Nixon and Frost Marvelous!
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television NIXON AND FROST? MARVELOUS! BY MARVIN KITMAN Not since Nikita Khrushchev faced David Susskind on Open End in the 1960s had there been the kind of excitement about two towering...
...If a show is merely important, it is financed by the oil companies, who offer high-minded commercials, such as Mobil's, that claim to be doing this noble thing—charging higher prices—to find more oil for America...
...These announce that commercials are being waived by the sponsor tonight because of the significant nature of what you are about to see...
...When they are grilled on Meet the Press and are asked awkward questions, they manage to sidestep, paper over, equivocate, or whatever else they can do to keep from actually lying...
...As Frost asked him a question on foreign affairs, a smile came to Nixon's lips...
...My friend Dr...
...That's why they are so boring...
...The rating of a show called "To Tell a Lie" would go through the roof...
...Donald Kaplan, a psychologist, shrewdly chose that time to go to a New York theater showing Woody Allen's Annie Hall...
...He also set the Guinness World Record for saying "Hello...
...Nonsense...
...Unbeknownst to some, the American public is intrigued by lying...
...And Frost doesn't even vote in this country...
...As soon as the papers began hinting that Nixon might be lying, viewers turned out in droves...
...That's what the previously unheard tapes, mysteriously leaked to the press that weekend, appeared to suggest...
...I think they should be fired...
...It was, as John Crosby of the old New York Herald Tribune pointed out at the time, "a summit conference between the head of Talent Associates and the head of the Soviet Union...
...I know just one person who didn't watch the opening installment...
...Frost dropped back to throw, and Nixon ran up, grabbed the ball, and headed for the touchdown...
...Engineers later said it was nothing, "the equivalent in the electronic age of a typographical error...
...It is rarely used nowadays, most football teams being too sophisticated...
...Except they ran it first because this was the juiciest installment, dealing as it did with Watergate...
...I'm just doing my job...
...Two has-beens: Nixon over the hill as a President and moral leader...
...Television, however, has its own special code that signals the true value of what is being presented, and it transcends the ballyhoo in the papers or even the Nielsen ratings: You can measure the prestige of a TV event by the commercials accompanying it...
...It showed that even the super David Frost organization, with its years of experience in handling complex audio equipment, was fallible...
...We could see—it was perfectly clear —that the gap in the tape was inserted in kindness to his guest...
...Super to see you...
...Even in his heyday as the host of The David Frost Show, he was not too good at asking questions...
...David Frost as prosecutor-inquisitor-interviewer for the people...
...Suddenly, the interviewer changed tactics...
...It was crazy time again...
...They were launched with a terrific gimmick...
...A smart coach would have told his boy: Use the occasion to admit everything...
...Frost washed up as a talk show host...
...It is, he says, 'a controversial subject.')" So we come to Nixon and Frost...
...BY MARVIN KITMAN Not since Nikita Khrushchev faced David Susskind on Open End in the 1960s had there been the kind of excitement about two towering eminences from different worlds meeting on TV that marked the first David Frost interview with Richard Nixon last May 4. (Strictly speaking, the Susskind-Khrushchev affair wasn't an interview...
...The first hour of the four-part miniseries, which should have been billed as "Crime Does Pay," revealed the hostile side of Frost...
...A lot of the hoopla over the interviews was artificially induced by the newspapers and newsmagazines...
...Apparently the broadcast industry felt there might be limited interest in "Nixon Sings...
...Still, Frost was probably better qualified for the job than his nearest rival, Merv Griffin...
...The TV industry, which is supposed to know what the masses want, shouldn't have been surprised...
...In any case, the Briton seemed to be preoccupied with qualifying for the next David Frost Presents the Guinness Book of World Records show...
...A normal person, I was drawn to the televised agony like a moth to the iconoscope tube, but I covered my face with my fingers, peeking through from time to time...
...The audio on the videotape shown on WNEW-TV (New York) went dead for the first 90 seconds...
...If a crazed GI living in a cave since the Korean War had then returned to civilization, upon seeing the last half hour of the show, he would have rushed out to join Nixon's campaign for the Presidency...
...They would then go after Kissinger and the others who haven't been pardoned...
...You have nothing to lose...
...In addition, they produced a time warp, raising once more the issue of veracity...
...And we are an impressionable people...
...Looking at him one got the impression that he had just returned from a weekend sojourn at Camp David, renewed and vigorous...
...Interestingly, almost nothing has been said about Nixon's advisers, agents and coach...
...The careers of both men went sour at about the same time and they were now trying to make a comeback together...
...By leaking a few tidbits they made the forthcoming first episode seem more than simply news...
...Before the communications revolution," Postman continued, "their public utterances would have been limited almost exclusively to sentences composed by more knowledgeable people, or they would have had no opportunity to make public utterances at all...
...He was not the wreck we thought he should have been after those nervous breakdowns he suffered for his country...
...The play was good enough for these teammates, though...
...The game's not over yet...
...Reasoning that the moviehouse would be empty, he thus confirmed a theory that a love of Woody Allen and a hatred of Nixon are two sides of the same coin...
...It was a lovely ending to the series...
...The result was a media equivalent of reading the last chapter of a mystery story first, to find out whodunnit and whether he admits it...
