raw eggs into a glass and tells Tim to drink it. Tim is reluctant and so Don asks if he’ll drink it if he drinks some. But Don can’t do it either so he tosses it all into a frying pan. 

            Johnny says he saw a special Tim did two years ago and was amazed to see him tap dance and then he found out later that it wasn’t Tim. Tim says it was a guy in a Tim Conway mask. He says he got a lot of work from that but people were surprised that he couldn’t dance after all.

            Johnny asks Tim when he first met Carol. He jokes that it was when she was 14 in pigtails. Carol says it was The Garry Moore Show which was where she also met Johnny. 

            Carol asks Johnny why when he cuts to commercial he used to do a full golf swing but now they just cut before he’s done. He jokes that it’s personal. Then he does it. 

            The Dick Cavett Show featuring Carol is already underway and the audience is asking Carol questions. Someone asks her to sing some of “I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles”. Carol sings a verse. In 1957 Dulles was the US Secretary of State. 

            This show takes place in the Museum of Broadcasting. A lot of Carol’s work is there for the public to view. Dick asks Carol if she can look back at her old stuff without pain. She says she can’t. When she looks at the reruns sometimes she doesn’t remember the sketches because those ones weren’t very good. 

            Sometimes she wishes she still had her show so she could do a sketch on Dynasty or something else that’s current like Imelda Marcos. She thinks Harvey would be funny as Robin Leach doing a parody of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. 

            Dick asks if she looks at the problems she’s had as an adult such as her divorce and thinks, “Haven’t I paid enough dues?” Carol says no. She doesn’t think of her marriage to Joe Hamilton as a failure. She doesn’t regret one minute of her twenty year marriage. 

            Dick talks about something he heard Carol’s daughter Carrie say in an interview that her mother rebelled against her parents by being straight. So that’s why Carrie rebelled by going wild. Carol says it skips a generation. 

            At the time of this interview Carrie was in the cast of the TV series Fame. The Heart and Lung Association got the cast of Fame to talk with 4th and 5th graders in the Boston area about drugs. As an ex-drug addict she was very effective at this. 

            In school James Stewart played accordion, sang and sometimes acted. In 1929 he was accepted at Princeton University where he studied Architecture and graduated as an architect. . He made his Broadway debut in Carry Nation in 1932. In 1934 he followed his best friend Henry Fonda to Hollywood. They lived together and gained the reputation of being Hollywood’s biggest playboys. But after the married their favourite activity was painting model airplanes together. They once got into a fist fight over politics because Stewart was a very conservative Republican and Fonda was a very liberal Democrat. Henry won the fight but they never discussed politics again. He made his screen debut in Art Trouble in 1934. He learned to fly in 1935. He tried twice to join the army but failed the medical because he was underweight. When he won the Best Actor Oscar in 1940 he sent it to his father who displayed it in his hardware store for 25 years. In 1940 he was finally accepted in the army and over the course of WWII he rose from private to colonel. They wanted him to do propaganda films but he insisted on fighting on the front lines. He remained with the army reserve after the war and in 1959 was promoted to brigadier general, making him the highest ranked actor in history. He married Gloria Stewaet in 1945 and they were together 45 years until she died. He co-starred in You Can’t Take It With You, Destry Rides Again, The Mortal Storm, The Philadelphia Story (for which he won an Oscar), The Shop Around the Corner, Born to Dance, It’s a Wonderful World, Ice Follies of 1939, Made for Each Other, The Shopworn Angel, Vivacious Lady, Of Human Hearts, Navy Blue and Gold, The Last Gangster, Seventh Heaven, After the Thin Man, Next Time We Love, The Murder Man, On Our Merry Way, You Gotta Stay Happy, Malaya, How the West Was Won, The Shootist, Airport 77, The Big Sleep, . He starred in No Time for Comedy, Come Live With Me, Pot O Gold, Ziegfeld Girl, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It’s a Wonderful Life, Harvey, Magic Town, Call Northside 777, Speed, Rope, Winchester ’73, Broken Arrow, The Jackpot, No Highway in the Sky, Carbine Williams, Bend of the River, The Naked Spur, Thunder Bay, Rear Window, The Man from Laramie, Vertigo, Anatomy of a Murder, Two Rode Together, Strategic Air Command, The Mountain Road, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Stratton Story, The Glenn Miller Story, The Spirit of St. Louis, How the West Was Won, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Night Passage, Bell Book and Candle, The Greatest Show On Earth, The FBI Story, Two Rode Together, Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation, Take Her She’s Mine, Dear Brigitte, Shenandoah, The Rare Breed, Firecreek, Bandolero, The Cheyenne Social Club, Fools’ Parade, The Magic of Lassie, and The Green Horizon. In 1955 he was the top box office draw. He starred in the radio series The Six Shooter in 1953. He starred in The Jimmy Stewart Show. He never took an acting lesson. Jimmy Stewart and His Poems was published in 1989. He hated draft dodgers. Over 3000 attended his funeral.

