Lots of attention is being paid to Paar in these comments but the real focus should be on these early heroes of the gay rights movement. They are brave and (surprisingly, for the times) 100% confident in their sense of self and their right to power. Thank you!
I recall this when it was broadcast; that's how old I am. In 1973, Jack Paar was desperate for a comeback, and it was his style to set up this kind of kerfuffle and let it unfold. DIck Cavett wrote that Jonathan Winters wondered aloud if Jack was "deep in the closet," and Winters may have been onto something. In another twist, a co-worker of mine told me he ran into Winters in a gay bar in the 70s. My friend: "Mr. Winters, I'm a big fan of yours." The man replied he was often mistaken for Winters. Me: "Was it Jonathan Winters?" My friend: "It was Winters. No question about it."
That's great! In that day, gay men (and women) didn't have the comfort of coming out. My cousin & I were born 2 weeks apart, in the early 60s & as a teen, he told me he was gay. Until we were in our 30s (in the 90s), he finally came out to everyone. I always felt bad for him. Now...he is a STUNNING transvestite. More beautiful than me! :) So, now I have someone to share my make up with & I love it and HER!
Paar appears so out of touch talking, or should I say, arguing with these gay people. Paar is trying to make his comeback to television controversial. But he falls flat with this type of banter.
Man, Paar was an asshole. "We have a right to be offended when you people go to far". Meanwhile, he revels in saying derogatory names, bullying, interrupting, and condescending. Kudos to those brave and articulate guests!
Yes. I was young, and trying to make a life and a future then. People like Jack Paar made this country a living hell for people like me. There are haters born much more recently and their age has little to do with it. Of course he was a human being too, and there are good things to say about him too. Just not about this.
People are complicated. He had many admirable traits but believed a lot of prejudices he was raised with at a time when no one was publicly challenging them.
@@nickbigd Clearly he was homophobic. He was also born in 1918. What do you expect? You can like other aspects of him without sending him to the "dustbin of history".
@@MarkEliasGrant It's hard to find other aspects to like after seeing this and reading his homophobic writing. PS Not everyone born in that era behaved this way.
@@nickbigd You're right. Most people from that era were ambivalent, not virulently homophobic and anti communist even. My dad graduated high school in 1959, I know for a fact most people just didn't talk about these issues.
@@MarkEliasGrant I agree, and that shows the importance of posting these conversations; we learn from history and hopefully will one day learn not to treat anyone with contempt
I adored Jack Paar, but it’s so patently obvious he was a closeted gay man. For all I know he didn’t even realize he was. Maybe he never acted out on it. But every indication is, he was. I say this as a gay woman. Paar was as fey as fey gets. Come on. Still adore the guy. At least they were trying to talk about it. What bravery for these folks to attempt to talk about it, despite his hostility. God what an awful time it was before we attained our rights. I don’t miss it at all.
It gives me no joy to say that rights that are attained can get taken away. Two words: Supreme Court. That said, you make a good point that the object of Jack's disapproval very much seems to be the object of his desire. That's often the case.
@@andrewhill4986 You don't need to be Carnak to know what's coming next: same-sex marriage is not protected by the equal protection clause, and it's up to the states.
Jack Paar would’ve been much better off if he had exited TV after his prime time NBC talk show (1962-65), which he did after stepping down from The Tonight Show. He left TV in 1965 saying that there was nobody left that he wanted to talk to. Dick Cavett was treated like shit by ABC and never really got the recognition he deserved. His show was a gem and so what if he didn’t beat Carson, ABC was at least ahead of CBS at the time and I wish his show had gone on through the 1970’s and even longer.
Recently, I was amazed while reading that Johnny Carson always thought that Dick could beat him in the ratings had ABC had a stronger group of station line-ups.
@@jimlaforte1755 I'd be flabbergasted if Johnny actually said such a thing, but maybe he was on to something. When Paar came back in '73, his first show actually beat Carson, which shows that Carson's audience was willing to stray if it found something better. But it didn't. Paar tanked quickly.
He seems so hostile about it and I hate the way he asks them a question and then talks over the top of them. Even if this was about a completely different topic it would still be so disrespectful. It's so irritating!
