A network late-night host resigning without warning in the middle of a show might seem unthinkable nowadays, but that’s exactly what happened 65 years ago tonight.
Not even three years into his tenure as the second host of NBC’s Tonight show, Jack Paar had grown weary of filling over seven hours of airtime each week. Ergo, it took only one run-in with the NBC censors to push him over the edge.
Paar’s abrupt exit on February 11, 1960 was brought on by the fact that a fairly long and somewhat off-color joke of his had been cut from the previous night’s show without his knowledge.
Said joke was built around the premise of a Swiss resort employee responding to a letter from a future English guest who wished to know if a W.C. would be available for her use. Taking the acronym to stand for “wayside chapel” rather than “water closet,” the Swiss man offered to save her a seat in the nearest W.C. (several miles from her room) where she would be in full view of hundreds of people.
The humorous story, which Paar claimed to have heard from a friend whose niece heard it from her teacher, was completely excised from the episode and replaced with news coverage. The very next night, Paar sat at his desk and spoke to his audience about the incident for almost eight minutes, saying, “If you would read some of the newspapers, you’d think that I had committed a terrible obscenity.”
Paar went on to clarify his general opposition toward “purposely plotted risqué material” while arguing that the “very adult and very funny” story he told was perfectly appropriate for a late night audience. He also perceived that those who heard the joke live “laughed like they haven’t laughed, perhaps, in some time.”
“The whole thing has gotten out of hand,” Paar added, “but the damage has been done, not only to [the Tonight show] but to me personally… I have been wrestling with my conscience all day.” Before passionately lambasting the journalists who had sensationalized the incident, he mentioned that his suggestion to assuage controversy by airing the cut joke had been shot down by NBC.
“I’m leaving the Tonight show,” Paar firmly stated before tearfully continuing, “There must be a better way of making a living than this. There’s a way of entertaining people without being constantly involved in some form of controversy, which is on me all the time. It’s rough on my wife and child, and I don’t need it… I believe I was let down by this network at a time when I could have used their help.”
With that, Paar stood up, shook hands with his announcer Hugh Downs, and walked off the set. Although Downs (and only Downs) had been informed of Paar’s intention to quit, he did not take him seriously.
In his own address to that night’s audience, Downs said, “I told Jack when he first mentioned to me what he intended to do that I wished he wouldn’t do it… It’s my hope that this isn’t final. Jack does things hastily at times that he does not hold onto… I hope it can be put in his mind to come back to this show, because he built it.”
Those sentiments were repeated several times as Downs filled in for Paar over the next hour, welcoming supportive guests Orson Bean, Shelley Berman, and Genevieve. Downs would host the show’s next eight episodes before passing the reins to actress Arlene Francis for a week.
After attracting more controversy than he would have if he hadn’t quit, Paar returned to his post on March 7, quipping, “I believe my last words were that there must be a better way of making a living than this. Well, I’ve looked, and there isn’t.”
The continued physical and mental demands of the job led Paar to permanently step down from the Tonight show about two years later, on March 30, 1962. In that case, he made sure to give his colleagues and viewers plenty of notice.
