name	Anne Rice
birth date	October 04, 1941
birth place	New Orleans, Louisiana, United States1
birth name	Howard Allen Frances O'Brien
occupation	Novelist, Author
genre	Gothic, Horror, Erotica, Christian fiction, Mystery, Romance, Fantasy
debut work	''Interview with the Vampire''
influences	Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, William Shakespeare, Bronte Sisters, Bram Stoker
website	http://www.annerice.com }}

Anne Rice (born Howard Allen Frances O'Brien; October 4, 1941) is a best-selling Southern American author of metaphysical gothic fiction, Christian literature and erotica from New Orleans, Louisiana. Her books have sold nearly 100 million copies, making her one of the most widely read authors in modern history. She was married to poet and painter Stan Rice for 41 years until his death from brain cancer in 2002.

Biography

Early life

Rice was born the second of four daughters of Irish Catholic parents, Howard O'Brien and Katherine "Kay" Allen O'Brien, in New Orleans. Rice's father worked for the U.S. Postal Service and authored the book, ''The Impulsive Imp'', which was published posthumously. Rice's older sister, the late Alice Borchardt, was a noted genre author. Her husband, Stan Rice was a highly regarded poet, and their son, Christopher Rice is a bestselling author.

Rice's early years were marked by coping with her mother's advancing alcoholism and poverty. She lived in the Irish Channel of New Orleans, which she describes as an Irish Catholic ghetto, in the rented home of her maternal grandmother, Alice Allen, known as "Mamma Allen," at 2301 St. Charles Avenue. Mamma Allen, a hard working Irish Catholic woman who worked as a domestic after she separated from her alcoholic husband, was an important early influence in Rice's life, keeping the family and household together while Rice's mother sank deeper into alcoholism. She died in 1949, but the O'Brien's remained in her home until 1956, when they moved to 2524 St. Charles Avenue, a former rectory, convent, and school owned by the parish, to be closer to the church and support for her mother's advanced alcoholism.

About her unusual given name, Rice said: "Well, my birth name is Howard Allen because apparently my mother thought it was a good idea to name me Howard. My father's name was Howard, she wanted to name me after Howard, and she thought it was a very interesting thing to do. She was a bit of a Bohemian, a bit of mad woman, a bit of a genius, and a great deal of a great teacher. And she had the idea that naming a woman Howard was going to give that woman an unusual advantage in the world." However, in Rice's official biography, ''Prism of the Night'', her father claimed to be the source of her birth name: "Thinking back to the days when his own name had been associated with girls, and perhaps in an effort to give it away, Howard named the little girl Howard Allen Frances O'Brien." Rice became "Anne" on her first day of school, when a nun asked her what her name was. She told the nun "Anne," which she considered a pretty name. Her mother, who was with her, let it go without correcting her, knowing how self-conscious her daughter was of her real name. From that day on, everyone she knew addressed her as "Anne." Rice was confirmed in the Catholic Church when she was twelve years old and became Howard Allen Frances Alphonsus Liguori O'Brien, adding the names of a saint and of an aunt, who was a nun. "I was honored to have my aunt's name, but it was my burden and joy as a child to have strange names."

Rice spent most of her childhood and teenage years in New Orleans, which forms the background against which most of her stories take place. Rice's mother died of alcoholism when she was fourteen years old. Soon after her mother's death, Rice's father placed her and two sisters in St. Joseph's Academy. Rice described St. Joseph's as "something out of Jane Eyre . . . a dilapidated, awful, medieval type of place. I really hated it and wanted to leave. I felt betrayed by my father."

In November, 1957, her father married Dorothy Van Bever, a divorced Baptist, and, in 1958, when Rice was 16, he moved the family to north Texas, purchasing their first home in Richardson. Rice met her future husband, Stan Rice, in a journalism class while they were both students at Richardson High School.

