[charlene]

part 2
Thanks to Silverman’s flair for promotion, Thicke will certainly become a TV celebrity, if only during the brief period of the show’s opening weeks. In addition to inciting excitement about the challenge to Carson, Silverman also has fanned speculation about his personal motives in the affair. While president of NBC, he was forced to capitulate in a much-publicized battle with Carson over salary demands, settling on a package reputedly amounting to more than $5 million annually. After bumping into Carson at a Los Angeles restaurant recently, Silverman gleefully reported that the entertainer tauntingly asked: “You still in business?” Thicke himself was initially reluctant to play up the Carson angle with the press. “I’m not really competition for him,” he said in June. However, as the pressure mounted in the weeks before the premiere and spokesmen for The Tonight Show continued to react to queries about the show with indifference, Thicke changed his tune. “I hear rumours that The Tonight Show would like to kill us, just squash us,” he said. Just before taping the first show, he told the studio audience another “rumour”— that pressure from network executives could prevent his wife, Gloria Loring, who plays the troubled Liz Courtney on NBC’s afternoon soap opera Days of Our Lives, from appearing on his show. Later, he sniffed, “And they say they’re not worried.”

Carson may have some concern, but none as serious as the worries that emerged during the early sessions of Thicke of the Night. The task of assembling a polished and sparkling 90-minute variety program to run five nights a week is a producer’s nightmare. And during the taping of the first shows before a studio audience in August, the lack of preparation was glaringly evident. There was almost no time for rehearsals, scripts were altered minutes before taping and performers wound up ad-libbing many of their lines.

Bright-eyed and at ease before the camera, Thicke displayed an abundance of what one of the show’s three producers, Scott Sternberg, considers his key asset: “the likability factor.” But no amount of charm could compensate for the lack of organization. One day, Thicke had no time to edit the lines on his cue cards and stumbled so badly through his comic monologue that it had to be retaped. Although he did not panic, neither did he pluck triumph from disaster as Carson might have done. Silverman watched it all from the wings with a pained expression. In contrast to the good-humoured and unflappable Thicke, whose work uniform is a Nike tracksuit, Silverman stalked the studio in a seersucker suit, demanding to know why writers were not producing more and why the staff had not swept the floors. On the second day, Silverman erupted when a skit bombed as a result of disorganization and berated the staff at a five-hour production meeting that lasted until 4 a.m. On the third day, however, a beaming Silverman pronounced the show “terrific.” He said with conviction, “I don’t think anyone can say we’re not giving them what we promised.”

Since his early days as a youth in Kirkland Lake, Thicke himself has lived up to his promise. Outgoing but quiet, he was, in his mother’s words, “always an achiever.” He excelled at sports, at school where he was class valedictorian, and at public speaking, for which he won prizes throughout Northern Ontario. As a teenager, Thicke considered pursuing a career as a doctor, a United Church minister and a sportswriter. But at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont., where he studied English, he discovered show business. Off campus he worked as a disc jockey at radio station CFPL at night, organized regular talent shows and even sang in the cocktail lounge of the now defunct lroquois Hotel. A publicity photograph at the time depicted a dreamy-eyed 18-year-old dressed in a shiny brocade jacket with black satin lapels, trying to look like Bobby Darin.

After Thicke graduated from university, he moved to Toronto, where he worked for three years as a writer and performer on such CBC shows as Time for Livin' and Good Company. One day in 1970 he saw a poster advertising the U.S.-born singer Gloria Loring, who was appearing at the city’s Royal York Hotel. Thicke, who fancied himself a ladies’ man, pestered Loring with phone calls until she reluctantly agreed to a date. Within a few months they were married, and they still speak about each other in glowing superlatives. Says Thicke: “I knew I would never find anyone more beautiful, talented, honest or maternal. Gloria is as good as it gets.”

