MovieChat Forums > Laugh-In (1967) Discussion > The truth about Laugh-In -- it isn't fun...

The truth about Laugh-In -- it isn't funny

posted 9 years ago by TMC-4
30 replies | jump to latest

http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2008/05/the-trut h-about.html

It's not funny.

Not even slightly.

If you catch a re-run on cable you're likely to sit slack-jawed in front of your TV stunned that you ever found the trite humor, broad slapstick and barrage of idiotic catch-phrases (you bet your sweet bippy!) even remotely entertaining during its original run from 1968-1973.

Not to speak ill of the dead (Dan Rowan died in 1987). Rowan and Martin somehow captured the comedy zeitgeist of middle America in the late 1960s (as a middle-American 10-year-old when the show debuted, it was appointment viewing for me) and their program's unusual, non-linear, sometimes surreal daffiness no doubt paved the way for such genuinely funny programs as "Saturday Night Live" and maybe even "Seinfeld" and "The Simpsons."

Comedy tends to age poorly, in part because it relies on being edgy and the edge keeps moving away. But "Laugh-In" is in a class of its own as a solemn cultural artifact -- a museum piece to be studied yet not actually enjoyed.

[–] hifijohn 9 years ago

I was a little too young to remember this show when it first aired but I have seen it in reruns and you're right , its not just non funny its imbarrasingly not funny.

[–] CleverTitania 9 years ago

Any person who says they can judge definitively what is and isn't funny, is one of the last people I would trust the opinion of. I laughed my ass off watching Laugh In, on Nick at Nite as a kid, and I still laugh at the "Best Of" copies today. Literally - I am in the middle of an episode right now.

And every person I've ever talked to about this show, who watched it regularly, loved it and mourned that the complete series was never released on VHS or DVD. Which is why I was checking the IMDB board on the show again, once more hoping a decent DVD collection (or better yet digital) was on the horizon.

Laugh In is and was hilarious, in no small part to it having a hilarious cast, and fantastic writers. People who wrote for Laugh In, also wrote for Sanford and Son, M.A.S.H., Mary Tyler Moore, All In the Family, Rhoda, Three's Company, The Carol Burnett Show, The Waltons, Get Smart, Inspector Gadget, 'Allo 'Allo!, The Good Times, McHale's Navy - the list goes on and on. These were top writers in their field, at the top of their game. It won numerous Emmy's and a couple of Golden Globes.

From 1968 to 1970, Rowan & Martin's Laugh In was the number one rated show in the nation. That doesn't happen with a show that simply isn't funny. Sure in '68-'69 it barely beat shows like Gunsmoke or Bonanza, but in '69-'70 it beat all it's competition by a large margin. Even if I find Seinfeld frustratingly stupid and boring as hell, I don't have the nerve to claim one of the most popular comedies in the history of television, isn't funny.

It sounds like some people saw this in their adolescence, and the missed the joke as an adult - which is weird because the show is a lot funnier once you understand the political context of California in the 1960s.

[–] Ed in MO 9 years ago

A lot of humor doesn't age well. Laugh-In basically threw vaudeville jokes onto television in a quick, haphazard manor that never slowed down, and did it with a laugh track that screamed "funny" even when the joke wasn't. Much like 1966's Batman, America tired of it in a couple of years and that was that.

All attempts at a revival never went anywhere, because Laugh-In was strictly a product of its time and place.

[–] CleverTitania 9 years ago

First off, Laugh-In did not use a laugh track. If you watch the later interviews with people like Arte Johnson, you'll find that in the early days they nearly killed themselves working the crowds between setups. There was no canned laughter to be found on the show, and the literal cut-and-paste style of editing they used to cut the show, would not have allowed for placing a laugh from another part of the show onto the jokes which fell flat. Every laugh you hear on that show, is legitimately earned from an audience that made that show the #1 series in the country for 2 years.

Yes, it drew heavily on vaudeville, but so did most big shows in that time frame - including classics like The Carol Burnett show and Ed Sullivan - vaudeville was the last form of stage comedy to be big before the advent of television. Even the Dick Van Dyke show drew on that history, by making Dick's character a writer on a comedy-variety show.

And America did not tire of it. The problem is many of the performers on the show, got famous too fast after being on it, and moved on too quickly - like Worley and Hawn. There was only one small attempt at revival after the initial series, and they could never recapture the chemistry of the cast in the first few seasons - even with a pre-Mork Robin Williams on the show, who also did one season of Laugh-In and became massively famous shortly thereafter. And any revival without Dan and Dick was never going to survive anyway - so not including their input in the revival was a recipe for failure. The show burned out quickly because it launched stars - whose departures left holes which couldn't be filled - but it burned bright as hell for the time it was on.