San Francisco and Berkeley

Rice graduated from Richardson High School in 1959, completed her freshman year at Texas Woman's University in Denton and transferred to North Texas State College for her sophomore year, but dropped out when she ran out of money and could not find a job. She decided to move to San Francisco, and got permission from her friend, Dennis Percy, to stay with his family until she found work as an insurance claims processor. She persuaded her college roommate from Texas Woman's University, Ginny Mathis, to join her, and they found an apartment in the Haight-Ashbury district. Mathis found a job at the same insurance company. Soon after, they began taking night courses at University of San Francisco, an all-male Jesuit school that allowed women to take night courses. Rice returned home for Easter vacation and rekindled her relationship with Stan Rice. After her return to San Francisco, Stan Rice came for a week-long visit when school was over in June. He returned to Texas, Rice moved back in with the Percys, and Mathis left San Francisco in August to enroll in a nursing program in Oklahoma. Rice continued living with the Percys and working at the insurance company. She received a special delivery letter from Stan Rice asking her to marry him. They married on October 14, 1961, in Denton, soon after she turned 20 years old, and he was just weeks from his nineteenth birthday.

The Rices moved back to San Francisco in 1962, experiencing the birth of the Hippie Revolution first hand as they lived in the soon to be fabled Haight-Ashbury district, Berkeley, and later the Castro District. "I'm a totally conservative person," she later told ''The New York Times'' (November 7, 1988). "In the middle of Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, I was typing away while everybody was dropping acid and smoking grass. I was known as my own square." Rice attended San Francisco State University and obtained a B.A. in Political Science in 1964 and an M.A. in Creative Writing in 1972. Rice interrupted her graduate studies at SFSU to become a Ph.D. candidate at Berkeley, but became disenchanted with the emphasis on literary criticism and the language requirements. She returned to San Francisco State in 1970 to finish her master's degree in Creative Writing. Stan Rice became an instructor at San Francisco State shortly after receiving his M.A. in Creative Writing from SFSU, and later chaired the Creative Writing department before retiring in 1988. Rice's daughter Michele, nicknamed "Mouse", was born on September 21, 1966. In 1970, while Rice was in the graduate program, her daughter was diagnosed with acute granulocytic leukemia. Rice had a prophetic dream, months before her daughter became ill, that her daughter was dying from "something wrong with her blood." On August 5, 1972, Rice's daughter died of leukemia at Stanford Children's Hospital in Palo Alto.

In 1973, while she was still grieving the loss of her daughter, Rice took a previously written short story and turned it into her first bestselling novel, ''Interview with the Vampire''. Many believe that Rice created the child vampire, Claudia, in the novel to help her overcome the loss of her daughter. After completing the novel and following many rejections of it, Rice developed Obsessive–compulsive personality disorder (OCPD). Rice was obsessed with germs, thinking that she contaminated everything she touched, engaged in frequent and obsessive hand washing and obsessively checked locks on windows and doors. Of this period, Rice says, "What you see when you're in this state is every single flaw in our hygiene and you can't control it and you go crazy."

In August, 1974, after a year of therapy for her OCPD, Rice attended a writer's conference at Squaw Valley, conducted by Ray Nelson, where she met her literary agent, Phyllis Seidel. In October 1974, Seidel sold ''Interview with the Vampire'' to Alfred A. Knopf for a $12,000 advance of the hardcover rights. Most new authors were receiving $2000 advances. ''Interview with the Vampire'' was published in May, 1976. In 1977, the Rices traveled in Europe and Egypt for the first time.

Rice's son Christopher was born in Berkeley, California in 1978 and is a best selling author. In mid-1979, Rice, an admitted alcoholic, and her husband, Stan Rice, quit drinking so their son would not have the life that she had as a child.

Following ''Interview with the Vampire'', while living in California, Rice wrote two historical novels, ''Feast of All Saints'' and ''Cry to Heaven'', along with three erotic novels under the pseudonym A.N. Roquelaure (''The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty'', ''Beauty's Punishment'', and ''Beauty's Release'') and two more under the pseudonym of Anne Rampling (''Exit to Eden'' and ''Belinda''). Rice then returned to the vampire metaphor with her best selling novels ''The Vampire Lestat'' and ''Queen of the Damned''.

New Orleans

In July, 1988, following the success of ''The Vampire Lestat'' and with ''Queen of the Damned'' about to be published, the Rices purchased a second home in New Orleans. Stan Rice took a leave of absence from his teaching, and the Rices moved to New Orleans. Within months, they decided to make it their permanent home. In New Orleans, Rice felt whole again and wrote ''The Witching Hour'' as an expression of her joy of coming home. In New Orleans, Rice continued her popular ''Vampire Chronicles'' series, which now includes over a dozen novels, three novels in the ''Lives of the Mayfair Witches'' series, and ''Violin'', a tale of a ghostly haunting.

