The endur­ing joy of Dick Cavett’s Old Hol­ly­wood interviews

Kather­ine Hep­burn didn’t do TV. ​“It was gospel,” vet­er­an talk show host Dick Cavett would lat­er recall, ​“her pri­va­cy was prac­ti­cal­ly enforced by the mil­i­tary”. But in 1973, Cavett did the impos­si­ble and man­aged to coax Miss Hep­burn, then a spry 66-year-old, out of her shell and in front of a tele­vi­sion cam­era. Her on-air debut turned out to be a sprawl­ing two-hour con­ver­sa­tion, broad­cast across two evenings, that remains a land­mark in Amer­i­can broadcasting.

Per­haps it was Cavett’s urbane pub­lic per­sona that helped to draw Hep­burn out of hid­ing. The Dick Cavett Show had already been on the air for five years, and in that time it had cul­ti­vat­ed a refined and met­ro­pol­i­tan rep­u­ta­tion that was unique among con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous talk shows. He had been a come­di­an, and he was amus­ing when he need­ed to be, but his show put a pre­mi­um on long-form con­ver­sa­tions over anec­dotes and one-liners.

Cavett him­self wasn’t espe­cial­ly hip but by the ear­ly sev­en­ties his show had accrued no small amount of coun­ter­cul­tur­al cache – it’s hard to imag­ine John­ny Car­son look­ing quite so at home with David Cros­by or John and Yoko. But he also made a con­scious effort to bridge the gen­er­a­tional gap, often pair­ing fash­ion­able younger guests with old­er ​‘liv­ing leg­ends’. One famous instance of this was a 1970 edi­tion of the pro­gramme that sat rock­er Janis Joplin across from silent movie queen Glo­ria Swanson.

If Cavett’s intent had been to scan­dalise Swan­son with Joplin, he failed. ​“I have seen every­thing,” announced Swan­son. ​“I was in Ger­many when boys were dress­ing like girls,” adding that ​“a lot of what goes on today” is mere­ly a ​“bad imi­ta­tion” of the roar­ing twen­ties. If any­thing, it was Swan­son who scan­dalised Joplin. At one point, the sub­ject of Swanson’s dab­bling with sculp­ture is broached, as well as her desire to sculpt Cavett. ​“I want to do his head,” she purrs. ​“Do you know what I mean by that?” ​“Yes I do,” replies Joplin, before burst­ing into a fit of earthy laugh­ter. Cavett doesn’t know where to look – bash­ful­ness was one of his specialties.

There’s some­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly sat­is­fy­ing about see­ing female movie stars of an Old Hol­ly­wood vin­tage stretch their legs on The Dick Cavett Show, free from the stric­tures, fix­ers, and muz­zles they will have known while under con­tract. Cavett’s affect was well-suit­ed to this type of guest too – he strikes a good bal­ance between gen­tle flir­ta­tion and earnest, grand­son-like rev­er­ence. Bette Davis was a recur­ring guest, and her affec­tion for Cavett is pal­pa­ble, although this didn’t extend to all of the cus­tom­ary talk show pleas­antries – ​“I’m sick of all the kiss­ing on talk shows,” she opined while rebuff­ing Cavett on a 1971 edi­tion. ​“I’m against it.”

One thing Davis seems keen to stress to both Cavett and the audi­ence is quite how ​‘no non­sense’ she is. She recalls how unglam­ourous she felt upon her arrival in Hol­ly­wood. ​“Imag­ine you’ve just seen Jean Har­low,” she scoffs, ​“and then I come through the gate.” How­ev­er, she’s nev­er exact­ly self-dep­re­cat­ing, char­ac­ter­is­ing her­self as clos­er to a legit­i­mate the­atre actress than a mere movie star. ​“I just dressed in an ordi­nary lit­tle Yan­kee way, and they [Hol­ly­wood] didn’t under­stand peo­ple like that.”

How­ev­er, she did have some kind words for some of her Hol­ly­wood con­tem­po­raries, par­tic­u­lar­ly her Now, Voy­ager co-star Claude Rains. ​“Was he a hap­py man?”, asks Cavett. ​“I don’t think as group actors are what I call ​‘hap­py peo­ple’,” Davis replies, as an air of melan­choly descends upon the stu­dio. ​“I could not say [Claude] was a hap­py per­son,” she con­tin­ues, ​“but he was wit­ty, amus­ing, and beau­ti­ful. Real­ly beau­ti­ful.” Rains had died four years ear­li­er, and here Davis reflects on the pass­ing of her peers thus­ly: ​“It’s going to be a dif­fer­ent world. We’re not going to have the same kind of per­son any­more.” Cavett solemn­ly con­curs. ​“I’m not going to sit around and moan about the past,” she adds, quick­ly com­pos­ing herself.