If you understand the context of the jokes, and the era they are from, they are every bit as funny now as they were then. And the political climate of the time still has things to teach us about today - including how to laugh at ourselves as a nation. But along with films like Murder by Death or The Bellboy - the comedy of Laugh-In never really loses its punch. If you or others don't laugh now at the humor, you're the exception, not the norm. This show still has an 8.1 on IMDB for a reason, and was listed as one of the top 50 television shows of all time by TV guide - for many people it has always been, and will always be, hilarious.

The number one show on the TV Guide's list, is Seinfeld, which I found to be one of the stupidest and least funny TV shows ever made - you don't see me claiming that my opinion of it is right and everyone else's is wrong.

As I already said, the top TV writers of the day wrote on Laugh-In - the fact that it was a fast paced form of comedy in no way detracts from that reality. Laugh-In was a product of great writers and performers, who worked in a wonderfully cooperative and free-form artistic environment, and those kinds of collaborations never go out of style.

[–] Ed in MO 9 years ago

I watched a few clips of Laugh-In on Youtube just to make sure that there was a laugh track as I remembered, and indeed there is. (If they used a studio audience, then they definitely "sweetened" their laughter with a machine.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7faHPGHk7E

I have no problem with that, but if they were telling people there was no artificial laughter or applause, then they are lying.

[–] CleverTitania 9 years ago

Perhaps you missed it earlier, where I pointed out they literally cut and pasted together the film - being one of the first shows to record on film. What you're hearing is a joke from Sammy Davis Jr.'s bit - which might even have been off-camera - overlapping with a clip of Henry Gibson a moment later. In fact the exact same effect happens later in that Youtube vid, with clips from Sammy and Henry again, and the laugh is entirely different from one clip to the next. Using overlapping audio of overlapping video clips is not a laugh-track.

I've seen every episode of the show, multiple times, and there was no evidence of canned laughter. The editing was good; if it hadn't been the show wouldn't have been a success. But for every little scene we saw on screen, there was a 10-15 minute performance in front of a live studio audience, who were laughing at things seen and unseen by the TV viewers. Did laughter get disseminated throughout a show with good editing, probably. But the laughter you heard - according to all parties involved - who are AGAIN highly respect people in TV production - was from their live audience's reactions to the performances seen.

I've done extensive digging, and found not a single reference to Charley Douglass' laugh tracks (who was the only person producing them at the time) being added to Laugh-In, other than vague assumptions on forums like this one, and sites like TV Tropes. So whose opinion would I take? My own not inexperienced ear along with the people who worked on the show, or a half dozen people online who think they can identify a laugh-track by edited together clips on Youtube?

I'll stick with reliable sources. Because given the number of shows that were using Douglass' methods around the era of Laugh-In, no one would reasonably lie to avoid admitting you were using a laugh track. They went so far as to play the pre-recorded video clips (like the ones filmed outdoors) to the live audiences, to record their reactions. A show that makes that kind of effort to get the live audience's real reactions, isn't surreptitiously adding canned laughter to their show.

Laugh-In is often referred to as the "Laugh Track of the 60's," because it had its finger on the pulse of comedy in its day. Not because it was heavy on sweetener.

[–] urgeking 9 years ago

Uhhh... well... CleverTitania, I agree with everything positive you've said about 'Laugh-In', except the laugh track. I definitely hear some sweetening. Even back in the 1960s when I was a kid it was pretty obvious to me. One of the perverse things about TV laugh tracks of the '60s-'70s was the reliance on certain specific laughs that were so distinctive that you couldn't NOT notice the repeated use of them. Makes me wonder if the technicians chose to do this so they could easily hear where they inserted them.

So nobody involved in the production ever publicly mentioned the use of such tracks? Well, they wouldn't have much motivation to do so, would they? And what would they really have to lose by telling a white lie about it? Now, maybe all of the laughs we hear had their ORIGIN in the show's studio audiences-- maybe-- but quite a few are inserted again and again in the standard canned-laughter manner. Their exact source-- some standard audio library or a real audience-- makes little difference to anyone who notices that they SOUND canned. If any insiders claim that EVERY laugh we hear was generated 'live' when we're hearing it take place, at that moment ONLY, with none added anywhere, there's a term for that claim: "a polite fiction".

