How I Got This Way (7 page)

Chapter Eight

JACK PAAR

H
ow I got to be the way I am—especially in front of television cameras—is mostly due to the inspiration I took from one special man. I’ve never made a secret of that fact. But in truth, nobody could ever do things the way he did them. It was my mother who first called my attention to Jack Paar. She wrote me a letter while I was in the navy mentioning how impressed she was with his chatty style and personality—and keep in mind, this was well before he became the original king of late night on NBC-TV’s
Tonight Show
. Back then, in the early fifties, she’d only seen Jack host
The Morning Show
for the CBS network out of New York, where he worked with a battery of news correspondents and always kept things lively throughout. Before getting her letter, I’d barely heard of him, but now I was very curious. Then, soon enough, our squadron was ported in San Diego, and the TV happened to be turned on in our LSM wardroom, where the commodore was holding his standard meeting. Somehow, maybe out of a little boredom, my gaze drifted toward that TV screen, and there was the show my mother had told me about. The one with Jack Paar. And I could see that my sainted mother was right again. Paar was a natural. You couldn’t take your eyes off him. (For the record, my mother had always been pretty good at spotting talent before they made it big: About a decade earlier, for instance, she heard a sixteen-year-old Brooklyn kid named Vic Damone singing over the radio on
The Carnation Hour
. Right on the spot, she announced he would become a musical sensation—and, of course, he did.)

Anyway, when I came back to San Diego in the late fifties—this time working as a young broadcaster reporting the news—I saw Jack Paar again, but now as host of
The Tonight Show
. And again I was knocked out by him: same spontaneity, same charm, and the same engaging interviewing skills I’d seen earlier. But what impressed me most was his opening monologue. Every night at eleven fifteen he would come out, sometimes sit on the edge of his desk, and just talk into the camera—directly to those of us watching at home. He created an intimacy with viewers like nobody I’d seen before. His openings were never simply a compilation of jokes (although I later learned that he did keep a stable of writers on staff). Instead, he was just telling his audience stories about where he had been that day, who he had met, what fun or crazy mishap he had along the way. To me, he was beyond different and always fascinating. Even though I was just getting my feet wet on the TV news side of things, I’d still been wondering what my future would hold in this business. And then I saw Paar, who made whatever he did on camera seem so personal, so unpredictable, so funny, and mainly so very real. It was marvelous. It was what I wanted to do, and he showed me how. Because in my heart, I somehow felt that I had the ability to do that, too. So with Jack’s influence planted firmly in mind—and once I got my own Saturday-night talk show in October 1961 on San Diego’s KOGO-TV—I was determined to open every one of those live broadcasts in exactly the same way. I told stories of what had happened in my life during the week, all very similar to the kind of stuff Jack was doing nationally night after night. And happily enough, it came across pretty smoothly for me—so much so that for the next fifty years I’ve never stopped doing it that way. That is, except for those few detours I made after moving on from San Diego, the most well known of which was my run as second banana/sidekick on ABC’s
The Joey Bishop Show
in Hollywood. But even then, part of my job was to banter with Joey about things going on in daily life—although it was mostly Joey’s daily life that we were focusing on. It was, after all,
his
show.

Joey, along with everyone else who ever tried, had his struggles competing against Johnny Carson’s
Tonight Show,
which was still based out of New York and then as always the dominant force in late night. Carson, of course, had taken over as host once Jack Paar had decided, after not quite five years at that job, to escape the nonstop rigamarole of making nightly television. Starting in late 1962, he opted to scale back and simply limit himself to hosting a popular Friday-night prime-time interview show—which he also later chose to give up, this time after three years. But even then, and for the rest of his post–
Tonight Show
life, he had mainly shunned all requests to be a guest on anyone else’s talk show.

