Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In

Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In TV Milestones

Series Editors Barry Keith Grant Jeannette Sloniowski Brock University Brock University

TV Milestones is part of the Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Series.

A complete listing of the books in this series can be found online at wsupress.wayne.edu

General Editor Barry Keith Grant Brock University

Advisory Editors Robert J. Burgoyne Frances Gateward University of St. Andrews California State University, Northridge

Caren J. Deming Tom Gunning University of Arizona University of Chicago

Patricia B. Erens Thomas Leitch School of the Art Institute of Chicago University of Delaware

Peter X. Feng Walter Metz University of Delaware Southern Illinois University

Lucy Fischer University of Pittsburgh ROWAN & MARTIN’S LAUGH–IN

Ken Feil

TV MILESTONES SERIES

Wayne State University Press Detroit © 2014 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014931823 ISBN 978-0-8143-3822-3 (paperback); ISBN 978-0-8143-3823-0 (ebook) For my parents, Naomi and Ed Feil, who introduced me to the world with love and laughter.

In memory of Alan Sues (1926–2011) and Billy Barnes (1927–2012).

Contents

Acknowledgments ix vii Introduction 1 1. Between “Inherently Tasteful” and “Rebellious and Weird”: Laugh-In’s Taste Tests 19 2. Hip to the Put-On and Pitching Camp: Vulgarity, the Counterculture, and “Beautiful Downtown Burbank” 37 3. Mass Camp, Open Secrets, and the Agency of Otherness: Laugh-In’s Hip Closets 63 4. “Verrry Integrated”: Laugh-In’s Identity Politics and “Other” Humor 85 Conclusion: Put-Ons, Closets, Cop-Outs, and Legacies 117

Notes 125 References 135 Index 145

Acknowledgments

his little book is the product of a long journey, one that I ix Tcould not have undertaken and completed without the support of so many friends, colleagues, and loved ones. First, many thanks to my editors Kristina Stonehill and Annie Martin, who got the ball rolling and patiently awaited my pitches (as well as socked it to me when my pace began to slack). I remain genuinely indebted to the extremely careful and perceptive advice offered by Wayne State University Press’s anonymous readers and copyeditor M. Yvonne Ramsey. I am so grateful to Steven Allen Carr, Michael DeAngelis, Jenny DiBartolomeo, Michael Selig, Janet Staiger, and Jess Wilton; without your insights, inspiration and wit, this book and I would be as fragmented as a Laugh-In episode. Thanks also go to Miranda Banks, James Delaney, Peter Flynn, Eric Schaefer, Jane Shattuc, and the Visual and Media Arts Department at Emerson College for consistent encouragement and support. For their invaluable and unend- ing help with research above and beyond looking things up in my Funk ’n’ Wagnall’s, I am indebted to Robert Fleming and the research staff of Emerson College’s Iwasaki Library and Comedy Archive and to Amanda Stow and John Waggener of the Ameri- can Heritage Center archive at the University of Wyoming. As always, I tender my infinite gratitude and affection to Michael S. Keane, whose patient help with research combined with his enthusiasm, sense of humor, and jovial tolerance (three years with Laugh-In!) made this writing experience a true love-in; you ring my bell, as Big Al might say. Thanks, gratitude, and love Acknowledgments also go to Stucka and Stoughton for leaving your paw prints on this project. Finally, I offer my heartfelt thanks to the creators and cast of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In for devising a program so rich and weird that, despite the fickle finger of fate, it continues to fascinate, amaze, and entertain.

x Introduction

he comedy-variety show Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In (NBC, 1 T1968–73) remains a woefully underrated innovator of commercial television in the United States during the late 1960s. Television histories commonly acknowledge Laugh-In’s con- tributions to video editing, ensemble comedy, political satire, and broadening network self-censorship policies, but the show remains overshadowed by both predecessors and successors: the anarchic, reflexive television comedy of Ernie Kovacs; the campy, Pop-influencedBatman (ABC, 1966–68); The Smoth- ers Brothers Comedy Hour (CBS, 1967–69) and The Flip Wilson Show (NBC, 1970–74), two popular comedy-variety shows notable for their political significance; the taboo-breaking, socially conscious sitcom All in the Family (CBS, 1971–79); and the absurd, adult, politically incorrect, and quasi-underground sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (NBC, 1975–present). Contemporary scholarship on television comedy persistently underestimates the inventiveness and impact of Laugh-In (Marc 1998, 124–25; Marc 1996, 157; Bodroghkozy 2001, 149–51; Erickson 2000, 40; Staiger 2000a, 86–87, 89, 98; Spigel 2008, 268–70; Thompson 2011, 5). When Laugh-In reigned as the highest-rated network program during its second and third seasons, audiences reportedly reveled in what appeared to be an utterly novel and unbeliev-

