Jack
Paar is one of television's most
intriguing and enigmatic talk show hosts. He served as the
host of the Tonight Show from
1957 through 1962 and headed his own
NBC variety series from 1962 to 1965. Both series were stamped
with Paar's volatile and
unpredictable personality and
often a haven for witty,
literate conversation.
Although Paar is considered one
of the key talents uniquely
suited to the cool medium of
television, he worked
extensively in other areas of show business. Leaving
school at sixteen, he first
worked as a radio announcer and later a
humorous disc jockey. During
World War II, Paar entertained
troops in the South Pacific with
his wry impersonations of
officers, sometimes in concert
with his Army colleague Jackie
Cooper. After the war, he
returned to radio, serving as a fill-in for Don
MacNeil on the Breakfast Club
and
panelist on The $64 Question. In
1947 he was the summer
replacement for Jack Benny, a
comedian whose mannerisms Paar
would later emulate. Paar was
signed to a contract at Howard
Hughes's RKO Pictures and
debuted in Walk Softly, Stranger
(1950) with Joseph Cotten. In
1951 he made Love Nest for 20th
Century-Fox, playing the sexy
boyfriend opposite an emerging
starlet, Marilyn Monroe.
Paar was first employed in
television as a host of game
shows, notably Up to Paar (1952) and
Bank of Stars (1953). In
November 1953 he hosted his own
daytime variety series for CBS
and assembled a cast of
regulars, including Edith Adams,
Richard Hayes, Jack Haskell, and
pianist Jose Melis. In August
1954 he took over the Morning
Show from Walter Cronkite and
became a competitor of Dave
Garroway and the Today show.
During this morning experience,
Paar developed his
conversational skills and an
appreciation for a relaxed
program with no rigid
guidelines. When CBS again
changed formats, Paar was given
another variety series, this
time in the afternoon.
Because of several well-received
guest appearances on NBC's
Tonight, Paar ascended to the
permanent host slot on 29 July
1957. For several months before,
the late-night series had
floundered when original host
Steve Allen moved permanently to
prime time. Paar was given free
rein to restore the show's
luster and assembled his ownfreewheeling staff, including
writers Jack Douglas and Paul
Keyes, to give the show an
extemporaneous quality. The new
creative team emphasized the
importance of the opening
monologue as a vehicle to
transmit Paar's singular, often
emotional view of the world.
Unlike any other host of The
Tonight Show, Paar had no talent
for sketches, so his writers
created a persona through his
words, always leaving space for
the host to verbally improvise. Called a "bull in his own
china shop," he gained
notoriety by creating feuds with the show
business community, including Ed Sullivan, Walter
Winchell,
William Paley, and most
television critics.
To salve his often
bruised ego, he surrounded
himself with
a salon of eccentrics whose
ranks included pianist and
professional hypochondriac Oscar
Levant, the outspoken Elsa
Maxwell, the irreverent
Alexander King, and British
raconteurs Robert Morley, Bea
Lillie, and Peter Ustinov. He
resurrected the careers of
performers on the entertainment
fringe, inviting back on a
regular basis the folksy Cliff
"Charley Weaver"
Arquette, music hall veteran
Hermione Gingold, French
chanteuse Genevieve, and acerbic
Hans Conreid. More in keeping
with the Tonight ethos, Paar
also nurtured young comic
talent, and among his
discoveries were Bob Newhart,
the Smothers Brothers, Dick
Gregory, Godfrey Cambridge, and
Bill Cosby.
Paar also removed the talk show
out of the controlled studio and begin to intermingle politics
and entertainment. He and author
Jim Bishop Journeyed to Cuba and
prepared a special report,
"The Background of the
Revolution." Paar's
unexplained embrace of Castro
was vehemently questioned by
Batista supporters and even the
United States House of
Representatives. Paar also
became friendly with the
Kennedys and invited Robert
Kennedy as chief counsel of the
Senate Labor-Management
Relations Committee to discuss
his investigation of organized
crime in the unions. The head of
the Teamsters, Jimmy Hoffa,
responded with a million dollar
lawsuit against Kennedy and Paar,
which was eventually thrown out
of court. Paar was also the
first entertainer to originate a
program from the Berlin Wall,
which he did less than a month
after its construction at the
height of Cold War tension.
Paar became the most successful
presence in late night,
expanding his affiliate base
from the 46 stations with which
he started out to 170. In 1957,
the title was changed to The
Jack Paar Tonight Show and the
next season the show was taped
early in the evening instead of
broadcast live. Beginning July
1959 Paar broadcast only four
nights a week; Friday night
became "The Best of Paar,"
inaugurating a tradition of
Tonight reruns. At the height of
his fame, he battled NBC censors
over a joke about a water
closet, a British euphemism for
a bathroom. Incensed, he walked
out at the beginning of a show,
leaving announcer Hugh Downs to
finish the program. His walk-off
and subsequent disappearance
dominated news for five weeks
until he returned after an
extended stay in Hong Kong.
Paar's rollercoaster ride on
Tonight continued until 30 March
1962. He retired from late night,
having hosted more than 2,000
hours. In September 1962, Paar returned to
the variety format and produced
a weekly Friday night series,
borrowing the most successful
elements of his talk show. Each
telecast was ignited by a
monologue and the core of each
program was an in-depth
conversation with some of
Hollywood's most voluble
personalities, including Judy
Garland, Tallulah Bankhead,
Richard Burton, and Jonathan
Winters. Paar also spiced the
series with home movies of his
family trips, with wife Miriam
and daughter Randy also becoming
celebrities. Paar continued to
make headlines with newsworthy
segments. He ventured into
Gabon, Africa to interview Nobel
Prize recipient Dr. Albert
Schweitzer. Richard Nixon made
his first public appearance
after his defeat in the
gubernatorial race in California
and entertained Paar's audience
with a piano solo. He also
presented the first footage of
the Beatles in prime time, a performance he openly derided as
the downfall of British
civilization. He retired from
the network grind in 1965 to
manage a television station in
Maine. In March 1975, Paar was
persuaded to return to late
night to compete against the
inheritor of the Tonight mantle,
Johnny Carson. This time he was
reduced to one week every month,
part of the ABC Wide World of
Entertainment. The format that
he had fostered had changed
considerably and Paar retired
five months later, this time for
good.
Paar was an integral part of a
new generation of television personalities. Unlike an older
generation trained in vaudeville
and Broadway, Paar and such 1950s
contemporaries as Garry Moore,
Arthur Godfrey, and Dave
Garroway had no specific show
business talents.
They could neither act, sing,
nor dance. They were products of
a intimate electronic technology
that allowed for a personalized connection with the audience. As
a talk show and variety host,
Paar created a complex,
unpredictable character, whose
whims and tantrums created
national tremors.
-Ron Simon
