TFTP's Monochrome March, On This Day: "The Tonight Show" w/ Jack Paar - audio only (Mar. 29, 1962)

Posted to YouTube by user 'epaddon'
Length - 1:14:44

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

It Was 56 Years Ago Today: We finish Monochrome March today with an item that is not a monochrome program per se, but the audio from a monochrome program--Jack Paar's final episode as host of the "Tonight Show", which aired 56 years ago today on March 29, 1962.

Many programs from the earliest period of TV history do not survive, but there are others for which the full program does not survive but the audio track does survive--and this last Paar "Tonight Show" episode is one of those. The program's audio above accompanies still images that attempt to illustrate what is going on in the audio track. Perhaps unsurprisingly given Paar's reputation, he spends a good chunk of this final episode settling scores, including with columnists Walter Winchell and Dorothy Kilgallen and those who criticized his visits to Cuba during his "Tonight Show" run (which took place as that country was undergoing revolution). Of course, a farewell show being what it is, there are plenty of testimonials to Paar as well, including from the likes of Richard Nixon, Robert Kennedy, Billy Graham, George Burns, Jack Benny, and Bob Hope.

Paar had been "Tonight Show" host for almost five years by March of 1962, having started in July of 1957 (succeeding first "Tonight" host Steve Allen). Paar's tenure on the "Tonight Show" had been famously rocky, and included a walkout of the show for several days in 1960 as a result of a dispute with NBC about censorship of jokes. (He quips in the monologue of this episode that the NBC legal department was having a luau to celebrate his leaving the program.) Paar was leaving at this particular time to launch a prime-time variety show on NBC that started in the fall of 1962. That program ran until 1965, and for a few years after Paar made an occasional TV special, but then he appeared on TV infrequently for the remainder of his life, which lasted until 2004.

TFTP Late Night: "The Jack Paar Tonight Show" from NBC (Sep. 21, 1960)

Posted to YouTube by user 'therealdrfilm'
Length - 18:46

For this second "TFTP Late Night" post, after the inaugural "Late Night" post featuring Steve Allen's "Tonight Show", we have the second "Tonight Show" host, Jack Paar. Paar became "Tonight Show" host in 1957 and remained until mid-1962. Paar had a sometimes rocky tenure as host that included a famous walk-out for a period of several days in 1960 in protest over NBC's censoring of a joke about a water closet.

This clip is from later that same year, Sept. 21, 1960. By this time, the title of the program had shifted from "Tonight Starring Jack Paar" to "The Jack Paar Tonight Show". The clip begins with comic Charley Weaver doing a somewhat indecipherable bit with the show's orchestra. Then Paar converses with stand-up comic Shelly Berman (in an unusual seating arrangement in which Berman sits to Paar's left at the desk, which was also used by Johnny Carson in his earliest "Tonight Show" years). Weaver, actress Hermione Gingold, and Paar sidekick (pre-"Today Show", pre-"20/20") Hugh Downs all join the conversation pell-mell, offering a good example of the more freewheeling format of early late-night talk shows (and especially of Paar's "Tonight Show").

Although this clip is in black and white, Paar supposedly had started just a few days before this episode to tape his program in color. Unfortunately, this means we are deprived of knowing the color of the seemingly random fez hat Paar is wearing.