Paar seems to have stepped out of a time machine from 1953 into 1973, and he has no idea anything has changed. He's just kind of bewildered. He reminds me of the Ugandan "Why are you ghey?" television interviewer.
Yeah. His autobiography from the 1960s devoted a whole chapter to the threats posed by communists and homosexuals, and he was still doing "fairy" jokes in the 1970s. It's a shame, because Paar was, otherwise, a smart, engaging, funny TV host and often a good interviewer.
@stevencapsuto873 I share his dislike for communism, but it seems bizarre to me in a modern context, making LGBTQ people part of some grand conspiracy with the Soviets or whatever. Paar's career peak was before I was born, but, from the clips I have seen, he seems to have been fairly intelligent. It's a shame he was blinkered by his own personal animus towards a group he likely knew very little about.
@@julianhermanubis6800 As far as I know, Paar said nothing about LGBTQ people as a group. His remarks were just about sexual orientation (and obsessively about gay men, for some reason). Paar's conflation of homosexuality with communism was common during the Red Scare of the 1950s and 1960s. The popular myth at the time was that everyone is naturally hard-wired for heterosexuality, that homosexuality is unnatural and immoral behavior. Right wingers, especially those with a John Birch Society mindset, got it into their heads that Soviet agents were encouraging such behavior in the US in a conspiracy to destroy American civilization. As evidence, they pointed to the fact that one of the first homophile rights organizations was founded by someone who had been a communist or socialist. There's a now-astonishing quote from 1950 from the then-head of the Republican National Committee to the effect that "homosexuals are as dangerous as the actual communists," as if we were some sort of pseudocommunists by dint of who we're attracted to. Just bizarre.
@@stevencapsuto873 Ah, the John Birch Society, that explains a large part of it. I once found a stack of their magazines someone had left at a small shopping center (maybe in an attempt to gain supporters), and I think they're still into weird conspiracy theories decades later. I was flabbergasted by what i was reading. That's interesting: I had no idea about the communists converting people to be homosexual conspiracy theories. That's very interesting from a psychological point of view really. Despite the Red Scare and its abuses, I do think Soviet communism was an actual threat to the West, and the declassification of Soviet state papers since the end of the Cold War has proven they did take part in international espionage on a large scale. However, admitting this as a reality and conducting witch hunts against convenient scapegoats is completely unjustifiable.
I don't know what his issue was, but he devoted a whole chapter in his autobiography to trashing "homosexuals" and communists, so there was some sort of weird obsession going on there.
@@stevencapsuto873 The word Paar used was "fairies." Johnny Carson made the occasional gay joke, but Paar was way, way over the line. Obsession isn't exactly inappropriate to say.
@@johndalton3180 You may have heard of Frank Fay, a successful vaudevillian of the 1920s. Mostly forgotten now except for being married to Barbara Stanwyck, he had a big comeback on Broadway starring in "Harvey." (The film was made with Jimmy Stewart.) It's possible that Bob Hope patterned himself on Fay, and clearly Jack Paar did. Fay had a role in "The Love Nest," as did Paar, so they met. You can see Frank Fay right here on YT, and check out his mannerisms.
The panel mentions wanting to see gays in movies or commercials, just like anybody else. I'm sure they knew they were fighting a battle that would take a long time to win. But I wonder if they realized it was going to take FIFTY years before that would finally happen?
I was 5 yes old when that interview was broadcast, and of course I don't watch it. I have a fascination with nostalgic TV and old movies. A couple of years ago I was browsing on UA-cam, and and became interested in the old Jack Part shows and liked him,I still like watching the old programs, but never thought that could so ignorant,I find very that someone like himself who knew about Hollywood and the business of that world would be damned condescending. In a nutshell I believe he was way,way, way in back of the closet.