A polite fudging, on the other hand, was the statement added to the beginning or end of many '70s sitcoms: "[Name of program] was recorded live before a studio audience." In and of itself, that's a true statement-- but THEN they overdubbed more 'laughs'.

BTW, I think you have the terms 'film' and 'video' switched here. The studio scenes were shot on video, while the outdoor footage was on film. And, yes, given the primitive nature of the 1960s videotape-editing technology they had to use, the rapidfire cutting is an amazing achievement-- so much painstaking labor in so little time. (The specifics have been discussed online somewhere.) But once they had a final edit of a videotape, they must have been adding more audio in post-production, even in that era. The music, for instance. For another example, check out the Carol Burnett episodes such as those airing on MeTV (also shot on video). Blatant sweetening added after the fact.

I've been a huge Monty Python fan for 41 years. They, too, shot their indoor scenes on video and their outdoor footage on film (probably 16mm). And their TV episodes also display audible evidence of inserted laughs. Some people involved in that program have also denied any use of sweetening, with explanations like, "Oh, you're just hearing exaggerated laughter from some teenyboppers in the studio audience who were crazy about John Cleese." And, based on what I hear in many 'MPFC' episodes, I don't believe those people either.

[–] CleverTitania 9 years ago

I didn't say they didn't publicly mention using it, I said they specifically talked about how shows were shot, and the ways cut it. All the laughs came from the studio audience who they spent a lot of effort keeping entertained between bits, and who reviewed the outside recorded segments to get their reactions. And again, most of the shows on the air around then used the sweetening, no one had a problem admitting it. Why would they? Charley Douglass was the ONLY person doing sweetening at the time Laugh In was on the air - and plenty of other shows on NBC were using it - and there is not one reference anywhere to Douglass' technique being connected to the show. The rational explanation, is that it wasn't used.

Everyone thinks they can recognize canned laughter, and half of the time they're wrong. It is a polite fiction to claim you can tell any of the laughter is repetitive or familiar, when there is not a single credit, article or other source material saying it is. Especially when there are multiple accounts of just how the show was produced, recorded and edited - and none mention the use of any canned laughter or any laugh track. And every example you give of a show which OPENLY used canned laughter and didn't hide it - like Carol Burnett - just reinforces my point.

You don't have to believe them. But the more important point is I don't have to believe you - I believe what facts are available and what observations I can make. I've also seen every episode of Flying Circus and Laugh In dozens of times. Growing up watching 70's TV, I also know what canned laughter sounds like, specifically because I have a huge hearing range in comparison to the average human - both high and low - and while I certainly could hear the same person laughing throughout individual episodes, I never heard what sounded like canned laughter on either of those shows.

People also try to claim that QI uses canned laughs, because there's no way their audience reactions are genuine - apparently these people don't grasp how group laughter works, or why studio audiences were 'invented' in the first place - but countless guests and audience members have stated categorically that what you hear in the broadcast is what was recorded live that night. I've never heard of a single person who said they heard laughter on the broadcast, that wasn't consistent with what happened in the studio. Once again, I'll take the statements of people who were actually there, over people who have a theory on the internet.

Show me one piece of evidence that Charles Douglass worked on Laugh-In - since again he was the only person using the technique right up into the 1970s - and I might change my perspective. But without evidence to support the argument, I'll maintain that the supposed placement of laugh tracks in those shows, is the fiction.

[–] urgeking 9 years ago

Wow! Where to begin?

Charley Douglass was the ONLY person doing sweetening at the time Laugh In was on the air -

Was he? Or was he the only one doing it as a contractor for hire? With all of the IN-HOUSE audio post-production capabilities already in use by 1968, is there really NO chance that anyone at any of the networks or production companies (Schlatter/Friendly, Romart) would ever experiment with sweetening techniques of their own? Really?

Everyone thinks they can recognize canned laughter, and half of the time they're wrong.

a) How do you know? Have you tested them?

B) Even if you're right, that means that half of the time we CAN recognize it!

I don't have online access to 'Laugh-In' episodes right now (due to temporary technical problems), but a few days ago I watched about twenty minutes of an episode with Greer Garson as the special guest... and almost immediately I began to hear those same familiar distinct sweetening bits, so familiar from all those years ago because they were used so often that most listeners probably noticed them even if they didn't give them much thought (since laugh tracks were so common).

Three specific examples from among the numerous sweetening clips I heard:

--The 'quacking' laugh (about 2 seconds). If Wolfman Jack were to let out a guffaw it would probably sound like this. It's most commonly used at the end of sketches or blackouts, not so much in things like the Dan-and-Dick repartee segments.