August 9, 1996: Brian and I busked and rehearsed

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday Brian Haddon and I busked and rehearsed at the same time on Bloor Street and in the evening we performed on the Spit Fridays open stage in the back room of the Cameron.

August 8, 1996: I found out from my sister that I'd be getting $15,000 from my dad's will

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I either busked or moved furniture. I heard from my sister that I was going to get about $15,000 from my father’s will once everything had been settled from his estate in around a month.

Dick Cavett

            On Sunday morning there were fewer bedbugs than usual so maybe the diatomaceous earth has taken its slow effect. 

            I found a picture of Boris Vian as a child and posted it on my Boris Vian Facebook page. 

            I worked out the chords for most of the first verse of “Shylock” by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have it done tomorrow and that will probably establish the pattern for the song. 

            I weighed 90.7 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the first of two out-of-tune sessions. 

            Around midday I did a thorough vacuuming of my bedroom and put fresh carpet tape around the edge of my futon and also around the edge of my mattress cover for hopefully double protection. 

            I weighed 92.2 kilos before lunch. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            I took a siesta and slept longer than I expected so it was too late to take a bike ride. 

            I weighed 92 kilos at 17:45, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening since July 21. 

            I made pizza on a slice of Rudolph’s sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, three sliced souvlaki, and five-year-old cheddar while watching a 1974 interview of Carol Burnett by Dick Cavett.

            He introduces it by saying that when he first met Carol she inspired affection and he’s heard from others who have had the same experience. She never has a phony moment in real life. 

            Dick comes out and after the applause dies down he says, “Let’s hope this one gets on”. He’s referring to a previous show that was not aired because it was determined that there wasn’t enough balance of opinion. He disagrees and the audience cheers. He doesn’t know yet if this one will air because he’s not here now. “I appear to be here and to you at home I’m here but I’m actually somewhere else, which raises the question why you can hear me… I was gonna do 90 minutes with Carol Burnett but now I may have to do half the show with an unfunny woman.” 

            Carol Burnett has been called the United States’ female Charlie Chaplin. Dick says he doesn’t know anyone he likes better than Carol Burnett. 

            He says he had a list of 78 things to ask her but tore it up because he doesn’t want this to be a difficult evening for her. He asks, “How did you lose your virginity?” “When I was a nun in the Alps.” She says she was pure until she got married. “It’s only the second time I’ve ever asked that question” “Bette Davis you asked and she gave you the same answer. In fact she and I had the same fella.” 

            She talks about how she used to play Tarzan. Dick says he met Johnny Weismuller and it was one of the great thrills of his life. Dick says he saw his first movie back in Gibbon, Nebraska. He doesn’t remember what he saw but it had cowboys. He says he was taken by violence and even now he loves a violent movie. Carol says even Bambi makes her upset. He admits it’s a horrifying movie. Carol says she watched The Godfather with her hands over her eyes. Dick says he doesn’t like film violence if it looks too real. He saw a movie in which Eli Wallach had his teeth beaten out (That might be in The Good the Bad and the Ugly). Dick says that was a little much. Carol says she liked the westerns where you’d get shot and die but now it’s everything coming out. 

            Carol says everything seemed a little dirtier when she left the movie theatre as a child. 

            Carol says she has a tooth fetish. Every time she passes a sink she brushes them and so she hasn’t had a cavity in 12 years. 

            Carol says she has no theories about comedy but what makes people laugh is being surprised. The hardest thing is being a comedy writer for a variety show because they have to come up with 4 or 5 sketches for different characters. You can’t win em all. There are many times when we have to go out and do something none of us are in love with. 

