At 89, Dick Cavett Names The 5 Celebrities He HATES Most – HT
At 89, Dick Cavett names the five celebrities he hates most. For over a decade, Dick Cavett hosted one of the most intelligent talk shows in American television history. And while Johnny Carson ruled late night with easy charm and celebrity small talk, Cavett did something entirely different. He put intellectuals, authors, politicians, and rock stars on the same couch and let them talk until the conversation turned electric, building a guest list that read like a roll call of the 20th century’s most
fascinating minds. [music] Cavett was not just a polite host smiling through pleasant conversations because behind that Midwestern charm and that Yale-educated wit lived a man who formed sharp opinions about the people who sat across from him, and some of those opinions were anything but kind. Over the decades, through his books, his New York Times columns, and his rare interviews, Cavett has been surprisingly candid about the guests and public figures who earned his genuine contempt.
A former producer who worked on The Dick Cavett Show throughout its ABC run explained it this way, saying that Dick is the nicest man in the world until you cross a line, and his lines are very specific because he cannot stand bullies. He cannot stand people who are cruel to others on camera for sport, and he absolutely cannot stand anyone who uses a platform to spread ignorance and hatred.
And that crossing any of those lines means Dick will remember it for the rest of his life. Cavett’s list stands apart from the feuds of other talk show hosts because of the precision of his dislike. Carson avoided conflict, and Sullivan kept his opinions behind his stone face, but Cavett is an intellectual who processes his contempt through language, delivering assessments so sharp and perfectly worded that the targets often did not realize they had been insulted until hours later.
At 89 years old, Cavett has outlived most of the people on this list, and in his later years, with nothing left to lose and no network executives to answer to, he has been more honest than ever about the celebrities he genuinely could not stand. These are the [music] five celebrities Dick Cavett hated most. Number five, Sly Stone, the genius who tested Cavett’s patience on live television.
Sly Stone created a sound that fused rock, soul, funk, and psychedelia into something entirely new with Sly and the Family Stone, building a band that was racially integrated, gender integrated, and musically unlike anything America had ever heard. Songs like everyday people and I want to take you higher defined an entire era of optimism and cultural change.
And Sly Stone also had a relationship with substances that was destroying him in real-time while Dick Cavett’s audience watched it happen on national television. Stone appeared on The Dick Cavett Show multiple times, including notable appearances in 1970 and 1971, and by the time of his 1971 visit, his substance issues had become so severe that they were affecting every aspect of his professional life.
Canceling performances at the last minute had become routine. His band members were increasingly frustrated, his record label was losing patience, and his personal relationships were falling apart around him. What followed after Stone performed I Want to Take You Higher and sat down with Cavett turned into one of the strangest interviews in the show’s history because Stone was visibly impaired and giving responses that drifted in and out of coherence, his words coming out in a slow, disconnected stream that bore no
resemblance to the sharp, articulate musician he had been just a few years earlier. One moment he would deliver a flash of the old brilliance, channeling his former music teacher in a stunning outburst about music theory, and the next moment he would lose the thread of his own sentence entirely. Cavett handled the situation with composure that impressed everyone watching, keeping the questions coming, keeping the conversation moving, and refusing to embarrass Stone on camera.
But those who knew Cavett recognized the tightness in his smile and the careful precision of his questions as signs that the host was working overtime to salvage a segment deteriorating What bothered Cavett about Stone was not the substance use itself because [music] Cavett had hosted plenty of guests who were not entirely sober.
What bothered him was the waste because here stood a man with one of the most extraordinary musical minds of his generation, a man who had changed American music forever, and he was throwing it all away on camera while millions of people watched. Cavett later described the experience as watching someone slowly erase themselves, and [music] he made it clear that sitting across from a genius in the process of self-destruction ranked among the most uncomfortable moments of his career.
