Jack Paar

Jacques Harold Paar (May 1, 1918 – January 27, 2004) was an American radio and television talk show host.

Birth and early career

Born in Canton, Ohio, Paar began his broadcasting career in radio, working first in Cleveland, Ohio and later, throughout the Midwest. During World War II, he was part of a special services company that entertained troops in the South Pacific. After the war, Paar tried his hand at movie acting and comedy, playing opposite Marilyn Monroe in Love Nest (1951) and frequently appearing as a standup comedian on The Ed Sullivan Show. He also hosted the game shows Up To Paar in 1952, and Bank On The Stars in 1953. In addition, he hosted The Morning Show on CBS in 1954. It was during an impressive stint as a guest host on Jack Benny's radio show that he caught the attention of NBC officials who eventually offered him his best known role as host of The Tonight Show. Paar was the program's host from 1957 to 1962; after 1959 it was known as The Jack Paar Show.

Controversy

In 1959, he was criticized for his interview with Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Two years later, he broadcast his show from Berlin just as the Berlin Wall was going up. He also sustained numerous cancellations from sponsors of the show, when he would make ad-libs during live commercials for that sponsor's product, such as once describing a brand of men's underwear that sponsored his show as "fitting so tight, it's like being hugged by a midget."

Highly emotional

Paar was often emotional and unpredictable. The most salient example of this kind of on-screen behavior was demonstrated in 1960. One of his jokes was cut from a broadcast by studio censors. The joke in question involved a woman writing to a vacation resort and inquiring about the availability of a "W.C." The woman used that term to mean "water closet" (i.e., bathroom), but the gentleman who received the letter misunderstood "W.C." to mean "wayside chapel" (i.e., church). The full text of the joke reveals multiple double entendres that are tame by today's standards, but too much for the network to bear in 1960. NBC replaced that section of the show with news coverage.

The decision to censor the joke so angered Paar that the next night, February 11, he announced on the air that he was leaving the show, saying "I've made a decision about what I'm going to do. I'm leaving The Tonight Show. There must be a better way to make a living than this, a way of entertaining people without being constantly involved in some form of controversy. I love NBC ^* But they let me down." After finishing this monologue, Paar abruptly walked offstage, leaving his flustered announcer Hugh Downs to finish the show for him.

Less than a month later, Paar was convinced to return; on March 7 he opened his monologue with the now-famous line, "As I was saying before I was interrupted...I believe the last thing I said was 'There must be a better way to make a living than this.' Well, I've looked...and there isn't." He then went on to explain his departure with typical frankness: "Leaving the show was a childish and perhaps emotional thing. I have been guilty of such action in the past and will perhaps be again. I'm totally unable to hide what I feel. It is not an asset in show business, but I shall do the best I can to amuse and entertain you and let other people speak freely, as I have in the past."

The move to prime time

Paar's emotionality made the everyday routine of putting together a ninety-minute program difficult to continue for long. Paar made it clear that he was not planning to continue with the Tonight Show, and he signed off for the last time on March 29, 1962.

Paar then began hosting a prime-time Friday night show on NBC, entitled The Jack Paar Program. Popular belief holds that The Ed Sullivan Show introduced the Beatles. In fact, they debuted on Paar's prime time hour. Paar's show had a world view, debuting acts from around the globe and showing films from exotic locations. During the first half of 1964, a running feud existed between Paar and the show immediately preceding his program David Frost's satire series That Was the Week That Was. A typical exchange would have That Was the Week That Was "signing off" the NBC Television Network just before the Paar program. Paar frequently responded that the show immediately preceding his was Henry Morgan's Amateur Hour (Morgan was a frequent guest on the show.). The mock feud suddenly evaporated when NBC moved That Was the Week That Was to a Tuesday night time slot for the 1964-65 season.

Paar's prime time show aired for three years, including guests such as Peter Ustinov, Lawrence of Arabia's brother, Richard Burton, Oscar Levant, Lowell Thomas, Muhammad Ali singing to piano accompaniment by Liberace, an inebriated Judy Garland, Jonathan Winters, Woody Allen, and many others. The final closing segment of the program featured him sitting alone on a stool, sharing a discussion that he had had with his daughter, who called Paar's departure a sabbatical. Noting the origins of the term, he said that his own field was, though not completely used up, "a little dry recently." Then he called to his German shepherd, who came to him from the seats of what was, for once, an empty studio, and walked out.

Later career

Paar came back for another late-night show in January 1973 on ABC—this time, as one of a group of rotating hosts on ABC Wide World of Entertainment, one week out of each month. The show, which was in direct competition with Tonight, only lasted for half a year. In 1986, NBC aired a special featuring Paar, titled Jack Paar Comes Home; the following year, a second special Jack Paar Is Alive and Well was broadcast by the network. Both of these specials were largely made up of kinescoped clips from Paar's prime time program, to which he maintained the copyright.

Death

Paar died at his Greenwich, Connecticut home in January 2004 at age 85, with his wife and daughter by his side. He had long been ill, having undergone triple-bypass heart surgery in 1998 and a stroke one year before he died.

As Richard Corliss noted in Time Magazine's obituary, Jack Paar had divided television talk show history into two eras: Before Paar and Below Paar.

References

"Jack Paar Timeline" Twoop.com 07 Feb. 2006

External links

Jack Paar Official Website
Jack Paar from the Museum of Broadcast Communications website
Time magazine obituary by Richard Corliss
Jack Paar - A timeline of his life
Record for Jack Paar at Findagrave.com
CNN obituary

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