Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (55 page)

Farblunget
: Totally confused; roaming aimlessly.

Greps
: Belch; burp.

Shmeikel
(shmeh-kel): Flatter insincerely; con or fast-talk.

Yenta
: Nosy, gossipy person.

By 1961, Jack Paar was one of the most celebrated stars in America. Who would have suspected that his job was making him sick?

E
ND OF THE ROAD

One of the gifts of a skilled performer is the ability to make a difficult task seem effortless, to make it seem like anyone could do it.

So when Jack Paar announced in late 1961 that he was quitting “The Tonight Show” after only five years as host, viewers were surprised. Why would he give up such a great job? After all, he was such a natural at it.

But behind the scenes, it was a different story: people were amazed he’d lasted as long as he did.

BUTTERFLIES

Few people who watched Paar delivering his monologue and talking to guests understood how grueling an experience it was for him:

• Rather than just wing it through his monologues, Paar committed them to memory each night before going to bed by writing them out in longhand, over and over again, until he knew every word by heart. The process often took hours.

• He began to show serious signs of stress: he mumbled, washed his hands compulsively, and paced for hours worrying about the show.

• But the biggest secret was that, despite all his years as a performer, Paar had never gotten over his stage fright. “Jack used to duck under his desk in between commercials and throw up because he was so nervous,” recalls Lew Hunter, the director of programming at NBC in the early 1960s. “It was amazing to watch him. That man went through hell to entertain people, and he’d already been on the air over two years when he was still doing that.”

As Paar’s tenure neared its end, he described his feelings about leaving. “I can’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of relief that the ordeal is nearly over,” he said. “The end is in sight at last, a release from days of living on my nerve ends and nights of sheer terror, going out before an audience of millions of viewers armed with nothing but a few notes….There never was a moment when I wasn’t scared to death.”

CHOOSING A REPLACEMENT

Two people were under serious consideration for Paar’s job: Merv Griffin, host of the NBC game show “Play Your Hunch,” and Johnny Carson, host of “Who Do You Trust?” on ABC.

In the end, of course, NBC chose Carson. They figured that like Paar, Carson was a strong ad-libber and would be able to keep the show moving. They had no idea how good a choice they’d made.

For Part VI, “He-e-ere’s Johnny,” turn to
page 359
.

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RANDOM ORIGINS

The Jacuzzi

In 1943, Candido Jacuzzi’s fifteen-month-old son suddenly contracted rheumatoid arthritis. The boy was in constant pain; the only thing that made him feel better was hydrotherapy treatments he got in the hospital. Candido decided to build a device that would enable him to have treatments at home. At the time his company, Jacuzzi Bros, Inc., was one of the world’s largest manufacturers of submersible pumps. He adapted one so it would work in his bathtub. In 1955, they began manufacturing them as whirlpool baths. They were sold through drugstores at first—but when Hollywood discovered them, they became a symbol of luxury.

The Thimble

“The thimble was originally called a ‘thumb bell’ by the English, because it was worn on the thumb; then it was referred to as a thumble, and finally its present name. It was a Dutch invention, and was first brought to England in 1695.”

—from
Origins,
by J. Braude

Here are three more stories of people who found something valuable. It could happen to you…

A
HIDDEN VALUE

The Find:
An 1830 painting

Where It Was Found:
At an auction

The Story:
In the mid-1990s, Wanda Bell paid $25 for an old print depicting the signing of the Declaration of Independence. One day, as she was cleaning the print, she noticed something underneath it. She removed it…and found an oil painting of a man. Bell was curious to know more about it. In August 1997, she heard that an “antiques roadshow” was offering free appraisals with experts from Sotheby’s, so she took the painting there. Their assessment: It’s an early portrait painted by a famous New England artist named Sheldon Peck. Estimated value: $250,000.

A ROLL OF FILM

The Find:
The pilot show of “I Love Lucy”

Where It Was Found:
Under a bed

The Story:
In 1949, CBS offered Lucille Ball her own TV show, to be based on her successful radio program, “My Favorite Husband.” She agreed…as long as they’d let her real-life husband, Desi Arnaz, co-star. CBS called the idea preposterous. “Who’d believe you were married to a Cuban bandleader?” they said.

Lucy was determined. She and Desi decided to create a live show and take it on the road to prove that audiences would accept them together. “Desi moved quickly to assemble a first-rate vaudeville act,” write Steven Coyne Sanders and Tom Gilbert in their book,
Desilu.

      
He called in an old friend, the renowned international Spanish clown Pepito, to devise some physical-comedy sketch material. Pepito rigorously coached the couple, as Desi recalled, “eight to ten hours a day” at the Coronado Hotel in San Diego.

The stage show was a huge success, so CBS agreed to film a sitcom pilot. The synopsis: “Ricky goes to a TV audition. Pepito the Clown, due to an accident, fails to appear and Lucy takes his place for the show.” It was filmed on March 2,1951.

