The first shot we see of Tom Snyder every weeknight is from a spotlight’s viewpoint. We are up in the rafters beaming down, and Snyder is below, his long frame folded into an armchair planted inside a magic circle.
If this were Broadway, or the table top of a Chinese restaurant, the circle would revolve. But this is Los Angeles, capital of cool. It just sits there, and Snyder sits in it being as cool as a man of his peculiar intensity can be.
It doesn’t last long. In a heartbeat, the camera is down with him, and his face is in our face once again, as it used to be during the 1970s, as it has been for a month now, since David Letterman talked the CBS network into snatching Snyder from CNBC, a cable outfit purveying business news during the day and chatter at night, and placing him back into the big tent of network television.
In a month, we’ve learned more about Tom Snyder’s bodily functions than we have about most talk hosts’ celebrity friends-and Snyder has given us the celebrity friends too!
In a month-okay, it really only took a day-we’ve been reminded of that bombastic, infectious laugh and of how Dan Aykroyd could ride his imitation of it to an early career peak.
In a month, we’ve grown accustomed once again to chasing Snyder through the hallways of his mind, where wit, bluster, charm and insecurity make for a fascinating household.
Ice-T has said, “Tom is cool.” Dan Rather has told him, “I’d crawl on hot lava for you.” Bob Costas has said, “You’re a big star again, Tom.”
“Don’t use `again,’ ” Snyder responded.
David Letterman has even telephoned already with one of the prank calls he used to make to Snyder’s CNBC talk show. “He called last Friday night,” Snyder said in a phone interview last week. “Larry King was on. Yeah, (Letterman) was `Elliott in Gas City, Ind.’ And he said, `Hey, Tom. Who’s that guy next to ya?’ And I said, `Larry King.’ And he says, `Hey, Tom. What’s he do?’ “
The laugh gates open and, over the phone from Los Angeles, out gushes all the zest that gives lie to the network’s initial fear that Snyder, at 58, was too old for the gig.
Snyder’s “Late Late Show” (11:35 p.m weeknights, WBBM-Ch. 2) is a welcome edifice on the late-night talk landscape, a refuge from all the Dave pretenders mouthing tepid, ultra ironic monologues and Oprah chasers praying that, tonight, somebody on that podium will toss a chair.
After the party-at-the-smart-guys’-frat atmosphere of Letterman’s “Late Show,” Snyder, usually with just two guests and no apparent scripted bits per hour, is like the quietly intense conversation you have afterward at an all-night diner. Sometimes you wake up the next morning and realize it didn’t add up to much. But you were engrossed at the time by the magnetism of the guy sipping coffee across from you-no matter how many tangents he explored, no matter how you couldn’t stop thinking about the way his eyebrows undulate, two black caterpillars that wiggle a lot but never get anywhere.
“We had talked to both Garry Shandling and Bob Costas, but in the back of our mind we always wanted Tom,” says Robert Morton, speaking also for Letterman, whose show Morton also co-executive produces for Letterman’s company. “There’s an intimacy that only Tom Snyder can create. Our aim was always to create the impression that there’s only three people awake in America: you, the guest and Tom Snyder. You know it’s late night, you know you’re doing a bad thing by staying up till 1:30 in the morning (Eastern), but you can’t turn it off. And I’d say it’s 90 percent Tom that’s keeping you there.”
The same thing can be said of the new talk host who replaced Snyder on CNBC (9 p.m. weeknights). Charles Grodin, the actor, author and talk-show guest extraordinaire, is now occupying the host’s seat and it’s a trip to watch. He has brought his familiar deadpan humor, and he has also brought a sincerity that is at first baffling because you’re used to Grodin not meaning what he says. Thursday, for instance, he reeled off six or seven parched items that verged on jokes-the crew was laughing, anyway-then made a heartfelt plea for a “less ugly society.”
Grodin and Snyder run similar shows, versions of radio done for TV. Both take calls from viewers and both play to the crew like a morning radio host plays to his news reader.
Snyder, being the veteran at this and on a network, is the more polished. He has living-room furniture while Grodin sits in chairs that look like they’re rented from an office-supply shop. Snyder looks into the camera and owns it. Grodin seems to duck it: His smaller eyes dart furtively and his head doesn’t stop shaking-it’s like there’s a constant minor earthquake in his neck. But in this loose atmosphere Grodin’s arid wit and penchant for launching quirky anecdotes are given the run of the property, with often entertaining results.
And Snyder, while he may be more polished than Grodin, is anything but slick. Morton says Snyder has mellowed, and in some respects it seems true. He no longer sucks greedily at cigarettes, as he did when he hosted NBC’s “Tomorrow” from 1973 to 1982 (when that pioneering late, late show was replaced on NBC by Letterman). Snyder certainly looks tan and comfortable, the blues and grays of his wardrobe nicely highlighting his gray hair.
He almost makes a virtue of not preparing. With one controversial guest, he talks about reading something about her while coming down the hall.
He’s a puppy dog to most of his guests-“I don’t think people want to see guests get beat up,” he says-but he’s usually at least frisky and he’ll nip on occasion too. He asked Dan Rostenkowski, who faces trial on charges of defrauding taxpayers, “When ya goin’ in?”
“That’s not even funny,” Rostenkowski growled. “When this process is concluded, I’ll be on this talk show throwing the barb at you.”
You can count on at least a couple of quirky utterances per night issuing from Snyder’s lips. On his first show, Jan. 9, he started by beefing about a security guard at the Los Angeles television station KCBS who failed to pay him proper obeisance.
To start shows last week, he told a story of tracking down a CBS executive in a hotel bar and suggested the man, Snyder’s boss, was several sheets to the wind. He related an encounter with “the steaming gift of canine friendship” that left him horizontal.
Everything around him-the circle, the nighttime cityscape, the cool jazz music going into commercials-seems designed to tone him down. It doesn’t quite work.
In the interview, he is pure energy coming across the phone. It is difficult to believe someone can sit in a little red armchair across from him and think about anything other than how positively wired this guy is.
“By the way, I don’t know if you watch us or not but I assume you do from time to time,” he insists. “How do you think we’re doing? I think we’re getting better.
“I mean this whole thing is just out of-heh, heh. Who knew? I mean, who knew? I mean, a year ago, if you’d have said, `By the way, a year from now. . . ‘ I’d have said, `What are you smokin’, pal?”
These things just burst from his mouth, like a spigot that can’t be turned off. In a strong interview with Kelsey Grammer, he acknowledged that at NBC in the 1970s “we used to smoke a little cigarette not manufactured by Philip Morris, and we had a blast.”
It’s a surprisingly frank admission. But no more so than his obsession with the sweat that tends to form on his upper lip.
“I said, `Sweat meeting,’ ” he tells America during the Grammer show. “I said (to staffers), `I’m sorry about that. I’m only human, you know. I occasionally pass gas. I do all kinds of things that normal humans do, and it works for me in my life! It’s okay!’ “
It is, indeed, okay.
