RIDGEFIELD, Conn. — Everyone wants to ask Dick Cavett the same question, and it is a question that he never wants to answer: Of all today’s talk-show hosts, who is the “next Dick Cavett”? “Well, ...

Although Cavett’s show was provocative, his persona, balancing Ivy League erudition with unflappable Midwestern solidity, has rarely ruffled anyone. Early in his career, Groucho Marx wrote him a ...