Return to Roman Catholicism

Rice returned to the Catholic Church in 1998 after decades of describing herself as an "atheist." On December 14, 1998, Rice went into a coma, nearly dying, and was diagnosed with Diabetes mellitus type 1. Rice is a brittle diabetic and insulin-dependent. In 2003, following the recommendation of her husband and shortly after his death, Rice underwent gastric bypass surgery and shed 103 pounds.

In 2004, Rice nearly died again from an intestinal blockage or bowel obstruction, a common complication of gastric bypass surgery. In 2005, Newsweek reported, "[Rice] came close to death last year, when she had surgery for an intestinal blockage, and also back in 1998, when she went into a sudden diabetic coma; that same year she returned to the Roman Catholic Church, which she'd left at 18." Her return did not come with a full embrace of the Church's stances on social issues; Rice remains a vocal supporter of equality for gay men and lesbians (including marriage rights), as well as abortion rights and birth control. Rice has written extensively on these matters. In October, 2005, while promoting her book, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, she announced in ''Newsweek'' that she would now use her life and talent of writing to glorify her belief in God, but did not renounce her earlier works.

In the Author's Note from ''Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt'', Rice states:

I had experienced an old fashioned, strict Roman Catholic childhood in the 1940s and 1950s… we attended daily Mass and communion in an enormous and magnificently decorated church … Stained glass windows, the Latin Mass, the detailed answers to complex questions on good and evil—these things were imprinted on my soul forever…

I left this church at age 18... I wanted to know what was happening, why so many seemingly good people didn’t believe in any organized religion yet cared passionately about their behavior and value of their lives… I broke with the church violently and totally... I wrote many novels that without my being aware of it reflected my quest for meaning in a world without God."

In her memoir ''Called Out of Darkness'', Rice also states:

In the moment of surrender, I let go of all the theological or social questions which had kept me from [God] for countless years. I simply let them go. There was the sense, profound and wordless, that if He knew everything I did not have to know everything, and that, in seeking to know everything, I’d been, all of my life, missing the entire point. No social paradox, no historic disaster, no hideous record of injustice or misery should keep me from Him. No question of Scriptural integrity, no torment over the fate of this or that atheist or gay friend, no worry for those condemned and ostracized by my church or any other church should stand between me and Him. The reason? It was magnificently simple: He knew how or why everything happened; He knew the disposition of every single soul. He wasn’t going to let anything happen by accident! Nobody was going to go to Hell by mistake."

Rice calls ''Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt'', published in 2005, the beginning of a series chronicling the life of Jesus. The second volume, ''Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana'', was published in March 2008. The third book [christ the lord: kingdom of heaven] in the series has been postponed.

Leaving New Orleans

On January 18, 2004, Rice announced her plans to leave New Orleans to her fans on her website. She cited living alone since the death of her husband and her son moving to California as the reasons for her move. On January 30, 2004, Rice put the largest of her three homes up for sale and moved to a gated community in ''Kenner, Louisiana''. Rice lived in the Garden District of New Orleans, also the home of multi-millionaire Rosemary and Stephen Ellis, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and Delta Burke. "Simplifying my life, not owning so much, that's the chief goal", said Rice. "I'll no longer be a citizen of New Orleans in the true sense." She sold her New York City condominium on January 20, 2005. In 2005, after completing ''Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt'', Rice left New Orleans. She left prior to the events of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. None of her former New Orleans properties were flooded. However, she remains a vocal advocate for the city and related relief projects.

California Desert

After leaving New Orleans, Rice settled first in La Jolla, CA. Rice remained in La Jolla less than a year, stating in January 2006 that the weather was too cold. In November 2005, she described the weather in La Jolla as "like heaven." Rice purchased a six bedroom home in Rancho Mirage, California on 12/29/2005, allowing her to be closer to her son, who lives in Los Angeles. In Rancho Mirage, Rice wrote ''Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana'', ''Angel Time'' and ''Of Love and Evil'' (the first two books in her Songs of the Seraphim series), and her memoir ''Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession''.

