David Frost: Newsman, Showman, and Suave at Both

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY Published: September 2, 2013

People tend to think that the line between comedy and hard news was breached first by Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show. But actually it was David Frost.

Associated Press David Frost, left, and Richard M. Nixon before their interview.

Mr. Frost, who died on Saturday, moved silkily from sketch comedy and political satire to serious interviews with politicians and newsmakers, and most famously a series of conversations with Richard M. Nixon in 1977 that lasted 28 hours 45 minutes. At his peak, Mr. Frost was a one-stop-shopping television star: a newsman with a flair for show business, an entertainer with a thoughtful side, and at times a brazen schmoozer with undeniable sophistication and charm. People assume that Barbara Walters was the first television journalist to become a Hollywood-style celebrity, but no one had as much finesse and gusto for mingling with the rich and powerful as Mr. Frost, who married the daughter of a duke and was knighted in 1993. He shared Ms. Walterss tensile knack for moving from newsrooms and ballrooms, but he commuted from London to New York, to host The David Frost Show in 1969 when Ms. Walters still shared a desk and predawn wake-up calls with her co-hosts on Today. In some ways he was an Oxbridge version of Larry King. Mr. Frost gently elicited answers rather than bullying his guests, and his dandyish striped shirts were almost as much of a trademark as Mr. Kings suspenders.

Like Mr. King, who after retiring from CNN created his own Web-only talk show on Hulu, Mr. Frost never tired of the limelight. When his career in Britain slowed down, Mr. Frost didnt. He signed on with Al Jazeera English in 2006 while he was still the host of Through the Keyhole, a popular game show that he helped create. (After a tour of a celebritys house, a panel of guests tries to guess the owner.) At that time, the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network was treated as an enemy by the Bush administration. Yet Mr. Frosts first guest was Tony Blair, then the British prime minister, who told him that the Iraq war was up to that point pretty much of a disaster. That kind of headline-making get is the best explanation for why Mr. Frost decided to risk his reputation on Al Jazeera. He couldnt resist the international showcase so many time zones or a chance to do the long, far-reaching interviews that have fallen out of favor in the age of channel surfing, Web clips and multitasking. No opportunity went untapped. When he died of a heart attack, he was scheduled to give a talk on the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth. Mr. Frost, who had his own production company, Paradine, was always astute about the business of television, a little like Merv Griffin, an entertainer who was also a media mogul and the creator of Jeopardy! Mr. Frost didnt just interview Nixon, he turned that encounter into an enterprise, paying that former president $600,000 (and a share on the profits) so he could package, produce and finance the five-part spectacle. The major American broadcast networks declined to broadcasting it, worried about checkbook journalism, so he syndicated it to local stations all over the United States and also internationally. As Ron Howard, who directed the 2008 movie Frost/Nixon, put it, Mr. Frost created the first fourth network. In the movie, which was based on the Peter Morgan play, Michael Sheen portrays Mr. Frost as glib and agreeable on the surface, but also shallow and desperate for approval and affirmation. If insecurity was his Rosebud, it didnt bleed into his on-camera performances. He handled Nixon cordially but rather sternly, evidently anxious to not appear too chummy or sympathetic. He will always be remembered for coaxing the disgraced president to apologize to the American people and also for leading Nixon into a staggering gaffe: Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal. But the Nixon conversation is not the best measure of Mr. Frosts aplomb and dexterity as an interviewer. Nixon was his own Scheherazade, weaving political platitudes into inky, self-pitying and strangely eloquent soliloquies that needed little interruption. One of the weirder interviews on The David Frost Show was with Yoko Ono and John Lennon in 1972. Ms. Ono did the talking, mostly about herself; Lennon agreed only to join her in singing protest songs they wrote together, including Attica State. When Ms. Ono complained that it was sexism that caused people to slip past her to get to her famous husband, Mr. Frost pointed out that Ingrid Bergmans husband at the time, Lars Schmidt, also didnt get enough attention. Now, that is not prejudice against

him because he is a man, he said. It is because he has a very famous wife. There are plenty of talk show hosts today who are quick witted and convivial, and there are still a few who do long, serious interviews about world affairs with statesmen, not just starlets. Mr. Frost did it all, on both sides of the ocean, and made it seem effortless. This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: September 2, 2013 An earlier version of this article mistakenly referred to Mr. Frost commuting from London to New York, via the Concorde, in 1969. The Concorde was not yet in operation at that time.
A version of this article appears in print on September 3, 2013, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Newsman, Showman, And Suave At Both .