Any interest in a Rowan and Martins Laugh In episode by episode thread

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by ajsmith, Sep 9, 2018.

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  1. MikaelaArsenault

    MikaelaArsenault Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
    Here is a recent Arte Johnson photo!

    [​IMG]

    And Ruth...

    [​IMG]
     
  2. MikaelaArsenault

    MikaelaArsenault Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
    Here's Gladys:

     
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  3. MikaelaArsenault

    MikaelaArsenault Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
  4. MikaelaArsenault

    MikaelaArsenault Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
  5. ajsmith

    ajsmith Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Glasgow
    Gladys Ormphby is one of those characters who is weirdly ageless because Ruth Buzzi started playing her at such a young age. Ruth is pretty funny on Twitter.

    RUTH BUZZI (@Ruth_A_Buzzi) | Twitter
     
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  6. Steve Litos

    Steve Litos Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago IL
    Ok...guys I watched the first couple of Laugh In episodes. I was born during the first run and have never seen an episode. My thoughts:

    -It's really fast paced. Lots of cuts. It really wasn't laugh out loud funny, but I wasnt bored.

    -The main cast was pretty well rounded. All of the women had to at least be able to sing.

    -Best moment so far was Artie Johnson singing and tap dancing in a made up Russian Dialect.

    -Dan has a perpetual cigarette on stage.

    -young Eileen Brennan...woah!

    -Cher and Tim Conway do a send up of McDonald and Eddy with a singing mountie and his gal. Although Cher was a little pitchy (hey its comedy!) She sings in a faux operatic voice and NOT the Cher voice!
     
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  7. MikaelaArsenault

    MikaelaArsenault Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
    This is what she had to say:

    I'm retired from showbiz, enjoying cats, horses, dogs and ranch life in beautiful north Texas with my husband!
     
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  8. MikaelaArsenault

    MikaelaArsenault Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
    This is from her Twitter by the way.
     
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  9. kronning

    kronning Forum Resident

    ajsmith, thanks for the Amazon Prime heads up. I liked your reference to vaudeville, that makes sense. I haven't seen this since I was a kid when it first aired watching on a black-and-white TV.
    God bless Tiny Tim. Besides him I don't remember the show featuring musical acts. I will have to start watching this again to refresh my memory.
     
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  10. tommy-thewho

    tommy-thewho Senior Member

    Location:
    detroit, mi
    I need to see this. I was pretty young when it came out.
     
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  11. O Don Piano

    O Don Piano Senior Member

    What who had to say?
     
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  12. Steve Litos

    Steve Litos Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago IL
    Ruth buzzi?
     
  13. Steve Litos

    Steve Litos Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago IL
    Ajsmith...I'm really enjoying the show.

    Good suggestion.

    I would be interested to skip ahead and see if the show lost it's freshness by 1971.

    I skipped ahead to series 2 and Dave Madden (Ruben Kinkade of the Partridge Family) is on the first episode.
     
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  14. ajsmith

    ajsmith Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Glasgow
    Glad you’re enjoying it! Yeah, I’ve been tempted to jump ahead to the last series to see what it was like by then, as the show seems so quintessentially 60s it’s hard to imagine it by 1973, just pre-SNL. I’m gonna try and stick to my chronological concept for now though. I don’t mind if you or anyone else wants to review or comment on later episodes though! Like the show itself, this thread should be a bit of a free for all!
     
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  15. MikaelaArsenault

    MikaelaArsenault Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
    Ruth.
     
  16. Wombat Reynolds

    Wombat Reynolds Jimmy Page stole all my best riffs.

    Location:
    Atlanta, GA, USA
    Recently we saw the first 4 or 5 on Amazon.

    Both my wife and I remembered seeing it when we were young and so were really looking forward to seeing it again.

    Goldie wasnt on the first couple, I was surprised at that...

    even so, while I recognize its place in history, and why it was so successful, and how different todays TV climate is....

    it didnt hold our interest. We bailed, sorry....
     
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  17. Steve Litos

    Steve Litos Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago IL
    I'm actually enjoying Laugh In.

    John Wayne shows up for a c
    Watched this one!

    The mono mix on the Temptations really rocked on Get Ready.

    You can hear the group vocals loud and punchy enough on this tv mix.
     
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  18. Steve Litos

    Steve Litos Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago IL
    Watched season 2 episode 2...still 1968.

    Eve Arden is the major guest and after nearly 40 years in the biz is a natural fit for the show. She gets the longest joke set up in the entire episode with a story about a missing wedding ring.

    Arlene Dahl, Herb Alpert, Jack Lemmon, Patrick Wayne all do cameos.

    Although it was known as Goldie Hawn's gig, Judy Carne, Chelsea Brown, and even Ruth Buzzi do the "grafitti dance" in bikinis in this episode.

    For the record there are something like 245 Major cuts or breaks during this show. Thats roughly each joke or visual set up.

    The editors were really working overtime to make the show work.

    Right before each commercial break is a quick montage of one scene with super fast edits followed by a cut to a line by a cast member. That was only counted as 2 edits (thematic elements) in my count but it was probably something like 12 film or video edits.

    Crazy.

    I won't be doing that again.
     
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  19. ajsmith

    ajsmith Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Glasgow
    Season 1 E7, broadcast March 4th 1968.