On July 18, 2010, Rice auctioned her vast, museum-quality collection of antique dolls at Thierault's in Chicago. Beginning in the summer of 2010 and continuing through the spring of 2011, Rice began auctioning off her household possessions, collectibles featured in her many books, jewelry, and wardrobe on eBay. She sold a large portion of her library collection to Powell's Books.

Renunciation of organized religion

On July 29, 2010, Rice publicly renounced her dedication to her Roman Catholic faith, while remaining committed to Christ, on her Facebook page:

"For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else."

A few hours later she added the following:

“In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”

She reaffirmed her faith in Christ with a stance of non-adherence to organized Christianity an hour or so later:

"My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become."

Subsequently, in an interview, Rice further clarified her statements:

"My commitment to Christ remains at the heart and center of my life. Transformation in Him is radical and ongoing. That I feel now that I am called to be an outsider for Him, to step away from the words, "Christian" and "Christianity" is something that my conscience demands of me. I feel that my faith in Him demands this of me. I know of no other way to express how I must remove myself from those things which seek to separate me from Him."

A media frenzy ensued with newspaper reporters, Internet bloggers, radio and t.v. commentators and news reporters around the world commenting about and interviewing Rice. In an August 7, 2010 interview with the ''Los Angeles Times'', Rice elaborated on her view regarding being a member of a Christian church: "I feel much more morally comfortable walking away from organized religion. I respect that there are all kinds of denominations and all kinds of churches, but it's the entire controversy, the entire conversation that I need to walk away from right now." In response to the question, "[H]ow do you follow Christ without a church?" Rice replied: "I think the basic ritual is simply prayer. It's talking to God, putting things in the hands of God, trusting that you're living in God's world and praying for God's guidance. And being absolutely faithful to the core principles of Jesus' teachings. I loved it.

Adaptations

Film

In 1994, Neil Jordan directed a motion picture adaptation of ''Interview with the Vampire'', from Rice's own screenplay. The movie starred Tom Cruise as Lestat, Brad Pitt as the guilt-ridden Louis and was a breakout role for young Kirsten Dunst as the deceitful child vampire Claudia.

A second film adaptation, ''Queen of the Damned,'' was released in February 2002. Starring Stuart Townsend as the vampire Lestat and singer Aaliyah as Akasha, Queen of the Vampires, the movie combined incidents from the second and third books in the series: ''The Vampire Lestat'' and ''The Queen of the Damned.'' Produced on a budget of $35 million, the film only recouped $30 million at the domestic(US) box office.

A 1994 film titled ''Exit to Eden,'' based loosely on the book Rice published as Anne Rampling, starred Rosie O'Donnell and Dan Aykroyd. The work was transformed from a love story into a police comedy, possibly due to the explicit S&M; themes of the book. The film was a box-office failure, and Rice publicly dissociated herself from it.

A film version of ''Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt'' was planned but later cancelled.

Television

In 1997, Rice wrote a television pilot entitled ''Rag and Bone'' starring Dean Cain and Robert Patrick, which featured many of the common themes of her work.

''The Feast of All Saints'' was made into a miniseries in 2001 by director Peter Medak.

Plans to adapt Rice's ''Lives of the Mayfair Witches'' trilogy into a twelve-hour miniseries to be aired on NBC were dropped after a change of studio head and subsequent loss of interest in the project.

Theatre

In 1997, a ballet adaptation of ''Interview with the Vampire'', premiered in Prague.

On April 25, 2006, the musical ''Lestat'', based on Rice's Vampire Chronicles books, opened at the Palace Theatre on Broadway after having its world premiere in San Francisco, California in December 2005. With music by Elton John and lyrics by Bernie Taupin, it was the inaugural production of the newly established Warner Brothers Theatre Ventures. Despite Rice's own overwhelming approval and praise, the show received mostly poor reviews by critics and disappointing attendance. ''Lestat'' closed a month later on May 28, 2006, after just 33 previews and 39 regular performances.

Comics

Anne Rice's books have been adapted over the years into comics. Below is a list of known adaptations and issue runs; along with publisher and year.

