Rant #1,814: It's a Laugh

Yesterday, I talked about my New Year meanderings on TV, and how I rediscovered "The Joey Bishop Show" sitcom, which is on Antenna TV's weekly schedule now after an absence from being broadcast of about 20 years.

Well, if I am going to talk about that show--which wasn't very good or very funny--I absolutely have to talk about "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In," which has seemingly found a home on the Decades channel.

It seems as if Decades is abandoning its four times a day schedule, where they would show the same shows four times during the course of a day. Part of this change is that they will be showing "Laugh-In" twice a day during the week.

I will bet that during its comedy month in December, the airings of the show did so well that the powers that be at Decades figured that they might as well show the hour-long shows on a regular basis.

I just love this show, always have, always will, and I thought I knew everything about it, but I have picked up some tidbits from these airings: the idea for "The Gong Show" came from the popularity of "Laugh-In's" New Talent segment, the one that introduced Tiny Tim to the world. Chris Bearde, one of the writers of the show, evidently liked the segment so much that he thought it could fill a half hour show on its own, and well, holy Chuck Barris and Gene, Gene the Dancing Machine, it did!

Also, the guy riding the tricycle on "Laugh-In," the one that you see only from the back, was most likely Arte Johnson. Even as a kid, I always thought that, but lo and behold, I was right!

Well, I guess I could have looked all of this up in my Funk & Wagnalls!

Anyway, in Rant No. 458, March 8, 2011, I did a pretty good summary of the show, and here is what I wrote, in edited form for those who don't know the show from a palmetto:

"… I used to laugh, laugh, and laugh some more when "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" came on the air for its six year run on NBC, every Monday night in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The show was groundbreaking. Usually, variety shows went at the pace of a turtle, but "Laugh-In" was different--very different.

Jokes were rapid-fire, and just when you got done laughing at one joke, another came on, and another, and another. There were regular bits: The Party, the Farkle Family, Laugh-In Looks at the News, and, of course, the Joke Wall, but most bits lasted little more than a few seconds.

The show was tied together by its hosts, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. Rowan and Martin were veteran Las Vegas entertainers who dabbled in both the movies and TV with varying degrees of success. They had made an OK movie, "Once Upon a Horse," which featured an un-named and then very unknown Mary Tyler Moore as one of the dancers in the film. Dick Martin had appeared semi-regularly as the next door neighbor of Lucy on "The Lucy Show." But generally, they weren't that well known outside of Las Vegas.

With producer George Schlatter at the helm, NBC ordered a special from Schlatter starring the duo. The show also featured a pretty much non-descript cast of players who also had had some minor successes in the entertainment field, including Arte Johnson, Joanne Worley, Judy Carne, Ruth Buzzi (she had been seen from time to time as Marlo Thomas's friend on "That Girl") and Alan Seus. All had been around for years, but had never broken through. They probably took this show as a lark.

But little did anyone know that this lark would turn to gold.

The special clicked with audiences, and a series was ordered.

Running during its first season after the equally groundbreaking "The Monkees," "Laugh-In" became the No. 1 show in the country, and stayed there for two or three years.

The cast, which also included Goldie Hawn and Henry Gibson, became megastars overnight.

And who can forget the debut of Tiny Tim?

Everyone wanted to be on this show, and such mega-stars as Sammy Davis Jr., John Wayne, and yes, even Richard Nixon made cameo appearances on the show.

The program ran afoul of the censors during its period on the air, but clever writing often was over the heads of those on the panic button. Alan Seus' wonderful performance as the slightly queer sports reporter was certainly a regular spot which went over their heads, as was the word "bippy," a word planted by the writers (including Coslough Johnson and Jeremy Lloyd) to throw off the censors. The censors thought bippy was something dirty (it wasn't), but they couldn't pull it because they couldn't find any evidence that it was something obscene.

They spent so much time looking for "bippy" dirt that a lot of stuff was left in that they missed.

What they did leave in included girls dressed in bikinis with sayings painted all over their bodies. You couldn't quite read some of those sayings with all the dancing about, but let me tell you, they missed plenty!

And you had oldtime black comedian Pigmeat Markham reaching new heights of popularity with white audiences with the "Hear Come the Judge" blackouts, which I don't think the censors really got as much as the public did.

But what you did get was a "Potpourri" of impressive talents. You literally saw the creation of several enduring stars taking their first babysteps, including Hawn and Lily Tomlin.

And you also had the foundation of "Saturday Night Live," as Lorne Michaels was one of the later writers on the show. He has said that "Saturday Night Live" is a combination of "Laugh-In" and "The Monkees," and I think he is correct.

Anyway, the show had its run, had a few spinoffs ("Letters to Laugh-In" and the later "Rowan and Martin Report"), several records (beyond Tiny Tim's "Tiptoe Through the Tulips," there was Shorty Long's "Here Comes the Judge" and many others by cast members and other acts), and several imitators ("Turn On," one of the all-time TV bombs).

In the mid 1970s, the show resurfaced, without Rowan and Martin or such a talented cast, but it did launch the career of Robin Williams.

So it is fun seeing "Laugh-In" again. Sure, as an 11 year old, I am sure some of the jokes on the show went way over my head, but looking back, I think I got more than I missed.

What a great show! There will never be another like it."

Yes, it is a great show, and I am happy that it is on in the hour-long version, not the truncated half hour version that ran in syndication in the 1980s. The shorter version didn't highlight the spontaneity and the show's surreal world that the hour long show did, and I am glad that those shorter versions of the hour long shows are not being shown here.

Three wishes: first, that all the seasons of the original program were included in this package (it seems that the shows are only from the first three seasons); and the second, which goes right into the first, that the final season of the show was included. It has never been in any "Laugh-In" syndication packages, and it would be nice to see the show's final cast again, including Moosie Dryer and Sarah Kennedy, along with the one original cast holdout, Ruth Buzzi.

Finally, I would like to see the original pilot, the one that sold NBC on having this show on its regular schedule, which I know I have never seen.

I have no interest in seeing the revived show with Robin Williams, which I watched but which was absolutely horrible, as I recall.

That being said, it is good to have "Laugh-In" back on the air. Check it out if you can--it is still funny!