    What a guest list for this one! Sally Field, Terry Thomas, and after the fake outs of the last few episodes, John Wayne! (possibly the least 'mod' guy to ever walk the earth).

    The French maid outfits the female cast wear for the News song in this one are memorable. There's a sketch featuring John Wayne playing on the idea of commercial companies sponsoring wars, which is a somewhat prescient idea, even though they don't do much with it.
     
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  20. ajsmith

    ajsmith Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Glasgow
    Season 1 E8, broadcast March 11th 1968.

    Sonny guests, ostensibly without Cher but in fact she appears to offer more dry commentary in cutaways. Barbara Feldon returns!

    This show features one of the darkest and most off colour jokes I've ever heard, when Dan Rowan, during the 'News of The Future' segment announces a gag news item to the effect of:

    ' 1988: and in an attempt to make reparations for past misdoings, the surviving Native Americans of the country are asked if they still hold any grudges against their peoples treatment. Both said no.' :eek: Bleak stuff: I don't know if it was intended to be come off as dark as it does, but it is brutal.

    Speaking of depressing, child star Anissa Jones features in this episode. Her wiki entry is not uplifting to read: Anissa Jones - Wikipedia
     
  21. ajsmith

    ajsmith Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Glasgow
    Season 1 E9, broadcast March 25th 1968. (I never said this would be a fast paced thread!)

    A landmark episode for 2 reasons: No.1 being the first appearance of the line 'you bet your sweet bippy', and also for the proper debut of the 'Here Comes The Judge' segment. It had in fact first appeared in the pilot episode but never since, but here it is made one of the main recurring features of this installment, strongly promoted by guest Sammy Davis Junior's constant cheerleading of the famous refrain, although Roddy Maude Roxby is still playing the judge himself.

    The line 'I've nothing against minorities: but what if there's more of them than us?' in the party scene is a comedic paradox that strikes a more serious tone these days, (and that's no matter where you are politically btw: I just mean that these issues are taken so seriously from all corners of the political spectrum today that a line like just doesn't read as a throwaway joke in the present milieu).

    Time to remark in general about the show how after a while of watching these shows you realise the 'Sock It To Me Time' bit isn't ever a segment like the other recurring features of the show: it just constantly reappears throughout, like it's always Sock It To Me Time. Maybe that's the point.

    Another general remark: while the nuts and bolts of Laugh In's humour is often incredibly corny on paper, and comments that it was 'of it's time' and 'hasn't aged well' ring true, the way it's cut so fast and the jokes become shorthand generates this intense surreal energy that I find completely mesmerising. Some comedy connoisseurs may lament Laugh In's vaudevillian crassness with comparison to the sophistication of Monty Python on the other side of the pond, but to me it creates a comparable intoxicating hyperreal energy. Also Laugh In had a much more expansive female cast than Python, so nyaaaah.

    Joanne Worley is literally wearing 'roller skates beneath a velvet gown' in one sketch, as mentioned in the lyrics to the 'Cuckoo Laugh-In World' song that opened the first Laugh-In LP.

    Goldie Hawn in the Mod Mod World cutaways is the Most!

    EDIT: another notable aspect of this episode is an unusually sincere tribute to Ernie Kovacs about 3 quarters of the way through. Clearly he was a key influence on Laugh-In's style, but it was a little jarring to see Rowan and Martin just straight facedly praising Kovacs without a topper or pay off in their dialogue.
     
    Last edited: Nov 26, 2018
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  22. antoniod

    antoniod Forum Resident

     
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  23. antoniod

    antoniod Forum Resident

    Ironically, original PYTHON TV producer Barry Took was a writer on LAUGH-IN for a time, and Roddy Maude Roxby had appeared in a series with Michael Palin and Terry Jones. Plus co-head writer Digby Wolfe was from the UK and had been involved with figures on the periphery of PYTHON(like Ronnie Corbett).
     
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  24. antoniod

    antoniod Forum Resident

    Hmm. Some random thoughts about LAUGH-IN. In interviews, George Schlatter downplays(or ignores)the fact that his cast were all known professionals in show business before they were on LAUGH-IN. Jo Anne Worley was in THE MAD SHOW, a precursor of Laugh-In on stage(with Linda Lavin and Paul Sand), Arte Johnson had been acting on stage and screen since the 50s, Goldie Hawn was on the sitcom GOOD MORNING, WORLD, of course Larry Hovis was on HOGAN'S HEROES, and Henry Gibson had records out. I really liked Roddy Maude Roxby's Palace Guard bit. Cher's sarcastic comebacks as "Pocahontas" to Tim Conway's John Smith are like a preview of her "Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour" persona. Note the running gag on the first season, "I could say that on the Smothers Brothers", ironic since Laugh-In got away with more in the end(until Schlatter left)than the Smothers' show. I wonder if Goldie Hawn got tired of playing the "Ditz", since we all know she had a lot more sides than that. And how did jokes about Oscar Wilde being the "Queen of England" get past S&P in 1968(it wasn't exactly the age of innocence, but S&P departments were stricter with entertainment shows than with, say, news and affairs, as you all probably know)?
     
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  25. ajsmith

    ajsmith Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Glasgow
    Very Interesting....
     
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