Dick Cavett

Richard Alva Cavett (born on November 19, 1936 in Gibbon, Nebraska) is a television talk show host known for his conversational style of in-depth and often serious issues discussion.

Yale

Cavett applied to Yale University only because of the urging of an Omaha high school teacher, Frank Rice, a friend of his parents.

Related Topics:
Yale University - Omaha

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• "My Nebraska clothes set me apart. I remember I actually wore brown-and-white shoes. They were impractical, though. The white one kept getting dirty."

He won the Louis H. Burlingham Memorial Scholarship, in return for which he worked 15 hours a week as a busboy in the Trumbull College dining hall. Later he continued working off his scholarship at the Yale library, assisting Robert Barlow, curator of the Yale Musical Theatre collection.

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He played in and directed dramas at the campus station, WYBC, and appeared in Yale Drama productions. In his senior year, he changed his major from English to drama. He had grand ambitions of getting into show business and was envious of fellow Yale students such as Bill Hinnant and James Franciscus who already were acting professionally.

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While a drama student, he always took advantage of any opportunity to meet stars, routinely going to shows in New York to hang around stage doors or venture backstage. He would go so far as to carry a copy of Variety or an appropriate piece of company stationery in order to look inconspicuous while sneaking backstage or into a TV studio.

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His distinctive voice, which had always set him apart in school, proved effective in attracting the attention of celebrities as well. He and his Yale roommate, Christopher Porterfield (later his executive producer) met the late Marlene Dietrich's daughter, Maria Riva, backstage after Tea and Sympathy at the Shubert Theater, and Cavett talked her into coming to meet them at the Taft Auditorium at Yale. He also met the late Sir Peter Ustinov after a reading at YMHA Poetry Center in Manhattan and got him to accept an invitation to come speak to the Drama School.

Related Topics:
Marlene Dietrich - Tea and Sympathy - Shubert Theater - Peter Ustinov

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During his last two summers at Yale, he apprenticed at Shakespeare festivals in Oregon and Stratford, Connecticut. He had one line in The Merchant of Venice, in which Katharine Hepburn played Portia.

Related Topics:
Shakespeare - Stratford, Connecticut - The Merchant of Venice - Katharine Hepburn - Portia

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At Drama School he met his future wife, Caroline Nye McGeoy (known professionally as Carrie Nye), a native of Greenwood, Mississippi. After graduation, the two of them acted in summer theater in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and he worked for two weeks in a local lumberyard in order to buy an engagement ring. Four years later, on June 4, 1964, they were married in New York, at which time Carrie Cavett was already playing a leading role in The Trojan Women off-Broadway.

Related Topics:
Greenwood, Mississippi - Williamstown, Massachusetts - June 4 - 1964 - The Trojan Women

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