The Return of St. Paarnard

"Five-four-three-two-one." Announcer Hugh Downs did the Canaveral countdown, then launched his rocket: "Here's Jack!" Into public view again loomed Jack Paar, returning to his bereft nighttime audience after his headline-making walkout (TIME, Feb. 22). Home from three weeks in the wise old Orient, he was full of sweetness and contrition. He gave NBC another chance, despite its censorship of the now celebrated W.C. joke, and he admitted that his tantrum had been childish and emotional. "I don't really need enemies," he said, "when I have me." Then he went right after his enemies, most of whom are members of the press.

Foam & Tears. John Wilkes Booth had turned up in the studio that night carrying a press card, Paar informed the audience. As for the disputed joke, "I only talked to you about a water closet; Walter Winchell would have peeked through the hole and told you who was there." Later he called Winchell lecherous and "a silly old man who could not admit under oath that he writes his own columns," added a few more phrases so barbarous that NBC cut them from the tape--with Paar's assent. (Winchell counterattacked toward week's end, wrote: "St. Paarnard is a mean, sick and malicious little man.")

No. 2 on Paar's list was Dorothy Kilgallen, like Winchell a Hearst columnist, and in Paar's opinion, "a puppet. She never moves her lips when she talks. She must use Novocain lipstick." Frank Sinatra spat on the floor when he mentioned her on his show, but she only made Paar foam at the mouth.

Inviting the Chicago Sun-Times's Irv Kupcinet and the New York Herald Tribune's Hy Gardner to grill him on the air, Paar answered their questions with the air of a do-it-yourself martyr. At one point he shed tears, telling about his ten-year-old daughter's problem of being overweight and how New York World-Telegram and Sun Columnist Harriet Van Home had called attention to it (when Randy Paar made one of her frequent appearances with papa). "Who the hell is that broad," said Paar, "to talk about my daughter's weight?"

Almost a Monk. Baring his troubles to an absorbed audience, Paar for three days turned 25 million people into one agglomerate headshrinker. All was not neurotic, however. Much was good, sharp fun, whether he was saying, "This is the Tonight show coming to you in living black and blue," or "I thought of joining a monastery, but I didn't want to live in." A wholesome Paar suggestion: the initials should be dropped from all W. C. Fields films shown on TV.

Finally retracting his nails, he promised to restore straight entertainment to the show and "give up Winchell and Kilgallen for Lent." Ten times over he had said about all there was to say, except how glad he was to be working again for NBWC.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.