But that was all about to change, if only for one unforgettable night. Turned out, not long after we started the Bishop show in the spring of 1967, we got word that Jack had come to Los Angeles to visit friends. Immediately, Joey knew it would be a coup—and would also help make a sizable dent in Johnny’s great ratings—to coax Jack into coming on as his guest. He already knew Jack slightly, having gone on Paar’s old show a couple times. So on the night that we’d heard Jack had come to town, Joey went to the Beverly Hills Hotel where Jack was staying. And unannounced, knocked on Jack’s door, got inside, and pleaded his case. He needed a big boost for our show, and Jack would be it, absolutely. No one had seen him on television for a couple of years, and Joey wouldn’t leave until Jack agreed—which to everyone’s amazement he did. And to raise the stakes further, we even scheduled Jack’s appearance for what turned out to be the very same night that Carson would come back to
The Tonight Show
after a nearly monthlong standoff with his NBC bosses over contract issues; Johnny went so far as to declare that he was done forever with the show, then disappeared from the air, a bold move that commanded headlines for all those weeks. NBC finally gave in to Johnny’s demands, but Joey knew that having Jack as his special guest would steal some significant spotlight away from Carson’s eagerly awaited return. This, by the way, was what TV people would call “counterprogramming” to the extreme!

Well, when I heard that Jack Paar was booked on our show, I was simply thrilled. I would finally meet this guy who had changed my life, who had shown me how to do it, who inspired me. I couldn’t wait to shake his hand and to thank him for what his work and his style had meant to me. The booking was already getting a lot of press. The ratings were bound to be much bigger than usual. But that day Joey’s producer, Paul Orr, who years earlier had also been Jack’s producer, approached me and said, kind of tentatively, “You know, Joey and Jack are both very nervous about this.” Then he added, “I think they would probably feel more at ease if you didn’t sit with them on the couch, if you’d just let them go at it one-on-one tonight.” I couldn’t believe it. All those years, and now I still wouldn’t have my chance to thank Jack Paar. That’s all I’d wanted to do. Not even on the air, heaven forbid, but during a commercial break, when no one but the two of us would know. I told Paul Orr what Paar meant to me, but he assured me not to worry. “I promise you,” he said, “when the show is over I’ll make sure you meet him.”

So the show went on, with me kind of awkwardly stationed on the sidelines and well away from the two of them. And yes, they clearly
were
nervous. Both were actually a little hesitant with each other during the interview. And as soon as the show was over—guess what?—Jack got up, rushed to the nearest exit, and was gone into the night! Joey, meanwhile, disappeared directly into his dressing room, probably because it hadn’t exactly turned out the way he’d hoped. And that was that. It took me a while to get over it.

To be honest, I never did entirely get over it . . . until at long last I was finally given a second chance to meet Jack. And when I say “at long last,” I’m talking about
nearly two decades later
! It happened just a few years after I returned to New York to start a morning talk show that I hoped would lead to national syndication. During those interim years I held many assorted jobs—one of which brought me to Chicago in the summer of 1974 to take over the local morning show on ABC’s WLS-TV after its host, Bob Kennedy, suddenly passed away. The producer on that show was a smart, funny young guy named Rick Ludwin, who would eventually become the top executive at NBC for all prime-time specials and late-night programming, among other duties. Anyway, in 1986 Rick called to tell me that NBC was preparing a nostalgic special titled
Jack Paar Comes Home,
to be taped in New York. It would feature Jack presiding over a parade of clips from some of his greatest interview moments. Rick remembered what a fan of Paar’s I had always been and asked if I’d like to be part of the studio audience for the taping. My answer, naturally: “Absolutely! I’d love nothing more!”

How great it would be just to see Jack in person again! I was seated about ten rows up, right on the aisle, and directly behind a blond lady who at one point turned and gave me a warm smile like she knew me. I smiled back, but I was sure we’d never met. Then the show started: Jack came out, as charming and spontaneous as always. Now in his early sixties, everything about him looked and felt ageless. There, right onstage in front of me, I could see all of his famous little mannerisms that I’d enjoyed since I first watched him so long ago—plus his electric warmth when telling hilarious “inside” stories and setting up clips of his best exchanges with all those great guests:
“Wait till you see me here with Richard Burton!”
It was wonderful television, all the more special because we were reliving Jack’s work right along with him.