Anne Rice's ''The Mummy or Ramses the Damned'' #1-12 by Millennium Comics (1990)

Anne Rice's ''Interview with the vampire'' #1-12 by Innovation Comics (1992)

Anne Rice's ''Queen of the Damned'' #1-11 (#12 was never published) by Innovation Comics (1991)

Anne Rice's ''The Tale of the Body Thief'' #1-4 (#'s 5-12 were never published) by Sicilian Dragon (1999)

Anne Rice's ''The Vampire Companion'' #1-3 by Innovation Comics (1991)

Anne Rice's ''The Master of Rampling Gate'' (one shot) by Innovation Comics (1991)

Anne Rice's ''Vampire Lestat'' #1-14 by Innovation Comics (1990)

Anne Rice's ''The Witching Hour'' #1-5 by Millennium Publishing (1992)

Fan fiction

Rice has expressed an adamant stance against fan fiction based on her work (mostly those from ''Interview with the Vampire'' and its sequels in ''The Vampire Chronicles'' or other elements in her books), releasing a statement on April 7, 2000 that prohibited all such efforts and cited copyright issues. She subsequently requested that FanFiction.Net remove stories featuring her characters.

Bibliography

The Vampire Chronicles

''Interview with the Vampire'' (1976)

''The Vampire Lestat'' (1985)

''The Queen of the Damned'' (1988)

''The Tale of the Body Thief'' (1992)

''Memnoch the Devil'' (1995)

''The Vampire Armand'' (1998)

''Merrick'' (2000)

''Blood and Gold'' (2001)

''Blackwood Farm'' (2002)

''Blood Canticle'' (2003)

New Tales of the Vampires

''Pandora'' (1998)

''Vittorio the Vampire'' (1999)

The Lives of the Mayfair Witches

''The Witching Hour'' (1990)

''Lasher'' (1993)

''Taltos'' (1994)

Vampire/Mayfair crossover

In these novels the Mayfair Witches become part of the Vampire Chronicles world.

''Merrick'' (2000)

''Blackwood Farm'' (2002)

''Blood Canticle'' (2003)

The Life of Christ

''Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt'' (2005)

''Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana'' (2008)

''Christ the Lord: The Kingdom of Heaven'' (date not announced)

Songs of the Seraphim

''Angel Time'' (October 2009)

''Of Love and Evil'' (November 30, 2010)

Miscellaneous novels

''The Feast of All Saints'' (1979)

''Cry to Heaven'' (1982)

''The Mummy'' (1989)

''Servant of the Bones'' (1996)

''Violin'' (1997)

''Born for Atlantis'' (2012)

''The Wolf Gift'' (forthcoming, date TBA)

Short fiction

''October 4, 1948'' (1965)

''Nicholas and Jean'' (first ch. 1966)

''The Master of Rampling Gate'' (Vampire Short Story) (1982)

Non-fiction

''Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession'' (2008) (autobiographical)

Under the pseudonym Anne Rampling

''Exit to Eden'' (1985)

''Belinda'' (1986)

Under the pseudonym A.N. Roquelaure

''The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty'' (1983)

''Beauty's Punishment'' (1984)

''Beauty's Release'' (1985)

Biographies

''Prism of the Night'' by Katherine Ramsland. New York, Dutton, Penguin Group, 1991 ISBN 0-525-93370-0

See also

List of bestselling novels in the United States

List of best-selling fiction authors

Footnotes

External links

Anne Rice's official website

Anne Rice's spiritual journey site

Category:1941 births Category:Living people Category:American erotica writers Category:American fantasy writers Category:American horror writers Category:American novelists Category:BDSM writers Category:Former Roman Catholics Category:Erotic horror writers Category:Female authors who wrote under male or gender-neutral pseudonyms Category:American writers of Irish descent Category:LGBT rights activists from the United States Category:People from New Orleans, Louisiana Category:People from Rancho Mirage, California Category:University of North Texas alumni Category:San Francisco State University alumni Category:Writers from California Category:Writers from Louisiana Category:Dark fantasy writers

