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From:  Hans Conried: A Biography; With a Filmography and a Listing of Radio, Television, Stage and Voice Work (McFarland & Co., Inc.: 2002), (C) 2002 Suzanne Gargiulo. All Rights Reserved

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Selected excerpts from Chapter 8: A "TV PERSONALITY" IS BORN       (Page 105-106):  1955 would begin slowly for Conried's career.  Radio work was sporadic, and television was not yet providing a stable substitute for the shortfall in his earnings.  There was an adversarial atmosphere between the new breed of television directors, and actors who had once worked almost exclusively in radio.  Conried recalled, "It wasn't easy, having been a radio actor; we were all considered bad actors, you see.  And all of the television directors were young men, and I supposed they may have been wary of men who were more veteran than they in years, if not in actual knowledge, and we did not get on.  Ex-radio actors did not go gracefully into television."  The latter sentiment is eloquently expressed in a statement Conried gave to the press many years later:  "I used to be a radio actor, but then television came and killed us all off in one season.  The networks devoured their own child in order to give birth to another one.  The rose was full-blown, and then, suddenly, it was torn asunder by violent hands."  He went on to describe television as "a bird that fouls its own nest."  The resentment was strong, but Conried's will to survive was even stronger.        Conried begrudgingly purchased a "twonky" for his home.  One can imagine him kicking it a few times when no one was looking.  He told a young reporter, who had his own TV show, how he had developed a "morbid fascination" with watching his old movies:  "I see a young man of twenty or so, naturally slim with all his hair, who now works for nothing in competition with you on TV."       Walt Disney proved to be a great friend to Conried, and over the years gave him the opportunity to work on a large number of quality projects for his production company, Buena Vista.  Peter Pan was the first big name project that Conried lent his talent to, but he also worked on a few two-reel animated shorts.  The first one, Ben and Me was released the same year as Peter Pan, and required the same rigorous work schedule, though on a much smaller scale.  Conried was the voice of Thomas Jefferson in the short subject, and also posed for the live action film that helped the animators craft their Jefferson on the screen.        In 1955, Conried worked on the Disney produced Davy Crockett series for television. Davy Crockett at the Alamo was a three-part special featuring Conried as a dapper, Eastern gentleman named Thimblerig who joins the group for their trek to the Alamo (with disastrous results).  The show would prove a boon to Conried's career:  "It was very popular, of course; and I was suddenly rocketed into great fame among the younger element in America.  [My family and I] went on a camping trip at that time with a very close friend of mine, not a fellow theatrically inclined.  I was introduced to the others at this camping site, and no one knew me, which was quite all right.  I remember overhearing part of a conversation some of them had with my little girl, who was two or three.  And one kid said, 'Trilby, your daddy's a movie star!'  And she, in all her innocence said, 'No, papa's not that.  Papa's an actor.'" .       (Page 109-111):  Another old friend, Jack Paar, had found his way into television in the early 1950's.  At first, Paar worked as a host for a few game shows before being given his own variety show by CBS in 1953 appropriately called, The Jack Paar Show.  The format of this new show would develop into the more recognizable "talk show" style of program with the addition of celebrity guests.  After the demise of the CBS show, NBC managed to lure Paar over to their side in 1957.  Paar was signed to take over the reigns of The Tonight Show after Steve Allen's departure.  It proved to be a highly successful move.  Conried was one of the old friends Paar gathered around to appear on the first week's broadcasts.  The Tonight Show, featuring host Jack Paar, premiered on July 29, 1957.         Paar was well known for his "fanatical loyalty" (as Conried described it) to his old friends, and made sure to hire a group of them to surround him during his maiden voyage as The Tonight Show host.  "If Paar ever had a show, and there was a cake to be cut," Conried would say, "there was always a slice for me".  Though extremely grateful to Paar, Conried never quite understood what motivated this strong sense of loyalty.  A befuddled Conried admitted, "I've never thrown myself between him and a mad dog."        Whatever the reasons, Paar had a deep respect for his old friend and would say of him, "Hans adds class to our show; an Elizabethan kind of fun.  He's a wonderful talker with that beautiful flowery speech of his and Hans has that wonderful wit.  He can top most of the so-called wits around here, including me.  He has the ability to lie back and wait, for an hour if necessary, to get that barb.  Then, zing!"       As Conried realized when he first stepped in front of a television camera, it can be rather disconcerting to be introduced simply as "Hans Conried":  "It's quite a change for an actor used to playing characters to be introduced by his own name.  