Laugh-In

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Laugh-In

"Sock it to me!" "Here come de Judge!" "You bet your sweet bippy!" "Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls!" For a few years, these and other Laugh-In catch phrases circulated promiscuously in the everyday speech of North Americans. In the late 1960s, NBC's Monday night comedy series was more than just another television program, it was a cultural event. Holding top spot in the Nielsen ratings for two seasons, from 1968/1969 to 1969/1970, the show revolutionized the comedy-variety genre and, more than any other prime-time program of the period, signaled the massive social, moral, and generational changes the nation was undergoing. Laugh-In was the quintessential television show of the swinging 1960s.

Considering the show's emphasis on youth, left-liberal politics, the sexual liberation, and "New Wave" video techniques, the guiding lights behind Laugh-In formed an unlikely team. Dan Rowan (1922-1987) and Dick Martin (1922—) were aging forty-ish veterans of the nightclub and lounge circuit, having polished their act as a tuxedoed comedy duo since 1953. In 1966 they filled in for Dean Martin in his summer variety show. NBC then gave the pair a summer special the following year which proved to be the genesis of Laugh-In. Rowan and Martin brought in the veteran television producer George Schlatter, whose credits in the industry dated back to the 1950s and Dinah Shore's variety series. If the show's hosts and its executive producer seemed to have little connection to the burgeoning youth culture of the 1960s, the show's producer and head writer, Paul Keyes, was even further removed. Keyes' comedy credits dated back to penning jokes for Jack Paar. He was also a close friend of Richard Nixon and a major campaign advisor to the 1968 presidential candidate. Yet despite their Establishment backgrounds, these men produced a show designed to appeal to the sensibilities, tastes, politics, and lifestyles of 1960s youth—as well as those elders who increasingly wanted to be "with it."

Laugh-In (which is also known by its full name, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In) largely dispensed with the conventions of the comedy-variety genre. Rather than showcasing guest stars with extended musical segments, the show featured short cameo appearances of celebrity guests delivering one liners. Rather than present sketches that developed over five to ten minutes, Laugh-In reveled in ten second black-outs, non-sequitur jokes, and endless, rapid-fire one liners delivered either by performers, or in printed form on the screen, or on a dancing, bikini-clad body. Much of Laugh-In's content harkened back to vaudeville, from its jokes to its penchant for broad slapstick. For instance, every time series regular, Cockney-accented Judy Carne, happened to utter the famous phrase "sock it to me!" she would invariably get soaked with water, bonked on the head, or dropped through a trap door. What made the show revolutionary was not its approach to comedy, but rather its visual style. With flashes, zooms, breathtakingly quick cuts, and psychedelic colors, Laugh-In displayed a kinetic, frantic pace that was unprecedented in television. Not since Ernie Kovacs' self-reflexive use of the television medium for his visual brand of comedy in the 1950s had a television show so overtly drawn attention to the televisual form. Laugh-In used hundreds of separate shots per show requiring the services of four to five full time video editors to assemble all the myriad, tiny segments together. Some shots would be on screen for less than half a second, as when the bikini-clad dancer would stop momentarily as the camera zoomed in on a joke written somewhere on her bare anatomy. Frequently, viewers would not have enough time to speed read through the one-liner (such as, "forest fires prevent bears") before the camera zoomed back into a full shot of the merry dancer.

Reflecting the "sexual revolution" of the period in which the easier availability of birth control and the social experimentation of the young were freeing up sexual expression, Laugh-In engaged in heavy doses of scatological and risque humor. Dick Martin played the unrepentant bachelor wholly preoccupied with bedding down young women. Ruth Buzzi's beleaguered hair-netted old lady found herself constantly sexually accosted by Arte Johnson's dirty old man on a park bench. Muttering salacious invitations as he slid closer to her on the bench, Buzzi's old lady would eventually retaliate using her purse as an effective weapon.

Laugh-In also engaged in highly topical political humor, influenced by other politically-tinged television comedies such as That Was The Week That Was (1964-1965) and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1967-1969). With one-liners like "George Wallace, your sheets are ready" and "William Buckley, call your ventriloquist" the series emphatically took a left-liberal stance. This did not, however, prevent personalities associated with the political right—such as John Wayne—from agreeing to appear in cameos. Most famously, presidential candidate Richard Nixon appeared in 1968 and delivered the line: "Sock it to me?" But by 1969, with Nixon ensconced in the White House, Paul Keyes, who was closely associated with the Nixon Administration as advisor and speech writer, began lashing out at what he (and the White House) perceived to be the show's penchant for anti-Nixon and anti-Pentagon attacks. Keyes left the series in a huff. While Laugh-In engaged in many of the same kinds of political critiques that were getting the Smothers Brothers censored and eventually thrown of the air over at CBS, Rowan and Martin's show never suffered the same heavy handed censorship; the NBC Standards and Practices department tended to worry more about jokes having to do with sex and religion. Also, the black-out, rapid-fire manner of delivery tended to blunt the political implications of much of the humor. By the time the viewer got the message behind the joke, two or three other non-political jokes or black-outs had already whizzed by.

Laugh-In launched the careers of a number of its regular cast members, most notably Goldie Hawn who played a giggly dumb blonde and Lily Tomlin who created a number of famous characters from cheeky little girl Edith Ann to Ernestine the sarcastic and all powerful telephone operator ("one ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy…"). Other cast members became famous for particular shticks. Arte Johnson played a German soldier, forever peering through bushes and pronouncing something to be "verrrrrry interesting… but shtupid!" Earnest-faced Henry Gibson would appear with flower in hand and recite a pathetic poem.

Episodes ended with all the cast members and cameo guests behind a joke wall painted in swirly, psychedelic colors. They would pop their heads through small doors and deliver yet more one-liners. This joking would continue through the credits, with yet more blackout sketches, until finally things would end with the disembodied sound of one set of hands clapping.

By 1973, with most of its original cast gone, Laugh-In ran out of steam. The show's visual style, so cutting edge in the 1960s, quickly became dated. Laugh-In remains very much a show of its era (though it was revisited briefly in an unsuccessful 1979 sequel to the series). While it did not go on to serve as a direct inspiration for subsequent brands of television comedy, the show's frenetic editing pace, so revolutionary in 1968, is now, with the influence of music videos and commercials, quite unremarkable.

—Aniko Bodroghkozy