“I Love Lucy,” of course, became one of the most successful TV programs in history. But along the way, the pilot episode was lost. Fans and TV historians tried over the years to locate it, but it appeared to be gone for good. Then one day in 1989, Pepito’s 84-year-old widow (he’d died in 1975) looked under a bed in her Orange County home and came across a can of film labeled “Lucy-Desi-Pepito” audition. It was the long-lost “Lucy” pilot. Desi, it turns out, had given it to Pepito as a thank-you for his help. The film, with an estimated value of over $ 1 million, was quickly turned into a TV special and home video.

A LUCKY MISTAKE

The Find:
A unique coin

Where It Was Found:
At a flea market

The Story:
In 1970, Guy Giamo came across an interesting 1969 penny at a Northern California flea market. “What made it intriguing,” reported the
San Francisco Chronicle
, “was that it seemed to be a ‘double die’ stamping, a Bureau of the Mint manufacturing error that gave the legends
Liberty
and
In God We Trust
a blurred, double-image look.”

There are a lot of double-dies from 1955, worth more than $500 apiece. But double-die coins are easy to fake, and many are counterfeit. Giamo bought it anyway. Cost: about $100.

In 1978, he sent it to the U.S. Mint to find out if it was real. A few months later a Secret Service agent called and said simply: “The Treasury Department has determined your coin to be counterfeit, and it will be confiscated and destroyed.” “That’s it?” Giamo asked. “Affirmative,” the agent replied, and hung up.

But that’s not the end. A year later, Giamo was surprised by
another
call from the Treasury Department. “What the hell do you want now?” he asked bitterly. “We have a coin for you,” he was told. Someone had re-examined his penny before it was melted down, and decided it was genuine. “We goofed,” they told him.

Giamo’s coin is the only double-die 1969-S penny in existence. Its estimated value: as much as $50,000.

More of the annual Top 10 TV shows of the past 50 years.

1979-1980

(1) 60 Minutes

(2) Three’s Company

(3) M*A*S*H

(4) Alice

(5) Dallas

(6) Flo

(7) (tie) The Jeffersons

(7) (tie) The Dukes of Hazzard

(9) That’s Incredible

(10) One Day at a Time

1980-1981

(1) Dallas

(2) 60 Minutes

(3) The Dukes of Hazzard

(4) The Love Boat

(5) Private Benjamin

(6) M*A*S*H

(7) House Calls

(8) The Jeffersons

(9) (tie) The Two of Us

(9) (tie) Little House on the Prairie

1981-1982

(1) Dallas

(2) 60 Minutes

(3) The Jeffersons

(4) (tie) Joanie Loves Chachi

(4) (tie) Three’s Company

(6) Alice

(7) (tie) The Dukes of Hazzard

(7) (tie) Too Close for Comfort

(9) ABC Monday Night Movie

(10) M*A*S*H

1982-1983

(1) 60 Minutes

(2) Dallas

(3) (tie) M*A*S*H

(3) (tie) Magnum, P.I.

(5) Dynasty

(6) Three’s Company

(7) Simon & Simon

(8) Falcon Crest

(9) The Love Boat

(10) (tie) The A Team

(10) (tie) NFL Monday Night Football

1983-1984

(1) Dallas

(2) 60 Minutes

(3) Dynasty

(4) The A Team

(5) Simon & Simon

(6) Magnum, P.I.

(7) Falcon Crest

(8) Kate & Allie

(9) Hotel

(10) Cagney & Lacey

1984-1985

(1) Dynasty

(2) Dallas

(3) The Cosby Show

(4) 60 Minutes

(5) Family Ties

(6) The A Team

(7) Simon & Simon

(8) Murder, She Wrote

(9) Knots Landing

(10) Falcon Crest; Crazy Like a Fox

BRI member Sid Morrison found this in
Harper’s
magazine, and sent it our way. We enjoyed it so much that we decided to reprint it.

Here’s how
Harper’s
introduced this excerpt: “From an interview with Pema Jones, a 13-year-old Tibetan lama, in the Spring issue of
CyberSangha: The Buddhist Alternative Journal.
Jones, who is known as Rinpoche (“Precious One”), was born in India to a Tibetan mother and an American father; he lived in a Tibetan monastery until he was 7. He now lives in Wyoming, and is one of the youngest Buddhist teachers in the United
States. The
interview was conducted by Chris Helm.”

Chris Helm:
It must be hard enough to be a 13-year-old boy in America, not to mention a Tibetan lama. How do your friends and family treat your connection with the Dharma?

Pema Jones:
It’s kind of weird. I have 2 older brothers, and they tease me about it. They call me “shrimpoche.” The kids at school don’t know I’m a lama. I would never tell them.

Helm:
Why not?

Jones:
I get dissed enough as it is just being Asian. They call me names like “nip” and “gook.” It’s not like when I was growing up in India. Everyone here in Wyoming is white. I consider it a good day when some goof in a pickup truck doesn’t try to run me over.

Helm:
How do you deal with people trying to hurt you?

Jones:
It’s pretty safe around here, but we Asians need to stick together. Some of my best friends in our gang are Chinese. It’s strange to have Chinese friends when my family has been treated so badly by the Chinese, but this is America—I gotta live here with my own karma. Some skinhead doesn’t care whether I’m Tibetan or Chinese. He just wants to stomp my head.

Helm:
You’re in a gang?