I used to say to myself, 'Who am I?  What the hell am I playing?'  You develop a characterization; you create a personality.  You become someone the audience finds witty, and eventually they laugh at anything you say.  I wouldn't like to think that sardonic, witty façade is the person my family and friends know but I wonder if it's all so insincere and unreal.  Good manners and all sorts of 'civilized behavior'--it's in large part a façade, a disguise for natural behavior.  I'm not sure what kind of character Hans Conried is.  I wouldn't dare inquire."       Paar was asking Conried to come on his show just as he was:  no script to memorize, no dreaded rehearsals.  Conried was initially stunned by his friend's offer, and incredulously asked Paar, "You mean, I don't have to do anything?!"   Conried recalled that Paar calmly replied, "No, just talk, Hans.  You have a big mouth."  It was all very loose and informal.  In fact, doing any kind of prepared "act", according to Conried, was inviting disaster:  "It is very dangerous to perform on the Paar show.  The audience is too intimate, and the atmosphere too stark.  I remember a famous chanteuse, who shall remain nameless, and her attempt to do the same thing on Paar's show as she does in the swank hotel rooms.  She died--it was horrible!  It is better to go on cold and just rely on Mother Wit.  Jack asks me backstage before the show if I have some new story to tell, and I say no, and he shrugs his shoulders and walks out on stage."  The only thing Conried had to remember each night was, "when Jack looks at me the first time I start talking, when he looks at me the second time, I stop."       After appearing each night on The Tonight Show --later renamed The Jack Paar Show--for a full week, the press was buzzing about this "new" discovery.  They referred to Conried as a "personality".  Though flattered, Conried was a bit dumfounded at all the attention he was receiving.  His pride was hurt just a little bit too:  "After 25 years, I finally found successby sitting alongside Jack Paar and uttering inanities."       These "inanities" were causing quite a stir and Conried was being offered a sea of television work (including commercial endorsements), as well as offers for the legitimate theatre.   Record companies were also requesting his services for various projects.  Conried would say of his changing fate, "Heretofore I was an actor; now I'm a personality.  I'm not sure what a personality is, and I hope never to find out, as I like to keep on getting away with it.  I attribute my current inflation to my association with Jack Paar.  And don't ask me what Paar has because if I knew I'd try to bottle it and sell it.  You see, on the Paar show, in the over-all roast ham each clove must have its distinction.  I suppose I supply something however lethargic, wry, mordant, and warped I may be."  Even with all the success, Conried claimed to be relatively unfazed by it all:  "I've never worried much about whether I was known as an actor, or as a personality.  I just want to stay alive."       Conried did even better than just "stay alive".  Paar would ask him back on the show so often he was considered a semi-regular along with Dody Goodman, Jose Mellis, Genevieve, and a select group of Paar faithful.  The flush of fame Conried was now enjoying revitalized his career, and allowed him to move in new directions.  There was a trade-off though.  Conried was only being offered comedic roles.  The idea of Conried as a comedic actor would become solidified by the late 1950's.  One major studio's casting director was quoted by TV Guide magazine as saying, "When you think of Conried, you think instantly of a comic actor.  I would guess that producers feel audiences might have the same reaction, that they would instinctively laugh at the sight of him when they really weren't supposed to."  Another casting director said, "I've worked with Conried only twice, and each time he played a comic part.  He is the kind of personality that seems to register only in that vein.  You look at him and you laugh.  He can do Shakespeare beautifully on radio.  But when you see him, the entire aspect is comic."       After reading such remarks, Conried said with an air of resignation, "You do what you are asked to do.  Some of the things I am asked to do are a little silly, to be sure, but this is a part of the craft, and you bring to each job the very best you have."  Commenting on the same theme a few years later after playing a number of humorous villains on television and the stage, Conried said, "People know I'm up to no good when they see me skulking around but I guess I don't have the proper villainous features.  They laugh instead of hissing.  It's that kind of thing that, were I not so firm in my self-confidence, would make me feel inadequate."       In contrast to the comedy parts he was increasingly being offered, Conried landed the role of an eccentric artist on the crime drama: Dragnet.  The episode "The Big Howard" featured only the principal actors on the series, Jack Webb and Ben Alexander, and Conried.  All of the action took place during an interrogation in the artist's studio.  It was a very tightly woven, psychological drama that Conried found a welcome diversion:  "Not that playing an eccentric artist is a new part for me, but this one isn't the putty nose and baggy pants variety.  