Chuckling, smoking & dominating the conversation: Tom Snyder's gender-bending guests

This week’s episode features my review of the DVD release John, Paul, Tom & Ringo, which features solo Beatle interviews from Tom Snyder’s Tomorrow Show. Instead of offering up Beatle links, though, I wanted to salute the boorish but thoroughly absorbing Mr. Snyder. So, let me send you flying into some vintage items from the Disco Era, the scary depths of the Seventies.

Here’s a show that’s a good kind of drag: the immortal Divine and living legend (still out there performing) Holly Woodlawn, and their stage director Ron Link in 1979:


A cheat here: not a Tomorrow clip, but Snyder hosting a segment on a newsmagazine show in the same year, ’79, talking about the Rocky Horror Picture Show cult, focusing on its showings at the Eighth Street Playhouse. That chick playing Frankie was adorable, I saw her do her shtick a few times back in prehistory.



And to continue the gender-bending with Tom (who was the straightest, most overwhelming conversation-dominator you ever did see), here’s Alice Cooper in one of his leaner moments (seriously lean) in his oddest stage outfit, a weird look that can only be summed up as “leather geisha.” Alice looks seriously ill, but he later chalked it all up to living exclusively on liquor.