Of course, being in his presence also brought back memories of that night on the Bishop show when I never did get to shake his hand. And frankly, it didn’t look like it would happen on this night either. But at the end of the show, with the band playing his rousing theme song, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” and the crowd applauding wildly, he began to walk up the steps into the audience—
shaking hands with people on the aisle seats!
My God,
I thought,
he’s heading right toward me
. Here was my chance! I was terribly excited, but also afraid he might stop after only a few steps up and then turn around to make his exit. But he didn’t. He just kept coming!
What luck to have this seat,
I realized. And then suddenly he stopped right at the row in front of me. He bent over and kissed the blond lady, gallantly helping her up from her chair, and together they walked down the steps and out the door. That blond woman was, of course, his beloved wife, Miriam. And while I was happy to see them share his moment of postshow triumph—
it had happened again!
I had come so close . . . but once more, no cigar. I mean,
I swear
—all I wanted to do was just tell him thanks!

For days afterward, I couldn’t hide my disappointment. At that point, our program was called
The Morning Show
(just like Jack’s was at CBS, in fact, when my mother first spotted him). My producer, Steve Ober, plainly saw my agony over this latest runaway Paar incident and, about a year later, also saw his chance to surprise me. Jack had made yet another retrospective NBC special that was about to air, so one day Steve very quietly booked Jack on the show, partly to plug the special but mostly to finally give me the thrill I’d waited for so long. It was all a big hushed-up secret when, without any warning, Jack simply walked out onto our set. I was completely floored. Jack took the stool next to mine and—as our own studio audience gave him a long huge ovation—I could see he was very excited about being there. But also a bit nervous, which, let’s face it, was always part of his charm anyway. Main thing: there we were, Jack and Regis—
together at last!
I was so stunned that I can barely remember our conversation, except that it happened.

On that particular morning, the studio had an overflow of audience members, so we accommodated them by moving some extra rows of seats up to within a few feet of the stage. I remember this because, within seconds, Jack immediately began playing to a group of women sitting to his right. And I was sitting to his left! He barely ever looked at me! I do recall having had a tough time getting his attention. But he did get big laughs—especially with those women to his right. And in a few moments after the segment ended, he was gone again.

But now I was in New York, and Jack was up in Greenwich, Connecticut, just forty minutes away, so fate had bound a real connection to finally occur. Sure enough, a couple of years later, Kathie Lee Gifford, my cohost at the time, was dining at 21, one of New York’s top restaurants, with her husband, Frank, and there at a nearby table were Jack and Miriam. They chatted for a little while and the Paars were quite effusive about our show; I guess he probably also remembered his surprise guest appearance with us not long before we went national. Kathie Lee reminded him of how much I admired him. Also, right around the same time, I happened to be talking about Paar with Dave Letterman one night. He said that he knew Jack only a bit; Paar had guested on Dave’s old NBC
Late Night
program and they’d communicated on and off. But then Dave just laid it out in front of me: “Why not call him and take him to lunch?”

So that’s what I did. Joy and I met the Paars for lunch, and it was wonderful. I would prompt him, and all of those great old stories would just pour out of him. I loved it; it was simply the beginning of a treasured friendship. Soon after, Jack invited us to one of his lively dinner parties at his Greenwich home. And there, I finally managed to corner him for a moment, just the two of us, and privately tell him what he’d meant to me. He heard me, but I could see that he had a hard time taking compliments. But what parties he and Miriam threw! Always full of great names and old friends, so many of them now gone, like comic pianist Victor Borge, and the legendary showbiz caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. Guests were usually split between two separate tables, with Jack presiding at the head of his table as only he could. Famously, he loved to lean in and say to anyone near him: “Tell me something that would interest me.” What a challenge! Usually it produced plenty of laughs. But if he’d hear too many laughs coming from the other table, he’d be up like a shot and over to find out who was getting the laughs and why. “What? What?” he’d ask breathlessly. But that was Jack: He hated to miss out on anything.