Introduction ably hip, campy, anti-Establishment assault on white-bread, middlebrow network television (Erickson 2000, 145; Staiger 2000a, 12–13; Barthel 1971, 61). Commentators marveled over Laugh-In’s mockery of the tepid tastefulness, moral seriousness, and safe aesthetics of Lawrence Welk, the Cleavers, Ed Sullivan, and the like. The show’s unifying appeal garnered further attention. Old and young, square and hip, hawk and dove, African-American and Anglo-American, straight and queer, and highbrow and lowbrow audiences watched Laugh-In, engaged in its derision, and chanted the show’s suggestive catchphrases: “Sock it to me,” “Look that up in your Funk ’n’ Wagnalls,” and 2 “Here come the judge,” among others. It appeared quite clear that Laugh-In had reached across the boundaries of age, taste, race, and class, for instance, when the New York Shakespeare Festival’s 1968 production of Hamlet quoted the program and evoked its irreverence to taste and racial decorum, from African- American actor Cleavon Little’s entrance as the “sweet prince” roaring “Here come de judge” to the audience screaming “Sock it to ’em” as Hamlet kills Laertes (Lahr 1968, D1). Complementing Laugh-In’s newness, sophisticated style, brazen impertinence, and broad appeal, the show’s greatest innovation (and ultimate put-on) might have been perfecting the pose of playful ambivalence and the strategy of deliberate ambiguity.1 Laugh-In presented prime-time audiences with the unprecedented means to enjoy countercultural, anti-Establish- ment transgression through the indulgence of “bad taste” and, reassuringly, conveyed the sense that the show represented the Establishment’s investment in containing such defiant delights. In tandem with the show’s rebellion against good taste, Elana Levine (2007, 11, 22) credits Laugh-In with instigating “television’s construction of the new sexual culture.” Laugh-In openly targeted youth culture and its “part-time,” middle-of-the-road Introduction

The cast and producers of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. Courtesy of the 3 American Heritage Center, Dan Rowan Collection. adherents (Gans 1999, 123) by integrating sexually explicit content “suggestively”; the show could “seem current” and “keep within the boundaries of acceptable TV content” simultaneously (Levine 2007, 21–23, 170). Laugh-In’s navigation of “tastefulness” seemingly upheld the limits imposed by NBC on the representation of sexuality as well as race, gender, and politics, even while the show regularly ridiculed censorship and “good taste.” The show’s numerous rapidly edited segments gave abrupt and questionably tasteful glimpses of countercultural figures: sexual swingers (women and men), stoned hippies, empowered African Americans, feminists, and flamboyant nellie men. Related to these icons, Laugh-In reflected on hotly politicized current events: militarism in Vietnam, racial discrimination in the United States, civil rights, Black Power, birth control, free sex, feminism, and gay liberation. Establishment figures always made guest appearances, led by hosts Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, “two aging, tuxedoed, Las Vegas–style lounge performers whom no one could mistake for youth movement fellow travelers” (Bodroghkozy 2001, 149). Establishment figures also materialized in recurrent characters, such as Rowan’s fascistic warmonger General Bullright and Lily Tomlin’s obsessively

