INTERVIEW WITH TOM DREESEN:

RGP: I just wanted to begin by having you speak a little bit about your career which has been long and varied and tell us what you are doing now and kind of introduce yourself to the audience.

TD: Okay, yeah. I’ve been in show business about thirty years. I started in September of 1969. That was the first time I ever went on stage. What got me into show business was purely by accident. I was in the Jaycees, the Junior Chamber of Commerce it was called at that time, a young civic group back in Harvey, Illinois, and I had gotten out of the service and I joined the Jaycees to try to work within the community. They had a leadership training program within the Jaycees and they also did a lot of civic work and at that time I created a drug education program teaching grade school children the ills of drug abuse with humor. It was a concept that I had had. At that time, teenage crime was running rampant in the community I lived in, Harvey, Illinois. As I said, this is a suburb on the south side of Chicago and it seemed that most teenage crimes were either drug or alcohol related. Seventy-something percent of teenage crimes were drug or alcohol related so I decided that maybe we should be doing something about that so I came up with this idea of teaching grade school children the ills of drug abuse. At that time, there were no drug education programs in the high schools or in even colleges in the late 60’s. In fact, the feeling by the community was that if you talked to the young kids about drugs it would actually arouse their curiosity which was absolute hogwash, but at that time that’s the way people thought. So I came up with this concept and I wrote the program that I thought would be a program of playing records and actually getting the kids’ attention and then having some fun with them and then after making them laugh a little bit and I had no background as a comedian at that time at all, but then I could plant the little seeds. And helping me in this project was a young man that had just graduated out of Norfolk, Virginia, Norfolk State College, and then E.I. Dupont recruited him into Chicago so he joined the Jaycees, a young black man by the name of Tim Reid, and he joined me on the project and the program became very successful. It became number one in the fifty states and in twenty-two foreign countries. The Jaycees used it as a model program and it was about a year into this program that it was very successful at a grade school level. You know, we did a lot of things with the kids aside from teaching them in the classroom and having fun with them. We had each school vote for two students, a boy and a girl, to help us in the summertime build a float on the Fourth of July and then every school summer two students and these kids helped us build this float and it was young kids protesting against drugs and they carried signs. They were like street demonstrators that said keep off the grass, acid can burn a hole in your life, etc., etc. and that became very successful and we got them interacting. One day, a little eighth grade girl said, "You guys are so funny, you ought to become a comedy team" so the thought of a black/white comedy intrigued both Tim and I and we started talking about it and we started writing what we thought was material and then, you know, we did real material for about four months and we ended up going in a club and bombing one night, but then we went the next night and the guy liked us and we did real good and then we became America’s first black and white comedy team and continued to stay together for six years at which time the team broke up. Tim wanted to be more of an actor comedian. He later became Venus Flytrap on WKRP in Cincinnati and he has been in many sitcoms. He is very successful. Then I struggled by myself for a while and I ended up doing the Tonight Show and that turned my career around when I did my first Tonight Show and I have had subsequently then sixty-one appearances on the Tonight Show and I did fifty Dinah Shore shows, fifty Merv Griffin shows, and fifty Mike Douglas shows. I did Hollywood Squares and Midnight Special and a rock concert and Soul Train and American Bandstand and I did a lot of television at that time. I started touring with Sammy Davis, Jr. for years. I toured with him for three years and then I ended up touring with Smokey Robinson, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Tony Orlando and Dawn, etc., and Natalie Cole and then finally I got a chance to tour with Frank Sinatra and I toured with Frank Sinatra for thirteen years. In this career of motion pictures and acting in Murder She Wrote and Columbo I’ve had a wonderful career and continue to do so. But it was during this time that I knew my sister had come down with multiple sclerosis many years ago before I was even