Number four, Chad Everett, the [music] actor who revealed something ugly on camera. Chad Everett earned television fame through his role on the medical drama Medical Center, which ran from 1969 to 1976, and on March 31st of 1972, he appeared on The Dick Cavett Show [music] alongside actress and comedian Lily Tomlin in what would become one of the most infamous moments in the show’s history.
The conversation began innocuously enough with a discussion about an animal special Everett had been involved in. And when the topic turned to his personal life, Everett began listing his animals, saying he had three horses, three dogs, and a wife. Cavett sensed the awkward [music] phrasing and tried to lighten the moment by asking if Everett wanted to reconsider the billing order, but Everett did not reconsider and instead doubled down by looking at the camera and saying that his wife was the most beautiful animal he owned. That word
landed in the studio like a grenade. Lily Tomlin rose to her feet in visible shock, looked at Everett, and asked one word, “You own?” before turning and walking off the set entirely while straightening her jacket as she crossed the stage, and the audience applauded her departure. What happened after Tomlin left turned out to be arguably worse because with Tomlin gone, Everett attempted to recover by saying that his wife was very happy being taken care of by a man and had no aspirations to be taken care of by a woman, and then added
what appeared to be a direct reference to Tomlin’s personal life that went beyond casual sexism into something more deliberately cruel. Cavett sat through Everett’s comments with an expression that viewers who knew him well would recognize as contained fury, and he did not explode or lecture, but simply let the silence do the work, allowing Everett’s words to hang in the air long enough for the audience to process exactly what kind of man was sitting in the guest chair.
Cavett has referenced the Everett incident in the decades since as one of the moments that made him question whether some people deserved the platform his show provided, describing Everett’s behavior as revealing something that no amount of television charm could cover up. A casual contempt for women made worse by the fact that Everett clearly did not understand why anyone would find it offensive.
Number three, Richard Nixon, the president who tried to destroy Cavett’s show. Dick Cavett’s conflict with Richard Nixon went beyond political disagreement into something that felt to Cavett like genuine persecution because throughout the early 1970s, Cavett used his platform to question the Vietnam War, challenge the Nixon administration’s policies, and give airtime to voices that the White House would have preferred to silence, featuring anti-war activists, civil rights leaders, and political commentators who were openly critical of the president. None of this went
unnoticed by the administration. According to Cavett’s own accounts in his book Talk Show and his New York Times columns, the Nixon White House pressured ABC to rein in the show’s political content, and Cavett has [music] described receiving messages through network executives that certain topics and certain guests were making powerful people uncomfortable with the clear implication that continuing down this path would carry consequences for the show’s future.
What transformed Cavett’s disagreement with Nixon into genuine contempt was the personal nature of the intimidation because this was not a president disagreeing with a talk show host’s opinions, but the most powerful office in the world using its influence to threaten the livelihood of a television program because its host refused to be compliant.
Cavett wrote extensively about Nixon in his New York Times columns, and his assessments were devastating, describing Nixon as a man who combined insecurity with ruthlessness in a way that made him uniquely dangerous, someone who could not tolerate criticism and viewed anyone who questioned him as an enemy to be neutralized rather than a citizen exercising their rights.
What particularly enraged Cavett was the hypocrisy of a president who publicly championed free speech and democratic values while privately attempting to silence voices he found inconvenient. And Cavett came to see Nixon not just as a bad president, but as a man who did not believe in the principles he claimed to defend, a contradiction that fueled a contempt which has not diminished in the decades since Nixon’s resignation and death.
When Watergate finally brought Nixon down, Cavett felt vindicated, but not satisfied, and he has maintained that the damage Nixon inflicted on the country went far beyond the specific crimes that ended his presidency. Number two, Lester Maddox, the segregationist who walked off and came back. December 18th, 1970, produced one of the most explosive episodes in the history of American television when Dick Cavett welcomed three guests whose combination was practically designed to generate conflict.
