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His mother and Billy Graham think he should have been a minister. He himself thinks perhaps he should have tried to be a missionary, like Albert Schweitzer. Some of television's unseen but much-heard word merchants think he would have made a fine gag writer. Walter Winchell plainly thinks he should have been put into an ablative nose cone on a one-way rocket trip to the moon. Sponsors of late movies think he should have stayed in daytime television, and all across the land, people who like to go to sleep early think he should have stood in bed — and given them a chance to get to bed too.
But about 5,000,000 fans — along with happy NBC executives, satisfied advertisers and fellow entertainers whom his show helped to success — think that Jack Paar should be precisely what he is: a first-rate, refreshingly different TV performer who in a single year has come out of nowhere and made a huge hit of a special kind of entertainment. What Paar brings into American living rooms five nights a week is both more and less than a comedy, variety or chatter show — it is a special show business blend that Paartisans consider uniquely satisfying.
He is one of a whole new class of TV-age entertainers—the just-talkers. But his appeal has little in common with Steve Allen's brash sidewalk zaniness or Arthur Godfrey's somnolent saloon drone. When Paar appears on screen, there is an odd, hesitant hitch to his stride. For a split self-effacing second he is a late arrival, worried that he has blundered into the wrong party. His shy smile—he has developed one of the shiest smiles in the business—seems to ask a question: "Is this applause for me?" Then he remembers: he is really the host. Almost diffidently he pulls up a chair. What Paar calls his "cute little Presbyterian face" beams puckishly. With his voice wavering between a whisper and a sigh, he begins to engage his guests in quiet conversation.
He is surrounded by a band, singers, guest comedians, skits. But what really gives the Paar show its shape is the L formed by a scarred desk and a well-worn couch. Behind the desk, Jack is barricaded; the couch supports a "panel" of regular or irregular conversationalists. Says Paar: "The show is nothing. Just me and people talking. Historic naturalness. We don't act, we just defend ourselves."