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Though he now has his doubts about the meaning of it all, Cavett seems to have been destined to become the host with the mots. In Gibbon, Neb., and later in Lincoln, he was reared on words. His father Alva, who was then a high school English-lit teacher, read Shakespeare to his son when he was a toddler. By the time he was four, Dick was reciting A.A. Milne. He was also developing a remarkably resonant and deep voice, and that, coupled with the fact that he was exceedingly short (he is now a touch under 5 ft. 7 in.) made him feel something like a freak.
"I have a feeling," says Cavett, "that about 90% of my life has been shaped by my voice, both as an embarrassment and as an advantage. There was always the terrible incongruity of this deep voice barreling out of this little body. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was aware that it was ludicrous, that it took on an importance that wasn't really there. By the time I was in the fourth grade, I sounded exactly like my father on the phone."
He was an only child and, though popular, was a loner in school as well. His mother died when he was ten (his father remarried a year later), and he recalls the pain he felt at being the only one in his class who had lost a parent. His earliest playmates were girls, and he never learned games boys play. "When we moved to Lincoln," he says, "I remember going out at recess to play baseball. They told me to play shortstop, and I thought they said 'shortstock.' It was awful."
He proved some physical prowess by becoming expert in gymnastics, but his real world was all make-believe. Like Johnny Carson, a transplanted Nebraskan, young Cavett took up magic. He gave shows in his basement, and by the time he was a teenager, he was pulling rubber chickens out of his hat for pleasure and a fee before P.T.A. groups. He had his own weekly radio drama show on the local station while he was still in high school. He was living his show business fantasies in the highest style available to a boy, but that was not enough. He was a movie addict, and he haunted Lincoln's only stage door. He once spoke to Charles Laughton and still remembers that the actor remarked upon his low voice. When Bob Hope played Lincoln, Dick trapped the comedian backstage and said, "Fine show, Bob." Hope replied, "Thanks, son." Hardly a droll exchange, but enough to thrill Cavett. He recalls: "I thought, gee, if I were famous I wouldn't have to worry about being smooth like some of the jocks in my class, or about sweating when I danced with girls. If I were in the movies, they'd all be coming to me and I'd ride in limousines."
Stage Door Dick