in show business and I didn’t know what MS was. When she came to me and said, "They think that I have MS", I didn’t know what MS was and like most of us who have members of our family stricken with multiple sclerosis we all of a sudden become interested and involved. My sister, Darlene… Let me digress a little bit. I have eight brothers and sisters. There were eight of us, I mean. There were four boys and four girls. We were very poor. We lived in a shack. Five of us actually slept in one bed at one time. There was no bathtub and no shower and no hot water. We had to boil water and, you know, this wasn’t during the Depression. I’m not that old, but we were very poor. Both parents liked to drink and it caused us numerous problems as children, but my sister, Darlene, was the oldest girl and Darlene was just the sweetest, nicest human being I have ever met. She watched Gold Rush as much as possible. She was only eighteen months older than me, but I can remember far back when I was a kid her holding my hand and helping me and taking me to school and she always looked over me. She never really said an unkind word about anybody. When we went to Catholic school, she would go to Mass five days a week as we always did in those days and then even on Sunday so six out of seven days Darlene would go to church. She just did for everybody. She was deprived of her teenage years and her childhood because she spent most of her time watching over us. Our mother was a bartender and Darlene had to watch over us a lot, but she never complained. She wasn’t a complainer. She did what she had to do. I went in the service and, you know, she wrote to me all the time. She was just truly a great sister. She worked in a little pizza place when I was a teenager and when I was a kid I worked in a bowling alley and I would come to visit her and she always made sure even if she had, whatever little tip money she made from her tips, she would say, "Are you hungry, Tommy" and she would always make sure I was fed and she just was one of those kind of people that never complain. When she got multiple sclerosis, she never complained. She went from a cane to a walker, to a wheelchair, until one day she was bedridden. Prior to this, I had gone into show business and Darlene was probably my biggest fan. I still have a card she wrote to me the first time I ever appeared on television how proud she was of me, etc. But I came home after a year had gone by and doing a lot of Tonight Shows and things like that. I came back to Chicago to perform and went to visit her and her husband said she was in the house watching TV and when I went into the house she was slumped over in her wheelchair and she couldn’t right herself, get herself right, and she was having a particularly bad day and so I got her straightened up, sat her up, and she went off on me. I had never heard her do this. She said to me something about "Don’t come in here talking to me about positive mental attitude". I am a motivational speaker as well as a comedian and I used to talk to her a lot about those things, but she was angry and I had never seen her like this. She said, "Don’t come in here talking to me about positive mental attitude ever again. I don’t want to hear that anymore and don’t talk to me about God because there is no God. There is no God, Tommy, and you know it." I was stunned because this was a girl, like I said, who would go to church six days out of seven. She said, "You’ve known me all my life. You’ve known me all my life. What have I ever done to God that God would punish me so severely? You come on, tell me. You always seem to have the answers. What have I done? What did I do to God that he would punish me like this?" And I was dumbfounded and I just said, "I don’t know. I really don’t know, Sis. I don’t know what you could have ever done. Certainly you don’t deserve this at all." And it was like moments later she started to cry and moments later she got herself together and she apologized. She said, "I’m sorry. Forgive me, Tommy. I’m sorry I lost my faith for a moment. Forgive me." And I said, "If anybody deserves to be angry you do and certainly your life doesn’t deserve this kind of treatment and I don’t have those answers." She was okay after that. I went to do my show in Chicago and I went back to California a week later and I was jogging one morning and I was thinking that I want to do something to show her not only I care but that a lot of other people care about these people, men and women, who have multiple sclerosis and seem to think that maybe not only have their friends abandoned them but maybe God has abandoned them too. I thought well, maybe I can draw attention and awareness to the situation and I started training for a marathon and I set a goal that I would run 26 miles and call it "26 Miles For Darlene" and people