HG: Congress had to make the, there was a decision that had to be made, FCC [Federal Communications Commission] had to decide which [broadcast] system was going to be used throughout the industry. Actually, the CBS system was better looking. It was sharper, I don't know in terms of resolution, I don't know what that was, I'm not that well versed in it, but the NBC system was all electronic. [INT: And compatible?] And compatible to other systems. It's kind of like beta and you know, the beta system was slightly better. But I believe that Dr. DuMont [Allen B. DuMont] had something to do with the presentation. I think what he did, and if he didn't do it, he should have done it; to show what you would have to do, 'cause the senior system was predicated on an image like a 12-inch screen, or even a nine inch screen, and it looked pretty damn good. But to make a 30-inch, and NBC was working on a 30-inch tube at the time, and they had developed it and there it was, and with their electronic system; there was the picture, there was the camera, there was... and it was all kind of recently sized. But I think it was DuMont's idea to show how big the receiver would have to be to get a 30-inch picture. And there was the picture, but in back of it was this big housing for a wheel that would spin that was like four feet across, and of course over the years they would have found a way to, but that was very telling at the time, it was very clear that the semi-mechanical system of CBS had many flaws, and they awarded color to NBC; RCA initially. But I think Dr. DuMont was the one who came up with that idea of showing, 'cause he was, his system was also the NBC system. And he was still in the business of making television sets. [INT: Anyway, thank you, that was a terrific aside. I didn't even ask you about the English versions of the same thing, but we'll touch on it later. The John Logie Baird television, which was mechanical in the ‘30s [1930s].] Well, the earliest ones were mechanical. [INT: It was a film process that was scanned and they were, the BBC was alternating. It would be like one day it would be his system, which was really lame, and then there'd be the Marconi system. But they didn't want the Marconi system because it was Italian, and they'd go back, the BBC went back and forth. And then the war broke out and that was the end of that. But there was far worse and stranger stories in the history.

INT: But now you're at NBC, there's much more equipment, there's much more money, and you are in, you're sort of an integration AD [Associate Director], putting stuff together in master control and these are much more complicated shows now. 

HG: Right. The production values are miles ahead of anything. [INT: And they’ve, maybe they've laid the coaxial cable now so that there's a lot-] That was coming, yeah. And I remember being up in master control when we switched to LA, that was a big deal, we all cheered. And I had the honor of saying, "Take LA." And I just loved that. Also, NBC had structure. At DuMont [DuMont Television Network] I would go down and talk to the scenic designer, tell him where the window should go. I mean, here was a sound effects department, you go into a room and there was all kinds of stuff. The music department was manned by many people, not just one man with a record player. [INT: And also they had all that radio history behind them before that, so they were already in the business. They just…] Yeah. I guess that's true, they understood it, and they also had this mammoth facility with all the studios which when I started there, many of them were still in radio, and it wasn't quite clear whether... I knew that radio, I loved radio, I mean I grew up with radio, I still love radio. And I kind of resented the fact that radio would be pushed aside completely. I couldn't understand why there couldn't be good radio and good television. But that didn't happen.