Does anyone know who the guests are? The one I could figure out is the bald gentleman with the mustache - Arnie Kantrowitz. He was alive when this clip was posted, but passed away January 21, 2022 at the age of 81 due to complications from COVID. According to Wikipedia, ”He came out as gay in 1970. He was an early secretary and later vice-president of the pioneering New York City group Gay Activists Alliance. In the early 1970s, he was one of the first openly gay individuals to appear on popular radio and television shows, including those of Jack Paar, Geraldo Rivera, Bill Boggs and Sally Jesse Raphael. He also appeared in several documentary films, including ”After Stonewall“ (1999), ”Positive“ (1990), ”Gay Sex in the 70s“ (2005), and ”Vito“ (2011). He was also interviewed about gay liberation and the AIDS epidemic. Kantrowitz's autobiography ”Under the Rainbow“ was published in 1977 and reprinted in 1978; a new edition appeared in 1996. It was one of the first autobiographies by a gay rights activist.“ en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnie_Kantrowitz
The guests are Nathalie Rockhill, Arnie Kantrowitz (as you said), and Bruce Voeller, from the Gay Activists Alliance of New York. Later that year, in October 1973, Voeller and Rockhill would become two of the cofounders of the National Gay Task Force (now the National LGBTQ Task Force). I think Kantrowitz was an early NGTF board member.
i always enjoyed Paar and i think it's good that he gave these people some air time but i'm disappointed to see that he's as disrespectful as he is and keeps interrupting them.
From the synopsis: "A GAA member had an early home video recorder, which is why we have this." I expect most 1973 home video recorders couldn't record color.
A lot of TVs (and possibly recorders) in the early 70s were still black and white, even if the transmission was in color. I remember watching ”Gilligan's Island“ as a child, and thinking the Skipper and Gilligan were wearing the same color shirt (because we had a B&W TV). I was startled when we went to Kmart and ”Gilligan's Island“ was playing on the color TV, and I saw that the Skipper had a blue shirt, and Gilligan had a red shirt.
The only reason Paar invited these activists to appear on the show was that he was under pressure to give airtime to an opposing point of view after years of spouting homophobic bile in print and on the air. (His autobiography even devoted an entire chapter to raging against "fairies and communists.") By the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were already a few talk show hosts who were absolutely progressive on this subject, notably Phil Donahue. And even as early as the 1950s, there were talk show hosts like Fannie Hurst who were 100% allies and supported the destigmatization of same-sex desire, the decriminalization of homosexuality, and an end to job discrimination. Hurst was quite the pioneer in treating LGB people as the experts on our own lives, rather than inviting ostensibly straight "experts" (psychologists, psychiatrists, clergy, vice-squad police, etc.) to talk about us disparagingly in the third person.
Jack Paar had a real bug up his ass about gay men (pardon the expression). His 1961 memoir has a whole homophobic chapter called "Fairies and Communists," and he once remarked that "What's ruining television today are those big productions - the fairies who come in here and sing with the big balloons. It's the fairies who are going to ruin show business." As late as the 1970s, he was still doing jokes where the mere mention that gay men exist was treated as uproarious.
This show couldn’t have been very well syndicated. I was a active tv watching adult in1973 and I would have watched Jack as I had in the past, but I never saw this.
This was Jack Paar's ABC late-night show. It aired one week per month from January to November 1973 as one of the rotating features in ABC's WIDE WORLD OF ENTERTAINMENT slot.
Lots of attention is being paid to Paar in these comments but the real focus should be on these early heroes of the gay rights movement. They are brave and (surprisingly, for the times) 100% confident in their sense of self and their right to power. Thank you!
He interrupts his guests.
I recall this when it was broadcast; that's how old I am. In 1973, Jack Paar was desperate for a comeback, and it was his style to set up this kind of kerfuffle and let it unfold. DIck Cavett wrote that Jonathan Winters wondered aloud if Jack was "deep in the closet," and Winters may have been onto something. In another twist, a co-worker of mine told me he ran into Winters in a gay bar in the 70s. My friend: "Mr. Winters, I'm a big fan of yours." The man replied he was often mistaken for Winters. Me: "Was it Jonathan Winters?" My friend: "It was Winters. No question about it."
Then informed to read thanks
That's great! In that day, gay men (and women) didn't have the comfort of coming out. My cousin & I were born 2 weeks apart, in the early 60s & as a teen, he told me he was gay. Until we were in our 30s (in the 90s), he finally came out to everyone. I always felt bad for him. Now...he is a STUNNING transvestite. More beautiful than me! :) So, now I have someone to share my make up with & I love it and HER!
