Jack Paar

He first worked near home as a radio announcer at WIBM in Jackson, Michigan, and later as a humorous disc jockey at Midwest stations, including WJR in Detroit, WIRE in Indianapolis, WGAR in Cleveland, and WBEN in Buffalo. In his book P.S. Jack Paar, he recalled doing utility duty at WGAR in 1938 when Orson Welles broadcast his famous simulated alien invasion, The War of the Worlds, over the CBS network (and its WGAR affiliate). Attempting to calm possibly panicked listeners, Paar announced, "The world is not coming to an end. Trust me. When have I ever lied to you?"

Paar was drafted into the military in 1943 during World War II, interrupting his tenure as host of WBEN's morning show The Sun Greeter's Club. He was assigned to the U.S.O. in the South Pacific to entertain the troops.[5] Paar was a clever, wisecracking master of ceremonies whose impersonations of officers[5] nearly got him into trouble. He opted not to return to the WBEN at war's end, instead seeking opportunities in network radio and film.

After World War II, Paar worked in radio as a fill-in on The Breakfast Club show and appeared as a host of Take It or Leave It, a show with a top prize of $64. He got his big break when Jack Benny, who had been impressed by Paar's U.S.O. performances, suggested that Paar serve as his 1947 summer replacement.[4] Paar was enough of a hit on Benny's show that Benny's sponsor, the American Tobacco Company, decided to keep him on the air, moving him to ABC for the fall season. Paar later refused American Tobacco's suggestion that he come up with a weekly running gag or gimmick, saying he "wanted to get away from that kind of old-hat comedy, the kind being practiced by Jack Benny and Fred Allen."[6] The show was then terminated, earning Paar the enduring image of "a spoiled kid".[6] A profile of Paar by the Museum of Broadcast Communications suggests that Paar later emulated Benny's mannerisms.[4]

Paar signed as a contract player for Howard Hughes' RKO Pictures studio in the immediate postwar period,[4] appearing as the emcee in the movie Variety Time (1948), a compilation of vaudeville sketches.[7] He later recalled that RKO producers had trouble figuring out what kind of screen characters he could play until one of the executives dubbed him, "Kay Kyser [a popular bandleader of the time], with warmth." Another compared his leading man appearance with Alan Ladd. Paar projected a pleasant personality on film, and RKO called him back to emcee another filmed vaudeville show, Footlight Varieties (1951). He also appeared in the 1950 film Walk Softly, Stranger, starring Joseph Cotten.[4] In 1951, he played Marilyn Monroe's boyfriend in the 20th Century Fox film Love Nest.[4]

Paar returned to radio in 1950, hosting The $64 Question for one season, then quitting in a wage dispute after the show's sponsor pulled out and NBC insisted everyone involved take a pay cut. In 1956, he gave radio one more try, hosting a disc jockey effort on ABC called The Jack Paar Show. Paar once described that show as "so modest we did it from the basement rumpus room of our house in Bronxville."

Paar got his first taste of television in the early 1950s, appearing as a comic on The Ed Sullivan Show and hosting two game shows, Up To Paar (1952)[5] and Bank on the Stars (1953), before hosting The Morning Show (1954) on CBS. He guest-starred twice in 1958 on Polly Bergen's short-lived NBC comedy/variety show, The Polly Bergen Show.

With the success of Steve Allen as the first host of The Tonight Show, NBC gave him his own primetime variety hour in June 1956. Over the next seven months, Allen's Tonight duties were limited to three nights a week, with Ernie Kovacs filling in on Mondays and Tuesdays. With this heavy work load and his new show a success, Allen departed Tonight in January 1957. For the next six months, NBC renamed and replaced its late-night programing with a multihosted, multicity-based talk show which became a huge, embarrassing failure. In need of a hit, the network soon returned to a proven formula by reviving Tonight and hiring Jack Paar. With Paar as host, the show became a rating success and would generate annual advertising sales of $10-$15 million.[8] The show was initially entitled Tonight Starring Jack Paar; after 1959, it was officially known as The Jack Paar Show.

Paar often was unpredictable, emotional, and principled. When network censors cut a joke about a "water closet" (a term used for a toilet) from the show's February 10, 1960, broadcast tape before airtime without warning, Paar received national attention by walking off the program the following evening in protest. He did not return until three weeks later, after the network apologized and he was allowed to tell the joke.[1] Paar's emotional nature made the everyday routine of putting together a 105-minute program difficult to continue for more than five years. As a TV Guide item put it, he was "bone tired" of the grind, although he later confided to interviewer Dick Cavett that leaving the program was the greatest mistake of his life.[9] He signed off the show for the last time on March 29, 1962, spending much of that final program ripping his enemies in the press, notably gossip columnists Walter Winchell and Dorothy Kilgallen.[10]