HG: But talking about Britain, when I lived in Ireland for years, so I listened to Radio 4 every day, my wife and I. I still do when I go back. It's brilliant radio; it's great stuff. So it can be done. But you have to spend money; it has to be subsidized. We're not doing that. So I had all these things but I was working in master control, which I didn't like. And so to make that bridge between that and live, so I didn't ever work, I worked a few, as relief an AD [Associate Director] on live shows, a game show. And one was a new show called THE JACK PAAR SHOW. He was so successful in doing THE TONIGHT SHOW, that was actually not created by, but brought to a high level by Steve... [INT: Oh, first Jerry Lester, then Steve Allen, and Jack Paar.] Steve Allen. And actually Ernie Kovacs was also supplying episodes and I think it should be noted, maybe you don't remember but, Steve went on to prime time, with a pretty good show. Good characters, I loved it. And NBC came up with the terrific idea that was going to be called, they abandoned THE TONIGHT SHOW, it went off the air and in its place was something called BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD, and it was to be hosted by film and theater critics, and journalists. It was going to be completely kind of an honest look at what's going on in the world, no Actors, no comedians, real people. And after about four weeks, I think what's his name, the NBC genius? [INT: Sylvester "Pat" Weaver.] Yeah, Pat Weaver. Pat Weaver realized what a terrible mistake it was. It was dreadful. [INT: Yeah, I noticed that one didn't show up in any of his obituaries. THE TODAY SHOW, THE TONIGHT SHOW, THE AFTERNOON SHOW-] Well, it's disappeared; I've never seen a tape of it or a kinescope. I think everything was destroyed. So there's no evidence of how low... [INT: Sewn into the earth, covered with salt.] Like 125, 130 stations were carrying THE TONIGHT SHOW, and within 13 weeks, they were down to 60 or 70 stations, with everybody laughing on the... I wish I could remember these names, but they were the people who were hot at the time. And NBC was about to give, do the unpardonable, which was to run movies like CBS, because they had pioneered and they made--no one watched television after 11 o'clock and they created this kind of-- [INT: It's funny, I've never heard of this. This show that you talk about.] Really? [INT: Yes, I've never heard of it, and even if it was only on for four weeks, it's interesting that they would stop what was, became the standard for the evening, try out this extremely intellectual kind of New York idea, for better or worse--] Unfortunately, it wasn't intellectual; it was like on the level like Gene Lyons. These were columnists who were--[INT: Leonard Lyons.] Leonard Lyons, thank you. How do you know these things? But they were people who were in the, you know, in the DAILY NEWS or the MIRROR; they weren't THE NEW YORK TIMES critics. [INT: This wasn't Harold Clurman, it was... right. It was Earl Wilson and…] No, you know, Walter Kerr, I mean... Earl Wilson was one of these people. And they were dreadful, because they were dreadful journalists too. And so they made dreadful television. They were on for, I think they did the full 13-week cycle, but towards the end, they realized that either it's movies, it's like NBC's version of THE LATE LATE SHOW or they gotta find somebody else. And they called Jack, Jack Paar. And they said, “We're gonna give this one more shot. Live television at 11:30.” 11:15, actually.

INT: Now at this point Jack Paar had already had a show, is that what you're saying? That he'd had a show? 

HG: He had a show; he came from California after having kind of a spotty career out there, I would never say--I had dinner with Jack, Sunday night. And he was always interesting, but he had some projects that failed. And so he came east and replaced... it was a morning show and it was done from Grand Central Station; they had a theater, not a theater they had a stage. And he took the place of Cronkite [Walter Cronkite]. Cronkite had a morning show. [INT: But that was at CBS? CBS MORNING SHOW [THE MORNING SHOW] with the puppets?] You're right, and also I think... yeah, there was a woman singer, a gal singer who was kind of hot at the time. [INT: Right, but it was the CBS version of THE TODAY SHOW.] Yeah. [INT: With Cronkite that didn’t ultimately…] Righ. Cronkite, yeah. And they never, they never really nailed that period down. Even in those days, and we're talking about the early ‘50s [1950s] now, would have been, well would have been... '52 [1952], '53 [1953]. So Jack came in and took his place. [INT: On the CBS…] On the CBS MORNING SHOW, and that's where he met Jose Melis, Melis was a musical guy there. And actually, Dave's mother- Not Dave, see I'll do that often. Jack's mother, who lived in Jackson, Michigan, was a big Cronkite fan, and they have a letter that she wrote to Cronkite, showing how upset she was that he was going off the air, even though her son was taking his place. [INT: [LAUGH] With a mother like that...] Oh, she was wild. So Jack did it enough, but then that finally went off the air, and he was kind of in a limbo. [INT: Well you know, the parallel to Dave here, is not... They give them these morning shows, Dick Cavett I think had a morning show at one point, or a variety show before he got his, found his place.] Yeah, there's something about, I guess they see hope in the morning, I don't know. Not Bob Hope, but... So, Jack did that and then that went off the air and he was kind of like, I think he did a show, a game show. UP TO PAAR, horrible idea. And then Sullivan [Ed Sullivan] booked him for three stand-ups. And he did very well. People were surprised at how well he did. And he was funny, he had... I understand why he, there was a comedian back in the ‘30s [1930s], and I'll think of his name later on, who was like the first monologuist. He would come out and he had a kind of a, you probably know who I'm talking about; he had a kind of a sophisticated way, and he would kind of use big words in a comedic way, and he would tell stories. But he didn't look funny, it was actually rather him. Not Frank, Frank Fay maybe? Might have been Frank Fay. And Jack, that was Jack's hero, 'cause Jack would see him in vaudeville back in Jackson, Michigan as a boy. And he became an announcer and I think all the people who've done this job well, this kind of talking to other people have been announcers. Johnny [Johnny Carson] was an announcer. And Steve Allen was an announcer. So all these, I think they, there's something about that experience and--

INT: And it's something else too, which is that I agree with you completely, that all of these people that have been successful, have good voices, because at that time of night, you're not necessarily staring at the television set, you're kind of listening to it. And it's also true in the morning, and the people that don't do well in this medium, like Joan Rivers, are people that ultimately have really hard to listen to [LAUGH] voices. And Dave [David Letterman] has a beautiful voice. 