Paar appears so out of touch talking, or should I say, arguing with these gay people. Paar is trying to make his comeback to television controversial. But he falls flat with this type of banter.
For 1973, I’d say he was right on the money. Sadly.
Man, Paar was an asshole. "We have a right to be offended when you people go to far". Meanwhile, he revels in saying derogatory names, bullying, interrupting, and condescending. Kudos to those brave and articulate guests!
He was born in 1918. So, yea. Why are you angry with a man who has been dust for years. Cmon.
Yes. I was young, and trying to make a life and a future then. People like Jack Paar made this country a living hell for people like me. There are haters born much more recently and their age has little to do with it. Of course he was a human being too, and there are good things to say about him too. Just not about this.
geesh, didnt know paar was so phobic. he now moves off my 'i like him' list....
People are complicated. He had many admirable traits but believed a lot of prejudices he was raised with at a time when no one was publicly challenging them.
Great to see more Jack Paar! Hope you have more!
He was a virulent homophobe. He should be consigned to the dustbin of history. These GAA representatives are heroes.
@@nickbigd Clearly he was homophobic. He was also born in 1918. What do you expect? You can like other aspects of him without sending him to the "dustbin of history".
@@MarkEliasGrant It's hard to find other aspects to like after seeing this and reading his homophobic writing. PS Not everyone born in that era behaved this way.
@@nickbigd You're right. Most people from that era were ambivalent, not virulently homophobic and anti communist even. My dad graduated high school in 1959, I know for a fact most people just didn't talk about these issues.
@@MarkEliasGrant I agree, and that shows the importance of posting these conversations; we learn from history and hopefully will one day learn not to treat anyone with contempt
I adored Jack Paar, but it’s so patently obvious he was a closeted gay man. For all I know he didn’t even realize he was. Maybe he never acted out on it. But every indication is, he was. I say this as a gay woman. Paar was as fey as fey gets. Come on. Still adore the guy. At least they were trying to talk about it. What bravery for these folks to attempt to talk about it, despite his hostility. God what an awful time it was before we attained our rights. I don’t miss it at all.
It gives me no joy to say that rights that are attained can get taken away. Two words: Supreme Court. That said, you make a good point that the object of Jack's disapproval very much seems to be the object of his desire. That's often the case.
@@akrenwinkle that’s quite prescient.
@@andrewhill4986 You don't need to be Carnak to know what's coming next: same-sex marriage is not protected by the equal protection clause, and it's up to the states.
The brave pioneers
We owe them an immeasurable debt, truly!
Hiw mych more of this episode exists? It's an interesting discussion.
If I recall right, the whole segment runs 13 minutes, so there's 5 more minutes of it.
Fascinating excerpt. I wonder if the entire broadcast exists.
Jack Paar would’ve been much better off if he had exited TV after his prime time NBC talk show (1962-65), which he did after stepping down from The Tonight Show. He left TV in 1965 saying that there was nobody left that he wanted to talk to. Dick Cavett was treated like shit by ABC and never really got the recognition he deserved. His show was a gem and so what if he didn’t beat Carson, ABC was at least ahead of CBS at the time and I wish his show had gone on through the 1970’s and even longer.
Recently, I was amazed while reading that Johnny Carson always thought that Dick could beat him in the ratings had ABC had a stronger group of station line-ups.
@@jimlaforte1755 I'd be flabbergasted if Johnny actually said such a thing, but maybe he was on to something. When Paar came back in '73, his first show actually beat Carson, which shows that Carson's audience was willing to stray if it found something better. But it didn't. Paar tanked quickly.
Cavett--the man and the eponymous show--show never did it for me at all. Cringe!
The way I see it is Paar is an example of an extremely closeted homosexual man. Most of the ardent opponents of homosexuality are closeted.
He seems so hostile about it and I hate the way he asks them a question and then talks over the top of them. Even if this was about a completely different topic it would still be so disrespectful. It's so irritating!