It's a relief to get away from low comedy for a change."       As a result of wowing people with his witty, erudite self on The Jack Paar Show, Conried was offered a job in October of 1957 as a regular panelist on the NBC Saturday morning quiz show, What's It For?  Prior to its first broadcast, Conried told a reporter, "It will be a program dealing with new inventions.  Four adult, sober, and apparently sensible people will try to guess, over a period of thirty minutes, what are the purposes of the devices that are brought before them.  It will be very light and, I trust, amusing".  One of Conried's fellow panelists was old friend, and Broadway producer, Abe Burrows.       His run on The Danny Thomas Show as Uncle Tonoose would continue until the show's cancellation in 1971.  Even though he only appeared on the show three times during a season, many of the people he met stubbornly identified him with Tonoose:  "Since I started this role, people stop me in the street and greet me in Arabic.  Since I don't speak Arabic, I usually reply with a cordial 'Gezundheit!' or 'L'chayim', and let it go at that."  Conried eventually learned a few words of Arabic from Danny Thomas.  Thomas assured Conried they were friendly words of greeting.  An embarrassed Conried later found out the hard way the Arabic words were actually expletives! .       (Page 118-121):  In August of 1959, television audiences watched Conried in the well-publicized NBC comedy special, The Ransom of Red Chief.  Conried co-starred with his old friend William Bendix, and Mickey Rooney's young son, Teddy Rooney.  The critics blasted the show in print, and showed the elder stars no mercy (though they were kind to Teddy).  Conried even found himself taking some of the heat while trying to hail a taxi in New York:  "With unbecoming frequency I've been told that wasn't the greatest effort to hit television.  As you know, New York cabbies are never loath to advise you on your profession.  Well, the day after the show, a New York cabbie expressed it this way:  'Hey Conried, you sure stunk last night!'"        A bad show here or there aside, Conried was creating such a stir on television that he was asked to appear on The Mike Wallace Interview show.  After a few stints as the host of quiz shows--Conried was a panelist on a couple of them--Mike Wallace was quickly making a name for himself as a tough, no-nonsense, go-for-the-jugular interviewer.  His early efforts with The Mike Wallace Interview earned him the brand of "The Terrible Torquemada of the Television Inquisition."  What could Mike Wallace possible want with Conried?  Conried was never in any way a controversial figure, or involved in a scandal.  He always showed up for work on time, clean-shaven and sober.  He had nothing to worry about then, right?  Well... almost right.       Conried was worried, and when it came time to film the interview appeared to be quite uncomfortable, frequently squirming in his seat with arms and legs crossed.  For some reason, Mike Wallace went easy on Conried.  By 1959, the show's format had changed significantly (there had been some threats of lawsuits), and the questions asked took on a much softer tone.  It probably wouldn't have mattered what questions were asked, anyway, as Conried was such an impenetrable fortress there was no way Wallace could get him to open up and say anything that even hinted of controversy--until the second interview, at least.  It is amusing to note that as Conried and Wallace were discussing his early radio work, Conried felt the need to remind the viewers that a radio was "a box through which voices came--it's hard to explain it nowadays."       Two complete interviews were taped for The Mike Wallace Interview.  The tamer, non-confrontational version that ended with Wallace categorizing Conried as a "gentle man" was the one that aired on March 18, 1959.  The second interview was much edgier, and veered off into areas Conried did not want to discuss at all:  namely, politics.  It was brought out by Wallace that some of Conried's "friends" thought of him as an "arch, rabid, reactionary" when it came to politics.  Obviously not pleased with where the conversation was going, Conried defended himself, and said he was decidedly a "liberal", and his friends, who were also liberals, were completely wrong (though still friends).   Conried's views on politics were in many respects offbeat, and somewhat naïve.  For example, this is what he thought of the American system of government:  "In many respects, Democracy--Republicanism as we know it--is not successful, and it limps along because we are held back by the many-tongued monster that we are.  If you have a vote, and I have a vote, and a Doctor of Philosophy has a vote a political scientist has a vote, and the simple man who cannot count without removing his shoes and socks to get beyond ten--we all have equal votes--there is something wrong; that my vote can count out a Doctor of Philosophy, who is probably more worthy and understanding in the matter of what is good for the common weal, and the chap who is having difficulty tying his shoelaces."  Conried counted himself about a step and a half above the chap with the shoelace trouble.       Wallace (on a tip from Conried's "friends") asked Conried about his supposed desire to create a monarchy in the U.S., causing the poor fellow to nearly leap out of his chair to proclaim the ludicrousness of that notion, and to assure everyone he has never advocated the violent overthrow of the government.  