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Fame
& Fortune: Dick Cavett
Multitalented star can't get a grip on his finances |
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| Bankrate: How
much money did you lose?
Dick Cavett: I don't
know. I remember saying, "This is never going to stop." This
had to be back in the early 1970s, when I was doing the show. I
thought, "Why doesn't everyone take everybody's money? How
do you know? What are the protections against it?" You interview
them, and ask them questions about basics. Before I was even a writer
for Jack Paar, I did some radio commercials with Mel Brooks for
Ballantine beer. They needed something to pump up sales, and they
thought of having Mel, the title character in movie "The 2000
Year Old Man," be the 2,500-year-old brewmaster. We improvised
on tape for three hours at a time. The exchanges between him and
me were much praised, and the commercials won prizes.
People wrote in and wanted copies of them, and somewhere near the
end of the letter was always, "But please don't expect us to
drink that beer." The point is, even though I had heard the
term "residuals," I hadn't really pictured them. One day,
I got a letter from my agency. Then I noticed I had two letters
from them in the same day's mail. Then three and four more. I thought,
it couldn't be. And I tip-toed up the stairs and ripped them open,
and there were checks for $34, $22, $758, $406 and $30. And this
happened every day. I thought I would buy the town. The p--- poor,
or, the p--- flavor of the beer finally won out, and they had to
drop the commercials. People wrote in saying, "Please keep
the commercials, what can you do to keep the commercials? We're
already buying two six-packs a day of this awful stuff." Maybe
if this beer had been a little more splendid, I wouldn't even have
to talk to you now. I'd be using a pitchfork to get envelopes out
of my mail.
Bankrate: So, now are
you financially situated in such a way that you don't have to worry
about money, or is it something you should be worrying about, but
don't?
Dick
Cavett: It's probably some of the latter, and some of the fact that the
investments are doing nicely. Somewhere in there. Can you answer a money question
for me? Bankrate: I can try. Dick
Cavett: Why is America the only country dumb enough to have all its paper
money the same color and the same size? Bankrate:
I don't know the answer to that. Dick
Cavett: OK. Here's an incident from my early life that will give you an
indication of my financial skills. I bought a ton of fireworks one Christmas.
This box arrives that would hold a Volkswagen, and I decided to sell half of them,
and still had enough to shoot fireworks on the Fourth of July. I had them laid
out on my bed, and I had them marked, "8 cents each, or three for a quarter."
My father came up and said, "Why don't you think that through for a minute."
I didn't see anything wrong with it. That was my beginning with numbers and money. Larry
Getlen is a freelance writer based in New York. |