Truman Capote, the celebrated author of In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, football legend Jim Brown, and Lester Maddox, [music] the outgoing governor of Georgia and one of the most notorious segregationists in American politics. Maddox had earned national attention in 1964 when he refused to serve black customers at his Atlanta restaurant, The Pickrick, in defiance of the Civil Rights Act, and rather than integrate, he closed the restaurant entirely and distributed ax handles to white supporters, which became a symbol of his
resistance to racial equality. Despite this record, Georgia voters elected him governor in 1966. During a commercial break, Jim Brown asked Maddox if he had any trouble with the white bigots who supported him because of his treatment of black Americans. And when the cameras came back on, Cavett substituted the word admirers for bigots, but the damage was already done because Maddox was furious.
Maddox demanded an apology, and what Cavett delivered became one of the most perfectly calibrated non-apologies in television history, saying, “If I called any of your admirers bigots who are not bigots, I apologize.” The phrasing was deliberate because Cavett was not apologizing for calling anyone a bigot, but apologizing specifically for calling non-bigots bigots, which left open the clear implication that many of Maddox’s supporters were in fact exactly what that word described.
Maddox recognized what Cavett had done and stormed off the set, walking off the show 88 minutes into a 90-minute taping in a calculated exit by a politician who understood the value of television time, but one that also exposed the fragility of a man whose entire political identity was built on racial hatred because the moment he was confronted with what he represented through a single carefully chosen word, he could not handle it.
Truman Capote paused after Maddox left the stage and delivered one of the great lines in television history, looking at the empty chair and saying he had been to Maddox’s restaurant and the chicken was not that finger-licking good. The aftermath proved staggering. Approximately 6,000 pieces of mail arrived about the episode, an extraordinary number for any television program, and much [music] of it contained racial slurs, threats, and demands that Cavett be taken off the air. Cavett later confirmed he received
more comments about the Maddox show than any other episode he had ever done. What cemented Cavett’s contempt for Maddox permanently was not just the man’s racism, but his cowardice [music] because Maddox was willing to stand in front of his restaurant with axe handles threatening black families, but could not sit through a 90-minute television interview without running away the moment someone used the word bigot.
For Cavett, that combination of cruelty and fragility represented the most contemptible thing he had ever witnessed on his stage. Maddox later returned for another appearance, and this time Cavett walked off as a joke, turning Maddox’s dramatic exit into a punchline. And left alone on stage, Maddox cued the band and began singing, which was Cavett’s way of showing that he controlled the stage and not his guests, and that even the most intimidating politicians were ultimately performers on his show who could be reduced to a comedy bit whenever he
chose. Number one. Norman Mailer, the genius who became a bully on national television. The number one spot on Dick Cavett’s list belongs to the man who created the single most infamous moment in the show’s entire history, Norman Mailer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Naked and the Dead and The Armies of the Night, a man considered one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century, who also happened to be one of the most difficult human beings Cavett ever encountered.
December 1st, 1971, the legendary episode aired with Gore Vidal, and political commentator who served as Mailer’s long-time literary rival, and Janet Flanner, the respected New Yorker correspondent. And what should have been one of the most stimulating intellectual conversations on television instead became a train wreck of ego, aggression, and alcohol.
Trouble started before the cameras even turned on because in the green room before filming, Mailer and Vidal were alone when Mailer felt a hand on the back of his neck in what appeared to be a conciliatory gesture from Vidal. Mailer responded with what he later described as an open-handed tap across Vidal’s face, and Vidal slapped him back, and then Mailer leaned forward, grabbed the back of Vidal’s head, and head-butted him.
The man who wrote The Naked and the Dead head-butted Gore Vidal in the green room of the Dick Cavett Show before the taping even began. When Mailer came on stage, he was drunk and looking for a fight, attacking Vidal immediately by calling him a man without character, moral foundation, or intellectual substance.
