Jack Paar was crying.
Actually, he was doing more than that. On February 11, 1960, the man who basically invented the modern talk show looked into the lens of an NBC camera and told millions of Americans he was done. "I am leaving The Tonight Show," he said, his voice thick with a mix of exhaustion and genuine fury. "There must be a better way of making a living than this."
Then, he just walked off.
He left his announcer, Hugh Downs, sitting there looking like he’d just seen a ghost. It wasn't a stunt. It wasn't a "bit." It was the most famous crack-up in the history of late-night television. And the crazy part? It was all over a joke about a toilet.
The Water Closet Incident that Changed Everything
The Jack Paar Tonight Show era wasn't just about comedy. It was about raw, unfiltered personality. Before Paar took over in 1957, the show—then just called Tonight—was a variety mess. Steve Allen had been great, but after he left, NBC tried a weird news-magazine format called America After Dark. It flopped. Hard.
When Paar stepped in, he brought a desk, a sofa, and a temperament that could change faster than a New England winter. He was "urbanity" personified, but he was also deeply thin-skinned.
The 1960 walkout happened because NBC censors cut a four-minute segment from the previous night's tape. Paar had told a story about an English lady in Switzerland who confused "W.C." (Water Closet, a polite term for a bathroom) with a "Wayside Chapel." The joke involves a schoolmaster telling the lady the W.C. seats 229 people and is open on Sundays.
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By today’s standards, it’s harmless. In 1960? NBC thought it was "filthy." They didn't tell him they were cutting it; they just bleeped him out.
Paar felt betrayed. He felt the network didn't have his back. So, he quit. He stayed gone for a month, leaving the network in a total panic. When he finally returned on March 7, 1960, he walked out, stood there for a beat, and said: "As I was saying before I was interrupted..."
The crowd went nuts.
Why the Jack Paar Tonight Show Still Matters
Most people think Johnny Carson invented the late-night format. Honestly, Carson just perfected what Paar built. Paar was the one who realized that people didn't want to see a parade of vaudeville acts at 11:30 PM. They wanted conversation.
He didn't want actors just "plugging" a movie. He wanted "literate raconteurs." He wanted people who could talk.
His guest list was a wild, intellectual fever dream:
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- John F. Kennedy (while he was still a Senator).
- Richard Nixon.
- William F. Buckley Jr.
- Muhammad Ali (paired with Liberace, just to see what would happen).
- Fidel Castro (Paar actually went to Havana in 1959 to interview him, which caused a massive political stir).
He had a "stock company" of regulars that modern viewers wouldn't recognize but who were superstars back then. There was Oscar Levant, a brilliant pianist who was openly neurotic and talked about his time in mental institutions—unheard of for the 50s. There was Cliff Arquette, who played the folksy "Charley Weaver."
Paar’s show was the first time television felt dangerous. You didn't tune in to see if the jokes were good; you tuned in to see if Jack would have a breakdown or start a fight with a newspaper columnist. He famously feuded with Walter Winchell and Dorothy Kilgallen, using his monologue to tear them apart.
The "I Kid You Not" Factor
You've probably heard the phrase "I kid you not." That was Paar. He didn't invent it—Humphrey Bogart used it in The Caine Mutiny—but Paar turned it into a national catchphrase. It signaled his supposed sincerity.
He was a man of intense contradictions. He was a homebody who hated the spotlight, yet he was the most famous person on TV. He was a sentimentalist who could cry over a song, but he was also a "controversy magnet" who broadcasted from the Berlin Wall right as it was going up in 1961.
The Transition to Carson and the End of an Era
By 1962, Paar was just tired. The nightly grind—which was then 105 minutes long, not the 60 minutes we see today—had chewed him up. He wanted to travel. He wanted to see his daughter, Randy, grow up.
He left the Jack Paar Tonight Show permanently in March 1962. NBC gave the keys to Johnny Carson, but Carson couldn't start for several months because of a contract dispute with ABC. During that gap, a series of guest hosts filled in. One of them was a young guy named Merv Griffin.
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When Carson finally took over, he moved the show to California and made it "showbiz." Paar had kept it "New York intellectual."
It's sort of sad how little of Paar’s work survives. Because the show was often taped on high-quality video (it was one of the first shows to go to color in 1960), the tapes were expensive. NBC simply wiped them and reused them. Most of what we have now are grainy black-and-white "kinescopes."
Lessons from the Paar Method
If you’re a creator or a communicator today, there’s actually a lot to learn from how Jack handled his five-year reign. He proved that authenticity—even the messy, volatile kind—wins over polished perfection every single time.
- Focus on the "Raconteur": Find people who have stories, not just products to sell.
- The Power of the Sidekick: Hugh Downs wasn't just an announcer; he was the "sane" foil to Paar’s "crazy." Every great lead needs a steady hand nearby.
- Don't Hide the Seams: When Paar was upset, he showed it. In a world of filtered Instagram feeds, that kind of raw honesty is still a superpower.
What most people get wrong about the Jack Paar Tonight Show is thinking it was just a precursor to what we have now. In many ways, it was more sophisticated. It was a show where a President could sit next to a neurotic pianist and a French comedian, and they would all have a real, unscripted conversation.
If you want to see the roots of modern media, stop looking at TikTok and start looking at those old, grainy clips of a man in a skinny tie, sitting behind a desk, telling the world he’d had enough.
To really understand the legacy, your next move should be tracking down the few surviving clips of the 1960 return speech. Watching the tension in his face as he delivers that "As I was saying" line is a masterclass in tension and release. You can also look into the memoirs of Dick Cavett, who was a writer for Paar and captures the chaotic, brilliant energy of those writers' rooms better than anyone else.