Noted Personality Passes Away...

Tom Snyder (May 12, 1936 - July 29, 2007), best known for his late night talk shows The Tomorrow Show on NBC television network in the 1970s and '80s and The Late Late Show on the CBS television network in the 1990s. passed away in San Francisco Sunday, after suffering from leukemia. He was 71.

And to me he was one of those guys that told it like it was...no holds barred. He gave no quarter and expected none in return. I look at him as the precursor to people like Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Geraldo Rivera, but Tom was more than the sum of all three of these people..and perhaps a bit more.

If you were a thinking man or woman, he was the "go-to" person for REAL interviews. And he was never afraid to put "his" two cents into the mix. He was much like Edward R. Murrow (imho), with his quiet demeanor, but he could also go from 0 to bombastic in mere seconds.

You might like what he had to say one day, get totally pissed at him the next, but STILL you watched, because his delivery during his interviews was something that captured your attention...and held on with a half-nelson!

And he was not without HIS critics. But Snyder told the NY Times back in 1977: " I'm not just THERE as a piece of wood, for people to talk to. I'm a human being. I have opinions and biases and beliefs and standards, and I have to inject them into that program (Tomorrow with Tom Snyder), otherwise we might as well have an empty chair and give the guests a list of written questions and let them answer them". Don't see very much of that today, do we (well maybe HERE on this blog).

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(from Wikipedia)

Snyder was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was raised Roman Catholic and graduated from the Jesuit-run Marquette University High School. He also graduated from Marquette University.

Snyder began his career as a radio reporter in Milwaukee in the 1960s. For a time he worked at Savannah, Georgia AM station WSAV (now WBMQ). After moving to television in the 1970s, he was a news anchor for KYW-TV in Philadelphia, WNBC-TV in New York City and KNBC-TV in Los Angeles.

He gained national fame as the host of Tomorrow with Tom Snyder (more commonly known as The Tomorrow Show), which aired late nights after The Tonight Show on NBC from 1973 – 1982. It was a talk show unlike the usual late-night fare, with Snyder alternating between asking hard-hitting questions without pulling punches, and offering personal observations that made the interview closer to a conversation.

Unique one-on-one exchanges were common to the program, notably with actor Sterling Hayden and author Harlan Ellison. When not grilling guests, Snyder would often joke around with off-stage crewmen, often breaking out in a distinctively hearty laugh that was the basis of Dan Aykroyd's impersonation of Snyder on Saturday Night Live. Snyder was also the basis of the cartoon "Tom Morrow," which appeared in Playboy in the late 1970s. Snyder's seemingly mismatched jet black eyebrows and grey hair were also lampooned on Saturday Night Live.

Peak moments with Snyder on Tomorrow included John Lennon's final televised interview, in April 1975 (replayed in December 1980 as a tribute to Lennon, and later released on home video), an interview with philosopher Ayn Rand in 1979, and U2's first American television appearance in June 1981. "Weird Al" Yankovic's first television appearance was on the show in April 1981.

Bizarre moments included 1979 appearances by punk singer Johnny Rotten, Chicago shock-jock Steve Dahl, The Clash in 1981 and a 1980 appearance by rock band The Plasmatics during which lead singer Wendy O. Williams blew up a TV in the studio; the explosion disrupted a live broadcast of NBC Nightly News being produced in a studio two floors above. Snyder himself referred to this occurrence on a 1981 followup appearance in which the Plasmatics demolished a car. Also memorable was the 1980 appearance of Public Image Ltd.'s John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) and Keith Levene, whose thoroughly uncooperative twelve-minute appearance on the show acquired a long-term notoriety.

The most outrageous interview seen on Snyder's show occurred on Halloween 1979, when the rock band KISS appeared to promote their album Dynasty. During that 25-minute "interview", the conversation devolved into a somewhat chaotic exchange between Snyder and a very drunk Ace Frehley, who picked up a teddy bear left behind by another guest, put the armbands from his costume on the bear, and laughed, "the only Spacebear in captivity! I've got him-- he's captured!". When Snyder asked Ace if his costume was that of some sort of spaceman Frehley quipped, "Actually I'm a plumber." Snyder shot back, "If that's the case then I've got some pipe you can work on backstage." The inebriated Frehley clapped his hands and cackled hysterically at the exchange. Gene Simmons has revealed on his website that he felt "betrayed" by the other members during this interview. Shortly thereafter, the band broke up. Following the break up, Snyder was the very first to have a member of the band appear without make up in public. Peter Criss, the former drummer, appeared to announce his departure.