--The 'falsetto' male laugh (about 1 second)-- used as a chuckle, it sounds like the "Hoohoohoohoo!" from the 'Scrubbing Bubbles' ads in the 1970s (can't remember which cleaner that was), except that the sound used in the ad rises in pitch near the end, whereas this stays constant.

--The 'quizzical' sound (about 1 second)-- rising in pitch at the midpoint, then falling again, it resembles a slithery note played on a violin, or air being let out of a balloon.

Each of those was used multiple times, and each time one was used it sounded identical, not just similar.

Growing up watching 70's TV, I also know what canned laughter sounds like, specifically because I have a huge hearing range in comparison to the average human - both high and low -

You do, huh? How do you know? It doesn't matter, though, because the audio frequencies contained in human vocal expression fall almost entirely between 100 and 6000 Hz, not out at the far extremes. That's been noted in various audio literature, and, having done a lot of extremely meticulous audio remastering on headphones over the last few years, I've found it to be true in practice.

I have no doubt that MOST of the audience reaction heard on 'Laugh-In' was genuine, but someone was adding little bits in post to spice it up, and other people here have noticed them too. Soon I'll go through an episode and list precisely where some of those recurring little clips appear.

[–] CleverTitania 9 years ago

How about you begin with facts rather than speculation?

From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, Douglass had a virtual monopoly on the laugh-track business. In 1966, TV Guide critic Dick Hobson said the Douglass family were "the only laugh game in town." When it came time to "lay in the laughs", the producer would direct Douglass where and when to insert the type of laugh requested. Douglass would then go to work at creating the audience, out of sight from the producer or anyone else present at the studio in order to preserve secrecy around his technique. Consequently, very few in the industry ever witnessed Douglass using his invention.

The one-of-a-kind laugh-track device—known throughout the industry as the "laff box"—was tightly secured with padlocks, stood more than two feet tall, and operated like an organ. Only immediate members of the family knew what the inside actually looked like (at one time, the laff box was called "the most sought after but well-concealed box in the world").

- Hobson, Dick (July 2, 1966). "The Hollywood Sphinx and his Laff Box". TV Guide.

There is absolutely no reference anywhere, to anyone involved with the production of Laugh-In, trying to develop their own sweetening techniques - and once again tons of other NBC shows used Douglass' methods, so why would Laugh-In invent their own? If you have a source that says the producers of the show were inventing their own techniques, produce it. Otherwise you are doing nothing but guessing.

So you gave three examples from a single episode, where you heard laughs which sounded somewhat like other laughs you've heard in other venues, but not precisely like those laughs? The only proof you have is that you heard the same laugh multiple times in the same episode - i.e. in front of the same studio audience? And what was it I said? That's right - that I have heard the same person laugh multiple times during the same episode. I can hear Jimmy Carr's strange high pitched laugh a thousand times - and it still sounds created by a machine because it's nearly identical every time it comes out - for that matter it also sounds damned similar to Burt Reynolds laugh, which also doesn't vary in pitch, duration or cadence as much as most people's laugh. Yet it's entirely obvious that Jimmy's laugh is both genuine and spontaneous. You have proven nothing with that argument.

How do I know my hearing range? It's been tested numerous times over the years, the first time I am aware of, with an audiometer - in front of about 60 people - in college. I never stated that listening for laughter require 20,000hz of hearing capability. I was simply pointing out that I have not inconsiderable ability to hear varying ranges of frequencies - more so than the average human being - so it's not that I just can't hear the "manufactured" laughter.

But since you'd like to classify just how high is high....

Even more remarkable were the very high frequencies of some voiced laughs. Male fundamentals were sometimes over 1,000 Hertz (Hz)-about the pitch of a high "C" for a soprano singer. Females were sometimes over 2,000 Hz-one octave higher than a soprano's high C. These high fundamentals were unexpected. "I personally didn't imagine that males and females would produce sounds with fundamentals that high in natural circumstances," Bachorowski said.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/10/011004065312.htm

One octave higher than soprano's high C is an extreme. A woman's high pitched scream is 3000hz. And the older one gets, the less likely they are to be able to identify distinctions in any sound that high in frequency.

So in all of my comments, you found one thing I said which wasn't backed up by outside sources - that half the time people misidentify laugh tracks. I remember reading that statistic previously, but cannot now find the source of it.

