Jack Paar height - How tall is Jack Paar?

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 409-411. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007.

In 1998 he underwent triple heart bypass surgery, complicated by an embolism discovered during the operation. In March of 2003 he suffered a mild stroke.

After five years of hosting, he tired of the routine and switched to a weekly NBC variety series in 1962 that flopped. He next purchased a television station in Poland Springs, Maine, and sold it several years later.

In 1960 he abruptly quit the show four minutes into programming after discovering that a joke of his that included the words "WC", meaning water closet (a polite term for a flush toilet) had been censored. As he left his desk, he said, "I am leaving [The Tonight Show Starring Jack Parr (1957)]. There must be a better way of making a living than this." Several weeks later, after a formal apology from the NBC network executives, he triumphantly returned to a standing ovation from the audience. The first words he spoke were, "As I was saying before I was interrupted . . . ".

Became host of the Tonight Show in 1957 and quickly view very popular with viewers. So popular, in fact, that the show was renamed "The Jack Paar Show" after only one year of hosting. Paar's trademark was his great ability to engage in conversation with guests that went above and beyond the generic "chat" that other hosts never rose above. He was very emotional and was known to weep on camera at times. Once he walked off the show in a huff when the network censored a joke he made referring to a "water closet". On his program he developed a regular roster of favorite guests including Zsa Zsa Gabor, Cliff Arquette, Genevieve, Hans Conreid, Hermoine Gingold, Genevieve, and Dody Goodman.

One of his first TV hosting jobs was on the game show Up to Paar (1952). Around the same time, he had a minor role as Marilyn Monroe's boyfriend in Love Nest (1951), one of her early films.