would pledge money for every mile I run. I got the Jaycees back in Illinois to help me with it and we decided what we would do is run two miles in thirteen communities, that we would run two miles and then get on a little shuttle bus, go to the next community, and people would meet us there. We would run two miles with each village on the south side and I got Jaycees from each of those villages to rally up their people and their support and to get a lot of publicity they contacted the local newspapers so that there would be an awareness of multiple sclerosis if you hadn’t been aware of it before. I then recruited all of my celebrity friends that I could. Frankie Avalon, Frankie Valli, Tony Danza, James Darren (I don’t want to leave anybody out), Eddie Marinaro, and I’m probably forgetting. I just got every celebrity that I ever met to help me and then I got the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago Bears, stars from both of those teams, to come out. You know, Jim McMahan with the Bears who has helped me ever since and continues to help me even today when I do golf tournaments for multiple sclerosis, but we raised a lot of awareness. We raised a lot of money and not only that Darlene was able to witness this and she had her picture taken with all of these celebrities and these stars and it was her day. I remember one time we culminated our run in Park Forest, Illinois where they had about 30,000 people out for a big fair as well as our run and Frankie Avalon and Smokey Robinson or Smokey helped me with the runs. By the way, Smokey is the only entertainer to run all 26 miles with me. In one year, he ran 20 and collapsed in 95 degree heat and then that day at the press conference I said, "I’m not going to do this anymore, we’ll do a little 10K run" and Smokey came into the press conference with a big towel around his head and begged me, would we do more one year, to promise me to do one year, and so I agreed to it and he came back the next year and ran all 26 miles. Then he wrote a song with Frankie Avalon called "Don’t Give Up" and they sang it and so what happened was at this big festival this year we culminated our run in Park Forest, Illinois at our last run and all of these folks were there at a big festival and we combined the two of them and they had the Illinois Symphony orchestra and stars like Connie Stevens, Tony Danza, and Smokey, everybody got on stage, Frankie Avalon, and we were singing to all the MS patients out there. Darlene came in a special van and they opened up the door for her so that she could see and all of these people. We had taught the people the chorus of it, the chorus of Don’t Give Up, and so we rehearsed it with them so that when Darlene came up the stars were on the stage with the Illinois Symphony singing the song to her and to all other MS patients, "Don’t give up. The road is lonely and…" I forgot the lyrics of it now, but the chorus was "Don’t give up, don’t give up; we’re with you and we’re going to fight" and so we had the people sing this to her. I said to her, "Darlene, you remember years ago when you said to me why me, why did this happen to me, why did God do this me, and I still don’t have this answer, but I do know that because of you there are 30,000 people out here and they are all singing today and they are singing to you and all of the other MS patients." And she said, "No, Tommy, not because of me, because of you." And I said, "No, not because of me, because of all the kindness and all the love that you showed me as a child, all those things we learned in church as a kid that whatever you put out comes back to you is true" and I said that part is true because all the love you put out is coming back to you today. 30,000 people are giving you back the love that you gave out and that’s the truth. You know, it’s because of you, Darlene, people are aware of this and maybe there might be some young student out there, some young kid that ran with us today who is 10 years old or 11 years old, that ran with us today that later on will become a brilliant scientist and when he gets a grant from some foundation maybe that will say what do you want to research he might say, "You know, I would like to research multiple sclerosis because I remember when I was a kid there was a girl named Darlene who had it" and I said maybe he will be the one that will find the cure to multiple sclerosis because of all the love you gave. I hope she absorbed that. She passed away not too much longer after that, but she still lives because, you know, I started doing 10K runs and stuff like that and then I ended up doing golf tournaments because I could raise just as much money and even more and I didn’t have to run 26 miles everywhere which was wearing me out totally, you know, but people still stop me to this day and ask me about Darlene.

