David Frost (TV presenter)

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David Frost (2005)

Sir David Paradine Frost , OBE (born April 7, 1939 in Tenterden , Kent , England - † August 31, 2013 in the Mediterranean on board the Queen Elizabeth ) was a British journalist , television presenter and political satirist. He was one of the most famous English-speaking television interviewers and wrote television history with Richard Nixon's interview on the Watergate affair .

Life

Frost was the son of a Methodist pastor and studied on a scholarship at Gonville and Caius College of Cambridge University English literature (after he had already signed a contract as a player for the football club Nottingham Forest). At the same time he was secretary of the student theater Footlights and editor of the student magazine Varsity and the literary magazine Granta . He also performed as a cabaret artist and became a trainee at Associated Rediffusion , a television production company.

In 1962/63 he was the presenter of the political satirical BBC television program That Was The Week That Was (TW3), which ran very successfully, but was canceled in the election year 1964. In 1964/65 an adaptation ran on NBC in the USA after Frost had attracted attention there through a TW3 episode in memory of the just murdered John F. Kennedy in 1963. More satirical programs followed, such as the Frost Report 1966/67, in which the television careers of John Cleese , Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker began.

He moved in the direction of journalism with his interview format (in front of a studio audience) The Frost Program, in which he exposed , among other things, the insurance fraud and imposture of Emil Savundra , which is considered the first example of Trial by Television in Great Britain. After that he had several interview programs in the USA and Great Britain, which were also broadcast worldwide, e.g. B. Frost on America in the 1970s in the US and Frost on Sunday 1984 to 1992 on TV-am, followed by Breakfast with Frost from 1993 to 2005 for the BBC. He interviewed all British Prime Ministers since 1964 and all US Presidents since 1969, but also celebrities such as Muhammad Ali (in Zaire at Rumble in the Jungle ), Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (in his last interview in January 1980), Golda Meir , Mosche Dajan , Orson Welles , Maria Callas , Mick Jagger , the Beatles and Prince Charles .

He became known worldwide in 1977 when he interviewed ex-President of the United States Richard Nixon , who had to resign three years earlier because of the Watergate affair . The interview, which was released in full on DVD in 2008, resulted from a total of 28 hours of conversations that were held over 12 days. In discussing Watergate, Nixon voiced a disturbing view that the president was above the law. Eventually, Frost got him to admit he had betrayed the interests of the American people. British author Peter Morgan converted the interview into the play Frost / Nixon , which was successfully staged in London's West End in 2006. Two years later, the play by Ron Howard was made into a film under the title Frost / Nixon .

Frost was also the author of 15 books. He has founded several television production companies (including co-founder of the British breakfast TV production company TV-am in 1981 ) and has received numerous awards for his television career. Among other things, he became a Fellow of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) in 2005 . He held the title OBE and since 1993 Knight Bachelor .

From 2006 to 2012 he presented the weekly interview program Frost over the World on the Al Jazeera English channel . From 2012 to 2013, the same channel ran under the name The Frost Interview, a format in which Frost interviewed several people one after the other in the same hour-long airtime instead of usually one after the other.

Private

Frost was married to Lynne Frederick , Peter Sellers ' widow , from 1981 to 1982 . Since 1983 he was married to Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk , with whom he had three sons. The second eldest son, Wilfred, is a television presenter at CNBC .

At the end of August 2013, Frost was a guest on board the Queen Elizabeth . While giving a speech there, he suddenly had a heart attack and died. The cause of death was hereditary hypertrophic cardiomyopathy , from which his eldest son Miles died in 2015 at the age of 31. The other two sons therefore founded the Miles Frost Fund, which aims to raise awareness of preventive medical checkups for this disease.

literature

  • Harald Staun: The dangerous friend. His interview with Nixon made him world famous. But how did it go on? A visit to Sir David Frost. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung , March 29, 2009, p. 29.

Web links

Commons : David Frost  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Later on, the Monty Python members were unable to speak to him very well in several skits, including a. they let through allegations of plagiarism.
  2. ↑ To Appeal to David Frost . In: Washington Post . January 17, 1980, ISSN  0190-8286 ( washingtonpost.com [accessed December 8, 2017]).
  3. ↑ n-tv news: How Maria got along with "the Callas" . In: n-tv.de . ( n-tv.de [accessed on May 26, 2018]).
  4. ↑ For the differences between play or film script and reality see Alexander Menden: Script for "Frost / Nixon" - Natural living space: cocktail party. ( Memento of the original from February 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , February 4, 2009 (interview with screenwriter Peter Morgan). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sueddeutsche.de
  5. ↑ Al Jazeera host David Frost dies , in: Al Jazeera from September 2, 2013 (English)
  6. ↑ a b Sir David Frost's son Miles dies, aged 31 , The Guardian , July 21, 2015
  7. ^ A b David Kamp: All You Need to Know About Wilfred Frost, CNBC's British Import . Vanity Fair. Retrieved August 5, 2018.
  8. ↑ Kunal Dutta: Sir David Frost Dies: Veteran Broadcaster Suffers Heart Attack Aged 74. In: The Independent , September 1, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Frost, David
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Frost, David Paradine (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British journalist, author and television presenter
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Tenterden , Kent
DATE OF DEATH August 31, 2013
Place of death Queen Elizabeth (ship, 2010)