On Television
BOROFF, DAVID
ON TELEVISION The Death of Conversation By David Boroff Now that he is gone from the Tonight show (NBC), everybody misses Jack Paar. It is not that he was that good; it is that Johnny...
...Even more to the point, Carson demonstrates what is wrong with show-biz talk shows...
...He was so richly idiosyncratic, so helplessly candid, so ferociously egocentric—Everyman with power...
...Somehow Paar managed to skirt the dangers...
...It was a nifty case of art transcending life...
...He almost redeemed the show...
...After Johnny Carson's automated cheerfulness, it is a huge relief...
...He wears wafer-thin suits, he is oh-so-crew-cut, and he is all quips and cranks and wanton smiles...
...To be sure, his was no soft touch...
...Allen does not inhibit his natural verbal range...
...This is where Tonight is showbiz at its worst...
...And when they do talk, it is mainly about show business...
...On the show, she was too busy grimacing and looking bright, in that dreadful way women in show business have, to say anything intelligent...
...Moreover, in contrast to Carson, he is an unabashed entertainer: He plays the piano well, he sings, he moves interestingly—in a big, ungainly way...
...The women were intimidated by him, and their responses were frozen...
...David Boroff, Associate Professor of English at New York University, writes for Harper's and Esquire...
...But talk...
...The Eskimo, a bright-eyed little man, was magnificent, especially when he demonstrated a hunting dance...
...Thus is the language contaminated...
...This morality tale has a beautiful consistency, for Carson has undone the show's potentialities...
...Skitch is a fine conductor," Carson will say, "no, not on the New Haven Railroad" (the humor is actually that feeble...
...He proved to be a rather simple young man who likes to "work out" and keep in shape...
...But since everyone in show business, from Paul Anka up, is described as "a great artist," and since Dali is ambiguous at best, one did not know whether Carson meant artist-artist or show-biz-artist...
...Carson is clearly one of the new breed: the onstage managerial type...
...I had an unnerving vision of Mike Wallace wandering in a barren Pirandello-esque corridor waiting for the Word on his new identity...
...And there is hardly a Paar devotee who did not immediately perceive that Carson had borrowed from the Master—but in so many of the wrong ways...
...His stock in trade is the long stare followed by a mischievous little smile...
...Then there is always inside abuse to provide a laugh...
...As a result, when he tries to involve his audience, it doesn't work...
...Part of Steve Allen's charm is his brooding, sorrowful quality...
...they won't give Diners' Club cards to actors...
...Almost never...
...Williams, it appears, can handle himself in the boxing ring and is no slouch at judo...
...it is also a model for it...
...From there they shifted to body types...
...For a change, no one made any stupid ethnocentric gags...
...Allen seized the opportunity to make some sensible remarks about cultural relativity ("Every people has customs which to other people seem absurd...
...Allen is like your kid's favorite junior high school teacher: mildly didactic and sweetly homiletic...
...The next night it was revealed that it was all a hoax...
...Recently, Phillis Newman was one of Carson's guests...
...Tonight is to conversation what the Western is to physical action: It provides vicarious experience...
...A show like Carson's can subtly influence the way people talk and what they talk about...
...Carson pushes his betters around—especially Skitch Henderson, the bearded conductor...
...People do not really talk...
...She kept unwinding her stole and exposing her gleaming shoulders like a genteel stripper, deprecated an earlier phase of sartorial neglect in her life ("my beatnik phase"), and delivered one opinion: Working mothers should work only part-time...
...The night I watched, Allen was interviewing an old Eskimo...
...they are merely "on...
...That must be quite a thrill, to sell six million records," Carson said superfluously...
...Every Paar fan was out gunning for the usurper...
...A few nights earlier, Salvador Dali had been a guest, wearing a satin outfit with obscure designs on his chest...
...They smile, they gesture, they make noises at each other, they quip like mad...
...He bears about the same relationship to a real entertainer as the public relations man does to the novelist...
...I caught a little of Steve Allen's show (Westinghouse) recently...
...But there comes a time when the TV set is turned off and real-life conversation begins...
...it is that Johnny Carson is so bad...
...Not too long ago, I heard a director on the now defunct Mike Wallace show say, "Mike has given up the inquisitor's image, but we don't know yet what his new image will be...
...Where Paar has a little boy's cuteness, bugeyed with wonder, Carson is arch...
...In fact, for many people, he is the very quintessence of Madison Avenue...
...It was a populist maneuver that failed...
...The matador was really an American actor who had done a stint in Mexico City...
...Recently, taking his cue from the much-publicized bestdressed women in the world, he stalked his audience and asked some well-dressed women to explain what they were wearing and how much they paid for it...
...But the television camera is remorseless: The smile comes out a half-smirk, and the brightness is brittle...
...Then he will follow up by saying, "Now, he'll go into the sulking room.' Unhappily, Carson can't quite carry off the role of the pater familias, the loving daddy who teases his children...
...Carson's talk ranges from selfcongratulation ("What a lot of talent we have on this show tonight") to in-group self-pity ("The worst credit risk is an actor...
...In between, there is the usual trade chit-chat—who is working where, how you get started in the business, etc...
...He and Carson discussed weight, and the most memorable question concerned what Keel had eaten for breakfast that morning...
...Then it was Howard Keel's turn...
...Johnny Carson is another story...
...He conforms to their image of the television executive or advertising man...
...I somehow remember that when Miss Newman broke into theater she was described as a brainy girl...
...As he left, Carson said appreciatively, "He's a great artist...
...His humor is always on the edge of nastiness...
...Roger Williams came on next, a kitsch piano player who has sold something like six million records...
...Carson brought out an exmatador who talked quite intelligently and amusingly, in a thick Spanish accent, about his former profession...
...But he also had a genuine knack for projecting himself and his guests, a sense of the drama of the human encounter...
...Television is not only a substitute for living...
...Carson's image is that of the sharp, trim Ivy League master of revels...
...Keel is a big, burly man with a beard and a pleasant relaxed manner...
...And Paar is one of the few TV personalities who can use their own ignorance—and God knows, Paar's is vast—to bring the competence and expertise of others into sharp relief...
...Where Paar is sexy, Carson is prurient...
...If Paar is the cute little boy whose delinquencies somehow have to be forgiven and whose crying spells are just one of those things, Carson is the mean little boy you do not quite trust...
...The show is full of "takes" and "pieces...
...In short, Carson is something of a fake, a studio fabrication...
...But what is most offensive is that some of the show's participants disguise their intelligence...
...nor does he run away from a compound sentence...
...And don't think for a minute that the business of a television "image" is an intellectual's nightmare...
...Significantly, the one conversation that really registered turned out to be a pseudo-conversation...
...He has borrowed some of Paar's body english, too, but on him it looks like a nervous tic...
...Carson observed that people associate piano players with a slight build...
Vol. 46 • January 1963 • No. 2