And in all of your comments, you have yet to provide a single source to back up your claims that there was a laugh track on Laugh-In (or Flying Circus), or that anyone involved in those shows was using Douglass' or home-grown techniques. You have also yet to provide a single source showing evidence of a laugh track in their audio recordings.

Your patronizing tone is not warranted by your comments. "Other people" also think they notice that people didn't land on the moon because of the lighting in the photographs or how the footprints formed. "Other people" claim that they heard people talking in an operating room while they were brain dead - and yet there is no evidence to this day to support that claim. Plenty of "other people" have said they hear no such evidence of a laugh track. "Other people" hearing things do not make them exist.

http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:57/ELEC-301-Projects-Fall-2007

So find time-frequency recordings which confirm the existence of a laugh track - or sources that the show's sound engineers on the show were developing their own sweetening techniques - and you'll have an argument.

Note that I didn't start the argument for their NOT being a laugh-track - I was contradicting the review posted by the OP, claiming there was a laugh-track. Which means I have no obligation to prove a negative. But regardless of that, I have backed up my statements with sourced facts, and you have only backed yours up with more speculation. So like I said - show me evidence to back up your claims and I might believe you. But I have yet to see any evidence to support the laugh-track conclusion, from you or anyone else. Just a lot of people claiming their guesses as facts.

[–] urgeking 9 years ago

MY patronizing tone?!? Phheewwww.

The only proof you have is that you heard the same laugh multiple times in the same episode - i.e. in front of the same studio audience?

Nope. My point was, I used to hear the same laughs and other sounds (such as the "quacking" or cackling laugh, mentioned previously) repeatedly in NUMEROUS episodes of the show-- so that these sounds became a familiar, 'normal' part of the show for me, as familiar as the music clips-- or as familiar as, say, the Enterprise's synthetic "nature' sounds and other sound effects for those watching the first 'Star Trek' series. They came to be a predictable, expected part of the environment of the show... for better or worse.

"From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, Douglass had a virtual monopoly on the laugh-track business." I note that it didn't say "on laugh-track TECHNIQUES". To "have a monopoly on the BUSINESS" might only mean that he was the only one SELLING his services TO CLIENTS who were not his actual employers. If people on 'Laugh-In' were doing their own kind of sweetening, they would not, strictly speaking, be "IN the laugh-track business". They would be in the business of producing a program. So that quote could be technically correct yet not say as much as it appears to.

And do note that he was said to have a "VIRTUAL monopoly"-- not an absolute one. I didn't notice that qualifier at first... but I do now!

I was simply pointing out that I have not inconsiderable ability to hear varying ranges of frequencies - more so than the average human being -

"Varying ranges of frequencies"? What exactly does that MEAN?

"More so than the average human being"-- in what way?

- so it's not that I just can't hear the "manufactured" laughter.

I think a number of longtime 'Laugh-In' viewers reading this might disagree there... but in any case, perception depends on more than just the physical ability to hear frequencies. Some people are better than others at PATTERN RECOGNITION. Some will listen to a rock or jazz recording for years and never hear certain instruments or voices that other people noticed right away. You could probably find lots of people who'd swear they never heard "The Wilhelm" in most of the movies where it was used-- yet it WAS used there, and many other people DID notice.

My "evidence" for sweetening has been, and is, the sound of the shows themselves. Listen and judge for yourself, folks.

[–] Ed in MO 9 years ago

I've listened, and there is definitely canned laughter there. It's so obvious that to deny it is like saying that black is white.

I'm not saying that laugh tracks aren't necessary. It's interesting to see a comedy without a laugh track. It completely changes the whole tone....it turns that comedy into a drama.

Here's one good example. "Friends" without a laugh track. It plays like something you would see on Lifetime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgKgXehYnnw

[–] phoebemunster 9 years ago

I agree that there is some canned laughter sweetening, and that it's some of the same laughs heard in many 60s sitcoms. I just heard one last night when I was watching an episode on the third disc of the Best Of 2 set (I can't remember which of the two episodes). It was this woman's sympathetic laugh (kind of sounds like ohoh) that I've definitely heard in The Munsters and other shows. But overall, I agree with the posts that say positive things about the show and that it is indeed funny (to me, anyway).

Urgeking, thanks for mentioning the "quizzical sound." Assuming you're talking about the thing I'm thinking of, I kept hearing it over and over in the latter seasons of Bewitched when I was rewatching them on DVD last year. I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be a baby noise or what.

[–] R_Kane (15828) 2 years ago

Geez, lady. If you’d ever shut the fuck up, some man might want to put his dick in you.