Introduction class-conscious Tasteful Lady, in addition to guest appearances from Richard Nixon, Bob Hope, John Wayne, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Liberace, Rock Hudson, and many others. Establishment stars appearing on Laugh-In continually expressed embarrassment about appearing on such a low, vulgar program, providing the normative square voice that confirmedLaugh-In ’s hip, current value; appeased more conservative audiences; and redeemed the Establishment as hip. The opening moments of a second-season episode capture these features of Laugh-In in addition to its signature reflexivity and “Eisensteinian” editing (Marc 1996, 157). First, a flamboy- 4 ant film director (Alan Sues) addresses a blond belle wearing a pink gown and clutching a parasol, her back to the camera: “You’re perfect, absolutely perfect for Scarlet O’Hara in our new remake of Gone with the Wind! Except, there’s just one thing wrong.” The woman spins around, revealing African-American comedian Flip Wilson in drag, who replies in the brassy voice later associated with Wilson’s character Geraldine: “You mean my New York accent?” This cuts to Henry Gibson, Laugh-In’s resident folksy poet (famed for the rhyme “Marshall McLuhan/ What’re you doin’?”). Gibson intones to the camera, “Tell it like it T-I-Z ’tis, Flip.” Laconic Dave Madden (known soon after as Reuben Kincaid on The Partridge Family) then declares, “Now, as a public service, here is a list of all the swingers in beautiful downtown Burbank: Helen.” This cuts to two furniture mov- ers (Dan Rowan and Dick Martin) carrying a table. When told by a woman (Ruth Buzzi) to “remove the legs,” they matter- of-factly break off the appendages. Next, a barber cheerfully peels the white bib off his client who, dressed in a white robe, energetically dons his Ku Klux Klan hood. Wilson reappears in a gi and karate-chops a cement block, stunned when his own hand shatters instead. Suddenly, Sammy Davis Jr. blurts to the camera/viewer, “Two for flinching!” The scene cuts to Introduction aging Hollywood star Van Johnson in front of a psychedelic backdrop disclaiming any responsibility for appearing: “Hey, you better stop drinking. I’m not in this show. I’m on a war movie on Channel 14.” This cuts to Greer Garson, another classical Hollywood icon posed in front of a psychedelic backdrop, who admits with royal bearing, “I didn’t know that.” Cut to show announcer Gary Owens, booming in a style redolent of radio’s Golden Age: “And now, from the pot room of the beautiful downtown Burbank Kitchen Utensil Factory, NBC proudly presents—well, let’s just say, NBC presents, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In!” Following cast introductions, Wilson enters joined by Chelsea Brown, the show’s first regular African-American ensemble member, to usher in the titular hosts: “Now here are two guys who can move into my old neighborhood anytime 5 they want” (10/21/68).2 These inaugural few minutes crystallize the show’s strategy and appeal. The avant-garde editing style showcases the program’s McLuhanist modernity—which many TV critics noted, giving the show cultural credibility—and also ensured that meaning cohered only through speedy association. Innocent and suggestive gags, jokes, and sketches burst out in a franti- cally paced stream, with rapid-fire revelations of countercultural otherness and dissent alongside conventional comedy shtick, appearances from Establishment stars questioning the show’s cultural status, and self-mocking commentary about Laugh-In, NBC, and the institution of television. Wilson’s drag—racial, gendered, and regional—frames the themes of sexuality, race, taste, and counterculture that ensuing bits underscore: the references to swingers, the KKK, racist real estate practices and the Fair Housing Act, and marijuana. On the heels of the Gone with the Wind and KKK citations, Davis’s nonsensical insert becomes a sick pun on lynching. Other bits recall animation and vaudeville shtick, such as Wilson’s martial arts stunt, although the karate scene turns into a running gag with a racialized punch line later in the show. When Chelsea Brown pummels Wilson’s white opponent, he proclaims, “Now that’s black power!” Wil- son’s racialized drag also recurs just a few minutes later, ac-