Another memorable segment was a prison interview with mass murderer Charles Manson. Manson was mesmerizing in the interview at times, then without warning, getting a wild look in his eyes and spouting wild notions at Snyder, before temporarily returning to a much calmer demeanor.

The show was canceled in 1982 to make room for up-and-coming young comedian David Letterman, following a disastrous experiment with turning Tomorrow into a more typical talk show, renaming the show Tomorrow Coast to Coast, adding a live audience and co-host Rona Barrett, all of which Snyder resented.
Soon after the cancellation of The Tomorrow Show, Snyder worked as a New York news anchor on WABC-TV's Eyewitness News. In 1985, he returned to the talk format at KABC-TV in Los Angeles, with a local afternoon show he had planned to gear up for national syndication the following year; those plans were scratched after Oprah Winfrey's Chicago-based show entered the market first and took over Snyder's time slot on KABC-TV.

An older, slightly more mellow Snyder returned to virtually the same format on ABC Radio. The show's three-hour format was a natural for Snyder. The first hour was spent chatting with a celebrity guest, during the second hour Snyder engaged someone in the news, and the final hour was consumed chatting with his legion of fans. Occasionally the caller would be a well-known fan like David Letterman or Ted Koppel. The "Tom Snyder Show" for ABC Radio Networks went off the air in late 1992. Snyder returned to television on CNBC in the early 1990s, adding the opportunity for viewers to call in with their own questions for his guests. Snyder nicknamed his show "the Colorcast", reviving an old promotional term NBC-TV used in the early 1960s to hype its color broadcasts.

Meanwhile, Letterman had moved on to CBS and was given control of creating a new program to follow his at 12:35 am. Letterman, who had idolized Snyder for years — hired Snyder in 1995 as host of The Late Late Show. The idea had actually begun as a running joke on Letterman's show, that Snyder would soon follow him on the air as he'd once followed Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show; the unlikely suggestion caught on. This show aired live on the East Coast and was simulcast to other time zones on radio to allow everyone a chance to call in. Snyder's CNBC show was taken over, largely unchanged in format, by Charles Grodin. In 1999 Snyder left The Late Late Show, which was then reformatted for Craig Kilborn. It has since been turned over to Scottish comedian Craig Ferguson.

Snyder also hosted a video called "A Century of Legendary Lionel Trains", commemorating 100 years of Lionel Trains. Additionally, he hosted a model train video called "Celebrity Train Layouts 2: Tom Snyder".

Snyder posted regular messages on his own now-defunct website, colortini.com during the early 2000s. A "colortini", according to Snyder in the CNBC era, was the drink you should enjoy while watching the show ("Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air."). For the CBS show, he redubbed the mythical drink a "simultini".

On July 28, 2005, Snyder announced he was deleting his website after six years, stating: "The novelty of communicating this way has worn off." On August 1, 2005 his page was abruptly taken offline. The front page was replaced with a white screen with the simple phrase: "Colortini is gone. Thanks for the Memories". The colortini.com domain now displays a search engine page with topics related to hair coloring.

In April 2005, Snyder revealed that he was battling chronic lymphocytic leukemia, but that his doctors had told him it is "treatable".

In June 2006, Snyder sold his home in the Benedict Canyon area of Los Angeles, California, where he had lived for almost 30 years. He headed to Belvedere, in Northern California, where he owned a second home.

Snyder died July 29, 2007 in San Francisco from complications of leukemia.

Snyder had one child, Anne Mari Snyder, who lives in Maui, Hawaii, and two grandchildren

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"He was...compelling", said Dave Letterman.

So next time, when it's after hours, and the TV is on....think about having a "colortini", sitting back and watching those pictures as they fly through the air.

I know I won't view any late night programming the same now.

Compelling...

I, along with many, will truly miss him.