Tom Dreesen, the veteran stand-up comic whose late-night résumé stretched from Johnny Carson to David Letterman and beyond, has died. He was 86.
For regular late-night viewers, Dreesen was one of those comics who just seemed to belong—comfortable under the lights, at ease with a couch, and fluent in the rhythms of hosts who still treated stand-up as one of the form’s essential building blocks.
By his own count, Dreesen made more than 500 national television appearances over the course of his career. That tally included at least 28 appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, four more on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show, turns on Politically Incorrect, The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and, yes, three appearances on Comics Unleashed.
But his deepest late-night connection was with David Letterman.
Dreesen appeared 42 times across Letterman’s two late-night shows, beginning just two months into Letterman’s NBC tenure and continuing all the way to April 2015, when he made one last visit to the Late Show five weeks before Letterman signed off from CBS.
The two men were old friends going back to the mid-1970s, when both were young comics working the Comedy Store. Dreesen liked to tell the story of their first meeting the same way: he came offstage one night, Letterman—newly arrived in town in a red pickup truck—complimented his set, and the two started talking. Letterman, according to Dreesen, eventually objected to the anecdote on artistic grounds.
“Every time you do an interview or I do an interview and they say, ‘How did we meet?’ you always tell the same story,” Letterman told him, Dreesen recalled. “It’s a boring story.”
Letterman’s proposed rewrite was more Letterman: Dreesen should say that he came offstage, discovered Letterman had stolen his material, and “beat the hell out of” him in the Comedy Store parking lot.
“Why would I tell a story like that?” Dreesen asked.
“Because it’s a better story,” Letterman replied.
Dreesen got the last word—or at least the next punchline—when Letterman later called seeking his help in Dreesen’s native Illinois with a matter involving property used by autistic adults to grow food for the homeless. Dreesen reached out to a political contact who could help, then gave him one instruction: tell Dave the reason he was helping was because Dreesen had beaten him up in the Comedy Store parking lot. Ten minutes later, Dreesen said, Letterman called back.
“Didn’t I tell you that’s a better story?”
That was the Dreesen-Letterman dynamic in miniature: old friends and bits that improved with each retelling.
Dreesen’s Letterman connection also put him in the host’s chair, briefly, during one of the stranger stretches in Late Show history. In March 2003, when Letterman was sidelined by shingles, Dreesen was among the guest hosts tapped to fill in. It was a rare chance for a career comic best known as a guest and raconteur to run the hour himself.
Dreesen’s career, though, was not confined to late night. He first broke through as one half of Tim and Tom with Tim Reid, one of America’s first interracial comedy teams. He later became known for his years opening for Frank Sinatra, a job that placed him in a different kind of show-business finishing school—one with tuxedos, orchestras, midnight dinners, and a boss who expected the room to be warmed properly before he walked onstage.
He also acted, with credits that included Murder, She Wrote, Columbo, Touched by an Angel, WKRP in Cincinnati, and Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs. Offstage, he became a motivational speaker and a fixture in charitable work, including years of support for the Gary Sinise Foundation.
Even in his eighties, Dreesen kept working. He continued performing live and just recently launched a podcast titled Who’s Tom Dreesen?.
Letterman’s YouTube channel just posted a thirty-minute compilation of Dreesen’s many appearances with him.
R.I.P , Tom Dreesen .