am:አኔ ራይስ ar:آن رايس bg:Ан Райс ca:Anne Rice cs:Anne Rice da:Anne Rice de:Anne Rice es:Anne Rice eo:Anne Rice ext:Anne Rice eu:Anne Rice fr:Anne Rice gl:Anne Rice hi:ऐन राइस hr:Anne Rice id:Anne Rice ia:Anne Rice ie:Anne Rice is:Anne Rice it:Anne Rice he:אן רייס sw:Anne Rice la:Anna Rice lt:Anne Rice hu:Anne Rice nl:Anne Rice ja:アン・ライス no:Anne Rice pl:Anne Rice pt:Anne Rice ro:Anne Rice ru:Энн Райс simple:Anne Rice sk:Anne Riceová sr:Ен Рајс sh:Anne Rice fi:Anne Rice sv:Anne Rice tr:Anne Rice vo:Anne Rice zh:安妮·莱斯

name	Christopher Rice
birth date	March 11, 1978
birth place	Berkeley, California, United States
occupation	author
nationality	American
genre	historical fiction, fantasy, and horror
relatives	Anne Rice (mother), Stan Rice (father)
website	http://christopherricebooks.com/ }}

Christopher Travis Rice (born March 11, 1978 in Berkeley, California) is an American author. Rice has written five best-selling novels: ''A Density of Souls'', ''The Snow Garden'', ''Light Before Day'', ''Blind Fall'', and his latest book, ''The Moonlit Earth'', which was published in April 2010 by Scribner.

Biography

Christopher Rice comes from a family of authors. His parents are Anne Rice and the late poet Stan Rice; his aunt, Alice Borchardt, is a noted writer. He is also friends with fellow author Clive Barker. Unlike his famous mother, he does not write horror novels, but considers his books to be thrillers.

Rice has lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and is a 1996 graduate of the prestigious Isidore Newman School. Rice went on to attend Brown University and the Tisch School of the Arts. He did not graduate from either school; instead, he moved to Los Angeles to explore writing screenplays.

Rice now lives in Los Angeles, California.

His sexuality and its role in his work

Rice is gay, and his works consist of descriptions of contemporary American life for the gay male. When asked in 2002 about "being pegged a 'gay writer,'" he replied:

That's not what I do. I might be more open to that label if I hadn't introduced ensemble casts of characters. Granted, ''A Density of Souls'' is as close to a gay book as you can get. It revolves around a character's homosexuality, and others are described in terms of their reaction to the one character's sexuality. In that sense it's at the core of the book. ''The Snow Garden'' is about identity. With this book, I'm trying to shrug off the term "gay" author.

Nonetheless, Rice is proud of his large following in the gay community, explaining "it was incredibly rewarding when I got a huge positive response from the character Stephen in ''The Density of Souls.'' More than a thousand young gay men contacted me and said that I captured what it was like for them going through those years. That means everything to me."

Rice also writes a regular feature for the LGBT-related biweekly news magazine ''The Advocate'' called "Coastal Disturbances," in which he discusses various topics.

Bibliography

Novels: (Chronological)

''A Density of Souls'' (2000)

''Snow Garden'' (2001)

''Light Before Day'' (2005)

''Blind Fall'' (2008)

''The Moonlit Earth'' (2010)

References

External links

Christopher Rice Books website

Interview with Christopher Rice

Category:1978 births Category:American novelists Category:Gay writers Category:Isidore Newman alumni Category:Lambda Literary Award winners Category:LGBT writers from the United States Category:Living people Category:People from New Orleans, Louisiana

de:Christopher Rice es:Christopher Rice fr:Christopher Rice ja:クリストファー・ライス pt:Christopher Rice sv:Christopher Rice

name	Tom Snyder
birth date	May 12, 1936
birth place	Milwaukee, Wisconsin
death date	July 29, 2007
death place	San Francisco, California
nationality	United States
years active	1959–1999
credits	''The Late Late Show'' ''Tomorrow with Tom Snyder'' ''NBC Nightly News'' }}

Thomas James "Tom" Snyder (May 12, 1936 – July 29, 2007) was an American television personality, news anchor and radio personality best known for his late night talk shows ''The Tomorrow Show'', on the NBC television network in the 1970s and 1980s, and ''The Late Late Show'', on the CBS Television Network in the 1990s.

Snyder was also the pioneer anchor of the primetime ''NBC News Update'', in the 1970s and early 1980s, which was a one-minute capsule of news updates in primetime.

Early life

Snyder was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His parents, Frank and Marie, gave him a Catholic upbringing; he attended St. Agnes Elementary School and then graduated from Jesuit-run Marquette University High School. He also attended Marquette University, after which he had originally planned to study medicine and become a doctor.

