Snyder’s career began in Milwaukee in the 1960s as a radio reporter. He then moved into local television news and anchored newscasts in Philadelphia, Los Angeles and New York before moving to late night.
Paul Friedman, a senior executive at CBS News who worked with Snyder on local news in New York, said he was a first-rate newswriter. He’d “read all the wire copy and then throw it away and write the story, quickly, in his own conversational, made-for-broadcast style. It always worked,” Friedman said.
Ed Hookstratten, Snyder’s longtime agent, said Snyder was one of the best local anchors in the country, but he loved interviewing “and always wanted his own hour. He loved to dig down and do his homework on whoever his guest was.” – Article in USA Today, 7/31/2007
This is our fourth Sunday With Snyder: every Sunday, ILT “rebroadcasts” Tom Snyder’s ABC Radio Show. Tonight: September 4, 1992: Lawyer Melvin Belli (partial; joined in progress) and TV Guide Editor Anthea Disney.(NOTE: This is a new, significantly expanded file added on Dec. 21, 2009 which includes segments that had been missing).
As a young man I attended Marquette University. I never did graduate, which nearly broke my Mom and Dad’s hearts. I was short ten credits because some professor claimed I copied another student’s book report. This professor had a morning class and an afternoon class. I was in the morning session, the other student in the afternoon. I never met him. Or her. I tried to convince the guy that if we were both reviewing the same book, as turned out to be the case, our reports would be similar. He didn’t buy it and flunked me. I was a senior and so pissed off I moved to Savannah, Georgia to start my television work. – Tom Snyder, April 9, 2003 (Picture: TS in bit part on The Rifleman, 1961 – From Videowatchdog)
This is our third Sunday With Snyder: every Sunday, ILT “rebroadcasts” Tom Snyder’s ABC Radio Show.
Tonight: August 26, 1992: Making Schools Better with Larry Martz and British Entertainer Des O’Connor. Tom’s hour with Des O’Connor is terrific.
Some investment advice in today’s rocky economy. If you had bought a thousand dollars worth of Nortel stock a year back, today it would be worth about forty six bucks. If you had bought a thousand dollars worth of Miller Light (the beer, not the stock), and drank all the beer and redeemed the cans at the redemption center, you’d have about a hundred and five dollars. Given the current volatility in the market, my advice is to drink heavily and recycle! – Tom Snyder, July 30, 2002.
This is our second Sunday With Snyder: every Sunday, ILT “rebroadcasts” Tom Snyder’s ABC Radio Show.
Tonight: From May 20, 1992: TS with guest John Astin (partial) and Nightside hour. John Astin talks about the Addams Family (recording sessions for the animated version) and with a member of his own family. Also: acting with Charles Laughton. On the Nightside hour: Dan Quayle has attacked sitcom character Murphy Brown, who chose to have a child outside marriage; Tom creates a yogurt controversy.
In 1987, Tom Snyder filled-in as occasional guest host on Larry King’s Mutual Radio show. He enjoyed the work and was good at it.
In 1988, the ABC Radio Network gave Tom his own nationally syndicated call-in program. Known simply as “The Radio Show,” it ran for three hours every weekday night for five years. The first hour was usually a news maker or political guest; hour two featured someone from the field of entertainment, and the third hour, the “nightside” hour, was “…you and TS, all alone on the telephone.”
This wasn’t confrontational radio. It wasn’t partisan political radio. It was simply the world filtered through Tom Snyder’s intellect. He was sympathetic to guests and callers alike, connecting on a basic, “common sense” level. When common sense seemed an impossible goal, Tom would give an exasperated “Sheesh!” Not “Sheesh, this person is ridiculous,” but rather “Sheesh, how far am I going to have to go in order to have a conversation?”
It was easy-going and personal. Tom would swap stories with guests rather than formally interview them. It almost didn’t matter who the guest was – listeners tuned in for Tom. Tom gave them great radio.
