Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (33 page)

A PLACE IN HISTORY

Elisha Gray:
Gray was an electrical genius who independently developed his own telephone. Incredibly, he filed a patent for the invention on February 14, 1876—the
exact same day
that Alexander Graham Bell did—but a few hours
after
Bell. “If Bell had been a few hours late,” says one historian, “what we know of as the Bell System would have been the Gray System.” Gray was successful with other inventions, but was bitter for the rest of his life about not receiving credit for the telephone.

James Swinburne:
Leo Baekeland patented the first modern plastic on June 14, 1907; he called it “Bakelite.” A day later, a Scottish electrical engineer named James Swinburne filed a patent for almost exactly the same thing. He’d been experimenting with the same chemicals on his own halfway around the world, and had come up with the substance completely independently. Unlike Gray, though, he made peace with his near-miss and wound up chairman of the Bakelite company.

A CAREER-ENDING “INJURY”

Frank Sinatra:
“Gangster Sam Giancana once ordered a hit on Frank Sinatra. He was going to have Sinatra’s throat cut to ruin his voice. But on the night the hit was supposed to go down, Giancana was enjoying an intimate moment with [his girlfriend] Phyllis McGuire, who played Sinatra records to heighten the romantic mood. After listening for a while, Giancana decided he couldn’t in good conscience silence that voice. He cancelled the hit.” (
The Portland Oregonian,
August 29, 1997)

MILITARY DEFEAT

George Washington:
“On Christmas night, 1776, Washington was preparing to cross the Delaware with his army to attack the British. The commander of forces at Trenton, Colonel Rail, was German. He was drinking and playing cards when he received a note from a British loyalist warning him of the attack. But the note was in English, which Rail couldn’t read, and he was groggy anyway, so he put it in his pocket. At dawn, Washington attacked and because the British were unprepared, he won. As Rail lay dying on the battlefield, the note was translated into German and Rail admitted if he’d read it, ‘1 would not be here.’ ” (From
Oh Say Can You See?
)

THE PRESIDENCY

John Janney:
“In 1840, Janney was chairman of the Whig Party Convention in Virginia. This convention nominated William Henry Harrison for president. John Janney and John Tyler were the nominees for vice president. When the vote of the convention was a tie, Janney, as chairman, did the “honorable” thing and voted for Tyler. Harrison won the election but died soon after, and John Tyler became president. John Janney lost the presidency by one vote—his own.” (From
Dear Abby
, December 17, 1996)

Sen. Ben Wade:
When Lincoln was shot in 1865, Andrew Johnson became president. In 1867 the Republican Congress tried to impeach him, but was one vote shy of the two-thirds majority needed to remove him from office. Wade, as president of the Senate, would have become the 18th American president. He became the second man in history to miss the U.S. presidency by one vote.

In his day, Jack Paar left as big a mark on “The Tonight Show” as Johnny Carson. But he only hosted the show for five years…and it’s been more than
35
years since he left the stage…so his contribution is largely forgotten. Here’s Part III of “The Tonight Show.” (Continued from
page 133
.)

S
TARTING OVER

With “America After Dark” going down in flames, NBC began looking for someone to host a new version of “The Tonight Show.” The search didn’t take long: when Steve Allen had cut back to three days a week in 1956, two comedians had been contenders for the Monday and Tuesday slots: Ernie Kovacs (who got the job) and Jack Paar, an out-of-work television personality.

This time, NBC decided to give Paar a chance. They weren’t confident he could pull it off—with good reason. He seemed to have a knack for turning opportunity into disaster.

Army Brat

• Paar first attracted notice in the Army during World War II. He performed as part of the Special Service Company at USO shows, and was notorious for his satirical putdowns of military brass. Enlisted troops loved him, and he drew bigger applause than even Jack Benny or Bob Hope when he appeared with them. But the act nearly got him court-martialed after he insulted a commodore.

• After he was discharged, he moved to Hollywood. In 1947 Jack Benny took time off from his radio program and arranged for Paar fill in over the summer. It might have been a big break, but Paar let his ego and his temper get in the way. Three of his four writers walked out one afternoon after he insulted them once too often. Then he was quoted in
Time
magazine referring to Jack Benny’s style of humor as “old hat” and pledging to bring a fresh approach to radio comedy.

“When the summer ended,” Robert Metz writes in
The Tonight Show
, “so did Jack’s Hollywood career. He had made lots of enemies there, partly because of unbending attitudes, and, his critics say, his unwillingness to show humility.”

• Paar moved on to New York and did a number of TV game, news, and variety shows, but none worked. Then he got a job as Walter Cronkite’s replacement on “The Morning Show,” which ran on CBS against “The Today Show.” The “Morning Show’s” ratings went up during Paar’s tenure, but he developed a reputation for being “uncooperative.” CBS fired him after he refused to attribute his wife’s “newfound” beauty to a sponsor’s lipstick.

• Paar lost his job, but won an important fan—NBC executive Mort Werner…who hired him for “The Tonight Show.”

THE JACK PAAR STYLE

At first, Paar tried to mimic Steve Allen’s format. “The first night,” he recalled years later, “I grappled with a heavyweight wrestler, threw vegetables at the audience, and fed catnip to a lion.” But where Allen had been a gifted and very physical comedian, Paar was uncomfortable and wooden. The critics panned the July 29, 1957 premiere.

