(CNN) -- A comedy team starring a DuPont marketing manager and an insurance salesman? It will never work.
And it didn’t work -- not for long, anyway -- but not because of the jobs Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen held when they met at a Junior Chamber of Commerce gathering near Chicago. Reid, who eventually became famous as disc jockey Venus Flytrap in "WKRP in Cincinnati," was an African-American from Norfolk, Virginia; Dreesen, who would eventually become a noted standup comedian and Frank Sinatra’s opening act, was a working-class white kid from the south Chicago suburbs.
Together, they were Tim & Tom, the first interracial comedy team -- "and the last," Dreesen likes to joke.
The pair’s story is a tale of their times -- the late ’60s and early ’70s, when racial issues were at the forefront of the national dialogue -- and our times, when the country still struggles with many of the same questions. Their story is recalled in "Tim & Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White" (University of Chicago Press), which the pair wrote with Chicago sportswriter Ron Rapoport. Slideshow: Reid and Dreesen talk about their act »
"I resisted doing the book for many years," admits Reid in a joint phone interview with Dreesen. "I said, ‘Tom, nobody cared. They didn’t care then, and they don’t care now.’ And Tom said, ‘No, no, there’s something here.’ Read more...
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feeds. Thanks for visiting!
