Heart attack. Breaking news – no online story yet. BBC just announced it.
He was only 74!?!
Was. Not anymore.
That’s sad. Every person’s death is a loss, of course, but some celebrity deaths cause more pangs of nostalgia than others.
Aye, true. Just a little surprised he was the same age as my dad!
He was all of 23 when TW3 started in Britain. He’s only six months older than John Cleese.
he died with his boots on.
For me, his legacy will be his interviews with Richard Nixon.
That is because you are an American who knows little about him.
Yes, but it really was a hell of a coup. How many other interviews have been made into a movie?
Exactly my response. So he was still in his 30s when he interviewed Nixon? Wow.
His cousin Jack is inconsolable.
“It’s like a boxing match where the challenger feels the champion’s left jab for the first time. You can see it in his face. All the months of preparation, psyching out, it’s all just illusory. Well, in the case of David Frost, if he didn’t know the caliber of the man he was up against before the interview, it was clear that he did, halfway through Richard Nixon’s first answer.”
–the Nixon aide, played by Kevin Bacon
Why so dismissive? Frost was as familiar to Americans as to the British. TW3 aired here, also. Nixon was an important political figure and his interviews with Frost were a high point of the news when they took place. I would daresay they are the first thing that come to mind when anyone thinks of Frost, whether there had been a movie recently or not, and to dismiss my opinion because I’m American seems to me to be a little arrogant.
In that most British of shows, we heard The Doctor tell President Nixon “Say hello to David Frost for me.” It’s not just an American thing.
I remember Frost well from TW3, though…
If you had lived in Britain in the '60s and early '70s you would have been aware of TW3 as a huge sensation that changed British culture and politics irrevocably, then you would have known The Frost Report, a major success in the more more mainstream comedy market, that launched the careers of people (Cleese, Barker, Corbett) who would dominate British comedy for a decade or more to come, you would also know how Frost went on to be instrumental in launching a new TV company, London Weekend Television, with himself presenting major chat shows (not just to London, but to the nation) three nights a week. If you had lived through all that there is no way you would regard his interview with Nixon as anything approaching his most significant achievement. His interview with Nixon is merely his most significant achievement (maybe his only significant achievement) in the American market. It is all most Americans (who have heard of him at all) know about him. In Britain, where he is from and where he had most of his career, it is a mere footnote.
Sheesh! I am no great fan of Frost, and I feel a bit weird to be talking him up like this, but no way is is his single extended interview with Nixon even close to being his most significant work.
Of course it is. That was not there for British viewers, it was there because they are trying to sell Dr Who to a wider American audience, and so are trying, rather clumsily, to pander to the insular American market, to people who care about British people or things only if and inasmuch as they impact American interests and concerns.
Thank you for that post. Now that you’ve expanded on your comment, I respect your opinion more than I did the previous “ignorant American” threadshit. I still disagree with you, but I can see where you’re coming from. David Frost was well-known to us Americans and highly respected. But we didn’t see all of his body of work, and my personal point of view is still that his interviews with Nixon were a crowning accomplishment to his career rather than just a mere footnote. And yes, you acknowledged that at least, over here, it was. I agree there was more to him than the Nixon interviews, but they were too important to dismiss.
And a play. BBC for one can’t stop talking about Frost and the Nixon interview.