Word: paar
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...South Pacific's one-a-day, island-hopping vaudeville circuit, Paar became the open enemy of all brass. Once, in New Caledonia, a show was delayed and 5,000 men were kept waiting by a Navy commodore, who finally arrived with a nurse on his arm. "We were going to have six lovely girls do the dance of the virgins," announced Paar. "But they broke their contracts by being with the commodore." The commodore threatened a courtmartial. "The Army got me out of it," claims Paar, "by promising to send me to Okinawa...
...front of a camera (he did once play opposite an unheard-of starlet named Marilyn Monroe). In 1947 he was hired as the summer replacement on NBC-Radio's Jack Benny Show. His fresh, natural style was a success, and in the fall American Tobacco put the Jack Paar Show on the air on ABC. It lasted until Christmas Eve. In his radio days Paar squabbled with everyone, fired a whole set of writers, feuded with a Daily Variety columnist named Jack Hellman (Paar put a nameplate-"Hellman"-on a chimpanzee and paraded it through Hollywood...
...goods that he had a machine to analyze comedians." Walker's machine reported that Jack got laughs all right but that he had no character, like Benny's "cheapness," Gracie Allen's "dumbness." "There is nothing to tune back to each week," reported Walker, and the Paar option was dropped. Today, says Jack, he is just as glad that he did not play along with the phony character bit: "I have no character except what I am-complicated, sentimental, lovable, honest, loyal, decent, generous, likable and lonely...
Perhaps the only person who knows him well and does not quite believe he has arrived is Jack Paar himself. Like any TV performer, Paar watches himself on a monitor set during the show, but he also seems to be watching himself on an imaginary monitor when he is not performing. Compulsive and candid talker that he is, he looks for signs of having said the wrong thing or having been misunderstood. He still broods "When will they start tearing me down?" Or "I wonder how many among my group really love me?" Says a former agent...
...small kindness from anyone seems to be a large emotional shock, and Paar still weeps often. When he went through the motions of an on-screen reconciliation with Dody Goodman fortnight ago, he broke into tears. When he was told that a Lindy comic had liked his show, he was "Leaky Jack" once more, his eyes misting as his own hostility melted...