In July 1957, after the failure of
Tonight! America After Dark (a news-oriented program first hosted by
Jack Lescoulie and briefly by
Al Collins), NBC reverted its late-night show,
Tonight, to a talk/variety show format as it had been during
Steve Allen's tenure as host.
Jack Paar was brought in to host the reformatted
Tonight. He was, at the time, working for
CBS and hosting the network's
The Morning Show, a morning show similar to NBC's
The Today Show, before he agreed to jump networks and take over
Tonight. Under Paar, most of the NBC affiliates that had dropped the show during the ill-fated run of
America After Dark, or who had never picked it up, began airing the show once again. Paar's era began the practice of branding the series after the host, and as such the program, though officially still called
Tonight, was marketed as
The Jack Paar Show. A combo band conducted by Paar's Army buddy pianist
José Melis filled commercial breaks and backed musical entertainers. When Paar was on vacation, guest hosts presided over the show; one of these early hosts was
Johnny Carson. Other guest hosts included
Jonathan Winters,
Orson Bean,
Dick Van Dyke as well as the show's announcer,
Hugh Downs. Starting on September 19, 1960, it was one of the first regularly scheduled shows to be videotaped in color, with the show recorded very early in the evening and broadcast from 11:15 P.M. to 1 A.M. Eastern time that night. Only a handful of complete Jack Paar "Tonight Show" episodes exist. All of them are black-and-white kinescope recordings. No color videotapes of any complete Paar "Tonight" shows are known to exist. Paar hosted the program from 1957 to 1962. Paar's original announcer was actor
Franklin Pangborn, but he was fired after only a few nights. His replacement was
Hugh Downs, who stayed with Paar to the end. At first, the show was called "Tonight Starring Jack Paar"; after 1959 it was officially known as
The Jack Paar Show (or
The Jack Paar Tonight Show, a phrasing which led to the name "The Tonight Show," as opposed to simply "Tonight," being adopted permanently after Paar's departure).
Only a few minutes of video of Paar's talk host career in color are known to exist today; NBC's policy at the time was to preserve programming on black-and-white
kinescopes, but this policy only applied to live or videotaped prime time programming, and as such, the videotapes of most of Paar's
Tonight Show appearances were
taped over and no longer exist, a policy that continued through the first ten years of Johnny Carson's hosting of the same series. During Paar's stint as host,
The Tonight Show became an entertainment juggernaut; Paar generated the most obsessive fascination and curiosity from press and public of anyone who ever hosted the show. He strove for compelling conversation as well as humor. His guests tended to be literate raconteurs such as
Peter Ustinov or intellectuals such as
William F. Buckley Jr., as opposed to just actors or other performers selling their current work, while Paar earned a reputation as a superb storyteller. He surrounded himself with a memorable group of regulars and semi-regulars, including
Cliff Arquette as the homespun "Charley Weaver", author-illustrator
Alexander King,
Tedi Thurman (NBC's sultry "Miss Monitor") and comedy actresses
Peggy Cass and
Dody Goodman. Goodman was a regular from shortly after the show's debut until Paar fired her in 1958. Goodman frequently stepped on Paar's lines and was seen as an uncontrollable upstager. Paar's oft repeated expression,
I kid you not (something
Humphrey Bogart as Capt. Philip Queeg uttered often in
The Caine Mutiny), became a national catchphrase. In 1959, Paar's gag writer
Jack Douglas became a bestselling author (
My Brother Was an Only Child,
A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to the Grave: An Autobiography) after his regular appearances with Paar. Douglas' Japanese wife Reiko often appeared, as did Hungarian beauty queen
Zsa Zsa Gabor, French comedian
Genevieve and several British performers appeared as well. Paar enjoyed conversing with foreigners and knew their accents would spice up the proceedings.
Hal Gurnee directed
Tonight for much of Paar's tenure as well as the period between Paar's departure and Carson's arrival, when the show was presented by a series of guest hosts. Gurnee went on to direct Paar's prime time
The Jack Paar Program and later directed
The David Letterman Show,
Late Night with David Letterman, and the
Late Show with David Letterman.
Controversy In 1959, Paar was criticized for his interview with
Cuban leader
Fidel Castro; Paar's on-location interview was the last time any American late-night show filmed in Cuba until
Conan O'Brien, who himself
briefly hosted Tonight, visited the country in 2015 for an episode of his show,
Conan. On December 1, 1959, Paar again made news by asking an apparently inebriated
Mickey Rooney to leave the program, remarking "It's a shame, he was such a great talent." Rooney and Paar quickly reconciled. In 1961, Paar broadcast his show from Berlin, just as the
Berlin Wall was going up. He attacked members of the
United States Senate and the American press who criticized him, including syndicated columnist
Dorothy Kilgallen of the
New York Journal-American,
Earl Wilson of the
New York Post,
Jack Gould of
The New York Times,
Irv Kupcinet of the
Chicago Sun-Times and Senator
Mike Mansfield. Paar also engaged in a number of public feuds, one of them with CBS luminary
Ed Sullivan, and another with
Walter Winchell. The latter feud "effectively ended Winchell's career", beginning a shift in power from print to television. Paar famously introduced actress
Jayne Mansfield with the line "here they are, Jayne Mansfield!" (a reference to Mansfield's breasts); the writer of the joke was
Dick Cavett, who later went on to host his own show on
ABC.
On-air resignation and return Paar was often unpredictable and emotional. The most notorious example of this kind of on-screen behavior was demonstrated on the February 10, 1960, show, when 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 is: NBC censors replaced that section of the show with news coverage and failed to inform Paar of their decision. On February 11, 1960, Jack Paar quit the show. As he
left his desk in the middle of the program, he said: Although Paar had earlier told his announcer
Hugh Downs of his intention to quit the show, Downs at first thought Paar was joking. He expected the host to return to the stage, but the abrupt departure left Downs to finish the broadcast himself. While Paar traveled outside the country, his disappearance became a national news event. The entire broadcast of this episode exists on audio tape from
WMCT in
Memphis, Urged to return to the show by his friend
Jonathan Winters, Paar reappeared on March 7, 1960, strolled on stage, struck a pose, and said, "As I was saying before I was interrupted...". After the audience erupted in applause, Paar continued, "I believe my last words were that there must be a better way of making a living than this. Well, I've looked... and there isn't." That line produced a burst of laughter from the audience. 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." ==Paar's departure==