            She sometimes doesn’t find her character until the day of taping and she’s wearing the costume because she works from the outside in. There’s an old lady she does called Stella Toddler and Carol was trying to find a voice for her. She went into the washroom on the second floor and sat in a cubicle to be alone and work on the voice. What she found was a low voice little bit like Gabby Hayes and she sat there talking for a while. When she came out there were three women just standing there. She left without washing her hands. 

            Carol lives in the old Betty Grable house. Betty was on her show in the first season and they invited her over. She walked through the house and got teary eyed. She was a wonderful person and never took her stardom that seriously.

            Every Friday night at Hollywood High there was a dance and she’d go but only either dance with her girlfriend or play ping pong in the game room. The guys that did ask her to dance had pimples, bad breath and couldn’t keep time. 

            Carol loves chewing ice. 

            Carol and Dick sing “A Fine Romance” by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields from the 1936 film Swing Time. The set rolls to the left while they are sitting on it and they step to centre stage. When they are done Carol says, “That was really terrible!” Then they sit down on the edge of the stage and Carol arranges her legs so it doesn’t expose too much. There is apparently a priest sitting in the audience and Carol asks, “Okay father?” They sing “Two Sleepy People” by Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser from the 1938 film Thanks for the Memory. Afterwards Carol notices that Dick’s eyes are shining. She says he ought to do a musical but he’d need a little more rehearsal. Dick shows the tape of their earlier rehearsal of “A Fine Romance” and then Dick puts his hand on Carol’s back she moves it down to her hip. Then she throws her hip out of joint as she’s able to do. He says he’s never known another woman who could do that. Carol says, “You told me your wife can do that.” “Oh, that’s right.” They show an earlier part of the rehearsal when Carol first hears Dick sing and she cracks up. Carol explains she was laughing out of sheer joy. 

            Dick asks if she ever gets the actor’s dream of forgetting her lines and she has. She’s doing Six Rooms right now with Alan Alda. It’s a warm comedy about adultery. 

            Dick tells Carol she has some of the most beautiful legs he’s ever seen. 

            Carol says most of the people she knows in show business are happy and especially the big ones. James Stewart and Lucille Ball are terrific people. Dick says there are also some true swine. Carol says it attracts them. Dick asks her to name some of her favourite swine. She says Porky Pig. 

            Dick says Carol’s show is more like repertory theatre than most TV shows. 

            Carol says she had a wonderful year with her dad when he went on the wagon but even when he was drunk he was very kind. Her mother was a nasty drunk but she was funny. She only wishes they lived until she was making enough money to cure them. They both died at the age of 46. 

            Carol says the movie Pete and Tilly in which she starred with Walter Matthau was too serious. She was worried that since she and Walter were known as comic actors that they would be expecting the film to be a comedy. So she underplayed her character and felt very stiff. 

            Dick lets the audience ask questions. 

            Someone asks Carol if the parties she goes to are different now that she’s successful. She says the parties she went to in New York when she was starting out were in run down apartments. She doesn’t go to that many parties because she likes to spend time with her family but when she does go they’re usually in a big house and they play games like charades and treasure hunt and those are the most fun parties. 

            Someone asks her to do her Charo impersonation. 

            Someone asks if she got in trouble for imitating the Nixon family in a sketch. She says there wasn’t a lot to latch onto with the Nixons. She had more fun playing Lady Bird Johnson because she was an outgoing Texan. 

            Someone asks what she would do if she wasn’t in show business. She says she’d probably be a school teacher of the fourth, fifth, or sixth grades. A school teacher in the audience tells her not to do it.

            Someone asks about the earthquakes in California. She says the big one they had three years ago happened around sunrise. Carol headed for Erin’s room and she was 2 at the time, standing in her crib and holding on while the room was shaking and saying “Good morning mommy!” Carol picked her up to take her to the other room so they could all die together and Erin said, “I wanna wear my pink dress!”

            Carol says when she was a kid her closet was the bathroom shower rack because her grandmother was a packrat and even saved peanut butter jars in their one closet. If a guy came over and wanted to use the bathroom she’d tell him it was out of order and direct him to the Shell station. Her grandmother was messy and so they’d just sit in the hotel lobby. 

            Dick asks Carol what books were important to her as a kid. She says The Yearling. She also liked Grimm's Fairy Tales. 

            He asks what she would study if she went back to college and she answers music and dance. She says she’s terrified whenever she has to dance on her show. 

            Dick asks Carol what she likes about him. She says his sex appeal and his brains. 