If these shows are archived somewhere, I haven’t found them. So Sundays With Snyder will be a regular feature here on Isn’t Life Terrible until our finite supply of programs saved on audiocassette runs out. Some shows will be “joined in progress,” some will be incomplete, some will have static, and some will suffer from a buzzing sound generated by a nearby appliance. Others will be screwed up professionally by WICC-AM, the local affiliate, where the board op would frequently miss cues or played two feeds at once. WICC also provided long periods of dead air… but those, like commercials and newscasts, have been cut out. Commercials and newscasts are retained when there’s historic or entertainment value.
Tonight: From Feb. 18th 1992: TS with guest Gloria Steinem. The country is smack dab in the middle of a recession, and it’s the day of the New Hampshire primary when Tsongas beat Clinton and Bush beat Buchanan. (We do not know how provocatively TS was dressed for this show).
The original Mickey Mouse Club presented five new hour-long episodes each week during the 1955-’56 and 1956-’57 TV seasons.
In ‘57-’58, the show started slipping away, cut to five half-hour programs per week.
In ‘58-’59, the lights were still on in Mickey’s Clubhouse, but nobody was home.
Production had shut down, and Disney resorted to re-cut half-hour reruns. The loyal viewers who remained to watch the repeats had the unusual opportunity to relive a portion of their childhood while they were still children.
By the Autumn of 1959, these kids had no idea what to do with themselves at 5 p.m. on weekdays. It was in that forlorn condition that they entered the sixties, mere months later, which might just explain the entire decade.
After three years of clublessness, reruns of the show again became available through local syndication, and MMC ran in this manner for another three years, from 1962 through 1965.
If you were eight when the show had premiered, you were a teenager by the second go-round, and distinctly embarrassed if not appalled by how much you used to love this juvenile entertainment. It was left to a new group of eight-year-olds to pick up Mickey’s fallen banner.
As the Mickey Mouse Club returned to the air in September of 1962, the Beatles went into the studio with their new drummer, Ringo Starr, to record six tracks. By the time the MMC “went dark” again, the Beatles had played Shea Stadium and received their MBE’s.
The show then made a strong bid for obscurity, remaining “dark” for ten long years. Depending on my math skills – and the month of our fictional eight-year-old’s birthday – the kid is now 28.
Not old – but not feeling so young, either. “The Sixties” really began in ‘63 or ‘64 (the Kennedy assassination or The Beatles, take your pick) and really ended in ‘74 or ‘75 (Watergate or the draft, your pick once again). This third time around elicited acute nostalgia from the original audience, now fueled by memories of what, in retrospect, seemed a far simpler time. Some of them were watching as the Club reconvened on January 20th, 1975, when the second series of reruns began.
That same evening, The Tomorrow Show With Tom Snyder videotaped an episode featuring original Mouseketeers Darlene Gillespie, Sharon Baird, Lonnie Burr, Cubby O’Brien, Tommy Cole, and Cheryl Holdridge (who died earlier this month at 64). For the many original viewers who were now allowed to stay up late and watch people smoke, the hour-long Tomorrow Show was the electronic equivalent of a grade-school reunion. And, especially for those who were watching their first rerun, it must have been something of a shock.
You see, each morning, you get up, you look in the mirror, and, barring misfortune, you see almost exactly the same face you saw yesterday and will see tomorrow. You never see yourself age. You only come to realize how old you are obliquely, by encountering some other face you haven’t seen in a long while. At that point, logic kicks in: I don’t feel older, but if that person is older, then Imust be older.
If it weren’t for those damn Mouseketeers, and those damn memories of winter days when the fading sunlight in our TV rooms imperceptibly accomplished a cross-dissolve with the blue glow from our black and white sets, we could have stayed young forever.
Tom Snyder always seemed to get a kick out of Harlan Ellison, who here looks amazingly good for a guy only seven weeks past open-heart surgery in April 1996. Ellison has always been as outspoken as he is talented… and he’s very talented, which makes him an ideal talk show guest.
