Jack Paar

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Jack Harold Paar (May 1, 1918 – January 27, 2004) was an American writer, film actor, radio and television comedian, and talk show host.

He is best known for his work as the second host of The Tonight Show from 1957 to 1962.

"His followers will remember him as the one who broke talk show history into two epochs: before Paar and Below Paar."

Early life and education

Paar was born in 1918 in Canton, Ohio, the son of Lillian M. (Hein) and Howard Paar. As a child, he and his family travelled to Jackson, Michigan, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) south of Lansing. He had a stutter as an infant, which he learned to handle. He contracted tuberculosis when he was 14 and left school at 16.

Personal life and death

Irene Paar (née Gubbins) married twice to his first wife, Irene Paar (née Gubbins). The couple married in 1940 in Ohio, only to divorce later. Miriam Wagner, his second wife, married him in 1943, and the two stayed together until his death.

Paar's health began to decline gradually in the 1990s. He underwent triple-bypass heart surgery in 1998 and had a stroke in 2003. He died at his Greenwich, Connecticut, home with Miriam and their daughter Randy at his bedside each year. Paar's body was cremated, and his ashes were returned to his family.

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Career

He first worked at WIBM in Jackson, Michigan, as a radio announcer. As a radio announcer, he was known to stop by the newspaper stand in front of the Jackson Citizen Patriot to pick up a newly printed copy of the local newspaper before going to work where he would read from the newspaper. His verbatim reading of their work product had left them somewhat dissatisfied, and they'd only produced a special edition of the paper for him on April 1st of this year, noting it up before going to work. According to the story, an Arabian potentate named "Loof Lirpa" will be visiting the town later this day. When it was discovered that Loof Lirpa was in fact "April Fool" in reverse, the newspaper staff had a little revenge when he read that column on television and later had egg on his face. Paar went back to work as a comedic disc jockey at other Midwest radio stations, including WJR in Detroit, WIRE in Cleveland, WGAR in Cleveland, and WBEN in Buffalo. P.S.'s book P.S. argues that he is an American. Jack Paar, who worked at WGAR in 1938, remembers when Orson Welles broadcast his famous simulated alien invasion, The War of the Worlds, on the CBS network (and its WGAR affiliate). Paar said, "The world is not coming to an end" as attempting to calm possibly distraught listeners. Trust me.

When have I ever lied to you?"

Paar was recruited into the Army in 1943 during World War II, halting his service as the host of WBEN's morning show The Sun Greeter's Club. He had been assigned to the United StatesO. The troops were deployed in the South Pacific to entertain the troops. Paar was a shrewd, wisecracking master of ceremonies; he barely avoided being disciplined after he impersonated senior officers, especially Col. Ralph Parr.

Paar did not return to WBEN after World War II, instead searching for roles in network radio and film. He appeared on radio as a fill-in on The Breakfast Club show and as a host of Take It or Leave It, a show with a top prize of $64. Jack Benny, who had been captivated by Paar's U.S.O., got his big break when he was inspired. Paar was viewed as his 1947 summer replacement, according to his appearances. 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. Later, Paar said he had denied American Tobacco's suggestion that he come up with a weekly running gag or gimmick, adding that he "wanted to get away from that kind of old-hat comedy, like Jack Benny and Fred Allen." The performance was then ended, giving Paar the enduring image of "a spoilt kid." According to a Museum of Broadcast Communications report, Paar later imitated Benny's demeanor.

Paar signed as a resident of Howard Hughes' RKO studio in the immediate postwar period, making him the emcee in Variety Time (1948), a low-budget collection of vaudeville sketches. He later remembered that RKO producers had trouble figuring out what kind of screen characters he could play until one of the executives dubbed him "Kay Kyser [bandleader who had made films for RKO]. Alan Laddd's appearance as the leading man in his compared to his leading man. On film, Paar imagined a pleasant presence on film, and RKO called him back to emcee another filmed vaudeville display, Footlight Varieties (1951). Joseph Cotten appeared in Walk Softly, Stranger, a 1950 film. In the 1950s Fox film Love Nest, he played Marilyn Monroe's boyfriend.

