Carson Super Guest Tom Dreesen Looks at the Tonight Show, Old and New

Over the past few years, Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show has reemerged within the collective consciousness, thanks to the return of his shows to syndicated TV and best-of collections available on home entertainment media. One of those best-of packages, “The Vault Series”, features some of Carson’s favorite frequent guests, including Bob Hope, Dean Martin, Richard Pryor, and Big Crosby. And comedian Tom Dreesen, who appeared on the show 63 times (alongside Rodney Dangerfield and David Brenner in the all-star ranks).

And like so many stand-ups who considered The Tonight Show must watch TV, an appearance could literally make a comic’s career. When Dreesen first appeared on the show (after getting bumped three times) Dreesen had moved from Chicago to LA and lived in a car with a broken seat, hitchhiking to get to unpaid gigs at comedy clubs. But when he appeared on the show, after getting spotted at the Comedy Store by the Tonight Show’s talent coordinator, everything changed.

On a night that featured Carol Burnett and Bert Convy, Carson brought him onstage by saying “I’m glad you’re in such a good mood tonight, because our next guest is making his first appearance on the show tonight.” That was the line which kick-started his career as a professional stand-up and kept Dreesen working ever since. He recalled Carson using “the line ‘glad you’re in such a good mood,’ to set the tone for that appearance. And luckily, I got a lot of laughs and when it was over, Johnny brought me back out for another round of applause and did that little circle he did with his finger that meant, you did it.” At the time, close to 20 million nightly viewers watched, and decided that night that Dreesen could be defined as a comic. Dreesen remembered, “In a night, my entire life changed. At the time, when people asked what you did and you said ‘I’m a stand-up comedian’ the next question was, have you ever been on Johnny Carson. Because if you haven’t been on Carson in the eyes of America, you weren’t a comedian. You might want to be a comedian, but you weren’t one yet.”

The day before that appearance, he was drawing unemployment checks, but “after that I never stopped working. I appeared on all the television shows…game shows, Dina Shore, Soul Train, I’m the only white comic to have done Soul Train. Sammy Davis Jr. putting me on tour for three years.” That busy travel schedule kept him in the public eye and made him a name in comedy. But it also kept him out of the guest host chair. Unlike comics like Convy or Brenner, Dreesen was exclusively a guest on The Tonight Show. Although he did once sub for Convy when he needed a bathroom break in the middle of his guest appearance. Dreesen recalled “He told me, Tommy get behind the desk, I want you to bring out the next guest. Don’t say Bert told me to do it, just pretend it’s been like this all night. And I introduced the next guest, a singer, and by the time she was done performing, Bert was back at the desk. And people wrote in asking if they’d been seeing something.”

But Dreesen did take some guest hosting opportunities for an old friend and Carson’s protégé, David Letterman. Letterman was a peer of Dreesen who he had come up with and jogged and played sports. But appearing on Letterman and Carson were very different. “I liked doing his show, but when I came on his show, David wanted me to sit down and talk. He liked the stories I told. I’ve told David this before, but the difference between doing Letterman and Carson, was you did Letterman to stay sharp for the Tonight Show. If you sat down and told a story on the Tonight Show and you were drowning, Johnny threw you a life jacket. David would throw you an anchor. You had to be sharp with David.”

Some of those stories included his childhood origins, as one of 8 kids growing up dirt poor (a rat infested shack that had 5 kids sleeping together) that required a sense of humor to survive. And his comedy origins as an insurance salesman. Before moving out west, life insurance salesman Dreesen joined The Junior Center of Commerce in Harvey, Illinois and started a drug education program for grade schoolers (the number one drug education program in the country). His partner on this mission was a young marketing rep new to town from Norfolk, Virginia, Tim Reid (pre-WKRP in Cincinnati). Using comedy in their program, an 8th grader suggested they should be stand-ups, and the two formally created Tom and Tim, the first (and only) black and white stand-up comedy team. The two close friends wrote a book (Tim and Tom: America in Black and White) about their 6 year partnership and a movie’s in the works.

If (when) that happens, Dreesen might be talking about it with the Tonight Show’s current host, Jimmy Fallon. Carson’s massive influence is lost today with the larger variety of shows and stations– Carson could literally make or break a career. Dreesen knew from firsthand experience, “he would trust his talent coordinators because they knew what he liked. But if he didn’t like what he saw, they weren’t coming back, unless they were on with a guest host. Johnny was the final decision.” Carson was arguably the last of these mass taste makers in Hollywood, but his legacy remains strong with current talk show hosts. “New viewers can see where some of the current daytime talk show hosts got their style. I think Jimmy Fallon is fantastic, a perfect choice for the show. I see a lot of Johnny in him; that cocky arrogance mixed with a certain humility. Comics, or any entertainment, if you wrote their qualities on a blackboard, you would write arrogance/humble. Arrogant enough to believe you can go out in front of 20,000 and entertainment them, but humble enough to appreciate them when people like what they do. I see that in Jimmy Fallon.”

As for what made Carson the King of Late Night, Dreesen sees the man that changed his life as much as an artist as any of the performers he hosted. “A person is an artist in their field,” says Dreesen “when they make their work look one way…effortless. That can be the case for a truck driver, a brick layer, or entertainer. To make that work seem effortless. Johnny Carson made that job seem easy, but it’s not. He made people think the job was easy to do. And I know it’s not easy, because of the amount of preparation I had to do when I sat in for Letterman.”

Today Dreesen’s appearances on The Tonight Show can occasionally be seen in syndication, resulting in new viewers having the same reaction to him as their parents, saying “hey, I saw you on TV last night.” But he still performs regularly, as a motivational speaker for corporations and students as well as stand-up jobs. Those in LA can even catch him at the Laugh Factory when he’s working on new material. But don’t expect him to curse like the younger comics he shares the stage with. Recently he overheard comics in their 20s or 30s saying “he’s old school, he doesn’t use the F word.” When the other comic asked “What does he use for adjectives?” Dreesen stuck his head around and told the youngsters “adjectives.”

You can also see many of Tom’s appearances in a new DVD package, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson: The Vault Series. The set was released exclusively to Costco and includes 12 shows, uncut and featuring Paul McCartney, Dean Martin, Sean Connery and others, along with Ed McMahon, Doc Severinsen and the rest, all recorded between 1972 and 1987. On October 4th, additional material was release via a single, 3-disc, 6-disc and 12-disc collections with such guests as Richard Pryor, Muhammad Ali, Bob Hope and many others, now available everywhere. A must have for all comedy fans.

 

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