‘The Dick Cavett Show’ welcomed ‘Odd Couple’ star Tony Randall in 1972. Tony walks out and shakes Dick’s hand before sitting down for the interview. Dick immediately asks, “Where did you jet in from today? You’ve always just jetted in from somewhere.”
Tony responds, “I just jetted from the coast.” Dick says, “Ahh, the Golden Coast.” Dick then asks, “What’s the latest perversion in Los Angeles. You’re always here to report on something.”
Tony says, “This is an anthropological note, and I can report only on Los Angeles.”
Tony tells Dick that he lives in a hotel. He says, “Perhaps this phenomenon is widespread and is common to the entire nation or, for all I know, the entire world.”
Dick is confused and asks if he’s still talking about hotels. Tony says he needs to get Dick’s attention before he starts the story. Tony continues, “What I have observed in the hotel, not in the hotel itself, but in the hotel pool, which is observable from my window some, oh, I’d say 35 to 40 paces away.”
Tony continues the story, saying, “And I go to the pool to verify this observation from my window. Because I never go down there to swim. It is that the girls in the pool are topless.”
Tony looks over at Dick and says, “That woke you up, didn’t it?” He says he only did it for research reasons, and he wants to find out if it is a worldwide phenomenon because he’d love to go to more hotels.
The audience is in hysterics at Tony’s serious tone and delivery of such a comical story. Dick laughs right along at Tony’s quirky persona throughout the interview and story. No one expected to hear that Tony lived at a hotel with topless women.
