Today on the Rarified Heir Podcast we are talking to Ann Marie Snyder, daughter of journalist, news anchor and talk show host Tom Snyder who will soon be the topic of a documentary of his life, called “Tom Who?” Known primarily as the host of his late night program, The Tomorrow Show in the 1970s and his Late, Late Show with Tom Snyder in the 1990s, Tom Snyder was a charismatic, deep-thinking, irreverent and ethical personality who pioneered the long form, single subject interview on American television beginning in the early 1970s. Unlike say Johnny Carson or Merv Griffin (or even Steve Allen or Ernie Kovacs), Snyder considered himself a journalist first. His interviews with everyone from Charles Manson to John Lennon, Johnny Rotten, Kiss, Henry Miller and Howard Stern were either casual conversations you could slip into like a soft pair of slippers or occasionally cantankerous affairs, usually done with a cigarette in hand and a hearty laugh. Snyder loved his audience and his audience loved him. Frequent call-in guests to his three-hour radio show in the 1980s were Sherman Helmsley, Robert Blake and some guy from Indiana who turned out to be David Letterman. We talk to Ann Marie about her dad and we hear stories about everything from how she was forbidden to visit the 9th floor where Saturday Night Life taped at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, how her dad and Neil Young bonded over their mutual love of Lionel Trains and how her dad refused to allow her to see Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers at Madison Square Garden when guest and original Tom Petty drummer Stand Lynch gave Ann Marie two tickets and use of the band limo to the gig at age 15.It’s a great conversation with Ann Marie as we talk about her dad, who hated network interference, loved a stiff drink and was quite possibly the Godfather of the podcast as we know it today. And so as Tom might say, “Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air.” This is the Rarified Heir Podcast.
This episode is available in:
Josh Mills…very much welcomed series of one-hour podcasts, professionally presented…most recently profiling your interview with Ann Marie Snyder, daughter of Tom Snyder (episode #56).
Tom Snyder is one of the journalists I’ve always looked up to in my career.
He was honest. You could always tell he worked for the audience.
He had a michievious smile mixed with a hearty laugh.
Most times you tune in to a talk show for the guests, but you tuned in to the Late Late Show to see what Tom would be up to.
I always loved his child like enthusiasm for trains every Christmas.
They don’t make them like Tom Snyder anymore.