Review

"Ernie Kovacs rehearses his confusion." says one TV producer, "but Jack Paar just creates it." Last week Funnyman Paar, whom critics have long accused of living in winter off the nut he stores up in summer, was awash in the unrehearsed confusion of a sprawling, winter-weight marathon ballyhooed by NBC as the "new" Tonight. Contorting his rubber-band lips around his familiar pipestem and some spottily diverting japes, neat, dumpling-cheeked Jack Paar, 39, glibly scared up a little offbeat fun and flapdoodle--something that the gossipists who succeeded Kovacs and Steve Allen were notably unable to do. Despite first-week jitters, technical flaps, occasional lapses into tedium, and a mummer's parade of station-break plugs (Dorothy Kilgallen, Billy Graham, Coty Curl-Set), it looked as if Comedian Paar might be able to realize NBC's hopes of keeping TV "live" after 11, when many U.S. homes are surfeited with aged Hollywood movies. Boss Bob Sarnoff was so pleased that he sent Paar a pair of huge gold cuff links, and Program Chief "Mannie" Sacks sent "congratulations with a few suggestions."

As he had on previous shows, Paar complained on camera about cue mix-ups, improper offstage signals and placement of cameras. Casting a withering glance at a cameraman whose lenses were not quite up to Paar, he smirked: "I have no makeup on my belt buckle tonight." And when one show became a shambles, he ad-libbed: "Friends, aren't you glad you tuned in; we've been rehearsing for nine minutes." Some of Paar's gentle mockery was a replay of old summer material, e.g., his radio-announcer bloopers ("We have just the furniture to seat your nudes"), and reliable chestnuts like "Bring something round--we'll have a ball." But Paar's low-toned impudence and highhanded wit often came off engagingly. Reading off late news bulletins, he announced deadpan that Kathryn Murray, the indefatigable hostess of The Arthur Murray Party (TIME, July 22), "will not fight Floyd Patterson for the heavyweight championship of the world." He ribaldly admired the way Golfer Louise Suggs "drops her shorts on each green" and suggested to Hollywood Composer Dimitri Tiomkin some popular lyrics for new movies: "You are a mess, you are my Sweet Smell of Success"; "The day they hanged my daddy, mother was just A Face in the Crowd." To the dismay of NBC brass, he lashed out at the New York World-Telegram's Critic Harriet Van Home because she accused him of a lack of brashness ("I don't know what that broad meant"). If Paar can keep the fun and games going, he would like to call his new show Son of Tonight.

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