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

The BBC showed Laugh In in the UK starting from October 1968. They even made the front cover of the Radio Times

:Tilleys Vintage Magazines : RADIO TIMES magazine, October 26 - November 1 1968 issue for sale. ROWAN AND MARTINS LAUGH-IN, HARRY TIMES&page_num=41&menuchoice=&search_data=radio times

I'm not sure how long they stuck with it but it was definitely known and popular in the UK for a while. I'm 38 so I didn't experience this at the time. I first heard of the show when the 25th anniversary comp was shown in the UK some time in the mid 90s and I was mesmerised.

 

Popular enough that a UK TV ad did it's own version of "Tyrone and Gladys on the park bench" with Arthur Lowe.

 

Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall are both still living according to Wikipedia-I was curious so I looked them up.

 

S2 E3 First broadcast Sept 30th 1968

Not that much to note about this one, only that the show is getting more freeform, unstructured and surreal. The recurring motif of cutting to a cast member saying a single one syllable non-sequitur is particularly prominent in this edition. Thetoilet graffiti stating 'Rock Hudson is a Thespian' is also worthy of note.

I only just discovered that an in-depth book about the show was written just a few years ago:

https://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Downtown-Burbank-Laugh-1968-1973-ebook/dp/B00887PSK4

May have to pick this up if I can!

 

S2 E4 first broadcast October 7th 1968

A brief gag about a black sheep being 'tokenism' seemed pretty ahead of it's time: I didn't think awareness of token casting started that early.

You may have noticed these capsule 'reviews' are getting briefer and briefer of late.. that's cos the episodes are starting to run into each other for me (still enjoying them though), almost certainly illustrating the futilty of this operation as pointed out by others in this thread.. however I plan to see this out!

 

I always wondered what Ruth Bader Ginsburg did before she studied law.

 

I remember being startled back in '68 when I saw Richard Nixon say "sock it to ME?" in one episode; later I read one of the producers of the show was in pretty tight with the Nixon campaign. You'd think NBC would've leaned on the show's producers to include Humphrey in an episode in some way.

 

I think they asked him as well, but he refused.

 

No. That's Ruth Buzzi.

 

And yet, he wrote the liner notes to an album by Tommy James and the Shondells that year. Maybe if he had media advisers with working brain cells history would've been a lot different...

 

Agreed. I've tried to watch this so many times, but the jokes just don't work. It's far too American centric and a style of humour that just doesn't work well outside of the U.S. IMO.

 

S2 E5 first broadcast October 14th 1968

This was a goodie! Or maybe just seemed better cos I'd taken a break for a few months.

Bobby Darin is the principal guest, and fits in suprisingly well with the main cast. Maybe not so surprising for those more familar with his career, I had him down as mainly a singer but I see latterly he was more of an all round entertainer and he fronted his own variety show in the early 70s.

Among many other guests is Colonel Sanders, who I don't think I'd ever actually seen move before. He would have been 78 at the time! Kind of bizarre to see such a (literally) iconic face who's really just been a stylised logo to me and might as well have never really existed come to life in this show: it kind of adds to the whole pop art pizzazz of the thing.

This is also the episode that features the Holy Modal Rounders, at the time when Sam Shepard was their drummer no less! This must have been their only mainstream tv appearance ever surely? Laugh In is often dismissed as being a commercial cash in on 60s counter culture, but they certainly got properly underground freaky acts on that no other primetime show would have touched. Who was booking these guys? You can see Gladys Ormsby get up close and personal with them here:



I notice that they always give Judy Carne the drug jokes: she must have had a reputation even then as a hard partying gal.

There are some interesting meta jokes about the format of the show and also sketches referring to each other in quite a proto-Python way. (The Fun Couple watching other sketches on TV, and Dick and Dan suddenly being aware of and responding to the cutaways that interrupt their bits).

In a fast cut sequence near the end with Rowan and Martin firing non sequitur punchlines at each other I noticed they refer to 'The Aristocrats', the off colour joke popularized by the 2005 film but that would have been much more underground at the time, though common parlance amongst vaudevillians.

The 'Fickle Finger Of Fate' in this one is particularity solemn, being a straightforward condemnation of the Ku Klux Klan. And who could argue with that?

 

I used to like it when I was a kid in the 60s.
In England it was only shown on BBC2 and if your TV didn't have that new at the time channel you couldn't watch it.
I had to go round my friends to watch it.
Same for the Smith and Jones western series.

 

S2 E6 first broadcast October 21st 1968

A knowing reference early on in the show to Arte Johnson scrapping a blackface joke because it was 'too corny' is somewhat undermined by the 'Whats the News' song, where the female cast (inc Chelsea Brown) are dressed in full Zulu warrior garb, complete with stereotypical vocalisations.

News of the future hits a darkly amusing note when describing Martin Bormann (still MIA at the time) being found in 1988 and excusing his atrocities with the line 'I was only giving orders'...

There's an unusually long song near the beginning which has Joanne Worley singing an MOR 60s lounge number about her many progeny and ending up being swamped by the rest of the cast dressed as children.

I noticed with this show they're finally beginning to give Goldie some characters and gags that aren't just dumb blonde archetypes, and she even gets the last word (not sound!) in the show putting Arte's Wolfgang in his place. (his bedroom if you were wondering).

 

Huge Jack Benny fan here, just found this thread. I don't think you have reached any of his appearances, yet. His appearances are kind of a slow motion train wreck! His slow deliberate style is the antithesis to the comedy style of this show, but they are aware of that and write to it. Definitely interesting to watch.

