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TIM REID’S COLOR OF COMEDY (PT 2): Pioneering black and white comedy duo author new book.
A decade before “WKRP,” in the late 1960s, Reid and friend Tom Dreesen became the nation's first well-known black and white comedy team. Now, 40 years later, the two are reteaming for a book about their start called “Tim & Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White.” As amateurs, the duo set off for local nightclubs in Chicago with their act, and found themselves sharing the stage with the likes of Count Basie, Sarah Vaughn, and Stevie Wonder.
However, it wasn’t always about hobnobbing with legends. Reid and Dreesen fought racism with comedy, and at times with their fists. They often found themselves tackling issues the nation was too nervous to deal with and then having to tackle their way through aggressive racists to exit the club. And for all that they endured, and the love of comedy, the two would share a $35 paycheck.
“Nobody knew we were struggling, but that kind of exposure – that is what it’s all about,” Reid said of being followed by entertainers like Wonder. “Every time it came to the point that it was time to do something else, we’d get another gig. It was working from the standpoint that it gave us the energy to stay in it, but we weren’t making any money. I didn’t make much money until I started doing ‘WKRP in Cincinnati’ it was a struggle.”
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Reid, however, acknowledged that it was that Tim & Tom start, that struggle that launched the career success he has today. After “WKRP,” Reid went on to star in the ‘80s TV show “Simon & Simon,” then led his own television show in the late ‘80s called “Frank’s Place,” then in the ‘90s starred in “Sister, Sister,” and then in the millennium, the hit TV show “That 70s Show.” Along the way, Reid also became a producer, writer, and director.
“It was responsible for me having been in the business for 40 years,” Reid said of his years with Dreesen. “I learned so much. I knew that it was a marathon and not a sprint. I know that things change. The [entertainment] cycles repeat themselves and if you know that, you can prepare and you can stay ready, and that’s what kept us alive. The good news about the book is – the pain, the struggles, all the sense of humor that happened as we were trying to make it in show business – we made it. We made it individually, but we made it. He went on to be Sinatra’s opening act for 14 years or as he says it, Sinatra closed for him. He’s done hundreds of ‘Tonight Shows.’ He has been very successful and I went into film as an actor, director, and producer and have been very successful.”
Reid expounded that the good news about the book is that there is that happy ending. The two clearly did well in the entertainment industry. They had succeeded though he described survival as a very thin thread.
“It broke for us many times,” he said. “A few nights before he did Johnny Carson’s show that launched his career as a stand-up, he was sleeping in a car. The glam and the glitz are put into context.”
“Tim & Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White” takes a look at the widely popular interracial comedy pair in era of racially charged civil unrest and follows the story of the launch of the careers. It tells a story that some don’t know about, but it is an important story in comedy history – although, it was almost a story that didn’t get told.
“I didn’t really want to do the book,” Reid said. “Tom was a believer in the book. For years he was asking me about, ‘Let’s do a book.’ I thought, ‘It’s passé now. Nobody cares about race anymore. He kept after me. I saw the passion in him and I’m a sucker for passion. I see somebody’s passion, I give in.”
Reid agreed to do the book, but told EUR’s Lee Bailey that his requirements were that they find a good writer and that they stay connected to the project.
“The only thing is that it’s compelling and we [have] somebody to help us with it,” Reid insisted. “I don’t know anything about writing a book. We all think we’ve got a book, but writing one is not an easy task. So for about a year and a half, Tom and I and Ron Rappaport came together. I said, ‘I don’t want this to be a ghost book where we sit down, you put us on tape, and then go away and write a book. I want to be involved in this. I have to protect my part of the story.’ And so we worked as a collaborative.”
What Reid found powerful from the final product was that their collaborative author was able to write the book as a narrative.
“That was a bit unusual,” he said. “Ron was an observer and he wrote it in third person. So when you read the book, you are there. You are an observer. It’s very much like being there; it’s visual. And that’s what I was hoping it would be.”
“It was also very cathartic for me,” he continued. “It was painful to relive some of that. I don’t like to go back. I like to move forward. There were many times in the session where we both had to stop because we were in tears.”
Though reminiscing on stories drew tears, Reid admitted that not all the stories of the funny duo made the book. Reid said that they didn’t really hold back anything; they just held back the number of things. Reid talked about how he and Dreesen were married to different people when they started out, and that his first wife played a major part in helping them follow their showbiz dreams. But, as Reid explained, there were issues in regard to his marriage that he wanted to avoid mentioning in the book.
“My first wife comes off in the book as a saint, and she was. She was very instrumental in the early part of our career. But there were some things that happened there, some affairs and some things that I really didn’t know if I wanted to reveal and have her relive her pain.”
Furthermore, Reid added that there were the lives of other entertainers to consider.
“There are a lot of people involved in this book that are well-known people who came through our lives and you have to be careful about that. So I wanted the book to be about us; not to try to pinpoint things that other people did or we saw other people do. But we had to tell as much truth as was necessary to tell the story. So we had to be careful about that. We did tell more than I would have liked to have told.”
Maybe there are a few juicy stories missing from “Tim & Tom,” but the legacy of their act is evident in the book.
“There’s definitely a legacy because comedy itself at that time. When you look at what was going on in America, the comedy that was going on – Dick Gregory, Godfrey Cambridge, Nipsey Russell, and Jackie Vernon; all of these comics – when you look at the comedy that they were doing and what the country was going through, many of us dealt with that. Richard Pryor was just beginning to break. He was doing the kind of comedy that we were all doing. The genius at that time was Bill Cosby. He was the first person to do what you would call non-racial comedy, but it was racial. The context was his context. He defined his own environment, which was brilliant,” he applauded. “The legacy being that what comedy was going through, we were a part of it. And because we were the only black and white comedy team at all and still, we were a part of that legacy and created that comedy.”
“Tim & Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White” is in stores now, finally giving props to the duo that defined the color of comedy.
“We never got the respect from other comics that we should have gotten. There are so many comics that never even heard of us. When they do the history of comedy, very rarely does anybody say, ‘What about that black and white comedy team?’” Reid said. “If anything, I hope the book justifies that because we were a part of that. We were a part of the history of comedy.”
For more info, check out the Tim & Tom blog: http://timandtomtheblog.blogspot.com/.
Read part one here
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