Loved reading your reactions to the Ali column.
The video with this one is a particular treat. I'm not, of course, suggesting you skip the printed part here and rush right to it. If you do, of course, I'll never know.
One day, the champ asked if I'd like to see his training camp — he was preparing for his 1974 fight with Joe Frazier — and someone suggested taking cameras and making a show out of it. Whoever that was was smart.
The camp was unique, situated in a delightful rural setting in Pennsylvania. Great effort had gone into making the place primitive, as Ali says, twice, "Like in the days of Jack Johnson."
Note his delight in showing me his private cabin, and his delight in using the words "antique" and the tautology "old antique." He's like a big, exuberant kid here, showing off his hide-out. He is — and there's no other word — sweet. And it's also, of course, a skillful performance by a master.
You'll see a bit of acting on my part, too, as in pretending in his gym, for alleged comic purposes, that I couldn't jump rope.
(And I can't conceive of why I say to him that I wrestled in high school when you can plainly see from my bared body in the gym segment that I was a gymnast.)
I was put into a bedroom with the décor of a western lodge. No sign of Ali. Suddenly the door exploded open and a rowdy gang of my host and a group of his buddies burst into the room and flopped and draped themselves on the ample bed. They were a lively bunch, carousing like high school or fraternity pals: mock insults, playful punching and general horsing around … all the elements of adolescent-boy-fun with plenty of laughter.
Ali kept announcing, with an artful-seeming seriousness, "I can't believe Dick Cavett came all the way to Pennsylvania just to see me!" Oddly, I can't recall for sure if I stayed overnight. He did once at my place, but that's a separate story.
His mother somehow cooked and served a hearty lunch for about 20; TV crew, hangers-on, the jostling buddies, assorted relatives.
Halfway through lunch I noticed a certain conspiring and giggling among Ali and his buddies and then, lowering his voice so his mom wouldn't hear, he whispered, "We got some company for you, Dick. Look what just came in." I turned toward the door to see two of the most pleasant-seeming and startlingly unattractive women ever created. Had the pranksters used Central Casting?
Ali: "No hurry, Dick. They can stay all night."
Delight at my discomfort filled the room. One of the buddies nearly choked to death on a combination of my consternation, his laughter and a half-swallowed chunk of soul food. The merry jest over, the ladies were whisked away, in transportation that had been neatly arranged, and they were, I learned, generously rewarded.
I never figured out how to get even. Maybe that's why I used the word "niggardly" to him on a show, rewarded by the famous hands closing about my neck as he pretended not to know what it meant.
I promised last time to report some of the odd, fun, goofy sort of things that would happen between us. What follows won't sound, at first, like fun, but it gets there.
We were both part of some documentary back in those wonderful healthy days, and when I arrived on the "set" (a dune by the sea in Montauk), although the weather was fine, there was thick gloom. Muhammad was in a funk. I'd heard about these.
The filmmakers were looking desperate. "He won't talk to anybody and he just stands there gazing out to sea. We can't get to him. It's like he doesn't hear you." They were about to pack it in. They asked me to try to do something.
The champ stood there staring out to sea, statue-motionless, looking like an extraordinarily handsome cigar-store Indian. (I refuse to say "cigar-store Native American.")
I approached warily.
"Ali?" I ventured. He turned. And he burst into glee. "Dick Cavett!" he shouted, arms around me. Had he forgotten I was in it?
All was fine now, and the director, virtually in tears of gratitude, seemed to shed 10 years.
"What's this effect you have on him?" he wondered.
I can't begin to explain it. What was I to him who, then, had everything? What was our curious bond?
Opinions solicited.
At the end of the documentary shooting in Montauk, it was getting dark and I volunteered to drive the champ to his motel where his (then) wife, the beautiful Veronica, was waiting, and we all had dinner.
I like watching people's behavior when they recognize the famous, but with Ali it was unique.
He saw me to my car in front of the motel. Sometimes I would sort of forget who it was I was with until, as in this case, a couple going for their car saw him standing by mine and lost the power of speech.
The woman could only unconsciously keep pointing while her dumb-stricken husband, trying to exclaim, only managed to phonate a sort of protracted "oooorg" sound, his eyes having dilated to a larger size. I guess it was as Woody Allen said when he first laid eyes, at his new job, on Sid Caesar: "It was like looking at a god."
Later, as I started the car, Ali suddenly said, "Hey, Dick, how far's your house? I wanna see it." He jumped in. (No mention of Veronica.) It was only five minutes away.
He loved the place and I said, "You don't want to stay in a motel tonight, man. Why don't you stay here?"
"Hey, Dick, you really mean that? My friends won't ever believe I stayed in Dick Cavett's house." As I was about to match him with what my friends wouldn't believe, he added, "My mama really won't believe it."
"She wouldn't accusing you of fibbing, call you 'Cassius' and, as they say down in Dixie, 'slap you upside the head?'" (Big laugh.)
"Hey, Dick, you not only sound like my mama, you starting to look like her." (My turn to convulse.)
He asked if there was a bed for him and his wife. Of course, the master bedroom bed was offered and he got into it. "Will you go get Veronica while I lie down?" I did. He switched on the TV.
When we got back he was giggling to himself over what had just happened.
My wife, the late Carrie Nye, was then in a play in New York. The phone had rung and Ali had picked it up.
My answering machine recorded this much of the conversation:
[Ringing.]
Ali: Hello.
C.N.: Darling?
Ali: This ain't Darling.
C.N.: I'm sorry, I … Who is this?
Ali: Who is this? It's the only three-time heavyweight champion of the world and I'm sleepin' in your bed and I'm watchin' your TV.
C.N. (after a moment): Well, Mr. Ali, I shall have a plaque placed on that bed.
(An offer she never made me.)
The answering machine cut out there. Glad I had a wife who knew what — and especially who — the "heavyweight champion" was. How things have changed. How many wives today could name the heavyweight champion? And how many husbands? I can't.
I told this story on television and one night after that, at about 2 a.m., my phone rang. A gravelly, menacing, unfamiliar voice said, "Hey, Dick Cavett. I hear you lettin' niggers sleep in your bed."
While I was trying to think what a book on anger management might advise as to the best thing to do or say here, there was an ominous silence. Then a kind of chilling gurgling sound. Then the Voice of the Anonymous Coward let out a laugh that was both hearty and, now, somehow familiar.
Perhaps you can guess who it was?
Writing this stuff continues to dredge up memories and subjects about this great man, like his Vietnam travails and my part in that sorry episode.
I sometimes think I may have enough good stuff to write about him until the next Romney administration.
Anyway, enjoy these old Cavett show clips. Looking at him here, he is in the midst of the best part of his life. Being with him, I felt that I was, too.
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