Wallace tried to push him along those lines, but Conried refused to play the game saying he wouldn't discuss the subject any further: "I don't think publicly, not even as a joke, because I think we'd all be hanged."  Noting the increasing level of anxiety Conried was exhibiting, Wallace continued: MW:  "You are seriously concerned about speaking your mind" HC:  "I always have been.  I think as a cheap entertainer; a low clown... " MW:  "Do you really regard yourself as a 'low clown'"? HC:  "On this occasion I desire to hide behind that shield, yes, I assure you." MW:  "Why this fear?" HC:  "[Actors] are always targets for barbs.  We have the equal rights as citizens, surely" MW:  "What you're really saying is you're afraid people won't buy tickets to your show." HC: "In effect, Mike, you've hit it precisely and exactly." MW: "And so you are willing to be cowed by... " HC: (Jokingly)  "By you! Your rudeness--your lack of good taste--your lack of charm on this occasion.  Later, when we are in private, I'll probably punch your nose, but here I can do nothing!"        The interviewed ended with Wallace this time categorizing Conried as looking rather like "a devil, who perhaps thinks like a mischievous one too."  Conried tried to bolt off the set, but was motioned to sit down so the credits could roll.  Behind the credits, you can see Conried reaching over and grabbing Wallace by the collar, and threatening him in a mock aggressive way.  Mike Wallace was laughing so hard it looked like he was in danger of falling out of his chair.  I'm sure Conried was very happy to finally leave the studio, and even happier that version of the interview did not make it on the air.       The tickets Conried was afraid he would lose were for his hit Broadway play, Tall Story, that was playing to packed houses at that time.  This was Conried's second opportunity to perform on Broadway, and for the first time in his career he was enjoying a great deal of success as the main star of a legitimate theatrical production.  The details surrounding why he chose to leave Hollywood, and his flourishing television career behind to do another Broadway play isn't quite clear.  It is true 20th Century Fox was interested in having Conried play the lead in their proposed Mr. Belvedere television series, and wanted him to film the pilot.  The story goes that he actually flipped a coin to see if he'd do the series, or go to New York.  Obviously, Broadway won out.       The television series was by no means a sure thing, and it was seriously doubtful if Fox could find a sponsor.  The filming of the pilot was delayed, and he signed with Joshua Logan to star in Tall Story.  Logan, you may remember, was the one who successfully sweet-talked Conried into his nearly nonexistent role in the film Bus Stop.  This time, he really had something of substance to offer Conried.  Unfortunately, Logan would again disappoint him. Even with the Broadway play going full steam, and garnering rave reviews, Logan was already putting together the cast for the motion picture version of Tall Story without its Broadway star.  Conried was not even in the running.  When later asked why Joshua Logan didn't put him in the film version of Tall Story Conried replied sadly, "Now you're opening an old wound.  I thought it was over.  He just didn't see fit to cast me in the picture after I'd done that play."  Logan re-tooled the story for the motion picture to focus more on the basketball star, played in the film by Anthony Perkins, and because of the flexibility of the medium, could include actual basketball games.  Conried's character, the middle-aged college professor, who was the focal point of the stage play, ended up with a less important part in the film.  Conried summed it up years later by saying, "In my day it wasn't a basketball story; it was about a loveable professor.  When they reduced it in content and intellect to the motion picture, they made it a basketball story." .       (Page 123):  The following year, 1960, Conried headed off to England with Jack Paar, gave his first college lecture, and took another former Broadway show on the road.  1960 would be the start of one of the most hectic periods in Conried's career, and probably the most financially lucrative.  It was also the start of a very difficult time for his young children, who would rarely get to see their father, and a wife who had to cope as best she could without her husband.  Conried was in between that proverbial rock and a hard place, and he did what he felt was best for all concerned.  It was not by any means the way he would have wanted it, though:  "In life, as in any profession, one falls so far from his youthful goal.  Every human being is off target, no matter what he attains.  Nothing at this point is anywhere near my high clanking dreams of youth.  With necessary compromises, we're all failures, more or less."      Nevertheless, Conried always felt he was on "good terms with himself and his compromises", and forged ahead once again into the new territory of the legitimate stage.  After claiming to have had two or three careers shot out from under him, Conried was very pleased to have tenaciously survived long enough in the business to finally find a place where he could be a "star".