During that period, Thicke quit the CBC in frustration and moved with Loring to Los Angeles. CBC executives had rejected proposals Thicke made for a comedy series on the grounds that the network “was not in the business of developing ideas,” as he recalls. Ironically, he was able to use some of the same material on the Emmy award-winning Lokman and Barkley Comedy Hour, where he quickly found a job as a writer. In 1980, after Thicke had spent 10 busy years as a writer and producer, Arthur Weinthal, CTV’s entertainment programming chief, approached him and asked him to audition as a replacement for Alan Hamel as a daytime talk show host. Thicke won out over such high-profile contenders as Brian Linehan. After his first season on the show the audience size jumped 55 per cent, making it the biggest success in the history of Canadian daytime television.

CTV did its best to suppress the more outrageous side of Thicke’s personality, fearing that anything too sophisticated would alienate an audience composed largely of retired people and housewives. Occasionally, Thicke indulged in offbeat humour, but for the most part he conducted his interviews with TV stars, singers, comics and assorted experts in a relaxed, humourous manner that the show’s producer, Paul Block, approvingly describes as “nonthreatening.” While his perennial good nature made the show seem dull to some viewers, Block, who ranks Thicke in a league with talk show greats Steve Allen, Jack Paar and even Carson, bristles at such criticism. By way of rebuttal, he points to Thicke’s interview with actress Morgan Fairchild, during which she recounted how she had simulated making love for a part in a TV movie. Says Block: “The reenactment of her heavy breathing was so torrid that Alan picked up the water pitcher and poured it over his head. Now I hardly call that bland.”

For all Block’s support, Thicke and CTV have not parted on friendly terms this season. Thicke received 16 job offers, including a chance to host a primetime variety show on CBS. After he chose Thicke of the Night he offered to host a half-hour weekly variety show of his own design for CTV as well. The network turned him down, and Weinthal now refuses to comment on the matter. For his part, Thicke is bitter about the rejection. “Where else in the world would you spend three years building up a star and then let him slip through your fingers?” he asks. Thicke’s show on Global basically will be a shorter version of the U.S. program, with occasional different segments for the Canadian audience. With celebrity guests like Gretzky, Gordon Lightfoot, regulars including Montreal singer Cécile Frenette and a large contingent of Canadians on the production staff, the show will have little trouble meeting domestic content regulations established by the Canadian Radiotelevision and Telecommunications Commission.

South of the border, Thicke and his wife, who also earns a hefty six-figure salary as one of America’s most popular soap opera stars, enjoy the standard rewards of making it in Hollywood: a fulltime housekeeper, a Porsche, a Mercedes and a Lincoln in the driveway. Their large ranch-style house is perched high in the hills overlooking the San Fernando Valley. But busy careers and frequent appearances at charity benefits—particularly in support of research on juvenile diabetes, which their eight-year-old son, Brennan, contracted four years ago—leave them little time for staring at the view. Except for playing road hockey with Brennan and their other son, Robin, 6, or splashing in the Jacuzzi, Thicke’s notion of fun is working at home in his studio. Although he rarely loses his temper, Thicke is quietly demanding about everything in his life. He insists on seven-day work weeks for his staff and instructs his housekeeper in how to cook his bacon and eggs. Says Loring, unquestionably his match as a strong, vivacious personality: “Living with him is like a constant EST seminar.”

Although Thicke’s penchant for heavy gold jewellery and shirts unbuttoned to the navel creates a superficial impression of slickness, in fact he radiates a small-town friendliness which continues when the cameras stop rolling. The emotional support of his family is vital to Thicke. “I need to know that I always have that vine to grasp as I swing through the jungle,” he says.

Thicke of the Night may be an easy favourite with his family, but the first few weeks will put its popularity to the true test. The lavish promotion and dramatic buildup of the battle with Carson will ensure that millions tune in at the start—if only to see what all the fuss has been about. Thicke is fully aware that he faces enormous pressure to live up to his advance billing. “All the attention has been great, but it is a bit premature,” he says. “I’m not so stupid as to think I am the Messiah.” If Thicke is worried about the public verdict, he gives no sign of it. “The worst I can do is fail and go back to my Jacuzzi and lick my wounds,” he reflects lightly. Whether he succeeds or fails, there is no question that Alan Thicke will be entertaining for years to come.

Enjoy more great stories from The Maclean’s Archives.