HG: He does. He has a good voice. Yeah, Joey Bishop, I did the startup on a Joey Bishop; he has an annoying voice. [INT: Right. Or Dick Cavett, beautiful, beautiful voice. But anyway, that's an aside.] Yeah that's true. So here's Jack [Jack Paar], kind of doing well on THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW, surprisingly well, and I think Pat [Pat Weaver] probably saw this and said "Let's try Paar. Let's try Paar." And so they called him in and said, “Here’s 13 weeks, we don't think this is going to work but, give it a shot, see what happens.” And within 13 weeks, he was like on the cover of Time Magazine, it was an enormous success, very suddenly. This was THE TONIGHT SHOW [THE JACK PAAR TONIGHT SHOW], 1958. 1958, so they had given Jack kind of a 13-week death sentence. [INT: And where are you now in this process? What is your job?] I am working in master control, switching this up. [INT: Still working in master control, okay.] Every once in a while getting a chance to do a live show when someone's on vacation. [INT: Doing a live show in the sense of going into the studio. So you're a backup AD [Associate Director], working in master control. Has the union happened yet?] Back up AD, right. Oh yes, the union happened while I was DuMont [DuMont Television Network]. [INT: Very good, so financially things are much improved and there's structure.] Oh the money's good. And there's a lot of overtime, so I'm happy. I'm having my first child at that time. And I'm watching, 'cause I have to switch the show on, I wasn't very impressed by THE TONIGHT SHOW, I never liked; I liked movies so much that if I was home, I would never watch a talk show. I would tune a movie even if it was a bad movie. I'd rather see a bad movie then a brilliant talk show. So I wasn't impressed and then I was called in, to sub for the AD on THE TONIGHT SHOW, following Bobby Quinn. Oh, the reason I got that job, which was kind of a plum, was that Bobby, when the show was out in California, he would be thrown to the wolves and he'd have to come work in master control, or he'd have to prepare the... and he hated it so, and was so bad at it I would say, "Bobby, just go home. You're making more trouble for me than if you were working." So he liked that, where he would go and play cards with the stagehands, he was a great card player.

INT: Do you recall who the Director of THE JACK PAAR SHOW was? 

HG: At that point…yeah I do. It's a very important name too. Fellow came from Detroit, family was in the automobile business, he went to Princeton [Princeton University]. I have a block. [INT: Just that information, somebody can figure it out.] I'll think of it before, because he had one of these, kind of a WASPy, rich name. [INT: It wasn't like a Clark, Jones or one of those kind of, that era?] No, but a Clark Jones name, yeah. And I have trouble maybe because it ended sadly, and so I think I have a block on his name, but it'll come to me. So, Bobby went home and he appreciated the fact that I didn't make him do the work he's supposed to do, so when he went on vacation, I subbed for him. [INT: That must have been very exciting.] I loved it. I loved it, I loved the idea that it was live, and the, I'll think of the Director's name. We got along very well. Then after two weeks, I went back to master control. Well Bobby came back and... Bobby died two years ago; he was a good friend of mine, because he did me a great favor. He got me--and then, Bobby made the mistake of going to Jack and saying that he was really directing the show that they should, kind of dump the Director, because you know, he wasn't doing it. And it was kind of true. And Jack, and the Director, god this is terrible. But the Director was someone who Jack had worked with at CBS, and brought him over to do this. And so Jack didn't say anything, and when Bobby got back to the office he was finished. He was fired, that day. And so, they looked at the list to see who had done the show recently, and I had done it, and so the next day I was the AD [Associate Director] on THE TONIGHT SHOW [THE JACK PAAR TONIGHT SHOW]. Kind of like a tryout but within a week or so, they said, "We want you to do it full time." [INT: And Bobby Quinn was never heard of again. [LAUGH]] Well you know what happened to him, right? [INT: He just did fine.] He worked for 25 years with Johnny Carson. [INT: Poor guy, just never…] Disappeared, never heard from again. But he did for a while, he was really; he left the company and worked for the Space Agency [NASA Marshall Space Flight Center] down in Huntsville, Alabama. Kind of probably one of the most hellish jobs you could devise in television. Then he came back and worked as an AD [Associate Director], because I had done, I had become... well, I'm jumping way ahead. But, he became the AD again, under Johnny Carson's brother, Dick Carson, and then Dick Carson left and then Bobby took over and was, you know, Carson really liked Bobby and they were very close.

