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Thank you for the kind words! The singing midget on the Paar show was uncredited, and I wasn't able to track down whom it might have been; I had known from other sources that Elvia Allman (television lovers among us probably think of her best as Selma on Petticoat Junction) and Florence Halop (the same television lovers probably think of her as the second lady bailiff---she succeeded another old-time radio veteran, Selma Diamond, who had died of cancer---on Night Court) were in the evening's cast.

I wasn't just going for a laugh, by the way, when I noted Jack Benny had been Paar's benefactor since meeting him on Guadalcanal: Paar was attached to an entertainment unit during the war (he was barely known but thought a comer) when Benny took a shine to him and became his mentor and patron; it was Benny who pushed and got Paar as his summer replacement in 1947, with Benny's own sponsor at the time sponsoring Paar. Paar was received well enough, by listeners and critics alike (Time had been rather generous in praising him), that Lucky Strike decided to keep Paar on, moving him to ABC for the fall season.

The problem was that Paar didn't know how to be diplomatic about it when rejecting an idea he didn't think was right for him. Very early in Paar's fall run, Lucky Strike suggested he think of a continuing trademark gag to help cement his identifiability. Instead of replying something to the effect that it wasn't something he'd bring off well and everyone else was doing it, anyway, Paar got his nose in the air and harrumphed that he was trying to move away from "that sort of old-hat comedy" . . . the problem being that among those doing it was the biggest thing on radio at that time---Benny, Paar's benefactor and Lucky Strike's biggest attraction on the air.

Needless to say, Lucky Strike wasn't exactly thrilled about that response, and they dropped Paar well before the 1947-48 season was over. The incident helped stick him, according to several radio historians, with a spoiled kid image that never really left him alone. It took another decade and his break of getting The Tonight Show to bring him back in any major way, which was kind of a shame, because if you listen to what survives of the summer he was Jack Benny's replacement, it was clear enough that he had something . . .