Dick Cavett Drips Sweat, Drops names, and Disrobes:

Remembering when it was fun to be not so very famous; he and his pal Woody Allen used to go to Central Park incognito.

The Washington Star, November 22, 1978: Dick Cavett has a problem. It isn’t a big problem. In fact, if he didn’t have the problem, he’d have a problem. Here it is: Everywhere he goes, people recognize him.

“It is a drag,” he says.

“Woody and I,” Cavett begins one of the star-studded anecdotes the simplest of questions evoke. “Woody and I …” Pause. “Allen.” Heavy emphasis. A nervous chuckle and explanation: “Friend and neighbor.” Anyway, back to fame. Cavett and Woody Allen used to walk all over New York together, unnoticed. But the last time they were ambling in Central Park, they were ambushed by a gang of young kids, one of whom threw an expensive camera ahead to an accomplice, who snapped the two of them as they rounded a corner.

“That afternoon, the photo was in the New York Post,” says Cavett, mock moaning. “It must have been a slow news day: ‘Woody Allen and Dick Cavett Take Walk.’” Woody mused, afterwards, “Remember when we used to walk all the way to Greenwich Village and nobody knew who the hell we were?” But that was a long time ago. Cavett, 42, hardly remembers what it is like anymore not to be famous.

Recently, he trotted out of the Madison Hotel, dressed in short red boxer trunks, dirty blue running shoes and a green inside-out T-shirt (“They gave me this shirt when I was up in Boston and was running out of underwear. Paul Newman and I once thought we’d put on a celebrity underwear auction. We said a lot of unprintable things before we decided it wasn’t such a good idea.”) He was astounded that people kept looking at him.

Somehow, Cavett says, he thought Washington wasn’t as “celebrity crazy” as New York. His run over, he is sitting next to a cluttered breakfast table in his disheveled suite, his streaky blond hair straggling, the aura of sweat distinct if discreet. The mess is not all of his making, he makes it known. Last night two associates were up in his suite. Cavett’s appearance is such a contrast from his tailored, suited, urbane self as talk show host (for six years, until 1974, on ABC, briefly on CBS, now on a half-hour program, week nights on PBS), he might as well be in disguise.

He’ll shower and change later. He doesn’t want to keep a reporter, photographer and publicity woman waiting. He makes a house-husbandly attempt to tidy up a bit, but everyone says, don’t bother. So, he’s sitting there, being amusing, affably parrying questions with a word screen, humility warring with braggadocio and losing.

He’s only a beginning runner, he explains. Given a 50-yard head-start, he can get ahead of Jackie. Jackie Onassis. “For about half-way round the reservoir in Central Park, but after that, she passes me. Two more weeks and I’ll be able to catch Arthur and Kathryn Murray.”

The latter, only, is intended as a joke. “I’m getting crazy on all this coffee,” Cavett laughs.

He’s enjoying himself. He’s got himself safely tucked away behind his facade of friendly openness. “I much prefer to be interviewed than do interviews,” he says. “A better side of me comes out. When I’m guest on a show, I’m much funnier, much freer. It isn’t just that it’s their show and if it’s lousy, it’s their problem, it’s that I’m totally uninhibited.”

Just the other day, in fact, he listened to Beverly Sills sing a duet with Merv — Merv Griffin on Merv’s show and when Merv asked him how he liked it, Cavett replied, “I expected somebody to hit the gong.” Sills laughed a lot. Griffin just laughed once. “I hope I didn’t offend Merv and his illustrious guest,” Cavett says, looking like he hopes nothing of the kind. On the table are the remains of a heavy breakfast, including an empty Kelloggs’ Corn Flakes box. “I always order everything on the menu and room service always asks me if it is for two or three and I say, one.” He laughs at this cute paradox. Cavett is a small, wiry man who crackles with wit and nervous energy.

And the cereal box? “K E L L O ..!” he sings out. Not everyone knows that Dick Cavett is back at his trade, on PBS, but nearly everyone must know he eats Kelloggs’ Corn Flakes. Cavett is one of a growing number of celebrities who do television commercials. “I think when Olivier (Laurence Olivier) did it, it became legitimate.” Cavett laughs. “No one wanted to say they had higher standards than he did.”

Ask Cavett why he is now doing commercials for Kelloggs and you’ll get a detailed report on the number of nutritionists, including one from Harvard, he got to advise him about the product and who gave him a wholehearted OK. “My immediate reaction was no.” But facts are facts. And, “Maybe I do it partly to be able to stay on public broadcast,” he finally says, laconically.

Besides, he’s already done Ballantine Beer commercials with Mel. Mel Brooks. “Ad lib. It was one of the happiest experiences I ever had. I was the sort of straight man and Mel was the 2,500-year-old brew master.”

The other happiest experiences were the times his friend Woody Allen broke his vow to stay off television and was a guest on one or another of Cavett’s talk shows. “When Woody did my show it was as a wonderful personal favor because he used to be able to say, ‘I haven’t even done Cavett.’” Now Woody has done 15 Cavett shows and Cavett possesses a treasure trove of rare Allen stuff. “He ad-libs brilliantly on television.”

On one historic morning show, Cavett relates, “A woman called out. Do you think sex is dirty?’ And Woody said, “Only if you do it right.” It’s a classic joke; everyone’s copied.

Celebrity interviews are the name of Cavett’s game, which consists of landing the big ones and interviewing them with an easy grace. There are a few holdouts. “I almost talked Redford into it once.” Robert Redford. And Jackie. “I’ve asked her and she said, ‘You’re very sweet, but the answer is no.’ She’d be good, too, but you can imagine the thousand reasons she wouldn’t want to. I tried to convince her I wouldn’t be out to get her, she knows that, but she’d lose her immunity.”

