Word: paars
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Gamble. When asked about Jack Paar, the late Fred Allen once said: "Oh, you mean the young man who had the meteoric disappearance." A year ago the description still fitted Paar, sometime minor movie actor and perennial radio-TV summer replacement. He had done well with a radio program and a daytime television show of his own, but never well enough to make it big. One TV executive dismissed him as strictly a "pipe and slipper type." What happened next is told by NBC's Board Chairman Robert Sarnoff: "We faced a critical decision. The America After Dark version...
...moved into its second year last week, the show had chalked up five industry awards and a higher rating than successful Steve Allen several years ago in the same time slot. At a time when live shows are fading fast from every channel, the Paar show is seen over a record 115 stations and has collected as many as 38 sponsors, ranging from Minipoo shampoo to Corega denture fastener. One measure of the show's import is the loyalty of most of the guests; they are paid only "scale" ($320 per appearance), but most of them love the show...
...cowpokes or to the time-defying charms of late movies, with their youthful Gables and ageless Garbos. Could the All-American boy with the dimpled chin and the dinky toupee move the merchandise against such competition? At first NBC bigwigs were talking about a well-integrated variety show. Says Paar: "A television executive doesn't know what he wants to do, but he can put it on paper. I let them all talk and write memos and I secretly made plans...
...Characters. Paar's plans consisted mostly of organized planlessness. During the past year Jack has tantalized a tame lion with doses of catnip, tangled with a pickpocket named Dominique, who lifted his wallet, belt and wrist watch, sweated through a few falls with a professional wrestler named Killer Kowalski. He has worn funny hats, taken off his pants, climbed up the studio walls. But always, the high points were provided by the talkers - guided or goaded, driven or drawn out by Jack...
There was Dody Goodman, corn-fed elf and professional birdbrain, whose irrelevance and irreverence were fun until Paar got rid of her in an unseemly family squabble (TIME, March 24). Elsa Maxwell appeared for weekly off-with-their-heads chats, chopped at so many well-known necks (including Winchell's, Presley's, Princess Grace's) that Jack was only half kidding when he rolled his eyes and groaned: "Call the lawyers." For a few frenetic nights, Zsa Zsa Gabor leaned over her cleavage and rattled her host into some now famous fluffs. "It will...