Just a brief RIP to note the passing of TV host and interviewer David Frost. He died last Saturday of a heart attack at the age of 74.Frost is probably best known to American audiences for his post-Watergate interviews with former President Richard Nixon, where after letting Tricky Dick squirm away from him for the first hours of the interviews, Frost went after Nixon with pointed questions on Watergate until he broke him down and forced him to acknowledge that he had failed the American people.
But Frost was also a satirist, a game show host, and a serious political commentator who interviewed almost every British prime minister and US president who was in office during his career, which spanned five decades.
Where I first became aware of him was when he hosted the American version of a satirical news show called "That Was The Week That Was" in 1964-65. Besides Frost, who acted as host, the regular cast featured some names you might know, including Henry Morgan, Buck Henry, and Alan Alda, with Nancy Ames singing the opening song, which had new lyrics every week to reflect the news of the week. Many of the songs used on the show were written by Tom Lehrer.
However, I have to add - full disclosure - that I hated the show because my family wanted to watch it and I wanted to watch "The Twilight Zone," which was on opposite it.
Beside presidents and prime ministers, he also interviewed people ranging from Mikhail Gorbachev to Benazir Bhutto and from Orson Welles to the Beatles. Quite a career.
RIP, David Frost.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/01/david-frost-dead-dies_n_3851784.html?ir=Media
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=nixon_and_watergate_tmln&nixon_and_watergate_tmln_media_response=nixon_and_watergate_tmln_frost_nixon_interviews
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Was_The_Week_That_Was
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