Jack Paar checked out

January-27th-2004, 06:29 PM

He died today at age 85.

Brian Olewnick · January-27th-2004, 06:51 PM

Ditto. I coulda sworn he checked out in the 80s......

Squaredancecalling Steve · January-27th-2004, 07:12 PM

Who else would have had Oscar Levant ("I don't like liquor -- it makes me feel good.") on as regular guest? A great show. It's a pity that late night TV never did live up to the early promise held out by Steve Allen and Jack Paar.

stonemonkts · January-27th-2004, 07:42 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Squaredancecalling Steve
Who else would have had Oscar Levant ("I don't like liquor -- it makes me feel good.") on as regular guest? A great show. It's a pity that late night TV never did live up to the early promise held out by Steve Allen and Jack Paar.

I'm a bit too young to have been a viewer of Paar (or Allen, for that matter) but I've seen enough to appreciate them. As far as late night TV living up to that era's promise, I think the first few years of Letterman topped them all, and then some.

I too thought Paar had been long dead.

Captain Hate · January-27th-2004, 08:00 PM

Me too; I'm guessing he'd been quite ill because he'd been out of the public eye for a long time.

GoodSpeak · January-27th-2004, 08:13 PM

What's amazing to me is he was "only" 85.

Geez, he quit doing the Tonight Show when it still aired in black & white, for Pete's Sake.

Monte Smith · January-27th-2004, 08:15 PM

Haha! I knew Jack Paar was alive. Probably you guys are confusing his death with the death not too long ago of Steve Allen.

I've only ever known Jack Paar as a legendary broadcaster. Never had the pleasure to actually see a broadcast.

But as a timewarped fuddy-duddy, I have to say that anyone who isn't Jack Benny or Fred Allen SUCKS.

moneyp · January-27th-2004, 08:19 PM

I love the Allen/Paar bits I've had the fortune to see. Paar wore all of his emotions on his sleeve in a very refreshing way, a quality almost nonexistant in the entertainment world now. How many times did he cry on the show? You had to love the guy.

SinginSumo · January-27th-2004, 09:19 PM

Couldn't agree more, SqD.

Leave it to Monte Smith to say that Jack Paar sucks though he never saw any Paar broadcast to form an opinion.

GoodSpeak · January-27th-2004, 09:50 PM

Now you know how I feel sometimes, Monte.

Welcome to the Oft Misquoted Club.

Lazy River · January-27th-2004, 10:02 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Squaredancecalling Steve
Who else would have had Oscar Levant ("I don't like liquor -- it makes me feel good.") on as regular guest? A great show. It's a pity that late night TV never did live up to the early promise held out by Steve Allen and Jack Paar.

I don't agree with you re the above. Seems to me that Johnny Carson, who frequently used as guest emcee Cannonball, did pretty well. Johnny also had a wonderful Tonight Show band that included Ernie Watts, Pete Christlieb, et al.
Lazy River

moneyp · January-27th-2004, 10:16 PM

Enough of the personal insults, please. Thank youuuuuu....

Monte Smith · January-27th-2004, 10:37 PM

Sorry, Mone, but if you are going to remove my insults about Fat Ass, then you are going to have to remove his spurious complaint about me insulting Paar. Plainly, I did not insult Jack Paar. Let's be fair.

Captain Hate · January-27th-2004, 10:44 PM

Is this why the posts aren't numbered anymore?

GoodSpeak · January-27th-2004, 10:57 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by mone peterson
Enough of the personal insults, please. Thank youuuuuu....

Well done, Mone.

And as a show of support...I have deleted my less than gentlemanly retorts on this thread.

Dr Dave · January-27th-2004, 11:00 PM

The most memorable Jack Paar Show was the one when he showed a little footage of a Las Vegas stripper named "Jackie Parr." The clip ends before anything scandalous is revealed (scandalous by the standards of 30 years ago) and Paar wonders aloud whatever happened to the second reel.

Ron Thorne · January-27th-2004, 11:15 PM

I'll miss this pioneer, heart-on-his-sleeve guy. I first saw him while on my way to Berklee in 1962, during a stay with an Aunt & Uncle in D.C. Aunt Peg and I would sit up and watch him together, drinking bottles of Coke and laughing out loud. What an original!

RIP, Jack Paar~

moneyp · January-28th-2004, 12:20 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Captain Hate
Is this why the posts aren't numbered anymore?

No, but that's a good conspiracy theory! Still working on that with the meager free time I have.

Valerie · January-28th-2004, 12:56 AM

I am old enough to have very fond memories of watching Paar's show with my mother too many times to remember. We both enjoyed him immensely as he definitely was an original and had some very interesting guests along the way, like Richard Nixon , JFK and most of the entertainers of that time!!

Aside from many here being too young to have seen Paar's show, they may have thought he died years ago as he gave up his show many decades ago and retired from the public eye almost entirely.

SinginSumo · January-28th-2004, 05:50 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Monte Smith
Let's be fair.

Fair is having the sense not to post at all when one has no knowledge of the topic.

Well, this hasn't stopped you many times before...

Squaredancecalling Steve · January-28th-2004, 06:47 AM

With all due respect for Carson and Letterman, I think both of their shows were much more commercial, more predictable, and considerably less interesting then Allen or Paar,

I kid you not!

clinthopson · January-28th-2004, 11:36 AM

We used to watch the Paar show every night. It was always witty and a helluva lot smarter than anything on the tube at that time, in fact it still would surpass most of the stuff on our bazillion channels today.

His guests ranged all over the map from a French chanteuse Janevieve to authors like John Updike to Johnathan Winters to Oscar Levant. Watching Levant was like watching a train wreck.

You never knew when Paar was going to blow up. I saw the show the night he stormed off because the NBC censors cut a joke. And his return months later was a triumph.

I will say though, that the house band led by Jose Melis, deservedly forgotten, was the worst band in the land.

hornplayer · January-28th-2004, 03:13 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Valerie
I am old enough to have very fond memories of watching Paar's show.

I don't remember a lot of the specifics, but I really loved Jose Melis, his music director. He used to do a commercial for Realemon Juice, and I can still hear him with his accent singing "We squeeze, You pour, Realemon lemon juice. Reconstituted!" Still makes me laugh!

Jack Paar was definitely one-of-a-kind. I liked Steve Allen a lot, too... The stuff that passes for talk shows these days pales beside them...

clinthopson · January-28th-2004, 05:14 PM

Paar's show was a true talk show. Steve Allen's Tonight Show was a variety show with perhaps the greatest collection of funnymen ever to be assembled on a nightly basis: Steve, Bill Dana, Tom Poston and Louis Nye were consistentlu hilarious. Even the non-comics like Steve and Eydie, Skitch Henderson and Jayne Meadows could get a few laughs. Steve also introduced a few good stand-up comics like Bob Newhart, Shelly Berman, Nichols and May and even Lenny Bruce to network tv.

The is absolutely nothing on late night today that compares to those two great shows.