Newscasting career

Snyder had loved radio since he was a child and at some point changed his field of study from pre-med to journalism. He once told ''Milwaukee Journal Sentinel'' reporter Tim Cuprisin that broadcasting became more important to him than attending classes, and he skipped a lot of them. Snyder began his career as a radio reporter at WRIT-AM (unrelated to the present-day FM station) in Milwaukee and at WKZO in Kalamazoo (where he was fired by John Fetzer) in the 1950s. For a time he worked at Savannah, Georgia AM station WSAV (now WBMQ). After moving to television in the 1960s, he was a news anchor for KYW-TV in Cleveland and Philadelphia, and WNBC-TV and WABC-TV in New York City. He talked about driving cross country in an early Corvair from Atlanta to Los Angeles around 1963, where he landed a news job at KTLA-TV "Live On 5" then on to KNBC-TV also in Los Angeles, where from 1970 to 1974 he was an anchor for the 6 p.m. newscast working with KNBC broadcaster Kelly Lange, who was then a weather reporter before serving as a long-time KNBC news anchor. Lange later became Snyder's regular substitute guest host on the ''Tomorrow'' program, prior to the hiring of co-host Rona Barrett in the program's last year. Even after attaining fame as host of ''Tomorrow'', Snyder kept his hand in news anchoring with the Sunday broadcasts of ''NBC Nightly News'' during 1975 and 1976.

''Tomorrow with Tom Snyder''

Snyder gained national fame as the host of ''Tomorrow with Tom Snyder'' (more commonly known as ''The Tomorrow Show)'', which aired late nights after ''The Tonight Show'' on NBC from 1973 to 1982. It was a talk show unlike the usual late-night fare, with Snyder, cigarette in hand, alternating between asking hard-hitting questions and offering personal observations that made the interview closer to a conversation.

Unique one-on-one exchanges were common to the program, notably with author Harlan Ellison, John Lydon of PiL and The Sex Pistols in 1980, John Lennon in 1975, actor and writer Sterling Hayden, and author and philosopher Ayn Rand. A one-on-one program with David Brenner as the sole guest revealed that Snyder and Brenner worked together on several documentaries.

An infamous edition of The Tomorrow Show broadcast on October 31, 1979, saw Snyder interview the rock group KISS. During the episode, a visibly irritated Gene Simmons (bass) and Paul Stanley (guitar) tried to contain the bombastic (and drunk) Ace Frehley (lead guitar), whose nonstop laughter and joking overshadowed the content and conversation taking place between Snyder and the rest of the band. Drummer Peter Criss made repeated references to his large gun collection, to the chagrin of Simmons. Some of the footage from this show was later included on the Kissology - The Ultimate KISS Collection Vol. 2: 1978-1991 (2007) DVD.

When not grilling guests, Snyder would often joke around with offstage crewmen, often breaking out in the distinctively hearty laugh that was the basis of Dan Aykroyd's impersonation of Snyder on ''Saturday Night Live'' (12 occasions, 1976–1979 and 1995).

Following a disastrous experiment with turning ''Tomorrow'' into a more typical talk show—renaming it ''Tomorrow Coast to Coast'' and adding a live audience and co-host, Rona Barrett (all of which Snyder resented)—the show was canceled in 1982 to make way for the up-and-coming young comedian David Letterman.

After ''Tomorrow''

After ''Tomorrow'' was cancelled Snyder returned to news reporting, joining WABC in New York. In September 1982, Snyder and Kaity Tong began anchoring the 5PM ''Eyewitness News'' programs for the station. Snyder stayed at WABC for two years, leaving the station in 1984. In 1985, he returned to the talk format at KABC-TV in Los Angeles with a local afternoon show he had planned to gear up for national syndication the following year; those plans were scratched after Oprah Winfrey's Chicago-based syndicated show entered the market first and took over Snyder's time slot on KABC-TV.

