Jack Paar and the “Water Closet Joke” controversy
Original Airdates: Feb. 7-10, 2025
TVC 677.1: An encore presentation of an edition of The Sounds of Lost Television that originally aired in February 2012 in which Phil Gries plays audio highlights from the Feb. 11, 1960 broadcast of The Tonight Show, the night when host Jack Paar walked off the air after NBC had edited out a joke that Paar had told the night before without his consent. Topics this segment include how Paar was the first host of The Tonight Show to pre-record his show earlier in the day (prior to Paar, The Tonight Show had always aired live), plus a discussion of how the controversy that led to Paar’s walk-off can be boiled down to who controlled the content of The Tonight Show: Paar, the host, or NBC, the broadcaster? Audio courtesy ATVAudio.com.
Hugh Downs on the impulsive nature of Jack Paar
Original Airdates: Feb. 7-10, 2025
TVC 677.2: From February 2012: Phil Gries shares more audio highlights from the Feb. 11, 1960 edition of The Tonight Show, including on-air reaction from co-host Hugh Downs and guests Orson Bean and Shelley Berman in the moments after host Jack Paar had walked off the air to protest NBC’s decision to edit out a joke that Paar had told on the previous night’s show. Also in this segment: Phil discusses that the role that Jonathan Winters played in convincing Paar to return to The Tonight Show (which Paar did on Mar. 7, 1960), plus Ed plays an clip from the interview that he and Phil did with Hugh Downs in September 2013 in Downs reveals that, while he knew that Paar was going to quit prior to the taping of the Feb. 11, 1960 broadcast, he did not expect Paar to walk off at the beginning of the show. Audio courtesy ATVAudio.com.