Introduction companied by a rejoinder that entertains racist stereotypes. Wilson—bewigged in auburn ponytails tied with a red ribbon and wearing a lace collar—remarks on Goldie Hawn’s line fum- bling: “That’s easy for you to say, honey.” This cuts to Hawn, who replies, “Not really, Sapphire,” a reference to the infamous sitcom Amos ’n’ Andy (CBS, 1951–53). The explosion of borderline taste motivates representatives of the Establishment—Van Johnson, Greer Garson, NBC’s stand-in Owens—to playfully question the show’s legitimacy, gestures that reconcile Establishment and counterculture. Doubting Laugh-In’s status suggests nostalgia for Establishment 6 culture, the institutions of classical Hollywood and network TV, as well as hip, ironic validation of its members; as Garson utters anon, “You know, being on this show should prove that I’m not all that stuffy. I may be square but I’m not stuffy.” Owens likewise ironically unites the square Establishment and hip counterculture when using an outmoded presentation style to both imply NBC’s shame in Laugh-In and refer to marijuana. Laugh-In milked a strategy of ironic, hip, camp ambivalence, dancing at the borders of socially charged binaries that middlebrow TV had always neatly divided: high/low, public/private, apolitical/political, and serious/frivolous, among others. This flirtation with subverting bourgeois taste also endowed the show and its audience with hip distinction. If middlebrow sitcoms and comedy-variety shows took their normative moral precepts and tasteful exposition seriously, Laugh-In conversely embraced the distanciation and aestheticism characteristic of highbrow taste and appropriated by the countercultural sensibilities, camp and hip. Bourdieu (1986, 178) defines distanciation as “the refusal to invest oneself and take things seriously. . . . There is nothing more naïve and vulgar than to invest too much passion in the things of the mind or to expect much seriousness out of them.” As distanciation resists the “vulgarity” of straightforward sincer- Introduction ity, aestheticism delights in celebrating what middlebrows would perceive as vulgar by “conferring aesthetic status on objects or ways of representing them which are excluded by the dominant aesthetic of the time, or on objects that are given aesthetic status by dominated aesthetics.” The cool formalism of aestheticism serves the detachment of distanciation, both of which motivate the project of “shocking the bourgeoisie” (185–86). Camp, hip, and other anti-Establishment sensibilities of the late 1960s (such as the put-on) celebrated the “dominated aesthetics” associated with African-American, gay, and youth countercultures. Camp and hip both employed aestheticism and distanciation as alternately covert and confron- tational strategies for subverting dominant cultural hegemony. In her agenda-setting “Notes on ‘Camp,’” Sontag (1966) pro- 7 claims that “camp taste is homosexual taste” and characterizes it through the love of vulgarity, “the good taste of bad taste,” style over content, “snob taste,” “stylization,” and “detachment” (279, 283, 289, 291). Sontag also explains that camp’s reversal of high/low cultural hierarchies corresponds to reversing the “moral indignation” against homosexuality. Leland (2004, 7, 10, 58) defines the sensibility and function of hip in remark- ably similar terms; as a “subversive intelligence” originating in African-American culture to prevail in a racially mixed, white supremacist society, hip’s essential features remain the “love of the outsider,” the “straddle of high and low culture,” “a grimy sense of nobility,” “the elevation of style and background as narrative and foreground,” and the “mask” of “cool.” In the traditional Establishment’s eyes, camp and hip represented a vulgar defiling of bourgeois norms, the excesses of the sexual revolution and youth movements, and the assertion of radical difference by Black Power activists and gay liberationists.3 Laugh-In personified camp and hip in its parade of countercultural icons—desacralizing traditional, tasteful culture—and in its emphasis of style over content, yet the show deliberately promoted an incoherence that distanced itself from such subversive sources. Laugh-In’s distanciation differentiated it from The Smothers Brothers, whose sincere countercultural engage-

