He was the opening act for Frank Sinatra. He appeared on the Tonight Show With Johnny Carson more than 60 times. More than a half century after he first stepped onto the stage, Tom Dressen is still serving up laughs.
Here's one of his jokes.
"If you haven't been to a school reunion, don't go," said Dreesen. "Don't go. There are old people there who claim they were your classmates! One of my teachers came up to me, and this is the truth. He said 'You don't remember me.' But I said 'Yes, I do. Your name is Richard Bruno, and you teach algebra.' He said 'That's amazing.' I said 'You think that's amazing, listen to this. X to the fifth power times X to the fifth power is X to the tenth power, because in algebra you don't multiple exponents, you add them.' He said 'That's incredible!' I said you know what else is incredible? That's the first time I've ever been able to use it since you taught it to me!"
But, Dreesen didn’t start out to be a comedian. He admits it happened by accident.
"When I came out of the Navy, I was wandering aimlessly. I had a wife and two kids, and I was 21 years old," said Dreesen. "I started working construction. Then I got a job loading trucks. I was a Teamster. I was a bartender part-time. I couldn't find what it was I liked. I ended up selling life insurance, and I was good at it."
He joined the Jaycees, where he connected with another member, Tim Reid, who was a marketing executive. "I wrote a drug education program, teaching eighth graders the ills of drug abuse with humor. I wanted it to be a Jaycees project. It was 1969. I proposed it to the Jaycees, and a young black man who had just graduated from college, a marketing executive from DuPont, came up to me and said he'd like to work with me on the project," said Dreesen.
"We went into classrooms, and the program became very successful. One day, an eighth grade girl came up to us and said we were funny, and that we ought to become a comedy team," said Dressen. They liked the idea, and did it.
But, a black and white comedy duo was revolutionary at the time. "In 1969, the civil rights law was just five years old. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior was assasinated. Bobby Kennedy was assasinated. Students were protesting the Vietnam War. America was in turmoil. And we were going around, trying to make people laugh," said Dressen.
They were performing in black-owned nightclubs around the country. He said Reid would get heckled by some black audience members, who wanted to know why he was performing with a white man. And, Dreesen said some white audience members would heckle him for performing with a black man. But, they felt the idea was that they could make a difference in race relations through their comedy.
The duo never hit it big, and the team eventually split up into solo careers. Dreesen’s career as a standup comic took off, making him a staple of talk shows from Mike Douglas to David Letterman. Tim Reid became an actor and director, and is perhaps best known for his role as DJ Venus Flytrap on the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati.
Still, Dreesen is proud of what they did together. "I'll take this to my grave, and so will Tim Reid," said Dreesen. "A young white kid would come up to us after a show, and say there's a black schooolmate they have, and they'd like to reach out to them, but the white guys would call them names. Then a black kid would come up and say he had a white friend at the grocery story he went to, but the brothers would call him out. They would tell us after watching us perform, they were going to reach out to that friend," said Dreesen. "That happened more times than you will ever know."
In 2008, they wrote a book together about their experiences as a team, called Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White.
He toured with Frank Sinatra for years. What was it like opening for the icon? He admits it was a challenge.
"There's 20,000 people out there in an arena. You have to hold their attention. You have to make them laugh for 40 minutes. You have to pull the strings on the emotions of 20,000 people. No props, no tricks, no special light, just you," said Dreesen. "And one more thing. Not one of them came to see you!"
When asked about working with Sinatra, he said he wasn’t the opening act for the legend. He jokes Sinatra was his closing act.
Dreesen’s comedy has spanned decades. The 85-year-old comic thinks he’s still working because he learned early on to write fresh jokes for younger generations.
"I don't go political, because half the country is one way, and the other half of the country is the other way. As a comedian, I want to bring people together. I don't want to divide them. The other thing is that when I come off the road, I go to the Laugh Factoy, the Comedy Store, Flappers in Burbank, where the young comedians are working, and the young audiences are appearing. That's how I stay relevant."
What does he hope people take away from one of his shows?
"UCLA did research on what happens to the human body when you laugh, when you laugh hard, with tears running down your eyes. A whole chemical change comes over your body. It's the endorphins released by the brain. So, laughter is not only psychologically therapeudic, it's physiologically therapeutic, so you can call me Dr. Dreesen if you want!"
Dreesen will perform at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza at 4:30 Sunday afternoon (7/13), as part of an event honoring the legacy of comedy writer Gene Perret.