INT: I just, I want to ask you a question now, and you can answer it to whatever degree of… Be as candid as you want, or reject the question, but you were there, I wasn't. What was it about the Director, or the work of that Director, or just what was happening that Bobby [Bobby Quinn] didn't like and that you agree with? What was wrong? What was wrong in how it was shot or whatever? Can you recall? 

HG: Oh yeah, I know exactly, I just have to... I think the Director, was a very sweet man, very nice man, and a brilliant man. In fact, at Princeton he was in the Princeton Players, and wrote songs and, EAST OF THE SUN, I think is his lyric. He was really a substantial person. [INT: Yeah, I'm sure, but there was something about the comic timing or--] He was a drinker, he was a drinker, so he would have a long, kind of boozy lunch. [INT: And those shows were live at [OVERLAP]] Those were live, so there were times when he was not drinking, he was great. He was very good. When he was drinking, someone else had to do the job. [INT: All right, so it was not a question of choices or things, it was a personal problem. 'Cause that I don't need to know the details on, and I appreciate you telling me. I just was wondering, because what's happening here is that THE JACK PAAR SHOW was the first one to really come up on the screens of the public big time, and establish that form, and within that form there's a way of doing it. And you were one of the pioneers of doing it, so I was just curious.] I must say I can't take credit for... Jack Paar has to be given credit for THE TONIGHT SHOW as it exists today. Kind of, Jay [Jay Leno] has taken and bent it kinda... kind of imitated Dave [David Letterman] in some ways that I thought were, not inappropriate but don't work for him. And actually Johnny Carson towards the end of his career was borrowing from Dave, because they could see that the young audience, that's what, Dave had created a… Jack created the talk show and Dave went back and borrowed from, and we borrowed from people like Kovacs [Ernie Kovacs] and Steve Allen, and made a different kind of show. It's more of a variety show, with talk. But Jack was a strict talk show, and he was the first one to do that. And it was the desk, the desk is exactly where it is on THE TONIGHT SHOW today, is where Jack was comfortable, it was because the door to 6-B at the time was on the camera left side of the building, and people came in that way, and then the band was on the other side, and when we did, when we would go over to 6-A, which is a mirror image studio, we would have to then contort ourselves to keep the desk on the same side. We would move it over and Jack would always say, "I just can't do the show, 'cause I've been looking this way for so many years, now I have to look this way." And so we would change it around, but it never worked. And today, that geography, the desk, the little platform, the microphone, even though the microphone wasn't necessary, Jack had the old, I forgot the name of it, but that old NBC kind of the lozenge type. [INT: It's the 77DX, please don't think that I'm one of those people that actually knows things like that, but that I know.] No, no, I knew that, but I kind of erased it from my mind. [INT: As opposed to the 44BX, those are my two microphones.] Yeah, okay. But Dave still uses one on his desk. And we would have to rig up a real good microphone inside that. I mean that was a constant battle.