            Dick Cavett attended Yale University where he majored in drama and met his future wife Carrie Nye. He played in and directed plays on the campus radio station. He acted with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1956. He made his TV debut on Sgt. Bilko in 1959. Dick and Carrie married in 1964 and were together until she died 42 years later. He was too short to land lead roles in shows. He started as a stand up comic and then became a writer on The Tonight Show first for Jack Paar and then Johnny Carson. he also wrote for Merv Griffin. He starred in the movie Thayer of West Point. The Dick Cavett Show ran from 1968 to 1974 on ABC and then one more year on CBS. He earned the reputation as a thinking man’s talk show host. His show was third in ratings behind Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin but for a late night talk show he was considered second to Carson. He was famous for attracting guests that hated appearing on talk shows like Katherine Hepburn, Laurence Olivier, and Marlon Brando. He often paired guests with opposing views like Jim Brown and Lester Maddox. He hosted Saturday Night Live in 1976. His PBS Dick Cavett Show ran from 1977 to 1982. His USA network Dick Cavett Show ran from 1985 to 1986. His CNBC Dick Cavett Show ran from 1989 to 1996. He was nominated for ten Emmy Awards and won three. His book Brief Encounters was published in 2014. He later wrote a regular column for The New York Times. He speaks fluent German and is an agnostic.

August 7, 1996: My feature at the Art Bar reading series was one week away

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday I rehearsed with Brian Haddon at my place for our gig next week at the Art Bar reading series. Later that evening I went to said series at the Csarda Hungarian Restaurant on Elm Street to perform on the open stage. The host, Pierre Labbé reminded me that I needed to provide copies of one of my poem for the audience to read while I was performing. I was already working on a unique way to do that.

Lucie Arnaz

            On Saturday morning before bed I put fresh double sided carpet tape around my mattress. I didn’t notice any bedbugs on me overnight and didn’t find many when I searched after yoga besides the ones that got stuck on the tape. 

            I published my translation of “L'enfance de bonnot” (Bonnot’s Childhood) on my Christian’s Translations blog without music, since no one has posted the audio online. 

            I worked out the chords for the chorus and part of the first verse of “Shylock” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 90.8 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Kramer during song practice for the last of two sessions and it stayed in tune most of the time. 

            Around midday I rode down to No Frills where there was only one bag of Canadian cherries left. I got that, a Canadian watermelon, a basket of Canadian peaches, a pack of Mexican raspberries, some bananas, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a pack of chicken legs, a pack of two T-bone steaks, a jar of marinara, three bags of skim milk, a jug of orange juice, two containers of skyr, a bag of wedge fries, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips. 

            I weighed 91.45 kilos at 14:15. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            I took a siesta and got up too late to take a bike ride downtown. 

            I weighed 91.7 kilos at 17:25. 

            I was still about five days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up. 

            I grilled eight souvlaki. I made pizza on a slice of Rudolph’s sandwich bread with the last of my rosée tomato sauce, tomato pesto, three sliced souvlaki, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching a 1971 episode of The Dick Cavett Show with guests, Dr. Ferdie Pacheco, Lucy Arnaz, Carol Burnett, and Lucille Ball. 

            In his monologue Dick says he was distracted on his show last night partly because he was going to the Ali-Frasier fight after the show, but also because a guy in the audience kept shouting “Down in front!” “and he was talking to me!” Dick says hello to his orchestra leader and drummer Bobby Rosengarden. He says Robert does the audience warmup, which no one ever sees on TV. Dick says the fight was exciting. He went with his wife who does not like to go out in public with him because she hears too much of “Ooh it’s you!” But he says he can’t help it because when he sees a celebrity he always goes, “Ooh it’s you!” He says he doesn’t normally like going to sports events because he always gets glared at for not standing for the national anthem when he is standing. Ali and Frasier were paid $2.5 million each for the fight. That comes down to $926 a second. The Apollo 14 crew was at the fight. The news referred to them as “Our gutsy fly guys”, The New York Times called them “Lunar explorers”, but The Village Voice called them “Three who spaced out with a single capsule”. 

