Well Cavett certainly did. He was on ABC at 11:30 Eastern while Carson was on NBC. During my college years (1969-1973), we watched Cavett almost exclusively.
Cavett later had a show on PBS that generally aired in the early evening. I think that’s the one Krokodil’s referring to. As for Cavett’s ABC show, although it competed directly with Carson (as did Merv Griffin on CBS for a few years), his show (as recall from my early memories and recollections of my parents) was more intellectual, more political, and more controversial (in the sense that it delved into “taboo” topics). Thus, it was likely considered so sufficiently different that that Carson never employed “if-you-do-his-show-you-can’t-do-my-show” tactics against him. In contrast, competitors like Joan Rivers and Alan Thicke were more of a direct–and personal–challenge. Rivers has already been discussed but the train-wreck that was “Thicke of the Night” is also noteworthy. Thicke’s show was produced by former NBC head Fred Silverman. When Silverman was running NBC (mostly into the ground), Carson used to needle him mercilessly (as did SNL but that’s another story) and–at one point–was supposedly considering jumping to another network when his contract with NBC expired in 1980. Silverman apparently is somebody who isn’t above not holding grudges, so many in the industry viewed his involvement in “Thicke of the Night” as an attempt to get back at Carson. Of course, the Silverman-produced “Thicke of the Night” turned out to be no more successful in dethroning Carson as the “King of Late Night” than the Silverman-run NBC was in getting out of the ratings cellar. As stated earlier, one (of many) reasons for its failure was the strong-arm tactics used by Carson and his people to get choice guests for The Tonight Show.
Oh, crap! :smack: That should read:
Tuckerfan writes:
> Hell, a number of comics have made careers out of saying nasty things about
> their spouses and exes (Rodney Dangerfield, Henny Youngman and Phyllis Diller
> spring to mind).
Rodney Dangerfield never made jokes about any real spouse or ex-spouse of his. I don’t know how much you know about his biography. He had a career of a dozen or so years the first time. Then his first wife died. In so far as I know, it was a happy marriage and he didn’t draw from it in his later jokes. He quit show business for a dozen or so years and worked as a salesman. At 45 he returned to show business (and with the new name of “Rodney Dangerfield”). He decided to create a new persona as a comedian who never got any respect from other people. It was necessary to the routine that he made jokes about a wife who didn’t respect him either, but it had nothing to do with his late wife. It was many years before he remarried, and the jokes (which he had pretty much quit telling by that time) had nothing to do with his relationship to his second wife either.
I know less about Henny Youngman or Phyllis Diller, but I don’t think that their jokes about their spouses had anything to do with their real spouses either.
My point was that other comics said nasty things about their spouses, whether or not their spouses were fictional or the stories they were recounting were fictional or not is irrelevant because in pre-internet days how many people would know if the comic was even married? They said it because it was funny, just the same as Carson.
Oh that LargeLips, always with the quick comeback.
Well, I never wanted to talk to Joan Rivers’ period.
Wow, zombie thread! :eek:
The only thing I remember from Cavett’s show on one of the rare occasions I watched it was his having Jeffrey MacDonald, the Green Beret eventually convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and two little girls, as a guest. Cavett completely bought into MacDonald’s story of “The Army set me up because they had to find somebody!”
If you want to read about this incident, I highly recommend Joe McGuinness’s book Fatal Vision, which tells the whole ugly story of MacDonald and the murders. Be warned: It is not for the faint of heart.
Cavett had a guest who died on stage. Really died, not just bombed.
And that was where Mary McCarthy said my favorite putdown, of Lillian Hellman, “every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’”
When I looked at the OP I thought, Stern hit a new low, dissing someone dead for all these years. Then I saw the date.
At first, I thought Stern was ragging on Carson Daly.
[Moderating]
Since this was bumped by a troll and is no longer remotely relevant, I’m closing it.
And I assumed Ben Carson. Seriously, did nobody in this thread use a first name ever?