Paar returned to radio in 1950, hosting The $64 Question for a season and then resigned in the case of a wage dispute after the show's sponsor pulled out and NBC demanded that everyone concerned be paid. In 1956, he gave radio another try, hosting The Jack Paar Show, a disc jockey tribute on ABC. "We did it from the basement rumpus room of our house in Bronxville," Paar said about the performance.

Paar had his first glimpse of television in the early 1950s, appearing as a comedian on The Ed Sullivan Show and hosting two game shows, Up to Paar (1952) and Bank on the Stars (1953), before hosting The Morning Show (1954) on CBS. In 1958, he appeared on Polly Bergen's short-lived NBC comedy/variety show The Polly Bergen Show twice.

In June 1956, NBC introduced Steve Allen as the first host of The Tonight Show, earning him his own primetime variety hour. Allen's Tonight hours were limited to three nights a week over the next seven months, with Ernie Kovacs filling in on Mondays and Tuesdays. Allen had to leave Tonight in January 1957 to concentrate on his primetime performance, due to Allen's heavy workload. NBC redesigned the show for the next six months, as Tonight! America After Dark, a network's Today, is inspired by the network's Today. The new late-night show was a magazine show hosted in various towns, and it was a humiliating failure. The network returned to its proven formula by reviving Tonight and recruiting Jack Paar. The show became a ratings hit as a host, and it would achieve annual television revenues of up to $60 million. The show was originally called Tonight Starring Jack Paar, but it was later known as The Jack Paar Exhibition in 1959.

Paar was often impulsive, emotional, and philosophical. Paar received national attention when 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, and announcer Hugh Downs was forced to finish the program. After the network apologised and the actor was allowed to tell the parody, Paar did not return until three weeks later. Paar's emotional stability made it impossible to continue for more than five years with a 105-minute program. He was "bone tired" of the grind, as a TV Guide story said, though interviewer Dick Cavett later admitted that leaving the program was the single single mistake of his life. On March 29, 1962, he stood down for the final program, including gossip columnists Walter Winchell and Dorothy Kilgallen.

Abel Green of Variety said he was "the most popular entertainer since Milton Berle became Mister Television" and that he was the first popular entertainer after Amos 'n' Andy to change the country's habits, influencers of bedroom TV sets. Green also stated that Paar had more actors than Major Bowes.

Since NBC did not want to lose Paar to another network, it gave him a Saturday primetime hour, giving him carte blanche on content and format. He agreed, deciding on a twist of his late-night appearance and titling the show The Jack Paar Program. The show, which premiered in the fall of 1962, had a global view, debuting artists from around the world and screening films from exotic locations. The majority of the films were of travels by tourists, such as Arthur Godfrey or Paar himself, as well as visits with Albert Schweitzer at his Gabon resort in Central Africa, and Mary Martin's home in Brazil's jungles.

Just one month before their famous live appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Beatles performed in film clips.

A mock feud pitted Paar against his lead-in service in the first half of 1964, according to Englishman David Frost's news-satire series That Was The Week That Was ("TW3"). A typical situation would see TW3 "signing off" the NBC Television Network right before the Paar show, with Paar referring that the show immediately preceding him was "Henry Morgan's Amateur Hour" (Morgan was a regular guest on "TW3). When NBC moved "TW3" to a new time slot, the feud abruptly ceased.

For three years, Paar's primetime television stars, including comedian Brother Dave Gardner, actor Richard Burton, pianist-actor Richard Burton, television actor Oscar Levant, tennis legend Emile Levant, Betty Davis, Robert Morley, Cliff Arquette (as his Charley Weaver character), and many others. Paar sat alone on a stool during a discussion that he had with his daughter Randy, who referred to Paar's departure as a sabbatical. "A little dry recently," he said that his own field was still not entirely used up, although not entirely used up. He called Leica, his German Shepherd, who came to him from what seemed to be an empty studio for the first time. (Johnny Carson used the same style, sans dog, for his own farewell episode of The Tonight Show in 1992.)