Near the end of the run of the show, Abel Green of Variety called him "the most vivid personality in tv since Milton Berle became Mister Television" and said that he was the first popular entertainer since Amos 'n' Andy to change the habits of a nation, influencing TV set sales in the bedroom. He also claimed that Paar had created more stars than Major Bowes.[8]

Because NBC did not want to lose Paar to another network, it offered him a Friday primetime hour, giving him carte blanche on content and format. He agreed, deciding on a variation of his late-night format and titling the show The Jack Paar Program. The show, which debuted in the fall of 1962, had a global perspective, debuting acts from around the world and showing films from exotic locations. Most of the films were of travels by guests such as Arthur Godfrey or Paar himself, including visits with Albert Schweitzer at his compound in Gabon in Central Africa, and Mary Martin at her home in the jungles of Brazil.

Paar showed film clips of The Beatles performing, one month before their famous live appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.[1][5][11][12]

During the first half of 1964, a mock feud pitted Paar against his lead-in program, Englishman David Frost's news-satire series That Was The Week That Was ("TW3"). A typical exchange would have TW3 "signing off" the NBC Television Network just before the Paar program, with Paar responding that the show immediately preceding his was "Henry Morgan's Amateur Hour" (Morgan was a frequent guest on "TW3"). The feud suddenly evaporated when NBC moved "TW3" to a different time slot.

Paar's primetime show aired for three years, including a wide variety of guests such as comedian Brother Dave Gardner, actor-director Peter Ustinov, Lawrence of Arabia's brother, actor Richard Burton, pianist-actor Oscar Levant, news icon Lowell Thomas, boxing champion Muhammad Ali reciting his poetry to piano accompaniment by Liberace, Judy Garland, Jonathan Winters, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby (whose nickname for Paar was "The Boss"), Bette Davis, Robert Morley, Cliff Arquette (as his Charley Weaver character), Dick Gregory, and many others. The final segment of the series, broadcast on June 25, 1965, featured Paar sitting alone on a stool, sharing a discussion that he had with his daughter Randy, who called Paar's departure a sabbatical. He said that his own field was, though not completely used up, "a little dry recently." Then he called to his German Shepherd, which came to him from the seats of what was, for once, an empty studio, and walked out. (Johnny Carson used the same format, sans dog, for his own farewell episode of The Tonight Show in 1992.)

Paar continued to appear in occasional specials for the network until 1970.

In his 1962 book, My Saber is Bent, Paar wrote in chapter fourteen "Fairies and Communists," "There used to be a time when it looked like the Communists were taking over show business. Now it's fairies. They operate a lot alike, actually; both have a tendency to colonize. Just as there used to be no such thing as one Communist in a play or movie, now there is no such thing as one fairy. Where you find one, you usually find a baker's dozen swishing around.... When I hear that some fairy is producing or directing or acting in a play, I can often name some of the rest of the cast, even if I've never heard it.... The poor darlings, as they sometimes call themselves, are everywhere in show business. The theater is infested with them and it's beginning to show the effects. 'The New York theater is dying,' the late Ernie Kovacs complained recently, 'Killed by limp wrists.'" In addition to attacking gay men in theater and film, Paar also attacked gay men in the fashion industry: "I hope that all red-blooded men will rally to my crusade to have girls look like girls again. If we show our determination I'm sure that women will throw off the tyranny of fairy designers." [13]

In March 1973, during the run of Jack Paar Tonite, following protests from members of Gay Activists Alliance, Paar invited representatives of the organization on the show to explain why he "and other entertainers should not call homosexuals 'fairies,' 'dykes' and 'fags.'"[14]

Reflecting on the controversy, Jonathan Winters, who had been a frequest guest of Paar's, asked Dick Cavett, "Dick, did you ever think that Jack was maybe deep in the closet?”[14]

Paar (left) with Senator John F. Kennedy on The Tonight Show in 1959

In 1984, Paar came out of retirement once again for the Museum of Broadcasting's "Tribute to Jack Paar", produced by Kevin Doherty, making two live appearances in New York. This led to his 1986 NBC special Jack Paar Comes Home. The following year, a second special, Jack Paar Is Alive and Well, was broadcast by the network. Both were largely made up of black-and-white kinescoped clips used at the tribute from Tonight and from Paar's primetime program, to which he maintained the copyright. Although most of Paar's Tonight Shows were taped (in color from 1960), only a few moments are known to exist in this format.

In 1997, PBS television devoted an edition of the American Masters series to Paar's career, and in 2003 revisited the topic with another hour-long examination of his work, entitled Smart Television.

In the spring of 2004, a memorial for Paar was held at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City. Ron Simon, one of the museum's television and radio curators, was host and moderator, with appearances and speeches by television talk show host Dick Cavett, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) television host Robert Osborne, and Paar's daughter, Randy.