Jack Nicholson screen characters, someone who is "snarly, dumb, smart, noble, rascally—all the parts of 'Jack'" Nicholson went on to win his next Academy Award for Best Actor in the romantic comedy, "As Good as It Gets" (1997), his third film directed by James L. Brooks. He played Melvin Udall, a "wickedly funny", mean-spirited, obsessive-compulsive novelist. "I'm a studio Method actor", he said. "So I was prone to give some kind of clinical presentation of the disorder." His Oscar was matched with the Academy Award for Best Actress for Helen Hunt, who played a Manhattan wisecracking, single-mother waitress drawn into a love/hate
Tonight Starring Jack Paar Paar hosted the program from 1957 to 1962. Paar's original announcer was actor Franklin Pangborn, but he was fired after only a few weeks for not showing enough "spontaneous enthusiasm". His replacement was Hugh Downs, who stayed with Paar to the end. At first, the show was called "Tonight Starring Jack Paar"; after 1959 it was officially known as "The Jack Paar Show" (or "The Jack Paar Tonight Show", a phrasing which led to the name "The Tonight Show," as opposed to simply "Tonight," being adopted permanently after Paar's departure). On September 19, 1960, the series became one of the