Name: Tom Snyder on The David Letterman Show, September 29, 1980
Uploaded: 2016-04-16T02:48:27.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Tom Snyder on The David Letterman Show, September 29, 1980' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-04-16. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Tom Snyder on The David Letterman Show, September 29, 1980' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-04-16. Transcript available.

Good morning. Thank you very much.
What a fine group of humans we have assembled this morning.
You folks are wonderful. Thank you for being here.
My first guest, actually my second guest, following Chuck the Weasel,
my next guest has been described as both controversial and unpredictable.
Please welcome the host of NBC's Tomorrow Show, Mr. Tom Snyder.
Hello, Tom. Nice to have you here.
Thank you. Nice to be here.
Tom Snyder, how are things?
Things are fine, thank you.
I appreciate you getting up this end of the day because you...
This is a little early. There are a number of things I usually do in the
morning
that I haven't accomplished yet to be here.
What? Phone calls and so forth?
Yeah, calls, letters, meetings with people, things like that.
Figuring out whose day I can make miserable.
Well, you're darn good at it, Tom.
How's the new show, the new Tomorrow Show?
It's long. You were with us, I think, a week ago tonight.
And you'll remember this.
And I don't say this in jest.
Ninety minutes is a long time to sit in a television studio
with people who are sitting in seats such as these people are here.
And most people, I feel, come to a television program to watch it in the studio
for one of two reasons.
It's a long time to laugh, and I'm not very good at comedy, as you know and
have expressed here on the air.
The second reason they show up, I suspect, is to win a refrigerator or a
microwave or something like that.
That's right.
And I ain't got no refrigerators to give away.
So I sometimes say to myself in the middle of a serious interview,
such as we had Thursday night with Richard Queen, the hostage from Iran,
gee, are these people really here because they want to be here,
or are they expecting the new car to come out there any second
and, you know, get the bid on the price, something like that.
So it's a little bit difficult.
It's a long answer to a short question.
Yeah, these people are waiting in the studio for the methadone clinic to open.
I saw the fellow in the hallway, so they don't have long to wait.
You know, your show is really enjoyable, and my favorite part of the show,
and I must confess I've not seen the new one because I get up around dawn,
deliver the papers, and then come to work.
But I always enjoy you just talking to a person, and it's real interesting,
and I hope you continue that segment.
I don't like, and you probably don't, either panel discussions, as they call it,
where you have five or six experts out there,
and I have the feeling that a lot of times they bring five or six experts on
because the production people are not quite comfortable with one or two.
They feel a subject will not be covered.
But I feel when you've got eight people out there
and you try to let them all have their say in front of the camera,
it gets in the way of good conversation.
You know, if we had 12 people here, it would be upsetting to you and me
because we wouldn't be able to say the things that we want to say to each other.
I've found that a situation like that, if you get into redundancy,
two people can pretty well cover the topic.
Let me talk about something different,
something that you started making your living in, local news.
What do you think about the way local news is being presented now?
You know what I'm talking about.
Exactly.
And all these people who are in this room and all the people watching
are now watching stations that have an hour,
sometimes two hours of local news every night.
You and I have both been at stations where we had two guys, two gals,
and a dog, and did 15 minutes a day, and that was the end of it.
Now it has become a very valuable source of revenue to the local stations,
so these programs have expanded.
And some of the things they put in there, in my view, are questionable,
especially material that relates to pornography or sex.
A lot of times you'll see an ad tonight on the news,
the new child molesters.
And when you see that ad, you know it's ratings time.
Exactly.
Please watch to get more ratings.
I'm a little disturbed by that.
Why is she making pictures of us back there?
Probably our last appearance together.
Yeah, they could be one of our last appearances.
Are you busy tonight?
You know, my schedule has opened up considerably.
We're going to pause here for a commercial and be back to talk more with Mr.
Schneider.
Hi, welcome back to the show.
Tom Schneider is here this morning.
Howard Hughes, you mentioned Howard Hughes to me.
Well, I told him in the break, we had a gentleman in on Thursday night named
Melvin Dumar.
Melvin Dumar was the man who in 1968 supposedly found Howard Hughes lying on
his face,
laying on his face, prone on his face in the deserts of Nevada,
put him in the car and took him back to his apartment at the Sands Hotel.
Dumar ran the gasoline station in Utah,
at which the will Howard Hughes left behind turned up following his death in
1976.
And you know, there was a great big court battle involved to test the validity
of that will.
So now Thursday night, in comes Melvin Dumar with the attorney
that fought to establish the validity of the will.
And we're talking about things.
And the attorney says of Melvin Dumar, gas station attendant, he said,
Now, if this guy hadn't perjured himself, if this guy hadn't lied on the stand
and told so many different stories about the Howard Hughes will,
it would have been declared valid, and Melvin Dumar would have inherited one-sixteenth
of all the money Howard Hughes left,
about $175 to $200 million, okay?