...When the words of two world statesmen like David Frost and Richard Nixon are interrupted for toilet paper ads, with two housewives jabbering over the number of sheets in a roll, you know that Madison Avenue thinks the program is nothing out of the ordinary...
...Marvelous...
...what we witnessed that night, to borrow a phrase from one of the more obscure sciences favored by the ex-President himself, was the Statue of Liberty play, a sneaky football maneuver: The quarterback gets the ball and pretends he's going to pass...
...By the second episode, Nixon was in complete control of the action...
...Under this heading, the professor listed Johnny Carson, Hugh Downs, Joey Bishop, David Susskind, Ronald Reagan, Barbara Walters, and Joe Garagiola...
...Perhaps the Englishman let himself be used so badly because this episode was originally scheduled to be the last of the four interviews, Nixon's swan song...
...in fact, a gracious touch on the host's part...
...If you'd just open up, the press wouldn't give you the bum rap anymore...
...What made the whole thing particularly appealing, of course, was that he was convinced he was telling the truth...
...The immortal words of David Frost ?marvelous, marvelous"—ran through my mind...
...He may even have been crying, since snuffling sounds could be heard on the audio track (other explanations for the weird noise might be an engineer fired for the tape breakdown, or the pounding of the California surf...
...It isn't that I'm running for office," the candidate might weasel...
...They're always technically telling the truth...
...But I wasn't looking for ward to the Nixon interrogation...
...Marvelous...
...What was bugging him...
...The interviews more than fulfilled my high expectations...
...Nevertheless, the Roots-like ratings for the premiere—a political soap opera in the tradition of "As The Worm Turns"—went beyond the wildest and most avaricious dreams of the independent stations that eventually picked up the show...
...He acted as if the Department of Immigration had just told him his green card was going to be revoked...
...Everyone has seen the thrilling spectacle of an incumbent being asked if he's a candidate...
...They also may have reasoned that Frost seeming to have a toothache (the reflective, at-ease pose he adopted on his talk show and repeated here) would not stir audience interest...
...Praise has been heaped upon David Frost and his staff for their acumen in manipulating the print press...
...Conducting an argument more than an interview, hectoring the poor fallen President about Watergate with a list of quotes taken out of context, he came off as one of Nixon's harshest critics...
...For the first time in over two decades he came close to looking like a human being...
...Did you ever hear a swan really sing...
...Super welcome to the show...
...The lions like Time, the New York Times and the Washington Post couldn't have shilled more effectively for shillings...
...This was Dick Nixon's shining half hour on TV...
...For the hold the first segment had on viewers can be explained this way: All public figures tell the truth, or something like it, on the air...
...This was the Thursday Night Massacre...
...Media consultant Roger Ailes explained the mood of the staff and crew at the second interview: "If you saw Rosemary Woods hanging around the set, I would be very concerned...
...while nobody's looking, a backfield man comes around and takes the ball out of his hand...
...You've already been pardoned...
...You simply don't see a man openly lying that often (though I don't know why it's always Nixon who's the one...
...So wise up...
...The Nixon-Frost publicity, beginning the week before May 4, gave every indication that there would be some good lying going on...
...I remember him mostly for shaking hands with such international celebrities as Julie Andrews and Lassie...
...Actually, from the opening whistle of the series the fact that Nixon showed up at all was a moral victory for the forces of lawlessness, greed and disorder...
...When the series resumed the following Thursday night, everybody was relieved that nothing happened to the videotape...
...With the President on the ropes ready to be knocked on his posterity, he was allowed to start talking about his inner turmoil, how difficult it was to fire one's associates and loved ones...
...Finally, there is the public affairs show where you get the good old commercials...
...And the fault was all Frost's...
...It was...
...Frost, the killer bee a moment earlier, became strangely silent...
...Good evening...
...At this late date...
...Things being what they are, the press and the air waves are filled with the featured and prime-time sentences of people who are in no position to render informed judgment on what they are talking about: like Joey Bishop on the sociological implication of drugs, Johnny Carson on educational innovation, Ronald Reagan on the Pueblo Incident, David Susskind on anything, and Hugh Downs on menopause...
...Newsmen would start focusing on all the good things you did in foreign affairs and what a fine father you are...
...If a program is really significant, it has Xerox-type ads...
...He was setting the world record for the man most quickly won over by Nixon?58 minutes...
...I took a pill to control anticipated nausea, too...
...He was like the student who discovers the single book he has read during the year is the subject of the major essay question on the final exam...
...In an essay titled "The Demeaning of Meaning" in Language in America (Pegasus, 1969), Professor Neil Postman of New York University observed that "The invention of new and various media of communication has given a voice to, and an audience to, many people whose opinions would otherwise not be solicited, and who, in fact, have little if anything to contribute to public issues...
...If only I could keep myself from turning on The Nixon Interviews...
...Let me tell you about Israel," he said...
...This was undoubtedly the guide the major networks used in turning down The Nixon Interviews...
...Who could have imagined that Frost, the jet-setting friend of the great (Diahann Carroll) and the near-great (Princess Margaret), and by his own admission "the founder of modern satire" in Great Britain, would one day attempt to regain status on American TV by questioning Richard Nixon's honesty...
Vol. 60 • June 1977 • No. 12
