Tom Snyder (May 12, 1936 - July 29, 2007) was an American television personality, news anchor, and radio personality best known for his late night talk shows The Tomorrow Show, on the NBC television network in the 1970s and '80s, and The Late Late Show, on the CBS television network in the 1990s. Snyder was also the pioneer anchor of the primetime "NBC News Update", in the 1970s and early 1980s, which was a one-minute capsule of news updates in primetime; later in the mid 1980s, local affiliates took over these news update timeslots for local headlines which also served as promos for the local late newscasts.
Tom Snyder, the late-night talk show host whose free-form program and intimate interviewing style influenced a generation of broadcasters, died in his Tiburon home nearly two years after he announced he had chronic lymphatic leukemia.
Snyder, who was 71, died Sunday from complications from leukemia, associates said. Funeral arrangements are pending and will be private.
Best known for his 1973-82 stint as host of NBC's "The Tomorrow Show," which aired after Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show," Snyder showed that the wee hours of weeknight mornings didn't have to ceded to B-grade movies and reruns. There he showed how conversation -- be it goofy, serious, provocative and occasionally edgy -- could be compelling on its own.
With the camera pulled in tight on his face, the screen filled with the cigarette smoke from the host and often his guests, Snyder created a living-room atmosphere that allowed conversation partners such as John Lennon or Howard Stern to relax in ways they didn't on other programs.
"There was a quality about him that was electric -- and yet there was this intimacy on his program," Public Broadcasting System talk show host Charlie Rose told The Chronicle Monday. Rose, whose dimly lit interview program is one of television's last bastions of the same style of intimate, albeit usually more serious, chat, said, "I never tried to copy Tom, because nobody ever could. To have that electricity and that intimacy, that was unique."
Born in Milwaukee, Wis., Snyder began his career as a radio reporter there in the 1960s before anchoring local television news broadcasts in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. In 1973, long before the advent of 24-hour news channels and cable television, Snyder began "Tomorrow," and late night was never the same.
Working live without a script and talking directly into the camera, Snyder created an arresting image for the late-night audience on "The Tomorrow Show." Conversations would veer from Snyder offering his personal opinions to hard-hitting questions, to him displaying photographs from a July Fourth barbecue he attended.
Over the years, he hosted a parade of guests -- including Charles Manson -- that few prime-time programmers would touch. Several of his legendary interviews -- with the makeup-wearing band Kiss and the punk rockers the Plasmatics, who once blew up a car on his show -- live on the video-sharing site YouTube.com. There fans can still see Snyder, wearing a tie tucked under a V-neck sweater, smoking and laughing and jousting with the provocateurs of the era.
"His show was a home for the rock 'n' roll sensibility," said Wally Podrazik, a television historian and author of "Watching TV: Six Decades of American Television." "It was a free-wheeling place where you let your guard down.
"Tom was a personality unto himself. He'd go off on his own personal opinion, then laugh about how ridiculous something was, and then ask his guest a pointed, serious question about that topic -- it's sort of the same thing Jon Stewart does, in a way," Podrazik said.
Television producer and writer "David Milch used to say that coming on Tom's show was like his therapy," said Michael Naidus, a producer on CBS "The Late, Late Show" who worked with Snyder there as a publicist during his mid-1990s late-night talk show and remained in touch since. "You'd see Dennis Miller relax and behave differently on our show than he would any place else."
Over the years, Snyder's mannerisms -- from his chain-smoking, to his staccatoed form of questioning, to his booming guffaw of a laugh, which surfaced frequently at his own jokes -- became part of the cultural conversation, thanks to Dan Aykroyd's spot-on Snyder impersonation on "Saturday Night Live" in the mid-1970s. "Tom got a kick out of it," said his longtime lawyer and agent Ed Hookstratten.
Snyder's NBC show left the air in 1982, and his spot was taken by another late-night ground-breaker, David Letterman. After stints as a newscaster in New York, a nationally syndicated radio program and his own program on CNBC, Snyder returned to network television, thanks to a man who long idolized him: Letterman.
In 1995, after Letterman moved to CBS and was given control to create what would appear in the time slot after his, he invited Snyder to host "The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder." It ran for three years on CBS.
"Tom was the very thing that all broadcasters long to be -- compelling," Letterman said Monday in a statement. "Whether he was interviewing politicians, authors, actors or musicians, Tom was always the real reason to watch. I'm honored to have known him as a colleague and as a friend."
