Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [40]
Make no mistake about Paar. He had his “good side”: his sharp wit, his unquestioned ability as an interviewer, and his flair for spotting talent and popularizing new stars that made late-night TV viewing so exciting for many months.
Incidentally, in the event that you are still wondering what heinous things I wrote about Paar to occasion his outburst, here is the item in its entirety. Recall, if you will, the spate of headlines about Paar’s Berlin show and the fact that this was written with obvious tongue in cheek, and you’ll have a better understanding of the incident.
In Mike Fish’s the other night, members of the Damon Runyon set were discussing the refusal of NBC-TV’s Meet the Press to schedule Jack Paar for a guest appearance. “I do not think Paar should be angry on account he cannot get on Meet the Press,” exclaimed Society Kid Hogan. “He would be much better on a show called To Tell the Truth. I would like to see the real Jack Paar stand up.”
“You got the wrong show for Paar,” offered Morose Artie. “He should by all means appear on What’s My Line? Nobody seems to know the answer to that one.”
“I do not wish to argue with my closest chums,” cut in High Hat Harry, “but to me the show for Paar is I’ve Got a Secret. Then he can tell the audience his secret is that it is not so tense in Berlin and what’s all the excitement about, anyhow?”
Five-Star Final could hold back no longer. “The trouble with you guys is that you don’t understand Paar. If he wants to guest on a show, the one for him is Yout’ Wants to Know. He is very good with the youts of our nation on account he has nice, easy answers for everything.”
Dave Garroway is another whose professionalism I admire greatly. His old 11:60 Club disk-jockey radio show on WMAQ, and Garroway at Large on TV, proved him a versatile, mature, and conscientious entertainer long before he left Chicago. On such snafu-prone network shows as Today and Wide Wide World probably no one except Dave, with his unique, even temperament, could have survived. He still chuckles over such incidents as the one involving a TV producer who almost overslept the morning that Today was scheduled to do a remote pickup from the middle of New York’s George Washington Bridge. In the early dawn, wild-eyed and still in pajamas, he hailed a cab and said breathlessly, “George Washington Bridge, and stop in the middle.” “Oh, no, you don’t, buddy,” yelled the driver. “Not in my cab!” (After a proper explanation, the producer arrived and the show went on.)
And then there are the all-important men and women behind the scenes in radio and television. Louis G. Cowan, former president of CBS-TV is only one of many Chicagoans who have set the trend in mass communications. His Quiz Kids on radio, and Stop the Music and $64,000 Question on TV, were among the most popular programs of all time. (Cowan is now with Brandeis University, and a book publisher. His successor at CBS Television, James Aubrey, Jr., was also a Chicagoan.) The late H. Leslie Atlass, of WBBM, helped build CBS radio and CBS-TV, and popularized such stars as Gene Autry, Dale Evans, the Andrews Sisters, Ben Bernie, and Janette Davis. Other notable “backstage” personalities include Clark George, Atlass’ successor at WBBM, and his opposite numbers, Sterling Ouinlan of WBKB-ABC, Lloyd Yoder of WNBQ-NBC, and Ward Ouaal of the highly respected independent station, WGN-TV; Rod (Twilight Zone) Serling, a former Herrick House instructor who is one of TV’s ablest writers; Bernie and Rita Jacobs, who turned a bankrupt FM franchise into a Peabody Award winner and the most successful cultural station in the nation (listeners once kicked in $11,000 in one week to keep their WFMT going); former automobile distributor Pete DeMet, the “Mr. Bowling,” “Mr. Golf,” and “Mr. Fishing” of TV production; and Bill Morrow, program producer for the Ol’ Groaner, Bing Crosby.
Then there is the funniest backstager of them all, the zany king of the comedy writers, Goodman Ace who – with his wife Jane – once