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   "Tonight" Legend Jack Paar Passes

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Topic: "Tonight" Legend Jack Paar Passes (Read 181 times)

MzWings
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"Tonight" Legend Jack Paar Passes
« on: Jan 27^th, 2004, 5:30pm »

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http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,13363,00.html?tnews

by Marcus Errico
Jan 27, 2004, 12:00 PM PT

:cry2:

R.I.P. Jack :cry2:

Late-night icon Jack Paar, the onetime Tonight Show host who blazed the way for Carson, Letterman and Leno before quitting at the top of his game, died Tuesday at age 85.

His family confirmed the death, saying Paar succumbed to a "long illness" and passed away at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut, surrounded by his daughter and wife.

Paar's health had been declining in recent years. He spent six days in a Greenwich hospital last year after suffering a stroke. In 1997, Paar was hospitalized after undergoing triple heart bypass surgery, complicated by an embolism discovered during the operation.

The legendary entertainer, who introduced the sofa-and-desk format to late-night television, hosted NBC's Tonight Show from 1957 to 1962, serving as the bridge between original host Steve Allen and Johnny Carson.

Outwardly humble, Paar once told listeners, "It's almost impossible to dislike me because I do nothing." But a quick look at his résumé proves him wrong.

Born in 1918 in Canton, Ohio, Paar got his start in local radio. After a stint in the army entertaining troops with his parodies of WWII brass, Paar scored a summer-replacement gig in 1947 on the Jack Benny radio show.

For the next 10 years, he bounced between hosting duties on quiz and variety shows like Up to Paar and The Morning Show and the occasional stint as an actor. In 1951, Paar had a bit part as the boyfriend of young ingénue Marilyn Monroe in Love Nest.

Paar was brought in to rescue the ailing Tonight Show in 1957, six months after the departure of original host Steve Allen. He wasted no time bringing the show up to, well, par, changing the format from variety to talk and bringing a who's-who guest list to his sofa, including Richard Nixon and Judy Garland and newcomers like Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, Bob Newhart and the Smothers Brothers..

Paar helped pioneer the current format of late-night shows, inspiring the likes of Johnny Carson, David Letterman and Jay Leno and spawning countless imitators. The Paar-fronted show soon became so wildly popular that its name was changed to The Jack Paar Tonight Show, but success was not without its hitches.

A straight shooter (and edgy for his era) whose trademark phrase was "I kid you not," Paar was a controversy magnet, drawing ire for taking the show on the road and broadcasting from Cuba and the Great Wall in China. Famous for his long-running feuds with newspaper columnists and rivals like Ed Sullivan, Paar once stormed off mid-show after the network censored a joke using the term "water closet." Paar returned after a four-week absence, opening with, "As I was saying before being interrupted..."

He walked away from Tonight in 1962, leaving at the height of popularity and ceding the show to youngster Carson. Paar produced a Friday-night variety show the following season before leaving network TV in 1965 to run a Maine TV station.

He briefly returned to the airwaves in early 1975 as host of the monthly ABC Wide World of Entertainment, which ran against Carson. The experiment lasted just a few months before Paar quit showbiz for good and virtually disappeared, suffering no comebacks and rarely making public appearances. His last came as the guest of honor at a Museum of Radio and Television gala in 1997.

He is survived by his wife of six decades, Miriam, and daughter Randy.

News: Jack Paar recovering from stroke:
http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,11400,00.html

News: Jack Paar's ailing:
http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,4094,00.html

E! Online's Jack Paar fact sheet:
http://www.eonline.com/Facts/People/Bio/0,128,12136,00.html

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Re: "Tonight" Legend Jack Paar Passes
« Reply #1 on: Jan 27^th, 2004, 8:16pm »

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Re: "Tonight" Legend Jack Paar Passes
« Reply #2 on: Jan 29^th, 2004, 4:50am »

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www.nytimes.com/2004/01/29/arts/television/29PAAR.html?th
AN APPRECIATION
Anyone That Funny Is Entitled to Cry
By DICK CAVETT

Published: January 29, 2004

"What is Jack Paar really like?" The question was so persistently asked that for a time it became a sort of national catchphrase, and it dogged Jack for years. No one has ever answered it to anyone's satisfaction and I will not (sorry) be the exception.