 

Se2 E7 First Broadcast October 28th 1968

A Halloween themed episode, with plenty of trick or treating skits, as pictured below. Also a not particularly fond farewell to outgoing president Lyndon B Johnson, with an impression of him recurrent throughout the episode.

Marcel Marceau guests, an entertainer whose name carried such archetypal weight that I always thought he hailed from a slightly earlier age, so was surprised to see him looking relatively youthful here.

Goldie is seen with the first Laugh In LP in one skit, apparently now into it's second pressing.

There's a fairly elaborately staged song near the end about the commercialisation and increasing earliness of the Christmas season (was this a novel thing to observe at the time, or have people always complained of it?) which sees the whole cast in Santa suits and driving bizarre mobile chimneys on wheels, bringing to mind festive versions of The Residents in Vileness Fats!

 

Se2 E8 First Broadcast Nov 11th 1968

Dick Gregory guests in this, a pretty big deal of a guy I'm ashamed to say I'd never heard of before. 50 years on, this show is a cultural education. Rod Serling also guests, contributing amongst other links a very dry routine about a guy captured by Indians and banking on an eclipse to save his skin with a nicely dark pay off. He also introduces the first Robot Theatre, with Judy and Arte as slightly sinister slapstick marionettes. There's a brief bit with Judy as Peter Pan, a part her androgynous image and cockney Principal Boy enthusiasm fits like a glove, I wonder if she ever played the part for real in her earlier days?

I saw that Netflix added a new Laugh In retrospective/reunion show just last week, called 'Still Laugh In', and still devised by George Schlatter. Kind of odd they'd want to host this as the old shows are on Amazon Prime. I got to admit the trailer doesn't look great, but hopefully it will stir up more interest in the original show. I will try and watch it sometime soon and add my thoughts to this thread.

Still LAUGH-IN: The Stars Celebrate | Netflix Official Site

 

S2 E9 First broadcast Nov 18th 1968

What an outstandingly unique musical line up for this one! Victor Borge, Rosemary Clooney, The Banana Splits and The Legendary Stardust Cowboy! I mean. what other show could offer that kind of across the board variety? Borge is the nominal main guest doing the kind of self deprecating skittage that usually entails , Clooney does some amusingly sassy one liner cutaways, The Banana Splits appear in an unusual filmed insert kind of reminiscent of the 1st season pop videos (except there's no music) and peppered with hand drawn psychedelic logos reminiscent of early issues of X rated comic Sex To Sexty. It's an odd bit of NBC cross promotion that doesn't quite come off, although a later bit where some Banana Splits slapstick sketches are intercut with ultra quick cuts between Goldie Hawn and Joanne Worley's faces, the Ying Yang duality of the 2 extremes of their blonde and black haircuts combining into one like some crazed pop art optical illusion, is memorably fiercely psychedelic.

But the real highlight is the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, again I've no idea how such an uncompromisingly outsider artist managed to get onto this primetime show, but it is one of the true wonders of Laugh In that he did and that we must be forever grateful for, that his act was preserved in its prime in this way. Unlike the other 'kook' live acts they've had on recently, he actually gets a decent amoutn of screen time, he gets to do 2 numbers and even a quick (barely intelligible) interview. And at the end all the cast invade the stage and it's just a joyful crazed free for all. One of the best episodes so far for sure.

 

Oh damn, Arte Johnson just passed:

Arte Johnson, ‘Laugh-In’ Star, Dies at 90

 

Wow, this thread is one year old today! And I'm only up to...

S2 E 10 First Broadcast November 25th 1968

THERE IS NO PARTY SCENE OR MOD MOD WORLD IN THIS EPISODE!! What was going on? The absence of these two mainstays makes for a looser and less structred episode than usual, if that was possible. Tiny Tim is back again, performing some 3 Musketeers skits and song and dance routines with the female cast that don't seem to have any punchlines. Henny Youngman finally appears, after being referenced in a recurring running joke for most of the series up to this point ('Oh, that Henny Youngman?'). Phyllis Diller guests too, another big personality of entertainment past I was barely aware of till now but was very glad to make the acquaintance of. He cookery show spoof sections, with her big hair and the tacky pinkish decor, looks oddly like 80s cable TV 20 years early. Phyllis mocks the regular girls often shambolic 'News Of The Past Present and Future' dance routine as she introduces it, but in fact their Marlene Dietrich influenced rendition in this installment is pretty classy.

Phew! At this rate I'm barely advancing at the same rate as the original broadcasts, and won't be done with this episode by episode watch till around 2023!

 

Would you like some of the rest of us to start making synopses similar to yours, to move us along a little faster?

 

Yeah please go for it, if you’re interested!

 

S2 E 11 First Broadcast Dec 2nd 1968

Liberace guests on piano for a very sombre 'Moonlight Sonata' inspired version of the 'What's the news?' song

Joanne Worley doing cutaways shouting 'JUGS!' and 'MELONS!' is pretty near the knuckle in terms of outright blue content for the time.

The closing 'sock it to me' gag, where Arte as Wolfgang soaks Judy matter of factly and then turns to camera wistfully to say 'I was only following orders' is a great moment! Dark but somehow moving.

 

I still have about three episodes left of season one, which I bought when it was first individually released. To be fair, I'm not sure I ever watched any of it before last summer. This isn't a show that can really be binged (at least in season one), but it's great fun, one or two episodes at a time.