How many television professionals could effortlessly alternate between aggressively interviewing the most interesting and powerful people on Earth and satirizing them in acerbically comic performances?
The late Sir David Frost did just that for almost six decades.
The international media impresario died suddenly, yesterday, leaving an amazing legacy in video.
David Parradine Frost, the son of a Minister, was a Knight in his native England UK and a true Citizen of the World.
He was in the second wave of Television broadcasters. Frost was one of those who learned their craft in front of the camera as the medium evolved and matured, not behind the microphone in radio studios, as had their predecessors. His work resonated with British Baby Boomers, who were questioning the values and institutions that their parents saved in World War Two.
Frost forged a new genre in Television as the point man on the BBC's groundbreaking, comedy program, THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS in the 1960's. He also hosted a subsequent, abortive, American version on NBC. While the show was rejected, Frost was embraced by stateside audiences.
A charter member of the international Jet Set, in the 1970's , Frost personified the frequent flyer. He hosted a daily, syndicated talk show for GROUP W BROADCASTING, based in New York, and actually commuted to the UK to star in a weekly interview program.
Like Playboy's Hugh Hefner, his most intimate, personal relationships made global headlines. He exemplified the MOD sensibilities of the immediate, post-MAD MEN era. He produced and hosted television shows in America, The UK and Australia. He also produced films and wrote books.
For this smart, savvy, multi-national, multi-media, multi-tasker, life, like television, was a global affair.
David Frost will best be remembered for eliciting a long-awaited apology for the Watergate affair from disgraced, former President Richard Nixon, during a landmark series of interviews he conducted with Mr. Nixon in 1976. That tense exchange was, itself, chronicled in a Broadway show and an Academy Award nominated film.
Frost began his storied career as a child of the burgeoning television generation and lived to be a respected, recognized elder statesman of international media.
Here, from ABC NEWS is David Muir with a remembrance of Sir David Frost. R.I.P.
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