HG: Anyway, so I'm going back to Jack [Jack Paar] and his influence. [INT: We're trying to get you to your break here, we know you're going to have a break in a minute.] He invented the talk show. And he was good because he was a good listener, he was a good talker, he did a monologue which was different than other monologues; they weren't so much full of jokes as they were observations and things that happened to him during the day. Kind of I think what Frank Fay did back in the ‘30s [1930s]. And the show [TONIGHT WITH JACK PAAR] was exciting because Jack is curious, still curious to this day. He would have people on, he had Noel Coward on, and Noel Coward would want to come on because he knew there would be somebody who would be witty, although Jack barely finished high school. Reads a lot, obviously a very bright man. But we would have people on. We'd have, is it S.J. Kaufman? If you want to see, I think if you want to see people that were on no other shows, you'll see them on the old TONIGHT SHOW. [INT: S.J. Perelman, George S. Kaufman.] Yeah, people like that. [INT: And also some interesting sort of non--what would be the word--intellectuals who were intellectuals in the context of THE JACK PAAR SHOW. Alexander King, Dody Goodman. You know, people that literally lived in that light.] Yeah, Oscar Levant. [INT: Yes, yeah. In terms of, that he was also, since you were there, that one of the things that was very interesting was, because he was on every night, in a basically free form environment, he tended to wear his emotions on the outside. Not necessarily with a lot of subtlety.] No, no. He lived on the air. People would say, "What is Jack Paar really like?" I would say, "Tune in." I mean, this is, the man you're seeing in front of you is the real Jack Paar, 'cause people never believe that this is, they thought it was some sort of act, and that there was another Jack Paar that lived a completely different life. [INT: And he was the first person that I was aware of that did that sort of thing, and made it entertaining. That he wasn't working against anything, he used it as part of his show; his neurosis were the show. Now this has become very fashionable.] Yeah. But he was good at it. He was good at it because he would, he would lose his temper on the air. I remember Mickey Rooney, we were doing the show from California. Disaster. I mean Mickey Rooney came on, and sat down and then as soon as the lights hit him, he had been drinking, and he was so drunk he could hardly finish a sentence. And at the end he was challenging Jack to a fistfight, right on the set. It was one of those great embarrassing moments, and people don't talk about it, you know, because it was so embarrassing. But I relished it. I just love that. Jack also, it was… Jack encouraged me to do something, which had a lot to do with my dealings with Dave [David Letterman], which was to be heard on the SA. Going back to the serial you know, the idea of your voice booming out, controlling everything always intrigued me, even when I was the Director. And so, Jack every once in a while would talk to me, and I would have to talk back to him. And as a boy I remember there was THE 64 DOLLAR QUESTION, the announcer, there was an off-stage voice, and it's a famous announcer with a deep voice. I can't think of his name, and he would be heard, and he became part of the show. And I always remember that so that, every once in a while Jack would say something to me, and I was supposed to answer.

INT: Like the announcer on THE PERRY COMO SHOW, I forget, wonderful-- 

HG: The same fellow. Frank Gallop. [INT: Frank Gallop] Well, Frank Gallop was the announcer on THE 64 DOLLAR QUESTION. Remember, they gave 64 dollars that was a network show. 64 dollars? And so I was always kind of in love with that idea, that you had a comedic effect and actually the RHODA show, did it beautifully. [INT: Carlton, the Doorman.] Yeah. And I think people see that as slightly dangerous, like the people are hearing, at home you're hearing somebody who isn't supposed to be heard. [INT: Also if I remember correctly it was no nonsense, that you would give him a very direct, flat answer.] Yeah, never tried to be funny, that would be disaster. But always be to put him down. You know, Jack [Jack Paar] especially he loved it. He would say--I'm trying to think of some of the things… I would just say, "Jack, why don't we get on with the show." And he would say, "All right."

INT: So you have to get us to the place where you, because you're still working in RCA master control. THE JACK PAAR SHOW is on. So get us to where you moved forward. 

HG: Well, I think I did. Bobby [Bobby Quinn]--[INT: So you're the AD now?] Yeah, so Bobby leaves, I become the AD [Associate Director]. And the Director. This is a really psychological block here. 'Cause the Director, we were such good friends that I was to be his best man at the wedding but then his brother showed up and he was married at the Unitarian church, 86th and Madison. So we were very close, I liked him. He was bright. He was much older, not much older; he must have been 15 years older than myself. But he was interesting, we would go out to lunch and I could see he’d have--we went to the little place on the corner there, the bar on 6th Avenue and the other side, where Lindy's was the other, yeah. So we were good friends. [INT: And he was mentoring you? In some ways?] He was, he was and then, I was so full of myself, I don't think I would allow myself to be mentored, not by him, by Jack. So I felt kind of an equal level with him, 'cause I knew I could do that show. And when he would go on vacation, I would do the show. [INT: Okay. So the Director would--] So it was my first real directing job. And Jack would notice it would be different when I was doing 'em. [INT: Can you recall in any way what he noticed?] What he noticed was that I was taking more shots of him just listening. And reacting. So that after a while, when I was doing the show, he would do something, and then he would turn and I would grab a shot of him kind of rolling his eyes or doing a reaction which was--and people would laugh, because you know, the form was, the tradition was you stay on the person talking. And then the other person talking and you would switch to the person asking the questions, back and forth. And I always, even when I wasn't the Director, I said "Jeez, why don't they have a shot of the guy listening to the question, because that, you see the shift of the eyes you can tell almost immediately whether the man likes the question, doesn't like it; you can see him getting set up and it's more interesting to see the person receiving the question, rather than giving it. And I think Jack liked that.