Paar struggled with Allenesque skits and physical humor for another six months before he finally told his writers that from now on, he would open with a short monologue, then move to his desk, where he would chat with his guests. Paar was a strong conversationalist, and he wanted to make that the backbone of the show. He also figured that dumping the hijinks would help him attract more serious guests, such as politicians and journalists.

UP, UP, AND AWAY

“The Tonight Show” was building an audience even before the changes in format, and this helped it grow even more. “Before long,” Paar remembered years later, “we had 154 stations, an estimated 30 million viewers weekly, and so many sponsors I felt guilty when I interrupted the commercials with the program.” By the end of the second year, Paar’s ratings were higher than Steve Allen’s had been.

For the first time in its difficult history, “The Tonight Show” was selling out its advertising. And because the show was cheap to produce by TV standards—Paar had only three writers and a weekly budget of $50,000—it made big profits for NBC.

TALK SHOW

Guests were booked on the show not because they had a new movie or television show coming out (as most guests are booked today), but because Paar found them interesting to talk to. Some big celebrities never got on, while Betty White, then an unknown comedian, appeared more than 70 times. “Jack was fascinated [by the guests on the show],” says Hal Gurnee, who directed Paar’s show and years later would also direct David Letterman’s. “He was good at talking to people and convincing them he was interested in what they had to say.”

HOT TALENT

It wasn’t just Paar’s talent for conversation that followed him to “The Tonight Show.” His ego, stubbornness, and bad temper also came along. Ironically, these qualities—which had nearly derailed his career several times—became an important a part of “The Tonight Show’s” success. If he was mad about something, he’d vent his anger onstage. If he was emotional, he’d cry. If he didn’t like a guest, he’d insult them to their faces, right on national TV. Sometimes he even chewed out his staff on the air. Audiences, which were used to the tightly scripted TV shows of the 1950s, were mesmerized. There was nothing else like it on TV.

Unlike today’s talk-show hosts, who tend to keep personal disputes off the air and wage their wars through publicists, Paar fought his feuds on camera and in person. He attacked columnists who criticized his show and could become jealous of any guests who got bigger laughs than he did. One night comedian Jack E. Leonard scored big with the studio audience. Paar told him, “Keep going. You’re doing great!” throughout his routine, but a few days later, he announced that Leonard was history. “You’ll be seeing a lot of him in the future,” Paar told viewers, “but not on my show!”

Even regular guests had to watch their step. Dody Goodman was a ditsy comedian Paar discovered on the first week of the show. She was so funny that he made her a regular. But one night when she got too many laughs, he dumped her.

MR. NICE GUY

Paar could also be a sentimental family man—especially during his monologues, which he peppered with stories about his wife and daughter. When his daughter got her first training bra, he told the world. And when the family vacationed in foreign countries, Paar always packed a movie camera to record their trips for the show.

“Paar was in essence hosting a nightly gathering at his ‘house,’ ” Ronald Smith writes, “complete with home movies, guests who should not have been invited and the atmosphere that ‘anything might happen.’ Some guests were quietly invited to leave, the subject of catty insults. Others were embraced and urged to come back over and over, long overstaying their welcome.”

A NATIONAL HABIT

Viewers didn’t just
want
to watch “The Tonight Show,” they felt they
had
to, out of fear that they’d miss something if they didn’t.

“Jack in all his work let his own quirks, neuroses, suspicions and dislikes play freely on the surface,” Dick Cavett (a writer on the show) recalled in his autobiography. “There was always the implied possibility in his manner that he would explode one day, and you might miss seeing a live nervous breakdown viewed from the comfort of your own bedroom.”

As viewers flocked to “The Tonight Show,” so did celebrities from all walks of life. Richard Nixon played piano accompanied by an orchestra of “15 Democratic violinists”; Liberace tickled the ivories while a young Cassius Clay read poetry. “For a change, do that one about you,” he goaded the champ. Even Eleanor Roosevelt and Albert Schweitzer made appearances.

A LITTLE POLITICS ON THE SIDE

“The Tonight Show” may even have helped decide the outcome of the 1960 presidential elections. Both Kennedy and Nixon made appearances on the show to explain their positions, and on the eve of the election, Paar invited Bobby Kennedy, JFK’s campaign manager, on the show to explain “in three minutes” why his brother should be president. (Nixon, of course, was not pleased.) As James Reston of The
New York Times
put it, there were two litmus tests in the 1960 campaign: “Who can stand up to Nikita Khrushchev. And who can sit down with Jack Paar.”

Want to hear a censored joke? Turn to
page 271
for Part
IV.

It helps to be a celebrity if you want to run for political office. Take a look at Congress today: there’s a member of the “Love Boat” cast, a Hall of Fame pitcher, even a former rock star. Here are four famous Americans who aren’t known as politicians…because they lost.

H
ENRY FORD

Ran for:
U.S. Senate seat from Michigan

The Story:
Ford was one of the richest, most famous men in America when Woodrow Wilson called him into the White House in 1918 and asked him to run for the open senate seat in Michigan. He agreed to do it.

It was a bizarre campaign. Although he had unlimited cash, Ford refused to spend any. He also refused to make any public speeches. And while Ford said nothing, his opponent—Truman H. Newberry—attacked the carmaker mercilessly for his pacifism.

Outcome:
Surprisingly, Ford lost by less than 5,000 votes.
Then
he got interested in the election. He demanded a recount and hired private detectives to prove Newberry had cheated. Over the next four years, Ford had more than 40 investigators scouring Michigan, looking for proof that Newberry had spent money on his campaign illegally. This, he claimed (and perhaps believed), would be proof that Wall Street had conspired to beat him.