            Dick’s first guest is Dr. Ferdie Pacheco, Muhammed Ali’s personal physician. Dick asks if Ali had a broken jaw as everybody thought. Ferdie says he could see how people would think that since one side of his face was twice the size of the other. He says Ali was x-rayed and he had no fracture but just a collection of blood from the left hook that blew a blood vessel when it dropped him. He says he’ll be okay in five or six days. He says it was the best fight he’s ever seen in his 12 years of being a physician for boxers. It was an even fight until the knockout. Dick refers to Ali as Clay sometimes and Ferdie admits the name change is confusing. Dick asks about Ali’s diet and Ferdie says before a fight he’ll have a steak and a salad. Ferdie had to leave to be on Howard Cosell’s show. 

            Lucie Arnaz plays Lucille Ball’s daughter on Here’s Lucy and she is Lucille Ball’s daughter. Lucie comes out, shakes Dicks hand very quickly and sits down immediately. She says she didn’t want to stand next to him for too long, which is reference to the fact that she’s much taller than he is. She’s 1.75 meters tall while Dick is 1.69 meters tall. She says at 14 she was taller than the boys her age. Now at 19 she likes being tall because tall people can wear a wider variety of clothes than shorter people. 

            She says her time at Beverly Hills Catholic School was one of the worst times of her life. High school nuns are different than grammar school nuns because they are real people. but grammar school nuns are recruited from the army. They drag you by the ear, slap you around, and call you dirty names. She learned some terrific language from grammar school nuns. 

           She didn’t think of her parents as stars. But once she was thirteen she wanted them to introduce her to the stars but she never got to meet Paul Newman or Marlon Brando. She only met Wally Cox. She says she can’t really say what it’s like to be Lucille Ball’s daughter because she has nothing to compare it to. The president’s daughter can answer that question because she hasn’t always been the president’s daughter. 

            She says they had an extra garage that wasn’t being used and so she turned it into a theatre. Her mother had a guy from the studio come over and build a little stage for her and I assume her brother Desi. They had a microphone and a little box office. They put on Bye Bye Birdie when she was 11 and she played Ann-Margret’s character. Dick says Ann-Margret got mad at him when he had her as a guest. She was promoting C.C. and Company and showed a clip. Dick asked if a lot of money was riding on the picture. Ann said, “I’ve never seen you in a movie” and Dick responded “What a coincidence”. Lucy says, “I knew there was something I liked about you.” 

            Carol Burnett comes out. This is the first time she and Dick have met. Carol tells the story of how when she was a girl she pretended to be twins. There was a boy named Asher Washowski who lived in her building. Carol was 9 or 10. Asher used to sit in the lobby and read comic books. Carol lived in the apartment that was right off the lobby. Carol told Asher she was expecting her twin sister Karen from Canada. She told him she was going to the store but Karen would be coming in shortly and asked him to direct her to the apartment. He said he would and then Carol left the building, ran around and crawled into her apartment window, changed clothes, got a suitcase and crawled back out the window and walked in the lobby to say, “Hello, my name is Karen. Can you tell me where Carol Burnett lives?” Asher pointed and she knocked on the door. Her grandmother let her in, then Carol changed clothes again and crawled back out the window to come into the lobby and ask Asher if her sister had arrived yet. This went on for six days until she was exhausted. She suggests that it’s possible that Asher was putting her on and was just watching to see how long she could keep it up. Carol tells Dick that she’s actually triplets and she’s not actually Carol there tonight. 

            Her grandmother used to make capes and masks out of pillowcases and dye them black for Carol and her girlfriend. Then they would hang around the Bank of America looking for robbers. Carol used to go see the Nyoka Queen of the Jungle serials. She loved Flash Gordon and wanted to be an astronaut. Then she wanted to be a journalist and be Brenda Starr and fall in love with a man who had a patch over his eye. Carol says the other day her 4 year old daughter Jodie told the plumber that her mother was Juliet Prouse and she was married to Ray Charles. Carol says there was a hill where they’d play jungle and they’d mark off where the quicksand was and they’d have ropes to swing over it but if you touched it you had to pretend you were sinking and you’d die for that afternoon. Dick says he wishes he’d known her as a kid. 

            She tells the story of her benefactor who leant her the $1000 to go to New York. She said she wasn’t the only one he’d helped and it wasn’t only show business people. Dick tells Carol he finds her terribly attractive. She waves her hand in his face to check his vision. 

            Lucille Ball took over a television studio in a year when it lost over $65,000. Six years later she sold it for $17 million. 