Despite her gen­er­al can­did­ness and the show’s loose atmos­phere, Davis’s ret­i­cence to ​“moan” extends to her treat­ment at Warn­er Broth­ers, at least ini­tial­ly. While Cavett com­mends her brav­ery for duk­ing it out with the stu­dio in court, Davis is hes­i­tant to char­ac­terise Jack Warn­er as any­thing oth­er than a firm but fair pater­nal figure.

“We had a smash­ing rela­tion­ship,” she asserts. Uncon­vinced, Cavett gen­tly press­es Davis on this point. He points out that if three or so of her films had flopped in a row, she would have been per­sona non gra­ta on the back­lot. Ulti­mate­ly, Davis must con­cede that ​“from their side, [there was] no affec­tion.” Her whole demeanour changes as she starts to deflate in her seat. ​“Eigh­teen years at Warn­ers, I built many sound­stages there. Nev­er got a let­ter of good­bye.” It’s heart­break­ing, but one can’t help but feel there must have been some cathar­sis in say­ing it out loud.

When Kather­ine Hep­burn arrived on The Dick Cavett Show set, she hadn’t come for a tap­ing – she hadn’t even agreed to make an appear­ance. As per Cavett’s intro to the first broad­cast, ​“She agreed to come into my stu­dio for a test only to check things out to see how it looked and felt.” It was there and then that she agreed to an inter­view – with­out a stu­dio audience.

The Hep­burn inter­view real­ly is a remark­able piece of tele­vi­sion. On one hand, she meets our expec­ta­tions – she is every bit the untouch­able god­dess of The Philadel­phia Sto­ry, the skit­tish odd­ball of Bring­ing Up Baby, and the regal old­er lady of The African Queen and Sum­mer­time. On the oth­er, there’s some­thing star­tling­ly unvar­nished about her here. ​“Fear is what you and I suf­fer from try­ing to be fas­ci­nat­ing,” she tells Cavett. ​“It’s embar­rass­ing.” Hepburn’s charis­ma is irre­press­ible, but so are her jan­gling nerves. ​“I think the whole human race is pet­ri­fied,” she remarks, chuck­ling to her­self. ​“I’m a good coverer-upper.”

The con­ver­sa­tion is long and wind­ing, prone to the occa­sion­al dead-end, but it’s at its most fas­ci­nat­ing when Hep­burn unpacks and reflects upon her star­dom. In her own esti­ma­tion, she had ​“the right kind of looks, the right kind of voice,” as well as stand­ing for ​“some­thing just a lit­tle bit new”. She is, of course, refer­ring oblique­ly to the fem­i­nist streak that ran through her star per­sona, and Cavett is eager to know her thoughts on the ​‘women’s lib’ move­ment of the sev­en­ties, but she seems uncom­fort­able speak­ing on the mat­ter. ​“We did that a very, very long time ago” is all that she will say at first. Lat­er, she attempts to clar­i­fy her posi­tion: ​“I can’t see the dif­fer­ence between any of us. Can you?”

Much of the inter­view deals with gen­der. This makes sense, a key part of Hepburn’s appeal was her casu­al flaunt­ing of gen­der norms. ​“There are men,” she says, ​“who are all the same, and then there are women like me who have lived like men.” Some of her posi­tions on the mat­ter are more inscrutable. At one point she insists, with­out expla­na­tion, that a pro­lif­er­a­tion of fem­i­nine men and mas­cu­line women is being caused by ​“over­pop­u­la­tion”. Dick points out that the usu­al expla­na­tion for effem­i­nate boys is over­bear­ing moth­ers. ​“Every­thing is blamed on women any­way,” Hep­burn replies, ​“but they’re try­ing to put that right.”

The Dick Cavett Show may have been an out­lier in its own time, but it’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine such a patient pro­gramme sur­viv­ing in the cur­rent TV talk show land­scape, so much of which is geared towards bite-sized viral­i­ty. Pod­casts are prob­a­bly its near­est equiv­a­lent, but it’s a shame to think these kinds of con­ver­sa­tions now occu­py that rel­a­tive­ly mar­gin­al cul­tur­al space – Kather­ine Hep­burn was appoint­ment view­ing on net­work tele­vi­sion, two nights in a row.

Cavett had a knack for sweet­ly and sur­rep­ti­tious­ly break­ing down his guests’ defences, and the female stars of Old Hol­ly­wood were some of the tough­est nuts he ever tried to crack. As their marathon inter­view drew to a close, he told Hep­burn ​“I have nev­er enjoyed any­thing more than this in my life.” ​“You know some­thing fun­ny?” she replied, ​“I’ve enjoyed it too.”