Ugh! I hate the way he talks over the guest. I wanted to hear what the man with the mustache had to say. 1:42
These three people are brave heroes. God love them, where ever they are now.
Cleansed from Earth, via the miracles of AIDs and The Aryan Nations
Probably gone … 50 years ago and before aids hit
Paar seems to have stepped out of a time machine from 1953 into 1973, and he has no idea anything has changed. He's just kind of bewildered. He reminds me of the Ugandan "Why are you ghey?" television interviewer.
Yeah. His autobiography from the 1960s devoted a whole chapter to the threats posed by communists and homosexuals, and he was still doing "fairy" jokes in the 1970s. It's a shame, because Paar was, otherwise, a smart, engaging, funny TV host and often a good interviewer.
@stevencapsuto873 I share his dislike for communism, but it seems bizarre to me in a modern context, making LGBTQ people part of some grand conspiracy with the Soviets or whatever. Paar's career peak was before I was born, but, from the clips I have seen, he seems to have been fairly intelligent. It's a shame he was blinkered by his own personal animus towards a group he likely knew very little about.
@@julianhermanubis6800 As far as I know, Paar said nothing about LGBTQ people as a group. His remarks were just about sexual orientation (and obsessively about gay men, for some reason).
Paar's conflation of homosexuality with communism was common during the Red Scare of the 1950s and 1960s. The popular myth at the time was that everyone is naturally hard-wired for heterosexuality, that homosexuality is unnatural and immoral behavior. Right wingers, especially those with a John Birch Society mindset, got it into their heads that Soviet agents were encouraging such behavior in the US in a conspiracy to destroy American civilization. As evidence, they pointed to the fact that one of the first homophile rights organizations was founded by someone who had been a communist or socialist.
There's a now-astonishing quote from 1950 from the then-head of the Republican National Committee to the effect that "homosexuals are as dangerous as the actual communists," as if we were some sort of pseudocommunists by dint of who we're attracted to. Just bizarre.
@@stevencapsuto873 Ah, the John Birch Society, that explains a large part of it. I once found a stack of their magazines someone had left at a small shopping center (maybe in an attempt to gain supporters), and I think they're still into weird conspiracy theories decades later. I was flabbergasted by what i was reading. That's interesting: I had no idea about the communists converting people to be homosexual conspiracy theories. That's very interesting from a psychological point of view really.
Despite the Red Scare and its abuses, I do think Soviet communism was an actual threat to the West, and the declassification of Soviet state papers since the end of the Cold War has proven they did take part in international espionage on a large scale. However, admitting this as a reality and conducting witch hunts against convenient scapegoats is completely unjustifiable.
Jack Paar a self-loathing bisexual closeted
I don't know what his issue was, but he devoted a whole chapter in his autobiography to trashing "homosexuals" and communists, so there was some sort of weird obsession going on there.
@@stevencapsuto873 The word Paar used was "fairies." Johnny Carson made the occasional gay joke, but Paar was way, way over the line. Obsession isn't exactly inappropriate to say.
@@stevencapsuto873 Let's face it, his mannerisms weren't what you'd call masculine.
@@johndalton3180 You may have heard of Frank Fay, a successful vaudevillian of the 1920s. Mostly forgotten now except for being married to Barbara Stanwyck, he had a big comeback on Broadway starring in "Harvey." (The film was made with Jimmy Stewart.) It's possible that Bob Hope patterned himself on Fay, and clearly Jack Paar did. Fay had a role in "The Love Nest," as did Paar, so they met. You can see Frank Fay right here on YT, and check out his mannerisms.
The panel mentions wanting to see gays in movies or commercials, just like anybody else. I'm sure they knew they were fighting a battle that would take a long time to win. But I wonder if they realized it was going to take FIFTY years before that would finally happen?
Had Paar waited about 12 years, he'd have been great in the tabloid talk show emergence. if he would let them answer, he might have had a dialogue.
I was 5 yes old when that interview was broadcast, and of course I don't watch it. I have a fascination with nostalgic TV and old movies. A couple of years ago I was browsing on UA-cam, and and became interested in the old Jack Part shows and liked him,I still like watching the old programs, but never thought that could so ignorant,I find very that someone like himself who knew about Hollywood and the business of that world would be damned condescending. In a nutshell I believe he was way,way, way in back of the closet.