Introduction ment motivated “shocking the bourgeoisie,” as well as The Doris Day Show (CBS, 1968–73), equally sincere in soothing the bourgeoisie. A prototypical example of “mass camp,” Laugh- In rewarded audiences with the hip distinction of delighting in countercultural vulgarity devoid of the dangers of social, cultural, or political affiliation (Klinger 1994, 140). Laugh-In refined whatNew York Times reporter Joan Bar- thel (1968) called “borderline taste,” a dexterous balancing between high and low culture, and what TIME magazine dubbed “reverse sophistication,” an inversion of high and low (Anon. 1968f). “Reverse sophistication” engaged young audiences and 8 other minority-taste publics alienated by television’s conservative sensibility and eager to enjoy its subversion. “Borderline taste” mollified middlebrow viewers by onlysuggesting dirty, vulgar meanings. As Laugh-In’s head writer and coproducer Paul Keyes proclaimed on the heels of the show’s second ratings-busting season, “We’re naughty, but we’re not dirty. If people want to hear dirty jokes they can turn off the TV set and tell them to each other in the living room” (Buck 1969).4 In the spirit of borderline taste and reverse sophistication, Keyes pronounced Laugh-In’s adherence to taste boundaries as well as how the show closeted vulgarity. If Keyes distinguished between the show’s public presentation of naughty comedy and the audience’s private access to dirty jokes, the audience’s living room provided the space where Laugh-In’s suggestive double entendres and innuendo could mean something dirty. Laugh-In trumpeted an irreverent attitude to good taste that enabled its fans to revel in the show’s open secret of bad taste.5 Not a month after its January 1968 premiere, TIME announced that “blue cheer has moved into prime time” with Laugh-In’s “nonstop barrage of sight gags, one-liners and blackouts” that were “alternately good, bad and just plain irreverent.” After quoting a joke about marriage and divorce among Catholic clergy, the article Introduction continued, “Other efforts to bait the old taboos ran the gamut from clever to tasteless”: a joke implying that Governor Ronald Reagan and ocean liner Queen Elizabeth were “the two biggest queens in the world,” a blackout sketch about racial integration involving a “mixed doubles” tennis match, and the one-liners “Tinkerbell is a fairy” and “The pill stops inflation” (Anon. 1968c). And supplying similar examples, Compton (1968) affirmed that “it is pleasant to welcome a show which dares to be irreverent about censorship.” Laugh-In deployed reverse sophistication and borderline taste in its mass camp strategies of playful ambivalence and deliberate ambiguity, communicating irreverence toward social, political, and cultural norms without explicitly subverting them or choosing sides. Reverse sophistication and borderline taste allowed Laugh- 9 In to both mine and manage what was dubbed “the new permissiveness,” a period buzzword related to the proliferation of “new markets for sexual products” (Weeks 1985, 24). The sexual revolution thrived on commodifying sexual lifestyles detached from marriage and procreation, a process beginning in the 1950s when Playboy magazine prescribed the lifestyle of the hip, consumerist, hetero male sexual connoisseur (Weeks 1985, 23, 24, 25; Evans 1993, 66; Altman 1982, 89–93; Thompson 2011, 86–87). Just three months after Laugh-In’s premiere, NBC vice president Robert D. Kasmire confirmed to theNew York Times that TV presented a “permissive” market for selling sexuality: “If TV is more permissive, it is because the audience— indeed the whole society is going along. . . . Girls are wearing miniskirts, universities and colleges are more permissive. It is the whole attitude toward sex. We try to keep up with social changes” (Dallos 1968). Permissiveness is thus linked to a new image of the consumer audience characterized by expanding tastes and sexual norms. Although popularized by youth culture, “the whole society is going along,” asserted Kasmire. Mc- Call’s writer Harriet Van Horne corroborated Kasmire’s claims during Laugh-In’s third season, explaining that “a new permissiveness in the land, an easy-breezy tolerance has made Laugh- In family entertainment, in spite of its cheerful insouciance

Introduction about sex,” and she comically envisioned “the stern old ladies who call the show vulgar” and NBC censors who “soothe” them with proof of the “new permissiveness” (Van Horne 1969, 80, 161, 162). Engaging the permissive society meant maintaining even closer scrutiny of content. NBC’s self-censorship policy for Laugh- In hinged on patrolling and maintaining taste, exemplifying what Evans (1993, 79) refers to as “interventionist permissiveness”: winning consensus—in Laugh-In’s case, audiences and advertisers—by cultivating the perception that the newfound liberties of the counterculture, sexual revolution, and minority groups 10 were being contained, controlled through “close monitoring” and “moral” evaluation. A lengthy letter dated August 16, 1968, from Kasmire to Laugh-In producer Ed Friendly at the dawn of the second season punctuated NBC’s interventionist permissiveness: “however innocent the intended use of the name Funk and Wagnall might be, I and others at NBC are convinced that the effect will be a double-entendre that is objectionable because of the vulgarity of the word involved” (Rowan and MacDonald 1986, 66). Press coverage of Laugh-In recurrently illustrated how permissiveness functioned to both liberate and restrict content in order to broaden the audience address: NBC executive Sandy “Dr. No” Cummings toiling to detect and restrain potentially vulgar excesses, producer and cocreator George Schlatter’s tireless attempts to dupe Cummings, and the audience’s desire (para- phrasing numerous columnists) to see how far the show would or could go. In Inside Laugh-In, Brodhead (1969, 84) observed, for example, that Schlatter “loves to stretch the strictures, with the zeal of a high-school sophisticate trying to keep swear words in the senior-class play.” The Saturday Evening Post described Schlatter’s strategy for slipping an “off-color joke” past Standards and Practices: “Schlatter told them [the cast and crew] not to laugh when they read the line at Monday’s run-through; perhaps Introduction the NBC censor wouldn’t notice” (33). And McCall’s described a dialogue between Cummings and Schlatter amid one script conference: “‘I don’t think that will go. . . . There’s a double-meaning there.’ ‘All of life has double-meanings,’ replies Schlatter, a raffish, bearded man with a lusty laugh” (161). The constant reminders of NBC’s censorial gaze reflected the close monitoring and adju- dication of content that in turn demonstrated the network’s exercise of power to permit or prevent certain content (Evans 1993, 84). The repeated and comedic depictions of Schlatter’s attempts to circumvent self-censorship, on the other hand, presented yet another kind of monitoring and moralizing that both confirmed the program’s hip irreverence toward content restrictions and encouraged audiences to keep watching: Laugh-In’s spectacular yet mediated glimpses of minority groups, tastes, and politics and 11 its open secret of subversive vulgarity. By treating its vulgarity as an open secret, the program emphasized political and cultural ambivalence (Gray 2004, 131). Permissiveness produced the ironic tension between hip, vulgar counterculture and square, middlebrow Establishment, which served diverse functions for Laugh-In. The ironic tensions of permissiveness guided Laugh-In’s dual address, analo- gous to classical Hollywood’s strategy for evading the proscrip- tions of the Production Code: addressing “sophisticated” and “naive” audiences simultaneously (Joyrich 2009, 23). McCall’s conveyed the payoff for sophisticated fans who discerned controversial content despite the program’s rapid pace: “it takes a lightning-quick—to say nothing of hip—mind to get the point” (Van Horne 1969, 80). Such reasoning followed Dan Rowan’s, who also conjoined permissiveness with hipness. In a New York Times Sunday magazine story, Rowan reflected that “The country is becoming more adult—more hip, if you will—and the networks are more permissive” (Barthel 1968, 143, 150.) Schlatter confirmed that position in the sameNew York Times article and stated to the Saturday Evening Post that “The world has simply run out of squares; the hip quotient is up two hundred percent” (Dietz 1968, 35). A private criticism of one episode by Rowan’s friend, mystery writer John D. MacDonald,