INT: This is what I'm getting from this, is that whatever the situation was, you were a little younger, you were very, very focused on it, and you had some ideas about what might make an improvement in the quality of the way these shows [THE JACK PAAR TONIGHT SHOW], not even the quality, in the style in which these shows were shot, and Jack [Jack Paar] noticed it when you had your opportunity. 

HG: Yeah. I think everything you do in the business, in that business is to produce laughs. And anything you can do to get a laugh is valuable. And I think Jack saw that, and I saw that. I remember when Jack interviewed Bill Buckley. William F. Buckley. And I always had this kind of distaste, I just didn't like what he was, I didn't like his book, GOD & MAN AT YALE, I didn't like the conservative; I didn't like the overuse of words. He was insufferable to me. Now I know a lot of people, you know, he is the man who invented modern conservatism. [INT: Right. He's insufferable to Norman Mailer too, so...] Yeah, right. So when he was on the air, and I was directing, I would take shots of him reacting, and he has a terrible, I guess it's a tick, but he would do all kinds of contortions when he was listening to a question, so I loved... And then when Jack was talking, I would cut back to him listening, and he had this kind of intense way of listening, and people were laughing and he didn't know why they were laughing. It was really, kind of a shitty thing for me to be doing, but I enjoyed doing it. If it was somebody I admired, I probably wouldn't have done that. And then, Jack loved it because he didn't like Bill Buckley either, so you know, we would do the show, this is now we're up to tape, and we would do the show at eight o'clock, and he would go home and then watch it at night. [INT: Ah. Big difference now.] Now he can see what we're doing. When we started it was live. [INT: And I'm sure he did go home every single night and watch it every night.] He watched it every night. Yeah. [INT: And so it became your job?] We went to California, it was 1960, we went to Honolulu, and did the show for a week out there, and I could do that, 'cause it wasn't in, the DGA would let me, no it wasn't, it was NBC would let me do it because I was traveling with the show. When we got to--[INT: And traveling and going to places was already something you'd been trained in for years, so this was not taking you out of any…] But there was a distinction that when we got to the studios in LA, they insisted on having their own AD [Associate Director], the local people, so it had to be a West Coast DGA guy, and I would, my wife and I went off to San Francisco, and what happened was that the TD [Technical Director] and the AD weren't used to the Director's kind of nodding off or not paying attention, so the shows were kind of sloppy. And Jack knew this.

INT: I also recall--this is just a technical thing, but in the NBC system, the Director didn't speak directly with the cameras. I could be wrong about this in terms of the late night shows, that the TD [Technical Director] was all important in these environments. 

HG: I think what we're talking about now is the difference between CBS system and the NBC system. The NBC system, there was a big battle, in fact there was a strike in the mid to late ‘50s [1950s], where the Director… We went on strike because we were being shut out, 'cause we couldn't be on the PLs [private lines] with the cameramen. [INT: That's what I'm referring to.] Before that, it was, the TD would be on a PL with the cameramen and then he would have to talk through the TD. We won that and we could talk directly to the cameraman. [INT: So by the time you were directing, that had already been settled?] That had been settled and I could be on the PL. And just quickly, the CBS distinction is that, there the AD [Associate Director] is on the PL, with the cameras, and he readies all the cameras and the Director just calls the cameras. And I did, I never liked that system. [INT: It's not the best for comic timing.] I hated it. I did THE GARRY MOORE SHOW, it was a disaster, I couldn't ever; the idea that I couldn't talk directly to the cameras and tell 'em what I wanted just drove me nuts.

INT: So sometime around 1960, you've become the Director of THE JACK PAAR SHOW [THE JACK PAAR TONIGHT SHOW]? 

