The Jack Paar Program

As Jack Paar ended his stint on the Tonight Show and this guy named Carson took it over, NBC gave him the primest of prime time slots, Friday at 10 PM for an hour long variety show. He took with him bandleader Jose Melis for the orchestra.

Paar usually had two or three guests and the format I think allowed his guests more chance to perform. The usual regular guests, professional celebrities like Peggy Cass and other like Hermione Gingold and Alexander King showed up regularly. The incredibly zany Jonathan Winters showed up a lot and just took the whole show over when he did.

He didn't just confine himself to entertainers. I recall one show with Richard Nixon making his first television appearance after his presidential loss in 1960. He did another whole show devoted to the disappearance of Nelson Rockefeller's son Michael in New Guinea.

Paar took the assassination of JFK very hard as did a lot of us. He seemed to lose interest after that occurred and just let his career go. Apparently he saved his money well and didn't have to work that much. We saw sporadic appearances over the years, but he was pretty much forgotten as Johnny Carson became king of the night. Nobody could remember that Steve Allen and Paar came ahead of him.

I wish someone would find the reruns and put them on a nostalgia channel. Hope they exist.

This show was shot on beautiful color 2-inch videotape and as the producer and owner of the series, Paar had all of the tapes. As was his temperamental nature, he decided at some point to discard all of the shows and every day would put a few out for his garbage man to pick up. So, all that remains of the series are the black and white kinescopes which NBC saved, which is not even the complete run of the show. No color footage has been found to exist.