His lawsuits are written with the same gusto that infuses his books – a recent one described Ellison as “…a famous author, screenwriter, commentator and public speaker. He is the winner of countless literary awards…” and described the person he was suing as “…a scheming pathological liar and little more than an obsessively vindictive and petty man trying to be a mover and shaker.”
If you ever need to sue someone, try to get Harlan and his team on retainer. (He usually wins).
Alas, the Edgeworks series promoted in this appearance, which promised to be for Ellison what the Atlantic Edition is for H.G. Wells, ceased publication after only four volumes. But here is the highly entertaining Late Late Show appearance (30m), smacked and cracked into three bite-sized chunks.
Part 1 is above Part 2 is below
Part 2 is above Part 3 is below
[2021 note: Don's original embedded videos are missing; these are equivalents on YouTube.]
Tom Snyder falls head over heels in love with Bonnie Hunt right on the air. You can hear it happen. It can’t be anything else.
And, of course, why not? Bonnie’s beautiful, funny, talented, easy-going… and Tom means no harm; he just lets himself fall completely under her spell, and it’s lovely. Tom and Bonnie recall their respective strict Catholic upbringings, and Tom makes a couple of remarkably intimate and revealing statements about his life and philosophy.
First up is a segment with Norman Lear, followed by some “open phones” calls. The Lear show is from May 29, 1991 and the Hunt show is from April 19, 1992. And no, we never do get to hear how Norman Lear got through to Danny Thomas.
Two shows, both a little incomplete (The Lear segment is joined in progress, as is the Bonnie Hunt interview), but still a treat. Just under an hour and a half in total; commercials have been painstakingly removed. This program will stream in Box.net’s audio player, or you can download it.
I’ve had requests for additional episodes of The Radio Show with Tom Snyder, and I’m happy to make four additional episodes (complete with commercials; we’re talking nearly 12 hours here) available for download:
09-14-90 – With guests Irwin Schiff and Donald O’Connor. In case you’re swayed by any of Mr. Schiff’s “Don’t Pay Your Taxes” philosophy, may I point out that Mr. Schiff is currently in prison and won’t get out until 2016. (This one will play in Box.net’s player) about 3 hrs.
10-01-91 – With guests Curt Gentry, author of a J. Edgar Hoover biography, and Elayne Boosler. (This one must be downloaded first; and it’s joined in progress) 2hrs, 45min
10-09-91 – With guest Molly Ivins plus a discussion of the political correctness, or lack thereof, in Amos and Andy. (Will stream in Box.net’s player) about 3 hrs.
10-10-91 – With guests Joe McGinniss (Cruel Doubt) and Dr. Demento. (Will stream) about 3 hrs. (Remind me to tell you about my dinner with Joe McGinniss in Saratoga, or I guess you could look it up in The American Spectrum Encyclopedia, which seems to have every fact known to man between its covers)
Great listening; The Radio Show is one of the greatest radio talk/call-in shows ever.
3) The Nightside Hour. Tom reserved the final hour of his three-hour radio show for audience members who wanted to call in. This is from Sept. 8, 1992.
And for those of you who may have missed it, from The Tommorow Show, a favorite episode featuring Disney animator Ward Kimball that somehow survived the years on my 3/4″ video copy, taped off the air.
I’m learning to encode at 44.1, because those MP3 files will ’stream’ through the Box.Net player. For others, you’ll have to download the file and play it in your own MP3 player.
"Isn't Life Terrible" is a Charley Chase short from 1925. The title was derived from a 1924 D.W. Griffith film, "Isn't Life Wonderful?" Other Charley Chase film titles that ask questions are "What Price Goofy?" (1925), "Are Brunettes Safe?" (1927), and "Is Everybody Happy?" (1928). Chase abandoned his titles with question marks for titles with exclamation points during the sound era.
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Snyder’s career began in Milwaukee in the 1960s as a radio reporter. He then moved into local television news and anchored newscasts in Philadelphia, Los Angeles and New York before moving to late night.
