Word: jacks
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...After a long, embarrassing interview with an English actress who was scheduled for a guest appearance, Jack comes onstage again, explains with a sour face: "She made a movie with Noel Coward, she did this, she did that. I said, 'Can you talk about these things?' She said she wanted to be a cook, a creative cook. That's not believable. A good-looking girl with a build wants to be a cook? The audience would think she was lying, that I was lying. It would destroy the naturalness of the show...
...Paar stands in the wings alone. The show theme strikes up. Out front, Announcer Hugh Downs, who has been warming up the audience, chuckles with the nightly enthusiasm: "Now here's Jack." In that instant Jack Paar strides onstage, smiling shyly, snapping his fingers. He makes his little joke about hemlines and the men behind the TV cameras smile at him as if they meant it. The show is on its way, following a complex timetable of station breaks and commercials as the network gathers stations and moves west across the night...
...every commercial, whenever he is off camera, he finds a moment to lean over to chat with a guest, give instructions to an assistant director, and check the time schedule. The peering cameras, the prodding teleprompters, the signaling technicians seem not to bother him; he is at home. With Jack Douglas, head writer of his show, whom he puts on as a guest from time to time, he ad libs quickly and surely. With other guests, he is gentle, humble, anxious not to seem brighter than anybody else...
...midnight it is plain that the show is a hit. A cameraman smothers a laugh and says, "Jack's flying. He'll be home now." Henny Youngman, a charter member of the Lindy comedians Jack so often criticizes, has dropped in to watch-as many show business pros do. Says Youngman: "This guy gives 200%; he wants to be double good. He gives out a feeling of love, that's why they look at this man. This is a tough damn...
...moments after 1 a.m. the lights go down, and Jack is surrounded by exuberant writers. "Rosenbloom was great," says one. "Douglas killed them," chimes in another. Jack says: "I thought me was pretty good, too." He wipes off his makeup, grabs his briefcase and pushes his way to his car-he never joins the rest of the cast at the corner bar. At home in Bronxville. where Miriam is waiting up, he has a cup of soup and a beer. At 3:15 a.m., after reading two scripts that Writer Douglas has put together for future shows, Paar turns...