An older, slightly more mellow Snyder returned to virtually the same format on ABC Radio. The show's three-hour format was a natural for Snyder. The first hour was spent chatting with a celebrity guest, during the second hour Snyder engaged someone in the news, and the final hour was consumed chatting with his legion of fans. Occasionally the caller would be a well-known fan like David Letterman or Ted Koppel. One of Snyder's's favorite callers was Sherman Hemsley, the actor who played George Jefferson on the hit television sitcom ''The Jeffersons''. The ''Tom Snyder Show'' for ABC Radio Networks went off the air in late 1992, in part due to the rapid rise in popularity of ''The Rush Limbaugh Show'', which aired in the same time slot and which ABC had already been airing on many of its own stations. Snyder returned to television on CNBC in the early 1990s, adding the opportunity for viewers to call in with their own questions for his guests. Snyder nicknamed his show "the Colorcast", reviving an old promotional term NBC-TV used in the early 1960s to hype its color broadcasts. He also continued his trademark of talking to offscreen crew and made frequent reference to the studio, reminding viewers of its location in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

''The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder''

Meanwhile, Letterman had moved on to CBS and was given control of creating a new program to follow his at 12:35 am. Letterman, who had idolized Snyder for years, hired Snyder in 1995 as host of ''The Late Late Show''. The idea had actually begun as a running joke on Letterman's show, that Snyder would soon follow him on the air as he had once followed Johnny Carson on ''The Tonight Show''; the unlikely suggestion caught on. As part of the joke, Snyder appeared as himself in 1993 in ''The Larry Sanders Show'' episode ''Life Behind Larry'', in which talk-show host Sanders (Gary Shandling) steals Snyder from Letterman to host a talk-show in the slot immediately after his.

''The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder'' aired live in the Eastern and Central Time Zones, and was simulcast to other time zones on radio to allow everyone a chance to call in. Snyder's CNBC show was taken over, largely unchanged in format, by Charles Grodin. One of the many memorable ''Late Late Show'' interviews was with Gloria Vanderbilt about her son's suicide, told dramatically over an entire hour. Another was a lengthy interview with Robert Blake very soon before Blake was charged with murder. In 1999 Snyder left ''The Late Late Show,'' which was then reformatted for Craig Kilborn. It has since been turned over to Scottish comedian Craig Ferguson.

In February 2000, Snyder hosted two shows of The Late Show Backstage done during the time Letterman was recovering from heart surgery.

Snyder also hosted a video production called ''A Century of Legendary Lionel Trains'', commemorating 100 years of Lionel Trains. Additionally, he hosted another program from the same production company called ''Celebrity Train Layouts 2: Tom Snyder'', featuring his own collection of trains.

Colortini.com

Snyder posted regular messages on his own now-defunct website colortini.com during the early 2000s. A "colortini", according to Snyder in the CNBC era, was the drink you should enjoy while watching the show ("Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air."). For the CBS show, he redubbed the mythical drink a "simultini" as his show was also heard on selected radio stations.

On July 28, 2005, Snyder announced he was deleting his website after six years, stating: "The novelty of communicating this way has worn off." On August 1, 2005, his page was abruptly taken offline. The front page was replaced with a white screen with the simple phrase: "Colortini is gone. Thanks for the Memories". However, some 140 pages have been preserved at web.archive.org. The domain name has since been reused for other purposes.

Final years and death

In April 2005, Snyder revealed that he was battling chronic lymphocytic leukemia, but that his doctors had told him it was "treatable". A year later, in June 2006, Snyder sold his home in the Benedict Canyon area of Los Angeles, California, where he had lived for almost 30 years, and headed to Belvedere, in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he owned a second home.

Snyder died on July 29, 2007, in San Francisco at the age of 71 from complications of leukemia. He had one child, Anne Mari Snyder, who lives in Maui, Hawaii, and two grandchildren.

References

;Notes

External links

Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia: Tom Snyder

Tom Snyder Radio Show Episodes

Tom Snyder's trains

David Hinckley's tribute to Tom Snyder in the New York Daily News

Category:American talk radio hosts Category:American television talk show hosts Category:American Roman Catholics Category:Television news anchors in Los Angeles, California Category:New York City television anchors Category:Philadelphia, Pennsylvania television anchors Category:People from Milwaukee, Wisconsin Category:People from the San Francisco Bay Area Category:Marquette University alumni Category:Deaths from leukemia Category:KYW-TV Category:Cancer deaths in California Category:1936 births Category:2007 deaths

no:Tom Snyder