            Dick asks her to recount how she was fired by Ziegfeld. She says she’s never told the story before. When she came to New York at 16 all she wanted to do was get into vaudeville. She never got an agent or got near any building that had anything to do with vaudeville. Then she ran into some girls who were going to a cattle call at the Ziegfeld Theatre for a third road show of Rio Rita. Lucy got the job and kept it for five days of rehearsal until they culled her and several other girls out. She had already written home and told everybody that she was a Ziegfeld Girl. She was crying outside the theatre after all the other girls had left. Henry Sharp, Ziegfeld’s right hand man came out and told her it was ridiculous to cry because there are other jobs. Then he left and she followed him for two blocks while still sobbing. He told her to stop following him because she might get him arrested. So she walked away and thought that she had to kill herself. She saw a big limousine and thought getting hit by it would be a classy way to die so she tried to throw herself in front of it. But it stopped, so she got up and went home. Dick says, “If that car had been going faster I’d be talking to an empty chair.” Lucie says, “Two empty chairs!” Dick asks, “Were you Lucille Ball then?” “You don’t think I’d choose that name! After that I changed my name to Diane Belmont. But when she used to play act as a girl she was Madeline from The Light of the Western Stars by Zane Gray. 

            Lucy went to the John Murray Anderson Robert Milton Dramatic School in New York. Bette Davis was a star pupil there. They wrote Lucy’s mother a letter and told her she was wasting her money. So Lucy went back to Jamestown, New York. Once she ran away without permission and three blocks away her mother showed up with a packed lunch and an umbrella for her. Lucy couldn’t find a way in to show business and so finally she became a model and a good one. But sometimes she still had to go into coffee shops and find a booth where someone had left a half a donut and nickel tip. She’d steal the nickel to buy a coffee to have with the donut. 

            She once read a script where it said they were looking for a “Lucille Ball type”. She said that was a thrill and she didn’t even care if she got the part. 

           Dick asks if she’s ever wanted to do drama and she says no but her daughter points out that she was in The Big Street with Henry Fonda. Carol says she’s never wanted to do drama but she did later on. 

            Lucille says any woman who works has guilt about not being with her family. When she started I Love Lucy she was six months pregnant with Lucie. Carol says she spends more time at home than she does working. The earliest she has to be in is 11:00 but that’s only on taping day. She usually reports in at 13:00 but gets there earlier to do her exercise class with a group at CBS. She home every day by 17:30 with the exception of orchestra rehearsal. She has weekends and summers off and another week off every fourth or fifth week. 

            Dick asks Lucie if she wants to marry someone in show business. She says she’s engaged to someone who’s producing and she thinks it’s great because you’re both doing something you both understand. 

            Dick gives his guests a chance to ask him anything they want. Carol asks him his measurements. Lucie asks if he can cook and Dick says he made a stew once that would knock her hat off. Lucie says it’s a real turn on when a man can cook. 

            Dick says that Sigmund Freud said that in his 60 years of study he still doesn’t understand women. Carol says Sig was mixed up. Dick asks if she was acquainted with him. She says, “No but he tried”. 

            Dick says he was mentioned in the book The Sensuous Man (In it Terry Garret lists Dick as one of the top 10 sexy men). They ask for Dick’s middle name and he’s embarrassed to say but finally tells them it’s Alva. 

            Dick asks Lucille if she’d change anything about herself if she could. She says she’d like her hair to be naturally red and not mousy brown. 

            The three women agree on being attracted to Paul Newman and they says it’s those blue eyes.

            Carol tells Lucille that she’d love for her three girls to grow up like Lucie. Lucille tells Dick she thinks her son could take a few lessons from him. 

            It was Desi Arnaz who wanted their daughter to be named Lucie. She made her professional acting debut at the age of 12 on an episode of The Lucy Show. She made her film debut in 1977 in Billie Jack Goes to Washington. She made her Broadway debut in 1979 in They’re Playing Our Song. Lucie Arnaz co-starred in the 1980 adaptation of The Jazz Singer starring Neil Diamond (for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award). She co-starred in 119 episodes of Here’s Lucy. She starred in the short-lived sitcom The Lucie Arnaz Show, based on the British sitcom Agony. She later said it was a depressing experience. She starred in Second Thoughts, Smoking Non Smoking. She won an Emmy Award in 1993 for her documentary Lucy and Desi: a Home Movie. She and her brother only own the rights to Here’s Lucy of all their mother’s shows.