From The Vault:The night Jack Paar walked off “The Tonight Show” The Kenner Star September 2011

HEAR JACK PAAR'S ACTUAL WALKOUT SPEECH AFTER THE "READ MORE" JUMP IN THIS COLUMN!

        With Jay Leno and David Letterman, the Princes of late night television, its hard for my kids to realize that title was held by Johnny Carson for more than 30 years before Jay and David.  For Baby Boomers, (anyone born toward the end of World War II), the King of Late Night wasn’t Johnny Carson. It was a guy named Jack Paar. 

    Jack was named the host of “The Tonight Show” when Steve Allen’s tenure ended in 1957.  While Allen was funny, Jack Paar was funny... and controversial.  He was not afraid to take on the biggies, like the most feared show biz columnist of the time Walter Winchell or even Ed Sullivan.  But his biggest fight was with his bosses at NBC.  On the evening of February 11th 1960,  Jack Paar walked off “The Tonight Show.” He left because NBC had censored a joke from his show the night before. The joke was about a  British lady and a water closet. The joke wouldn’t shock a third grade class today but NBC thought it was offensive and chopped it, all four and a half minutes of it. As a teenager, I saw that show and wondered why NBC all of a sudden cut away to a five minute newscast. I knew something had to be up.
    I remember staying up late the next  night to see the show, as it had been on the news that Jack had walked out. America knew this before the show aired at 11:15pm eastern, because, a couple of years before, they had started recording the shows in the early evening using a modern marvel called videotape. 
    Paar was on for about five minutes when he said, “I’m leaving “The Tonight Show.” (Audience sighs in shock).  “There must be a better way of making a living than this,” and he got up and walked off leaving sidekick Hugh Downs with 85 minutes to fill. The walkout caused a sensation. It was all people talked about for three weeks until Jack finally came back after NBC apologized.
    What was the big deal about the joke? The joke, itself, was mild, even for 1960.It has been printed many times in the following years, but there is apparently no recording of it anywhere. More than likely the honchos at the network just hit “delete.” In fact, the show on which Jack made his triumphal return does not seem to exist either.  Most of Paar’s “Tonight” shows were taped over by the network so the tapes could be used again. Gives you an idea of the mentality of the executives who made the decision to cut the joke. Well, I guess your curiosity must be hanging by a thread right about now wondering what the heck all the fuss was about, so without further ado, here’s the joke America never heard:

Do they take me for a simpleton? From The Vault: November 2010 Kenner Star

    I am looking at a news article from 1988 on the USA TODAY website. The headline reads: “Have you noticed products are getting smaller, but prices remain the same?”
    Stop the presses!
    Excuse me?
    Can you say “hypocrite?”
    The article itself was actually first published in the Los Angeles Times and reads as follows: “Across the supermarket, manufacturers are trimming packages, nipping a half-ounce off that bar of soap, narrowing the width of toilet paper and shrinking the size of ice cream containers. For example, the makers of Skippy peanut butter added a large dimple to the bottom of the jar that allowed them to cut 1.7 ounces without any obvious changes to the packaging. The question is whether consumers who notice they are getting less for their money will stop buying the product.”
    While this news article was not a USA TODAY investigative piece, the mere fact they ran the story is ironic here in 2010. I mean, have you picked up a USA TODAY lately?

From the Vault: Nixon and Me The Kenner Star August 2001

    Recently on CNN, Larry King did his show from the Nixon Library and home in California with Nixon’s daughter Julie.  And as I watched them walk through the exhibits –  on Nixon’s peace overtures to China; his attempts to bring an “honorable end” to the war in Viet Nam; his involvement in the Watergate cover up that led to his political demise – I thought about the time I encountered Mr. Nixon.  
    It was 1963, and America was still coming off the most peaceful decade in a long time: the 50s. In the 60s, even as we tried to forget World War II, we entered the cold war with the Russians, and damn near had a nuclear war over missiles in Cuba, but President Jack Kennedy saved us,  and we dodged the warhead. So life was looking pretty good when I discovered Richard Nixon was in Syracuse, where I started in radio, for a Republican Party conference. I vowed nothing would stop me from getting an exclusive interview with the former Vice President who had lost to Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election.

The Ed Clancy Weekend

This is the only place you can find this 15 minute presentation of The Ed Clancy Weekend. Memories of Buddy Holly, Mel Blanc, the Beatles, the Ed Clancy Radio Cartoon and much more in just 15 minutes. Sit back and enjoy really good radio.

From The Vault: A Night To Remember - The Kenner Star 2000

            A lot of people in the New Orleans area know about Willie Pastrano, the light heavyweight boxing champ who died in 1997. I had a chance to meet Willie when I did my radio show on WWL-AM.  One of the best conversations I ever had.  I remember another boxer named Willie, and knowing him led me to one of the most memorable nights of my life.

            His name was Willie Pep. He was a featherweight out of Hartford, Connecticut  and he won more professional boxing matches than anyone before or since: 230 out of 241 fights.  He might have won more if a chartered plane crash hadn’t almost killed him. It merely slowed him down. There was no more exciting boxer than Willie Pep. His fights with Sandy Saddler are regarded by many as the wildest ever held.

From The Vault: The Unsinkable Edwin Edwards - The Kenner Star 2010

    I cannot remember the first time I met the man, but I do remember the first time I ever appeared with him on stage. I had received a call from a member of a local women’s business organization, who said her group was staging a mock awards program to make fun of New Orleans media types. They were calling it the Eddy Awards because they wanted me to co-host it with Governor Edwin Edwards. I said, “Does he know about this?”
    The lady replied, “Sure, he loves the idea.”
    So that was how I found myself on a stage in front of a rather large audience doing standup with the Grey Fox (that was one of the more polite nicknames given to the man usually known as Fast Eddy). The show was such a hit they asked us back to do it again the next year.

From The Vault: Scrapbook Memories- The Kenner Star 2009

    This past April 16th marks 36 years since I drove my ‘68 Volkswagen into the city of New Orleans, ready to go to work in radio. I recently came across a file folder I have kept over the years containing items connected with celebrities who have passed through New Orleans, or were gracious enough to take the time to talk to me by phone on the radio. So without further ado [I have never had any idea what an “ado” is], I will ask you to sit back, relax and travel with me through 36 years of time  I do need you to believe me when I tell you I am literally going to go through this memorial mess as I write this column. There will be no arranging in chronological order, no sorting, no sifting. I will simply relate to you a little something about each piece of memorabilia as I come to it. It’s a “live” show, folks.
    Now, the first thing we have instantly makes a liar out of me. It’s not from New Orleans, and not from the last 36 years. It’s a letter, dated July 7, 1970, from World War II hero Audie Murphy.