Introduction verified all these public claims, even if it also proved that the world had not quite “run out of squares”: “Perhaps it’s a sign of being square, but I always feel the least bit queasy after I have heard myself laugh at a queer joke. It is . . . a no-talent way to get a laugh” (Rowan and MacDonald 1986, 76). The ironic tension between hip, vulgar counterculture and square, middlebrow Establishment also remained a dynamic, calculated, and constitutive source of comedy. One second-season episode opens, for instance, with hosts Martin and Rowan standing in military duds in a foxhole. Martin asks if Rowan wants water and then hands over the canteen, when foppy Alan 12 Sues pops up dressed as a cowboy and bubbles, “I’ll have a frozen daiquiri!” (1/6/69). (Sues debuted on Laugh-In that season as the recurring character Big Al, a “faggy sports announcer” in the words of the Saturday Evening Post [Dietz 1968, 33], and in a western parody from October 21 portrayed a swishy cowboy in a saloon who blithely requests, “I’ll have a frozen daiquiri!”) Following Sues-the-cowboy in the foxhole, the setting cuts first to Sues as Big Al—“Now sports fans, here’s an instant replay”— and then to the same western saloon seen earlier in the season. Just as before, cowboys Rowan and Martin enter, slap the bar, and grunt “whiskey,” followed by cowboy Sues, who slaps the bar and exclaims, “I’ll have a fruit punch!” Owens then introduces the show: “And now, from the Freckle Ward of the Doris Day Memorial Home for the Incurably Wholesome, NBC presents Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.”6 How does this barrage of queer gags opening the show have any relation to Doris Day and the incurably wholesome? Laugh-In offered suggestions through Sues’s performance style, the incongruously manly situations that his characters inhabited, and the show’s associa- tive editing. For sophisticated audience members, the surprise “fruit punch” line (replacing the usual “daiquiris”) might have provided the campy answer and hip reward: the revelation of Introduction queerness infiltrating the military, TV sports news, westerns, and variety shows that shattered the myths of Doris Day wholesomeness that American culture and network television pro- mulgated. For naive, square audiences, though, the sequence offered an extended “queer joke,” to employ MacDonald’s terminology (Rowan and MacDonald 1986, 76): hoary burlesque comedy only intended to elicit laughter through the contrast of campy Sues and his straight surroundings. The hip permissiveness that Laugh-In flaunted pivoted on purposeful strategies for producing polysemy. On one hand, Laugh-In’s irreverence toward taste in jokes about the Vietnam War, the U.S. government, civil rights, the youth counterculture, homosexuality, and the sexual revolution evidenced liberal anti-Establishment positions to numerous reviewers. (Even 13 the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened a file on the show when viewers wrote to J. Edgar Hoover warning him of “se- ditious” content [BACM Research n.d.].) The testimony of the show’s creators further encouraged the perception of an “edito- rial stance” that was “clearly liberal-to-left” (Van Horne 1969, 80).7 Feature stories in the New York Times and the Saturday Evening Post published in the autumn of 1968 following the second-season launch both emphasized Rowan’s pacifist position on Vietnam (Barthel 1968, 147; Dietz 1968, 37, 74), as did Inside Laugh-In (Brodhead 1969, 81, 85). In the New York Times, Schlatter disputed the question that the program was “tasteless” by arguing that TV coverage of carnage in Vietnam trumped anything on Laugh-In (Barthel 1968, 146). Feature stories also quoted Schlatter, Rowan, and Martin on their appreciation of youth culture and its centrality in designing the show. And frequent remarks about Martin’s life as a “swinger” pushed the program’s perspective into the setting of the sexual revolution (Barthel 1968, 144, 146, 147; Dietz 1968, 37, 74; Brodhead 1969, 81, 85; Shain 1968a; Anon. 1968c; Van Horne 1969, 162; Anon. 1968f; Diehl 1971, 18). If McCall’s characterized “the Laugh-In formula” as “a blend of high Camp, knockabout farce, razor-edged satire, and total disrespect for the Establish- ment,” on the other hand, this “has not kept right-wingers off