"Tom was a true broadcaster, a rare thing," said Peter Lassally, executive producer of Snyder's CBS show, in a statement released by the network. "When he was on the air, he made the camera disappear. It was just you and him, in a room together, having a talk."
Or, as Snyder told his audience in his catch phrase, "Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air."
Several years ago, Snyder moved to the Bay Area for his primary residence. "He loved San Francisco," said Naidus. "He said 'it had no bad angles.' "
He is survived by a daughter and his longtime companion, Pamela Burke, according to his Hookstratten.
That happens to be the only show of his I caught. It was a good one, beyond the obvious. I guess, his show was off the air by the time I called Canada home.
He knew absolutely nothing about "new wave" music in the 70's, but had a number of the bands on with entertaining results. One night they flew Johnny Rotten in from England as a guest. He refused to talk, and was silent on the set - except I believe he called Snyder an asshole which, of course, didn't go over very well with Tom - to put it mildly. The Ramones were fine when they appeard on his show, they got along with him like he was one of their best friends.
Another time he had British (mainstream) musician/singer Graham Nash as a guest. For some reason the topic of Sinatra was hot at the time, maybe because he had recently died and Snyder, a fan of his, asked Nash if he liked Sinatra's work, but the answer was not affirmative. Snyder didn't argue or hold it against him, though. Many British rock musicians, including the Beatles, didn't seem appreciate jazz, or American song standards, either - but there are exceptions.
Once a country singer, Waylon Jennings I believe, was scheduled to go on. There was a delay, and Jennings became impatient and left the studio before even coming on. Snyder was more amused than angry.
You never really knew what was going to happen on that show.
He did make cryptic references to getting high, as in smoking weed, which I know is possible at night in certain areas of NBC studies at Rockefeller Center in NYC - I've done it with a friend who was employed as a video photographer there in the 70's., and possibly still works there.
The time that Letterman had Andy Kauffman, and the wrestler Jerry Lawler, on together, they got into a brawl on the show. Letterman didn't know how to handle it and said outloud something like, "Tom, we need you here!".
Larry King tried to spread gossip that Letterman and Snyder were on the outs, and Snyder addressed this on the show one night talking to the camera he told King, in no uncertain terms, to stop. And he really meant it. That was the end of that.
Larry King appparently got the message.
He did another good show that I remember about the old Negro Baseball Leagues, of which he was very interested in, with several surviving players. It was a very warm, informative interview at a time when the opportunities to see these aging players were becoming dangerously close to being over.
I missed him when he retired, and I hope he had some good times in his remaining years.
Last edited by Hudson Boy; July-31st-2007 at 09:03 AM.
He knew absolutely nothing about "new wave" music in the 70's, but had a number of the bands on with entertaining results. One night they flew Johnny Rotten in from England as a guest. He refused to talk, and was silent on the set - except I believe he called Snyder an asshole which, of course, didn't go over very well with Tom - to put it mildly. The Ramones were fine when they appeard on his show, they got along with him like he was one of their best friends.
One of my fondest memories of the Tomorrow show was when Elvis Costello and the Attractions were on fairly soon after the Johnny Rotten incident. I recall Snyder being somewhat on guard before the interview started, but Costello started talking about how he played standards gigs with his father as a teenager and how much he loved his dad, and it was the complete opposite of Snyder's interview with Rotten. I recall Snyder really being taken back by the disparity between Costello's stage sneer and his charming interview demeanor. Over the ensuing years, I wasn't surprised at all to see Costello engage in projects touching on Americana, jazz, and classical music.
One of my fondest memories of the Tomorrow show was when Elvis Costello and the Attractions were on fairly soon after the Johnny Rotten incident. I recall Snyder being somewhat on guard before the interview started, but Costello started talking about how he played standards gigs with his father as a teenager and how much he loved his dad, and it was the complete opposite of Snyder's interview with Rotten. I recall Snyder really being taken back by the disparity between Costello's stage sneer and his charming interview demeanor. Over the ensuing years, I wasn't surprised at all to see Costello engage in projects touching on Americana, jazz, and classical music.
I remember a really funny Costello response. When Snyder asked him (something like) "So would you say you've matured? Costello replied (with some distain) (something like) " I never think in terms of maturing. It sounds like cheese"
He did make cryptic references to getting high, as in smoking weed, which I know is possible at night in certain areas of NBC studies at Rockefeller Center in NYC - I've done it with a friend who was employed as a video photographer there in the 70's., and possibly still works there.
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Originally Posted by GoodSpeak