Garry Shandling used the clip of Paar's farewell in the series finale of The Larry Sanders Show in 1998, a sequence that shows Larry researching final episodes of late night shows to prepare for his own final episode.

Until 1970, Paar appeared in occasional specials for the network.

Later career

Paar lived in Maine, where he owned and operated television station WMTW, an ABC affiliate in Poland Spring, Maine, in the late 1960s.

Paar appeared on television in January 1973 on Jack Paar Tonite, which aired one week per month as one of many rotating shows on ABC's Wide World of Entertainment. Paar said it was the most he was able to attend and that he would not have appeared at all unless ABC had promised to keep Dick Cavett, one of his former writers, on the air. Peggy Cass, the comedian, was the programme's announcer. The national television debuts of comedians Freddie Prinze and Martin Mull were two of the evenings of perhaps the most memorable events. Before quitting, Paar stayed on the program, which was in direct competition with Tonight for one year. He was dissatisfied with the change scheme, and he complained that even his own mother didn't know when he was on vacation. Paar later expressed dissatisfaction with television broadcasting, and he had trouble interviewing people dressed in "overalls," a reference to young rock stars.

Paar made rare guest appearances on Donahue, The Tonight Show (hosted by Johnny Carson, then Jay Leno), Late Night with David Letterman, and Charles Grodin's CNBC talk show in the 1980s and 1990s. In his appearance on Letterman, which taped across the hall from Studio 6B, Jim Henson and his puppeteers had painted artwork on a set of pipes 20 years ago while waiting to appear on Paar's program. The work was preserved, and NBC has since saved the pipes for inclusion on the studio tour.

Betty White was honored on the television retrospective show "This Is Your Life" in 1987, and she expressed anecdote about her trying to fix her up with someone before she met Allen Ludden.

"There was a time when the Communists seemed to be taking over show business in my 1962 book, My Saber is Bent." Now it's fairies. They're actually similar; they both have a tendency to colonize. Now that there is no such thing as one Communist in a play or movie, there is no such thing as a fairy. If you find one, a baker's dozen is usually found around... Even if I've never heard of it, I can often recall at least some of the cast members of a play. Poor darlings, as they sometimes refer to themselves, are everywhere in show business. The theater is contaminated with them, and the effects are starting to show. "The New York theater is dying," Ernie Kovacs wrote recently, "Killed by limp wrists.' Paar also criticized gay men in theater and film: "I hope that all red-blooded men will rise to my cause to see girls again." If we show our resolve, I'm certain that women will banish fairy designers' tyranny."

Paar apologized for his anti-gay remarks in March 1973, after members of the Gay Activist Alliance's tonite's riots, and told the group's representatives that homosexuals should not call homosexuals "fairies," 'dykes' and "fags."

Jonathan Winters, a frequent visitor to Paar's, challenged Dick Cavett: "Dick, did you ever think Jack was possibly deep in the closet?" says the journalist.

Paar came out of retirement for the Museum of Broadcasting's "Tribute to Jack Paar," directed by Kevin Doherty, making two live appearances in New York in 1984. Jack Paar Comes Home, his 1986 NBC special, led to his 1986 NBC special. The network carried Jack Paar Is Alive and Well, a second special, the following year. Both were made up of black-and-white kinescope clips cut at the tribute to Tonight and from Paar's primetime to which he retained the copyright. Although the majority of Paar's Tonight Shows were taped (in colour from 1960), just a few times are known to exist in this style.

In 1997, PBS television dedicated an American Masters collection to Paar's career, and in 2003, PBS television revived the subject with a new hour-long investigation of his work, called Smart TV.

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

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