RGP: When did she die?

TD: She died about fourteen years ago.

RGP: What are the golf tournaments like now? What do you do? Do you have a yearly golf tournament?

TD: I have a golf tournament in Chicago. I had two of them in three years, one on the south side and one on the north side, and the proceeds all go to multiple sclerosis. We have raised millions of dollars over the years. I am not sure of the exact figure, but aside from that the MS Society, you know, I think there are like 74 or 75 chapters in the United States and I have gotten so much publicity throughout the years of being sympathetic to that cause that they contact me all the time, would I come and be the master of ceremony at the Dinner of Champions, would I perform at this function or that function, and so because of my sister I continue to do so in her name.

RGP: That’s a wonderful story, Tom, and obviously you have found a way to teach and engage people with your entertainment. Do you do a lot of teaching now while you’re entertaining? I mean, is that the way you look at it? How do you approach what you do now when you’re doing a performance or doing a motivational? You sort of mix the comedy with the motivation, is that correct or are the two separate?

TD: They’re separate. My nightclub act is separate and what I do for corporate dates that’s pure comedy and then when I give motivation speeches that’s a lot of what I talk about perception, that all of life is about perception. It’s not what it is, it’s what you perceive it to be and that’s simply what it is. You know, staying in the moment, staying in the presence of now, and perceiving. I give an analogy. I start out by saying a little boy goes in the backyard with a bat and a ball. He says, "I’m the greatest hitter in the world" and he throws the ball up in the air and he swings and he misses. He says, "I’m the greatest hitter in the world" and he throws the ball up in the air and he swings and he misses. He says, "I am the greatest hitter in the world" and he throws the ball up for the third time and he swings and he misses. Then he says, "I’m the greatest pitcher in the world" and the point of that is to say that nothing changed except for his perception of what just happened and that all of life is about perception. I feel that. I mean, I don’t feel that, I know that. Humor is healing. Norman Cousins wrote a book many years ago called "The Anatomy of an Illness" and he wrote another book called "Laughtermath". He was a man who had a terminal illness and was to die and the doctors told him that because of years of negative input and stress that had made him ill, that it manifested itself in a terminal illness. Norman Cousins, the editor of the Saturday Review, decided that if negative input (he was in the hospital) made him ill then positive input should make him well. So he checked out of the hospital and he only watched television funny things, I Love Lucy, Candid Camera, Three Stooges, Marx Brothers. He would only watch funny shows and funny things and he would listen to comedy albums and he lived twenty-six years after the doctors told him he was going to die and because of him they have done a lot of research, the UCLA research center, on what laughter does to the human body. When people laugh certain endorphins are released into the blood stream that are actual chemicals so that’s why after a hearty laugh where you have laughed so hard and tears are running down your eyes and you "Ahhh", this sense of well-being comes over you and an actual chemical change has come over you. You know, your body has gone through an actual chemical change. So not only is laughter healing psychologically because the brain cannot think of two things at the same time (and I’m telling you). If you’re watching a comedian or listening to a comedy album and you’re laughing, you’re certainly not thinking of the problems that you may feel are in your life psychologically. We found out now that it’s physiologically therapeutic because of the brain releasing these endorphins into your body so your body goes through a mental and a physical change when you’re laughing and so if I can deliver laughter to people, if I can go around the country and making people laugh, then in a sense I feel that I am somewhat helping healing them as well. I tell young comedians this all the time when I give motivation speeches to them – "Don’t take your profession lightly. You’re very, very important if you can write funny things or say funny things because how much healing are you bringing to the country?" How much healing did Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Milton Berle, how much healing have they brought around the world where people just for a moment stopped to laugh at them. I have many pictures on my office wall in my house, but the one I treasure the most is there is a picture of MS patients all sitting in wheelchairs. I was doing a show for them and they were laughing so heartily and one lady actually had a napkin in her hand and she is wiping the tears out of her eyes from laughing. I treasure that picture more than anything that I’ve ever done in my career. It means more to me than any award you could possibly give me because it’s my sister laughing. When I look at that picture, I think of Darlene and I think of how much good she did for me and for everybody she met and if I could make those people laugh and forget their problems for a moment that means more to me than certainly any award. Again, I treasure that picture more than anything. That’s what comedians are supposed to do. That’s why we were given the gift of being able to make people laugh and so laughter should go where laughter is needed and certainly laughter is needed for folks who have multiple sclerosis.

RGP: To change the subject a little, just out of curiosity, I know you toured with Frank Sinatra for thirteen years and that must have been something. I would just like for you to tell us a little bit about what that was like.

