Former 'Tonight Show' Host Jack Paar Dies
1 hour, 9 minutes ago
By FRAZIER MOORE, AP Television Writer
NEW YORK - Jack Paar (news), who held the nation's rapt attention as he pioneered late-night talk on "The Tonight Show," then told his viewers farewell when still in his prime, died Tuesday. He was 85.
Paar died at his Greenwich, Conn., home as a result of a long illness, said Stephen Wells, Paar's son-in-law.
"Jack invented the talk show format as we know it: the ability to sit down and make small talk big. I will miss him terribly," Merv Griffin (news) said. "Not only was he a great friend, he was my beginning, just as he was everyone else's."
Paar's years on NBC enlivened an otherwise "painfully predictable" TV landscape, wrote The New York Times' Jack Gould in 1962. "Mr. Paar almost alone has managed to preserve the possibility of surprise."
Johnny Carson (news) took over "The Tonight Show" in 1962. Paar had a prime-time talk show for three more seasons, then retired from television in 1965.
Carson said he was "very saddened" to hear of Paar's death. "He was a unique personality who brought a new dimension to late night television."
Paar had taken over the flagging NBC late-night slot in July 1957; Steve Allen (news) had departed some months earlier. Allen's show was a variety show; Paar's a talk show.
"Like being chosen as a kamikaze pilot," Paar wrote in "I Kid You Not," a memoir. "But I felt sure that people would enjoy good, frank and amusing talk."
They did. Viewers loved this cherubic wiseguy, someone once referred to as "like Peter Pan, if Peter Pan had been written by Mickey Spillane."
Soon, everyone was staying up to watch Paar, then talking about his show the next day. Even youngsters sent to bed before Paar came on parroted his jaunty catch phrase, "I kid you not," with which he regularly certified his flow of self-revealing stories.
Just why he walked away from such a breakthrough career at age 47 would become an enduring source of conjecture, possibly even for Paar. His explanation would have to suffice: that he was tired and ready to do other things. He stayed true to his word, other than a brief return in 1975 as one of several hosts on a rotating late-night roster at ABC.
Since the mid-1960s, Paar had kept mostly out of the public eye, engaging in business ventures and indulging his passion for travel.
Off the air, as on, Paar never stopped doing the thing he did best: talk.
"The only time I'm nervous or scared is when I'm NOT talking," he told The Associated Press in 1997. "When I'm talking, I know that I do it well."
Rest of the article.......
1 hour, 9 minutes ago
By FRAZIER MOORE, AP Television Writer
NEW YORK - Jack Paar (news), who held the nation's rapt attention as he pioneered late-night talk on "The Tonight Show," then told his viewers farewell when still in his prime, died Tuesday. He was 85.
Paar died at his Greenwich, Conn., home as a result of a long illness, said Stephen Wells, Paar's son-in-law.
"Jack invented the talk show format as we know it: the ability to sit down and make small talk big. I will miss him terribly," Merv Griffin (news) said. "Not only was he a great friend, he was my beginning, just as he was everyone else's."
Paar's years on NBC enlivened an otherwise "painfully predictable" TV landscape, wrote The New York Times' Jack Gould in 1962. "Mr. Paar almost alone has managed to preserve the possibility of surprise."
Johnny Carson (news) took over "The Tonight Show" in 1962. Paar had a prime-time talk show for three more seasons, then retired from television in 1965.
Carson said he was "very saddened" to hear of Paar's death. "He was a unique personality who brought a new dimension to late night television."
Paar had taken over the flagging NBC late-night slot in July 1957; Steve Allen (news) had departed some months earlier. Allen's show was a variety show; Paar's a talk show.
"Like being chosen as a kamikaze pilot," Paar wrote in "I Kid You Not," a memoir. "But I felt sure that people would enjoy good, frank and amusing talk."
They did. Viewers loved this cherubic wiseguy, someone once referred to as "like Peter Pan, if Peter Pan had been written by Mickey Spillane."
Soon, everyone was staying up to watch Paar, then talking about his show the next day. Even youngsters sent to bed before Paar came on parroted his jaunty catch phrase, "I kid you not," with which he regularly certified his flow of self-revealing stories.
Just why he walked away from such a breakthrough career at age 47 would become an enduring source of conjecture, possibly even for Paar. His explanation would have to suffice: that he was tired and ready to do other things. He stayed true to his word, other than a brief return in 1975 as one of several hosts on a rotating late-night roster at ABC.
Since the mid-1960s, Paar had kept mostly out of the public eye, engaging in business ventures and indulging his passion for travel.
Off the air, as on, Paar never stopped doing the thing he did best: talk.
"The only time I'm nervous or scared is when I'm NOT talking," he told The Associated Press in 1997. "When I'm talking, I know that I do it well."
Rest of the article.......
