“Forgotten Hollywood”- Dick Cavett Kicks Around Watergate!
Manny P. here…
PBS is marking the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s resignation by running a documentary on the Watergate scandal as seen through the prism of Dick Cavett’s late-night talk show at the time. People with memories of Watergate remember developments unfolding on the evening news, or the gripping Senate hearings shown on daytime television, but fewer recall that Cavett’s ABC program featured appearances by an array of pivotal figures.
From 1972 to 1974, Cavett interviewed many major Watergate figures, including Nixon aides John Ehrlichman, Alexander Haig, G. Gordon Liddy, and Jeb Magruder, as well as several members of the Senate committee investigating the case. Cavett’s show even taped a special edition from the room where the Senate hearings were held.
DICK CAVETT
Dick Cavett’s coverage didn’t earn him friends in high places. He’s mentioned in Nixon’s infamous White House tapes 26 times, including once when the president mused aloud in colorful language about ways the government could get back at him. Cavett later learned most members of his program’s staff had their tax returns audited. A clip of an Ehrlichman appearance shows the Nixon aide looking at Cavett with barely disguised contempt. Cavett’s low ratings at the time didn’t make him popular with ABC executives. His concentration on Watergate probably didn’t help — competitor Johnny Carson had Charo as a guest the night Cavett did his show from the Senate hearing room — but Cavett said he was shielded from most of what the network was saying about him.
The program also shows how the passage of time changes opinions. Former Washington Post reporter Bernstein was furious when Ford pardoned Nixon, yet decades later, he sees the wisdom in that decision.
The documentary Dick Cavett’s Watergate features fresh interviews with reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, former Nixon aide John Dean and Cavett. PBS announced it would air August 8th at 9p (EDT) — 40 years after Nixon announced to the nation he was quitting. This is a Hollywood-and-Vine moment, where entertainment and American history intersect.
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Bob Hastings portrayed the aide to Captain Binghamton (Joe Flynn), the yes-man Lieutenant Elroy Carpenter on ABC’s McHale’s Navy. Best remembered for his recurring role on the comedy, he also guest starred in multiple episodes of Sergeant Bilko, Dennis the Menace, Pete and Gladys, The Real McCoys, The Munsters, All in the Family, and General Hospital. After McHale’s Navy, Hastings was a regular on the Universal Studios lot, where the company paid actors during downtime to be on the grounds and talk to tourists. BOB HASTINGS —->
Hastings has also done voice work for animation and commercials, including on Beany and Cecil, and the voice of Commissioner Jim Gordon in the popular Batman: The Animated Series and its various spinoffs. He was in the movie Did You Hear the One About the Traveling Saleslady and Harper Valley PTA.
The affable Bob Hastings was 89.
Until next time> “never forget”
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