TD: Well, for a kid from the south side of Chicago who used to shine shoes in taverns and Frank’s songs were on every jukebox in every tavern and to hear Frank singing "Come Fly With Me", you know, let’s fly away and then one day I was flying with him in a private jet all over the world. It was 45 to 50 cities a year and it was experience I’ll never forget. Just to digress a moment, he also helped me with MS. Frank did two public service announcements in Chicago for my charity, one where he said, "Hi, this is Frank Sinatra and my good friend, Tom Dreesen, is going to be here" and he gave the date and would you come out and support him and all of his celebrity friends when they run the 26 miles, etc. And then the following year he had an idea. He said how about we do a funny spot. He said he rides a stationary bike and so he would be on the stationary bike and I would be running alongside of him and I would be reading copy and then he’d read the copy about the run and at the end I’m all out of breath and I’m saying, "Frank". You know, he’s riding the stationary bike. I say, "Frank, are you going to come out and run with us" and he said, "Are you kidding me? I can’t even ride this thing" and we all laugh. But he was very supportive of the MS and he once was best man. A friend of his named Oscar Dystel had a son who had multiple sclerosis and Frank was best man at his son’s wedding. Frank stood up for a wedding of a guy with MS so he was sympathetic to that. But to go back to what it was like being with him, I mean I can’t describe to you what it was like on stage. I mean to be able, for me, I’ve always been the kind of entertainer that loved the nightclub performance. Frank, Sammy, and Dean. When I was working construction in Chicago when I came out of the service and I was tending bar at night, to me Frank, Sammy, and Dean exemplified show business. That was show business. Vegas and the Rat Pack and all that. And for me to have been able to tour with Sammy Davis, Jr. and I did the Dean Martin shows and then later to be Frank’s opening act, it was to me the stamp of approval that I had arrived in show business. I didn’t care what NBC, ABC, or CBS ever thought of me. I didn’t care about anything but that those guys liked what I did and me as a person meant more to me. If I could grace the stage with Frank Sinatra, then I didn’t care anymore. You could close the lid on me and life was good, you know?

RGP: Well, I can understand that.

TD: He taught me a lot of things. He taught me a lot of things about life and show business as well as Sammy did too, but Frank was…first of all, going back to his charitable side no one, no one has ever done more for their fellow man in my business, in show business, than Frank Sinatra. I at one time had to give an award to him for the AFI, the American Film Institute, and one of the things I said was that my mother had an old beat-up plaque that said the talent you have is God’s gift to you. What you do with that talent is your gift to God. Frank Sinatra sang his songs and raised millions of dollars for Protestant orphanages and he’s not Protestant. He’d sing his songs and raise millions of dollars for Jewish temples and he’s not Jewish and they built temples. He’d sing his songs and raise millions of dollars and they sent thousands of African-American children to college and Frank’s not African-American. If it’s true that the talent you have is God’s gift to you and what you do with that talent is your gift to God, then no one in my business has ever done for their fellow man than Frank Sinatra and that’s again what he taught me, that you can’t keep taking from the stream. We’re blessed people if we make a living at what we love to do and so you can’t keep taking from the stream. You have to give something back and if I said to Frank Sinatra, "Gee, that’s a nice watch" he’d take it off and give it to you. If you said, "Gee, that’s a great painting" he’d take it off his wall and give it to you. You couldn’t say, "That’s a nice jacket." It was yours. His friends knew not to do that to him and one day when we were getting into a limousine I saw him give away something and I said, "Why did you do that." He said, "Tommy, if you possess something that you can’t give away then you don’t possess it, it possesses you" and I never forgot that he said it’s okay if somebody said, "Gee, I love your car" and you don’t give them your car. He said but that day when you’re shaving and you’re looking in the mirror you have to admit to that guy in the mirror that that car owns you. It possesses you because you can’t give it away and if you can’t give it away it owns you and that profoundly changed my life.

RGP: That’s terrific. That’s very interesting. Well, just to finish up, what would you say as a message to MS patients who are reading this or listening to this, probably reading it, as to what they can do to improve their life?

TD: You know, I know that they have heard this eighteen million times about attitude. Doctors have told me for years and you know yourself, Rich, that patients that should have died didn’t. Patients that should have gotten severely ill didn’t because they just simply wouldn’t give up and the only thing that I can say to them is I have never ever met in my years in the service or in my years on this planet I have never met so much courage as I have met with MS patients. I have seen women who have three children that would get up and take care of those kids and they were severely stricken with MS and I have seen men go to work and continue to go to work. Some of my dearest friends who have multiple sclerosis continue to go to work and put all that aside. I’ve never seen such courage as I have with MS patients.