[–] R_Kane (15828) 2 years ago

Titania, you need to get laid.

[–] 123Guy (6147) 2 years ago

This would solve many world problems from feminism to SJW triggers

[–] TOASTnJAM 9 years ago

I was a teenager living near Burbank and went to the tapings several times and there were not enough people in the audience for that laughter. There were about 200 seats and it was always less than half filled. The laughter was definitely canned.

Side note
Between the skit setups I would wander around the backstage and saw several celebrities, Bob Hope, Danny Thomas Johnny Carson. Even got to talk briefly with Goldie Hawn while we were both at the candy machine. That was a thrill.
There's no way audience member would be able to go backstage today. It really was a different era.

I'm a proud member of the other P.E.T.A.
People Eating Tasty Animals

[–] indy_go_blue44 8 years ago

It seems that the point being made by the OP has been lost in the argument about canned laughter. The OP says in essence that Laugh-In hasn't aged well (or has aged poorly.) That may be; I haven't watched it in many years. Be that as it may, neither have a lot of comedies that relied on humor re current events and people. Case in point: Some of the albums made through the '60s such as "The First Family" (about the Kennedy's) or "Welcome to the LBJ Ranch." Maybe we've lived through to much or didn't live through the times so we understand the humor.

At any rate, it was fantastic and true "must watch tv" at the time. The OP's final comment is true (though I don't agree with the "museum piece" cut.) "All in the Family" was over the edge in 1971; today it would be considered mild.

[–] louiseculmer 7 years ago

I've rewatched bits of it on youtube and still find them funny. Perhaps some of it hasn't worn well, but there's a lot that is still funny.

[–] rainbowfever64 7 years ago

I grew up watching it. Just got done watching it found it funny and interesting to look back on haven't seen a episode in probably 25 years. Glad its being rerun.

[–] madman58 7 years ago

watched it back in the day as a kid and now that it is on decades i can see it belongs in a time capsule,something to pull out and look at in just a historical aspect. some humor does not transcend time. I would put laugh-in there.(also monkees).

[–] mactach 7 years ago

Why does it matter if the humor doesn't transend time?

it was good for its time and that's all that matters.

[–] madman58 7 years ago

exactly, the topic was that it is not funny in the present age.

[–] joan399 7 years ago

Not funny? What ever....

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

It was rather the "bridge" between old-time TV comedy shows(Red Skeleton, Bob Hope, Jack Benny) and what was coming with Saturday Night Live.

The show depended on its fast pace...and I always recall feeling a little sad when that pace would pay off at the end with a bunch of folks saying "good night Dick" as we heard one lonely pair of handclaps taking the show off the air..and Arte Johnson's funny Nazi at the VERY end, usually teasing "Lucy" on the other network at the same time.

In Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, the show had "younger hipper guys" than Hope and Benny...and Martin in particular sold a goofy kind of sexual appetite(in real life, his wife at the time was a Playboy playmate.) The various jokes about sex and 1960's politics also made the show just a bit more hip for its time.

Probably the funniest "act" was Arte Johnson's old man shuffling up to Ruth Buzzi's "bag on a bench" to pitch woo and get slammed with a purse. It was the best of gags: funny from the start, funny at the finish, and a running schtick that was always the same.

And this: those fairly starry "star cameos" in between bits -- Kirk Douglas, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis...Liberace, Otto Preminger...Richard Nixon("Sock it to ME?") right before he won the Presidency.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

It's not funny.

Not even slightly.

If you catch a re-run on cable you're likely to sit slack-jawed in front of your TV stunned that you ever found the trite humor, broad slapstick and barrage of idiotic catch-phrases (you bet your sweet bippy!) even remotely entertaining during its original run from 1968-1973.

---

I return to note that I do recall a lot of people at the time doing imitations of:

Arte Johnson the old man getting beaten up by old bag Ruth Buzzi
Lily Tomlin -- in a giant chair -- doing the 6-year old philosopher "Edith Anne." (Teenage girls used to do THAT routine all the freakin' time.)
Lily Tomlin -- again(she joined Goldie Hawn as the big star to emerge from the show) as the telephone operator ("One ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingies.)

Goldie Hawn's ditzy, stumbling-over-her lines manner was inimitable -- and made her a star. Then, once a movie star, she stopped acting that way(it was "fake") and her star faded.

And I reiterate that Dick Martin DID have it going on as a rapid-fire comedian(with a decidedly lady-killer bent), and Dan Rowan WAS an expert straight man.

I guess you had to be there.