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He graduated second in his class and won a scholarship to Yale. He majored in English and graduated with a B average. His other major was New Haven, where Broadway shows tried out. Stage Door Dick was soon pestering the stars at the Shubert, telling them jokes, inviting them to see the campus. Meanwhile, he was getting into the Drama School's productions and making Midwest mischief with friends—sneaking into campus buildings after dark to prowl the corridors aimlessly, or climbing onto roofs to sit like gargoyles. When he told his Chaucer professor that he planned to go into television after he graduated in 1958, the disappointed reply was "Yes. I suppose you'll make a lot of money."
It took a while. There was some summer stock, bit parts on TV, and then long months on the Manhattan misery-go-round of casting offices. At times he became so depressed he refused to leave his bed for days at a time. He read Henry James. Then he read William James. He finally decided to take a steady job as a copy boy at TIME—a position that enables many an agile young man to devote most of his working hours to private pursuits. Cavett's was comedy. He had studied the greats and their techniques. One day he wrote a comedy monologue, slipped it into an imposing TIME envelope and took it to NBC's The Tonight Show host, Jack Paar. That night Paar used a couple of the gags. Within two months, Cavett was writing jokes full time for the king. He still retains the uncertain distinction of having dreamed up Paar's boffo introduction of pneumatose Jayne Mansfield: "And here they are! . . . Jayne Mansfield!"
Sour Night at The Bitter End
Once established, jokesmiths become itinerant peddlers. Cavett worked for Merv Griffin's CBS daytime show, then served a profitable ($1,200 a week) but stultifying four-month term as gagwriter for Jerry Lewis' abortive TV show in Hollywood. "In this profession," he says, "it was the equivalent of having been on the Hindenburg." He returned to New York City and went to work as a writer for Johnny Carson, who had taken over the Paar show.
Still, the performer in Cavett was pining for a chance. Comic Woody Allen persuaded him to put together a stand-up comedy act. After some characteristic procrastination, Dick opened at the Bitter End in New York, where he quipped into 20 minutes of dead silence. The disaster served only to propel him; after two and a half years of playing small clubs, he began to build a name. He was the hayseed Nebraskan who had won his S for sophistication at Yale, and some of his jokes were pretty good: "What can you say about a school that has a song with the phrase, 'For God, for country and for Yale' and is worried about the billing?" Or: "I knew it was cheap caviar because it came with photos of baseball players."
That sort of arch humor cast around the country brought Cavett TV offers. He played the game shows and appeared on the Carson and Griffin programs. ABC television tried him in a couple of not-so-special specials. A morning talk show did not sell but won an Emmy Award; then came a thrice-weekly summertime program. In the winter of 1969, ABC dropped Comic Joey Bishop and sent Cavett into the spot opposite Carson. Now he rides in a limousine, and that's show business.