Reel Pop

While doing research for another article, I kept stumbling upon clips from old talk shows. Not having been schooled in the history of televised talk, I decided to edify myself. Below, clips from five of the most prominent late night talk show hosts.

I'll be following up later this week with a post about a new broadband talk show. And if there's time, I'll pull together some famous moments in talk show history.

Arthur Godfrey
CBS | Arthur Godfrey and His Friends | 1949 - 1959
In 1948 CBS began to broadcast the radio program Arthur Godfrey Time on television. In 1949 that show morphed into Arthur Godfrey and His Friends, which aired during prime time. Godfrey is perhaps best known for extemporizing his live advertising segments to great comic effect, and for personally vouching for each product even as he derided it. Advertisers have long since migrated to the interstitial 30-second spot. But in a digital age where we're abandoning objective gatekeepers for editorial guides, Godfrey's antiquated pitches seem more relevant than ever. Below, Godfrey stumps for Lipton soups.

p.s. Godfrey was tapped by his friend and then-president Dwight Eisenhower to record a public service announcement to be aired in the event of a nuclear war.

Steve Allen
NBC | The Tonight Show | 1954 - 1957
Steve Allen created The Tonight Show and began hosting with sidekick Gene Rayburn in September, 1954. The show ran live from 11:15pm until 1am. On the show's first night, Allen addressed his audience and said "This is Tonight, and I can't think of too much to tell you about it except I want to give you the bad news first: this program is going to go on forever. Boy, you think you're tired now. Wait until you see one o'clock roll around."

Below, an appearance by a very young and very beardless Frank Zappa on the Steve Allen Show, circa 1963.

Jack Paar
NBC | The Tonight Show | 1957 - 1962
Jack Paar succeeded Steve Allen at the helm of The Tonight Show, which he captained until 1962, when Johnny Carson took over. He was one of the first TV personalities to pre-tape his shows, and was known as an engaging, witty and sometimes controversial host. Paar once walked off The Tonight Show after protesting censorship, an act which he recounts in a 1997 interview. Jack Gould wrote in 1962 that "Mr. Paar almost alone has managed to preserve the possibility of surprise." He died in 2004.

Below, an episode of the Jack Paar Program circa 1964, in which Cassius Clay recites a poem about pugilism. Accompaniment by Liberace.

Dick Cavett
ABC | The Dick Cavett Show | 1968 - 1975
The Dick Cavett show ran in a variety of time slots and with slightly varying titles from 1968 until 1975. Below, Woody Allen talks about psychoanalysis with Dick.

Johnny Carson
NBC | The Tonight Show | 1962 - 1992
Growing up, I watched two programs with my grandmother: Monday night football and Carson on the Tonight Show. When Carson died in January, 2005, comedian Steve Martin published an op-ed letter in the New York Times addressed to Carson. "Your death reminds me of the loss of America's innocence, the distance we have come from your sly, boyish leers to our flagrant, overstated embarrassments for parents and children."