Jack Paar, who died on Tuesday at 85, was an immense talent. He appeared to be uninfluenced. His delivery of material was like that of no one who came before. He was a genius as a monologuist, and I'm not sure anyone has revealed that he did his monologue without cue cards or prompter. He selected the material he wanted and then wrote it out for himself with a fountain pen, and he had it. This is unheard of.

He had looks and brains and talent, but so do many people. But you never hear anyone say, "He's a Jack Paar type." Mercurial may come closest to describing that unique makeup that was Jack's personality. He was smart, sentimental, witty, irritable, loyal, insecure, infuriating, hilarious, neurotic and totally entertaining.

I once asked the British critic Kenneth Tynan why no matter who was on the screen with him, you watched Jack. He replied, "You can't look away for fear of missing a live nervous breakdown on your home screen."

Jack was repeatedly ridiculed for his crying. He did cry now and then. Although it was plain to me that it was genuine, not everyone enjoyed it. At a party just before Johnny took over the "Tonight" show, I heard someone say, "If Carson is on that show 10 years [!], he will never shed a single tear."

Someone else responded, "For which I will be profoundly grateful to him."

Could Jack ad-lib or was it all written? the unwashed would ask. One night Jack said backstage: "Watch this, kid. When fat Jack Leonard comes out, I'm just going to freeze him out with silence."

Jack did, and after Leonard had exhausted his one-liners to no reply, in panic he seized on a fact.

Leonard: "You know, my wife is an acrobat."

Paar: "She'd have to be."

(Pandemonium.)

There were moments with Jack that I have yet to puzzle out. When I was dropping off my material for the "Tonight" show on Jack's desk one day, he looked up and said, "Hey, kid, you haven't given me anything I could use in weeks."

Shattered, I pointed out some of my recent lines that he had used, to no avail.

"Oh, and go a little easy on the fag jokes, O.K.?" he asked.

"I didn't know I had written any fag jokes, Jack."

"Just go easy on 'em, O.K.?"

"Sure," I said, stupefied. I told one of the older writers, and he said: "That's just Jack. He's forgotten it already." That sort of thing took some getting used to. The rewards made it worth it.

He gave me the best advice I ever got. I asked him what the secret was in doing such a show.

"Don't make it an interview, kid," he said. "Make it a conversation. Interviews have clipboards."

Jack envied education. He once asked, "What's the magazine?" I had a copy of, of all things, The Partisan Review under my arm. "Have you finished it?"

"Yes," I said, lying.

"Leave it off."

The next day he told me what he thought of an article on Marilyn Monroe titled "Marilyn and the Law of Negative Compensation," or some such pretentious title. He then analyzed the article so impressively that I had to reread it.

"She was a nice girl" he said. I didn't know then that they were in a film together.

The next thing Jack relieved me of was my copy of The Observer of London. Hearing him say on the air, "I just read in The Observer . . ." made me proud of my, um, student.

The bad part of this schooling envy of Jack's was that he would sometimes abase himself before guests who hadn't a scintilla of his wit or native intelligence.

Every time I thought I now knew Jack, something would prove the contrary.

One memorable night I shared the hotel elevator with a Who's Who of Hollywood. Eager to score points with Jack, then my new boss, I rushed to his door and pounded. The room was dark, and he was half-dressed, had a bottle of wine and was watching the show. And his hairpiece was askew. Oblivious to the degree to which I was not welcome, I blurted: "Judy Garland, Cary Grant, Jack Benny . . . are at a party right upstairs. I knew you'd want to know."

The only part of the ensuing tirade that I recall included the repeated use of an expletive and "Don't tell 'em where I am! I'd rather die!" The door was closed energetically.

I survived.

What have we lost? A giant of the entertainment industry whose foibles and neuroses were probably far more fun for us than they were for him.

I asked Jack once, "What's the formula for how to handle things when you don't like a guest?"

He said: "You think of it as what you would do in real life. Smile, be nice and then suddenly kick 'em under the table."

Dick Cavett was a writer for Jack Paar and later helped to revolutionize the late-night talk show.

--------------------------------------------------
Eric.

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