Oh boy, Paar isn't coming off very well here, is he? YIKES
Does anyone know who the guests are? The one I could figure out is the bald gentleman with the mustache - Arnie Kantrowitz. He was alive when this clip was posted, but passed away January 21, 2022 at the age of 81 due to complications from COVID.
According to Wikipedia, ”He came out as gay in 1970. He was an early secretary and later vice-president of the pioneering New York City group Gay Activists Alliance.
In the early 1970s, he was one of the first openly gay individuals to appear on popular radio and television shows, including those of Jack Paar, Geraldo Rivera, Bill Boggs and Sally Jesse Raphael. He also appeared in several documentary films, including ”After Stonewall“ (1999), ”Positive“ (1990), ”Gay Sex in the 70s“ (2005), and ”Vito“ (2011).
He was also interviewed about gay liberation and the AIDS epidemic.
Kantrowitz's autobiography ”Under the Rainbow“ was published in 1977 and reprinted in 1978; a new edition appeared in 1996. It was one of the first autobiographies by a gay rights activist.“
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnie_Kantrowitz
The guests are Nathalie Rockhill, Arnie Kantrowitz (as you said), and Bruce Voeller, from the Gay Activists Alliance of New York. Later that year, in October 1973, Voeller and Rockhill would become two of the cofounders of the National Gay Task Force (now the National LGBTQ Task Force). I think Kantrowitz was an early NGTF board member.
i always enjoyed Paar and i think it's good that he gave these people some air time but i'm disappointed to see that he's as disrespectful as he is and keeps interrupting them.
We’ve come far. I will never want to watch if the 199s times Jack hosted Judy. Hmmm
Paar is enraged, won't allow the guests to answer his questions. Hmmm...
Jack Paar gives off a gay vibe.
Why is this in black and white?
From the synopsis: "A GAA member had an early home video recorder, which is why we have this."
I expect most 1973 home video recorders couldn't record color.
A lot of TVs (and possibly recorders) in the early 70s were still black and white, even if the transmission was in color. I remember watching ”Gilligan's Island“ as a child, and thinking the Skipper and Gilligan were wearing the same color shirt (because we had a B&W TV).
I was startled when we went to Kmart and ”Gilligan's Island“ was playing on the color TV, and I saw that the Skipper had a blue shirt, and Gilligan had a red shirt.
Given the time period, Paar sounds positively liberal.
Fifty years... some change takes generations 😢
The only reason Paar invited these activists to appear on the show was that he was under pressure to give airtime to an opposing point of view after years of spouting homophobic bile in print and on the air. (His autobiography even devoted an entire chapter to raging against "fairies and communists.")
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were already a few talk show hosts who were absolutely progressive on this subject, notably Phil Donahue. And even as early as the 1950s, there were talk show hosts like Fannie Hurst who were 100% allies and supported the destigmatization of same-sex desire, the decriminalization of homosexuality, and an end to job discrimination. Hurst was quite the pioneer in treating LGB people as the experts on our own lives, rather than inviting ostensibly straight "experts" (psychologists, psychiatrists, clergy, vice-squad police, etc.) to talk about us disparagingly in the third person.
Well, there it is
Jack Paar had a real bug up his ass about gay men (pardon the expression).
His 1961 memoir has a whole homophobic chapter called "Fairies and Communists," and he once remarked that "What's ruining television today are those big productions - the fairies who come in here and sing with the big balloons. It's the fairies who are going to ruin show business."
As late as the 1970s, he was still doing jokes where the mere mention that gay men exist was treated as uproarious.
This show couldn’t have been very well syndicated. I was a active tv watching adult in1973 and I would have watched Jack as I had in the past, but I never saw this.
This was Jack Paar's ABC late-night show. It aired one week per month from January to November 1973 as one of the rotating features in ABC's WIDE WORLD OF ENTERTAINMENT slot.
Hey Jack, shut up and let your guests answer a question.
paar seems scarey