HG: Right. Jack [Jack Paar] just came to me one day, when we were in California, he says, "Greg...Craig... I'm letting him go, and you're gonna direct tonight." It was Thanksgiving, I remember, Thanksgiving, 1960. 1959. And because I liked this man so much, the whole idea… I did a lot of the editing because he didn't want to do it, so I had a good deal, I was working long hours, making good money, and I really didn't want this to happen. [INT: When you say editing, you're referring to?] Razor blades and iron particles. [INT: So it's really arranging, you're not really editing in the classic sense.] Well, editing in the mechanical sense; we did a show called THE BEST OF PAAR, which was on Saturday nights; we were on six nights a week! And so all day Friday, I would be working and also part of Saturday, putting this BEST OF PAAR, and it was tiresome. Long. And so I did that, and the Director didn't do that. So I didn't want that to happen, I felt very bad. I felt guilty, I still feel guilty in a way. And but I did the show and never looked back. I mean it was just, it was thrilling, and I felt this pang of guilt that the man was losing his job and I was taking his place, but Jack said, "You know, if you don't do it, I'll get somebody else." And that was it. So there wasn't a choice there. And I must say, it was a thrill that that night... Jack… Jack and I weren't close, I mean he hardly knew me, but he knew what I was doing, because he could see the shows. He knew that when I was doing a show it was different. And that night we went to, he said "I'm gonna take you out to dinner." That was the first time I ever had a meal with the guy, after working on the show for three years. And we went to... it's a place that's famous for Cobb salad and... Not The Brown Derby. Chasen's. [INT: Chasen’s. You’re out--] We're in California, this happened in California. And you can imagine, someone who really loves radio and we're having dinner and a man comes up and Jack says, "I want you to meet my new Director." And it's Jack Benny. And so that was the first night, and I just remember, and that's when it hit me, when he said, "I want you meet my Director." It was really a step up, in front of a man who I adored. You know, I still do. Jack Benny. Anyway, so that was the beginning, and then I stayed with it, right through the next year and a half, and then Jack decided to quit. Five years, that's it. People can understand it. And but before he left he said, they gave him a primetime show [THE JACK PAAR PROGRAM], Friday nights. 10 o'clock, Friday nights, and he asked me if I'd stay on and do it. And of course I did and we became… We became good--he was my mentor. And he gave me my break, and I learned so much from him, I mean there was just, that kind of television. I learned what was important and how important the bad stuff was. You know, people making mistakes or the people being ill at ease at the panel or people, you know, stepping on other's lines, and people just living in the moment, where everything seems to be live, although it wasn't live, it was taped. It was… I think that stayed with me throughout my career.

INT: And the idea of timing, that the Director needed to have a certain timing that ran parallel to the host, were those ideas that you were aware of or did it just happen? 

HG: It just happened. It just happened. I think after a while, when Jack [Jack Paar] saw that I would cut to him if he made a face or something, he would then kind of do things, to get the camera on him. You know, to get, to make a kind of a physical point, he would do something, and it always got a laugh, 'cause people didn't expect it. It was always like a little surprise.

INT: I just want to ask a question while we're still in the control room of THE JACK PAAR SHOW 'cause we'll move on after we eat is, I get the impression also that you had a certain amount of autonomy in the directing of the show. That there were not a lot of Producers standing over you, telling you what to do, is that a correct impression? 

HG: That's an important point in that it was a great boon, an opportunity for me to have someone at the desk, who didn't give a damn about the mechanics of the show. Didn't want to know about it. That changed with Dave [David Letterman], Dave knew exactly what was going on, and it became a burden at times, and a nuisance. But with Jack [Jack Paar], he didn't care what the sets looked like so every time we did a show, or did a special or I was in charge of the sets, I was in charge of the way things looked, the artwork and all that, it was left to me. And throughout my career, I've worked that way, except occasionally I've had to kind of give over to people who have been hired to do graphics or sets and all, but not to the degree where I didn't have the final say. And that was kind of a given when I did a job, that I would, you know, I did a David Frost show, and we worked out of what was called the Little Theatre at the time, now it's called the Helen Hayes, and it's tiny, tiny. And I was given a chance to completely do something I always wanted to do, is take the cameras off the stage so that the cameras were hidden. They were in back and it made a big difference in that show. And so that, you asked me about Jack and not having people--and also, Jack rode the Producers very hard, he was very kind to me, 'cause I think he saw me as an ally, someone who made him look good, and kind of worked with him in creating laughs. Where he saw the Producer as just getting the people to the studio on time and all that stuff, so he had no great feeling for the producing side of it. So that, it was terrific and I think it set a tone for me, and it gave me kind of a more weight than I would of had as a Director.