By court order, Tom Snyder was forced for awhile to work with professional gossip Rona Barrett, who, despite what Clement Freud thought of her, was a veritable beacon of decorum in that time between Hedda Hopper and Perez Hilton. In this gem of a Halloween-themed clip from a 1981 Tomorrow show, Barrett queries directors John Carpenter, George Romero and Jeannot Szwarc.
Rona Barrett interviewed a slew of major entertainers, before she could be apprehended. In 1973, she and Sir Clement Freud, the polymath grandson of Sigmund Freud, got into a dust-up on a program Jack Paar hosted years after he abandoned the Tonight Show.
From Freud’s 2009 obituary in the Telegraph: “In England the bearded Freud, who bore an uncanny resemblance to King Edward VII, became a household name appearing in dog food commercials alongside an equally mournful bloodhound named Henry.
His journalistic output was prodigious, running the gamut from the New Yorker to the pre-Murdoch Sun. He was at his best writing on food and drink (he had been an apprentice at the Dorchester and trained at the Martinez in Cannes). He wrote about recalcitrant head waiters, overrated chefs and curmudgeonly customs officers, waging a ceaseless battle against their arrogance, even though not always free of the trait himself.
Once, having waited 25 minutes for turtle soup, he told the waitress: ‘If you are making fresh turtle soup it is going to take two days, and we do not have the time. If it is canned turtle soup, I do not wish to eat here if it takes you 25 minutes to open a can.'”
Subscribe to my free Substack newsletter, "Books I Read This Month." It's published on the final day of each month. Some new titles, some older, some rare.
