This probably will not interest many of you. And that is OK.
But it is a reminder of a time when genuine, intelligent talk was available on television.
TV NotesA Last Look at Updike and Cheever
By Dick Cavett, in
The New York Times, March 2, 2009
Dear reader, I’ll try to keep this to a reasonable length so you can savor the accompanying video.
I loved reading the outpouring from you (and others) about the
Cheever/Updike column. A large number asked, and some begged earnestly, to see the full show from which the clips were taken.
I lobbied on your behalf and The Times has thoughtfully agreed to run the full show. Thus, you will see and hear Cheever on churchgoing (his) and his gracious refusal of my offer that he recite the Apostles’ Creed; Updike on first meeting me in the dark; both on the need to move out of New York City; and more.
There is still a Cheever show of mine to be unearthed. I wish I could remember what’s on it. A worried Johnny Carson once admitted to me that he frequently couldn’t remember what was said on a show he had just finished taping. And, sometimes, who the guests were. It’s a strange thing, and one I haven’t quite figured out.
Johnny all but wiped his brow when I told him it happened to me too, and that a few days earlier I got home and it took me a good 10 minutes to be able to report with whom I had just done 90 minutes. (It was only Lucille Ball!) It’s an oddity peculiar to the live performer’s divided brain that needs exploring. It has to do with the fact that you — and the “you” that performs — are not identical.
Back to Cheever. I’m pretty sure I didn’t bring up sexual ambiguity on any of the shows I did with him, but I may have. On another, solo Cheever show I just reviewed, I did ask him about a remark Updike had made about running into him, plastered, at some ceremony and finding him all but unrecognizable: “I was fairly certain that the John Cheever I knew was in there somewhere.”
Unfazed (seemingly), Cheever quickly answered, “I don’t remember where John made that remark,” and went on to talk toughly about his alcoholism, hitting bottom and saying to himself, “This is not me, nor the life for me, and I enrolled myself in Smithers” — where he kicked the booze after some hard months. I regret not having asked him more about his admiration for certain writers and his detestation of Salinger.
The price exacted by booze, drugs and the wear-and-tear of leading a double (triple?) life of bisexual adultery while maintaining a family and brilliant writing career was writ large on the raffish Cheever face. Looking at the two writers sitting side-by-side in the green room backstage, waiting to go on, Cheever’s somewhat rumpled appearance contrasted noticeably with that of the prim and preppy Updike.
A note on John U. and bad habits: Either before or during one show, someone lit a cigarette, and Updike said, “I could have sworn in court that I am not smoking these days. Then yesterday I edited some pages and, amazed, looked down and there were eleven butts in the ashtray.”
John died of what doctors abbreviate “ca. of the lung.” Maybe docs, especially, like to avoid the dread word.
There is dispute about who gets credit for “Envy no man until he has had a good death.” (Euripides? Shakespeare? Soupy Sales?)
Neither man did. Cheever’s “ca.” was of the bladder (possibly also thanks to the tobacco industry) and it had metastasized. At his last public appearance upon receiving a major literary award at Carnegie Hall, Updike reported, “We acolytes out front were horrified by his gaunt appearance.” He goes on to say, “On that night John announced, ‘Literature is invincible.’” My notes, alas, don’t have Updike’s exact next words, to the effect that “we were all astonished at this optimism.”
Speaking of loss, there was a “Dick Cavett Night” once at that great, historic 40-room mansion on Gramercy Park that is now The National Arts Club. My honoring speakers were (gulp) John Cheever and the great Agnes DeMille. I keep meaning to find out if there is any record of that night.
My memories include my wife’s being charmed and enchanted, getting to sit next to and chat with Cheever — whose works she knew — on the dais.
I remember a huge laugh I got, perhaps somewhat cruelly. In thanking a list of people out front, I came to the name of a gent who had spoken earlier. I recall his last name: Montmorency. His first may have been Rupert. If not, it should have been.
Coming to him on the list, I heard myself say, “And next, Mr. Rupert Montmorency. If, indeed, that is his name.” The laugh was robust to the point of regrettable. Cheever produced tears.
The one sad note of the evening: Out front afterwards, on the dark sidewalk as people were leaving, I thanked and said goodbye to John for the last time He started away and then came back, reached inside his jacket, and handed me his typed copy of the wonderful and witty remarks he had just made about me. As I recall, I tucked them inside my blazer pocket, making a mental note to take good care of that sheet of paper. A cleaner may have been the last to see it.
Damn my sloppiness to deepest hell!
I do have some other cherished items though. Cheever was the master of the terse, witty note of but three or four lines. A favorite had to do with some unflattering remarks made about me that appeared somewhere by the writer Francine du Plessix Gray. Cheever had answered them, defending me. In the mail came:
Dick,
I’m a little worried about my remarks, about Francine du Plexxis [his spelling] Gray. She is a member of the French aristocracy and a crack wing shot. There is no cover on my land.
John
Enjoy the show.
Click here to see the entire 28:30:http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2009...e-and-cheever/
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Mars' is another victim of the incompetent NY State Governor. His failure to recognize that the renewal of the Film Tax Incentive Program (RIGHT NOW!!!) will actually stimulate the economy.
Her poor husband has to be the most sleep deprived character on TV. That woman is justification for separate bedrooms! Or perhaps separate houses. 
I think that's the point DrLar is making: we're in the first Tuesday of a sweeps month (March) and all we're getting across most of the networks is wall-to-wall repeats. What kind of sweeps month is this?