RGP: I agree with that.

TD: My statement is we build hall of fames for men who hit baseballs far, score a lot of touchdowns, can run fast and we can call them champions and we build hall of fames for them, but to me a champion is someone who does their best when things are at their worst. That’s my definition of a champion. It’s someone who does their best when things are at their worst and I know of no greater champion than people that have multiple sclerosis. And my advice to you, and it humbles me to try to give advice to such great champions, but continue to be that champion. Continue to let the community see your courage with this illness that you have so that it brings more awareness to it. Don’t give up. I really believe the cure is right around the corner. I just really believe that they’re coming up with new…I mean, we’ve talked about Rebif and something new called Antegren. I believe it’s right around the corner and the more courage you show the more awareness you bring to your community and your family, the more we can get. I believe sometimes that cures are political. I really believe that if you just bring awareness that multiple sclerosis is out there, there’s something political about it that sooner or later though we’re going to make greater strides. You know, the more people we make aware of multiple sclerosis and the way we make that aware is by MS patients showing their courage and coming out. I say this because many years ago when I had a run there was a woman that came out. We were in a shopping center signing autographs just before the run.

RGP: I agree with you though. Awareness is extremely important. How did I get interested in it and the answer is I got interested in it because I met patients. The same thing. You meet people that make an impact on you and you can choose. For scientists and physicians maybe you have a choice early in life what you want to concentrate on and there’s nothing more powerful than meeting people. You know, people who are exhibiting courage in the face of disease and it’s extremely powerful and you’re right. The more people who are made aware the more they will choose to devote their resources and their time towards MS so I think you’re absolutely correct.

TD: I just want to finish this one story about this woman that I think will exemplify what I’m trying to say. At one of our functions years ago, before the run we were signing autographs, all of the celebrities, at a shopping center and the whole thing was for MS. It was called "26 Miles for Darlene" and there were crowds and a big table and they were pushing and shoving. I backed up a little bit and I backed right into a woman with a wheelchair and she was a very, very, very interesting woman sitting in a wheelchair in her thirties. I said, "Oh, I’m sorry" and she said, "Can I talk to you for a moment" and I said, "Yes." She said to me, "I haven’t been out of the house in two years. I won’t bring myself to except just to go to a doctor’s appointment and come back since I was stricken with multiple sclerosis." She said, "I just am devastated by this, mentally devastated." But she said, "I read in the paper that you were coming to town with all these celebrities about an illness that I had and I just couldn’t believe it and I had to come out and see for myself that you folks from Hollywood actually cared about something that I had." And she began to cry. I didn’t know what to say. I just put my arm around her and I brought all the celebrities over to talk to her and say hello to her and everything. But the courage she displayed by coming out like that and showing the community that yes, I have multiple sclerosis but I’m going to try every day, you know, to live as normal as possible. I’m going to try every day to function. It shows the community her courage and causes the community rally to around that courage and as I said earlier, who knows there may be some 8 or 9-year-old boy or 10-year-old boy or 16-year-old boy who is this brilliant young student that is going to end up one day being a scientist and might dedicate his life to multiple sclerosis and find a cure because of that courage. That is all I can take to them. And my last thing is don’t give up. Don’t give up because there are people who care about you and will continue to care about you until the cure is found.

RGP: Was that song ever recorded?

TD: Yeah. Frankie and Smokey. I got the tape of it. It was never made famous, but we have the tape of it and I can get that, you know.

RGP: That might be interesting, I think. So it did not come out on an album or anything like that?

TD: No, nothing like that. There was also another guy named Rick Anthony, a country western guy, who wrote a song for Darlene. The song was called "A Day for Darlene" and I have both of those that I could probably get to you.

RGP: Well, if it’s not too much trouble that would be good. I think that’s something that I think people would like to hear.

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