Cavett’s ABC show was a victim of the ratings, although a former ABC executive has since told him, “They never lost money on you.” He says, almost defensively, that he thinks he’s done some of the best shows that have ever been done.” Particularly, interviews with actors Laurence Olivier, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontaine and Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. “I also did a lot of crap,” he adds, momentarily modest. “But then you have to on commercial television.”

Just into his second season on PBS, Cavett has already interviewed nearly 150 luminaries in every line of cultural endeavor. The half-hour shows are taped and, occasionally, a guest will be asked to do a two-parter. Actor Peter Ustinov did an hour interview but half of it had to be scrapped because it included his UNICEF commercial. “It appealed for money, which as you know, you wouldn’t dare do on public television.”

Since his network days, Cavett’s television appearances were as guests of others, a fact he likes to play down by saying, “I don’t think I ever really left television.” However, his own company, Daphne, had been trying to sell another “Dick Cavett Show” ever since. Finally, last year, he claims he had a choice between syndication (doing a series and having it peddled on independent and network stations commercially) or public broadcasting. He chose the latter: “Woody-my-mentor said you’d be crazy not to do public television.” For his part. Cavett thinks it’s wonderful to do a show in which, “I could have John Cheever without having to explain who he is to the higher ups and/or to have to guarantee to bring in Buddy Hackett somewhere in the middle if the show got slow.”

The first season did get off to a slow start, as Cavett adjusted to a half-hour format, no commercial breaks, no audience and no beginning monologue. Since, a small studio audience has been added, and Cavett is settling in nicely. What is most amazing is that while the interviews often are more like conversations, Cavett has developed the art of listening.

On and off camera, Cavett seems obsessed with celebrity and fame. Topics, he says, he’s been meaning to write a book about. He remembers the moment, his hands making a peak together, one sliding up above the other, when his own celebrity became equal and then surpassed that of some of his talk show guests. “There came a time when I realized the studio audience came to see me just as much as the guest. They would ask for my autograph.”

It’s obvious he takes great joy in being a celebrity, even though it’s spoiled a little by the means he became famous. A graduate of Yale Drama School — where he met his actress wife, Carrie Nye — Cavett has done precious little acting in the last 15 years. Is he a frustrated actor? The question temporarily halts a monologue, the last few words trailing off slowly, one by one. “I love acting,” he admits. “I miss it. I’m a rather limited actor at this point.”

Last year, his celebrity brought him a lead role in Simon Gray’s “Otherwise Engaged,” which he played for four months on Broadway. Fortunately, Woody Allen advised him against reading any reviews since they only serve to irritate. In this case, the reviews would have been more than irritating.

But Cavett “loved every second of the play. Working with Harold Pinter (who directed it) was half the fun. I would have gladly stayed in it for two years. But the PBS show was hurting. It got off to a fairly klutzy start and I decided … “ Cavett’s voice trails off a moment.

Then he brightens. He did the play again for a few weeks this summer, in stock, and that reminds him of another cheering story. “When I was in London a few weeks ago, I called Ralph Richardson, because I do love him so, and someone said, ‘I’ll see if he’s in. And then I heard his great voice come on (Cavett imitates Richardson): ‘Hello! Dear boy! I hear you been acting! It’s wonderful to go back to a part, it’s like a painter standing back from his work.’” Cavett grins like a little kid, “Sir Ralph Richardson. Talking to me like a fellow actor!” And, characteristically. Cavett gives a rueful shrug and adds, “More or less.”

Other than ‘Otherwise Engaged,” his acting has been confined to “three-quarters of a minute” in Woody Allen’s movie, “Annie Hall,” in which he plays himself, as a talk show host. And he’s delighted to give the reporter a first about his next acting job — he’ll be playing himself as a talk show host, again briefly, in Robert Altman’s next movie.

Cavett’s wife, Carrie Nye — he explains he always calls her Carrie Nye, because that’s her Southern double first name; she was born in Mississippi — is getting her own widest visibility to date on the intellectually agile new PBS quiz show, “We Interrupt This Week,” on which she’s no match in her knowledge of trivia. “She quits acting every other week,” says her husband, who switches the topic of the morning over from himself. “But she’s got a cult following in New York. People who say she’s one of our three best actresses and why doesn’t she work more.”

Carrie Nye does a great deal of summer stock and, according to Cavett, “was stunning” in “Idiot’s Delight.” This assessment, coming from her husband, seems to be praise indeed: “When you’re married to someone, it is very hard to be impressed because you know them so well. As Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward say, it’s excruciating to watch each other.”

Being on “We Interrupt This Week,” still terrifies Carrie Nye, Cavett discloses. “It makes her crazy. She was so pleased she wasn’t run out of town for appearing in it. She says, everybody hated her, they thought she was just awful, she looked stupid. I told her Mike Nichols said she was transcendent on public broadcasting. She said, ‘He didn’t say that. You’re just saying that because you know I can’t sleep nights.’”

Cavett explains that Carrie Nye “was a little traumatized by the two-part television movie, “A Divorce/His,” and “A Divorce/Hers,” she made years ago with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. “She wrote an hilarious account of it, which she circulated privately. Then Time Magazine published it. Gore Vidal — am I getting enough names in here? — said he was jealous.”

The morning has fled by, and Cavett has to get moving to another interview, but he is still talking. “Start taking off your shoes.” advises the publicity woman. He does without missing a beat, then gets up and strips off his T-shirt. “I’m not an exhibitionist,” he grins, engagingly as the reporter, the photographer and the publicity woman hastily get ready to leave.

“Jeeee-suss!” Cavett says, shaking his head, “I sound like the name droppers today.”

“But then, that’s my business.”