And the audience who had come expecting witty literary conversation sat in stunned silence as Mailer became increasingly hostile, interrupting other guests, insulting the audience directly with a French profanity, and turning on Cavett himself by sneering at the host and questioning his intellectual credentials. The audience began to boo, and that only made Mailer angrier, with his accent shifting from professorial to aggressive as he lost control of whatever persona he had been trying to maintain.
Janet Flanner, the 79-year-old journalist sitting next to him, tried to interject, and Mailer dismissed her with the patronizing words, “Angel, it’s my turn now.” And that’s when Cavett delivered the line that would define the entire episode and become the most famous sentence he ever spoke on television, telling Mailer, “Why don’t you fold it five ways and put it where the moon don’t shine.” The audience erupted.
Cavett, the small, quiet Midwestern talk show host, had just told one of America’s most intimidating literary figures to perform an anatomically creative act of self-storage, and Mailer was stunned because for a moment the bully had been stopped by a man half his size who used words more precisely than anyone in the room.
What earned Mailer the number one spot on Cavett’s list was not just that single episode, but what the episode revealed about his character because here stood a man celebrated for his intelligence, his writing, and his courage as a public intellectual. And when he felt threatened, he resorted to physical violence, verbal abuse, and the bullying of an elderly woman on national television.
The genius became a thug the moment his ego was challenged. Mailer had arrived furious about a review Vidal published in the New York Review of Books earlier that summer comparing Mailer to Charles Manson and referencing the fact that Mailer had stabbed his second wife, Adele, with a penknife years earlier. And rather than responding with the literary brilliance he was capable of, Mailer responded with a head-butt, a string of insults, and the public humiliation of everyone around him.
Cavett has returned to the Mailer episode more than any other in his career in the decade since, writing about it in his books, discussing it in columns, and analyzing it in interviews. And his assessment of Mailer has remained consistent, [music] describing him as a man of extraordinary talent who could not control his own worst impulses and who confused aggression with strength in ways that damaged everyone around him, including himself.
Six years after the Cavett Show incident, Mailer punched Vidal at a cocktail party and knocked him to the floor. And Vidal, lying on his back, delivered what may be the greatest comeback in literary history by looking up at Mailer and saying, “Once again, words fail Norman Mailer.” For Cavett, that line captured everything about why Mailer earned the top spot on his list because here was a man who built his reputation on the power of language and who kept resorting to violence when those words were not enough. What Dick Cavett’s list reveals.
Dick Cavett has spent nearly 70 years in the public eye interviewing thousands of people across every field of human achievement, sitting with presidents and poets, athletes and actors, musicians, and figures from every corner of American life. And he has been charmed by some, bored by others, and genuinely moved by a few.
The five people on this list represent something specific because they represent the moments when Cavett’s famous composure was tested by people who violated the principles he holds most dear. Sly Stone wasted a once-in-a-generation talent through self-destruction. Chad Everett revealed a casual contempt for women that he could not even recognize as wrong.
Richard Nixon used the power of the presidency to try to silence a talk show because its host asked uncomfortable questions. Lester Maddox built a political career on racial hatred and then ran away the moment someone used the word bigot on his television show. And Norman Mailer, the most talented man on the list, turned into a bully the moment his ego was threatened, resorting to physical violence and verbal abuse when his intellect should have been more than sufficient.
Cavett has outlived most of them, and at 89, he has had decades to reflect on these encounters with opinions that have not softened over time. Age has made him more honest about the people who disappointed him and more willing to say what he really thinks without worrying about consequences. The thread connecting every name on this list is not talent or fame or politics, but the abuse of power, whether it was the power of physical intimidation, political office, celebrity platform, or extraordinary talent.
Because every person on this list had power and used it to hurt someone weaker. For Dick Cavett, a man who spent his career giving people a platform to speak, watching someone use that platform to bully, demean, or intimidate was the one thing he could never forgive. Which name surprised you most? Did you know about these confrontations before today? Share your thoughts in the comments below, and if you found this valuable, do not forget to like and subscribe for more untold stories from entertainment’s hidden past. Thanks for watching, and we
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