After Jerry Lester came Steve Allen on the Tonight show.   Allen brought intelligent humor and a wonderful musical presence. THEN came Paar.

He created, to me, the most intelligent and viewable talk show ever. No pandering and no hype for product by the guests. He was emotional, clever, and--yes, sometimes irritating as hell---and other times you empathized with him. Paar brought the likes of The Beatles, JFK, RFK, RMN, Jonathan Winters, Liza Minnelli (under a pseudonym insisted on by her mom--and in a wheelchair), and the wit and charm of Oscar Levant, Alexander King, Dodie Goodman, among so many others. Let us not forget Cliff Arquette---you know who's dad he is.

Jack Paar wept effusively on stage and laughed at his emotionalism. He cried about the comments about his daughter's weight problems, he cried about his job---you name it---he wept.

In the end, however, his turned out to be the basis for all late night talk shows--and, sadly, they have evolved into product pitches and short visits by guests with no in depth conversation. Looking beatiful and saying nada.

Yes, the hosts (Leno/Letterman/etc;) are clever. But extended interesting conversations with guests are not on==forgive the pun--on a par with Paar.   Dick Cavett, one of his writers, probably carried the Paar tradition on for a short time on ABC

Bill Hahn