So now he's talking about this guy lied and this guy perjured himself.
And I look over at Dumar, and tears are coming down this guy's face, okay?
I said, why are you crying?
And he says, well, Mr. Hughes was such a wonderful man, and I loved him so much,
and he loved me so much.
And I said, well, is possibly the reason you're crying is it's just dawned on
you that you've blown $200 million, you know?
And you're now selling frozen tuna in Utah for $300 a week.
What a terrible moment it was for that poor man to realize, gone-ski, you know,
all over.
See, that's a great bit of TV, though.
And as for the gas station, which he owned, they built a freeway three miles
west, and that's gone, too.
So he's had a tough go.
This is a man, his goal was so tough that he divorced his wife, spent the night
with her, she got pregnant, and he had to marry her again.
It's been a very, very tough go for this man.
Little odds and ends you pick up in late-night television.
Let me ask you about, you mentioned a wife, let me ask you about your family.
You know, I've watched your show since it first came on the air.
I can quote back to you some of the early things that you did on The Tomorrow
Show, but I really don't recall you ever much discussing a family or your
family or...
You're right, I haven't discussed that.
And I'm so happy you brought it up this morning because I'm dying.
No, like many people in this country, I'm a divorced person.
Like many people, I have a daughter or a son that I see.
In this case, it's not a daughter or a son, it's a daughter.
And I'm...
It was the last time I made the call, anyway.
And I don't talk about that too much, David, as I've noticed, you don't discuss...
No, I don't.
Now, why do you feel, like, not inclined to discuss it?
Because I don't think it's interesting.
I don't think people really much want to, you know, waste valuable network-watching
time hearing me tell about my family just as they don't want to waste valuable
network-watching time hearing you talk about your family.
It's basically boring.
It's the same old thing.
More coffee, honey?
No, thanks.
I'll just get an apartment in town.
It's very...
Very sick.
What do you want to do now?
When I grow up, yeah.
You know, I wanted to compliment you on a show you did, Primetime was the name
of the show, and there was a piece on there about the auditions for the little
girl in Annie.
I thought that was a wonderful piece.
Nice little story, wasn't it?
Yeah, very nice.
Several people here saw it, too.
But you're not doing that show anymore.
You're doing the Tomorrow Show...
That's it, basically, yeah.
Now, what other things would you want to do?
I think basically that's it.
That's 90 minutes a night, four nights a week.
It's a curious thing.
In all my life, people who view what we do, the press, people in the building,
your colleagues, they always have it in their head that there's something more
that people like you and I should do.
When I was doing the local news here in New York and the Tomorrow Show, you
know, 10 hours of television a week, they said, well, now, you know, you really
ought to be doing something more.
And now I'm doing the Tomorrow Show, and they say, well, you know, what do you
really want to do?
I know.
I mean, this is my high, hard one.
I am very comfortable doing late-night television, and I enjoy it a great deal.
It's been on the network now for seven years.
There ain't too many people that have been fortunate enough to have a show that
has lasted that long.
Try seven weeks.
Yeah, you know, that show is...
But you know what I'm saying?
I'm saying, hey, why do I have to do something more?
And I didn't mean to say that.
No, I...
You haven't said this, and I am sorry that this program is going to disappear,
because it was something...
It was something different and something adventurous and something really
courageous in daytime television.
And unfortunately...
Very nice of you to say it.
Let me...
Very, very nice of you.
Let me ask you about...
Well, I want you to not say...
Because I mean that.
I appreciate that.
You know, with this show not being in this building, a little bit of television
in New York is going to die.
And we'll all be the poorer for that.
And unfortunately, there are some people down the hall on this floor who don't
recognize that.
And that's their work.
Thank you very much.
Very, very courageous to be able to say that.
And they know who they are.
And their names.
No, no.
No, no.
Now, let me ask you about Rona Barrett.
How do you get along with Rona Barrett?
I get along with her real well.
She's coming on to be your West Coast anchor, right?
Anchor.
Correspondent on the 27th of October.
I've known Rona for a long time.
She's done reports on you, on me, and she's always been very fair.
And I've had some dealings with her over the years.
Had her as a guest on the show a couple of times.
And she's a most misunderstood lady.
She's not just the lovely Miss Rona, but she's a damn fine journalist and
reporter and personality.
A star in her own right, as the press releases say.
And I'm looking forward to her being there.
I think she'll help us there.
I think for me to sit there and do interviews for 90 minutes is basically
boring.
No, no, no.
You know, that to me was the perfect thing for that hour of the night, was to
watch you talk to somebody.
And it will continue.
And Rona will be joining you when?
October the 27th.
27th.
27th.
Gentleman's name is Tom Snyder.
I'm grateful that you took the time to be here.
It's my pleasure, sir.
Thank you.
We'll be right back.
Thank you.