Introduction the show” or right wing audiences from watching it (Van Horne 1969, 161, 162). Cameos by John Wayne and Richard Nixon and characters such as Tomlin’s Tasteful Lady coexisted with af- firmations of civil rights and Black Power, citations ofAmos ’n’ Andy, mockeries of feminism and gay liberation, and characters including unabashedly queeny men (Sues) and sexually powerful single women (such as Tomlin and Jo Anne Worley). If the show appealed to right- and left-wing constituencies as well as spanned generational divides, this stemmed from Laugh-In’s permissiveness. The “cheerful insouciance about sex” remained “suggestive,” not “dirty,” and left-leaning humor coexisted with 14 “old fashioned fun,” all of which rendered the show “family entertainment” (Van Horne 1969, 80, 161, 162). At its inception, Laugh-In promoted a facade of apolitical comedy and pluralistic consensus among the creative staff, all of which fueled the show’s ambiguity and ambivalence. As Rowan told Newsweek just a month after the first season premiere, “We’re not campaigning or crusading about anything” (Porter 1968).8 This was a typical line for Rowan who, like Schlatter, downplayed any pointed political meanings in light of the show’s innovative style: its rapidly edited, brief, abun- dant comedic bits (Barthel 1968, 142, 149; Brodhead 1969, 38, 41; Rowan 1969, 19–20; Anon. 1968d; Porter 1968; Van Horne 1969, 161). The mixed politics of the creative staff appeared to support Rowan’s assertion, from right-wing head writer Paul Keyes to left-leaning writer Digby Wolfe, as did the diverse stances on taste. While Keyes maintained “Let us be naughty but never vulgar” (Barthel 1968, 146), Schlatter was consistently portrayed as the vulgar trickster sneakily trying to undermine NBC’s self-censorship policies. In the middle stood Rowan and Martin, whose ambiguous politics could bend in many directions (Neuwirth 2006, 74–75; Rowan 1969, 21). This portrait of harmonious difference concealed, however, Introduction the politicized struggle over taste and the management of permissiveness that dogged the show, all of which erupted in the autumn of 1969 when Paul Keyes abruptly resigned. Explain- ing it as a clash of sensibilities “in the area of taste and public acceptability,” Keyes carped to a reporter that “The program has become slanted and vulgar and dirty. . . . Schlatter assured me he would not go in questionable directions, but the situa- tion only worsened” (Shain 1969b). Reports of Keyes’s departure insinuated that his objections to vulgarity coincided with rancor over satire of the Nixon administration. Besides writing speeches for Vice President Spiro Agnew, Keyes was an intimate of Nixon’s and during the 1968 presidential race helped the beleaguered candidate alter his popular image through television appearances, especially Nixon’s “Sock it to me?” cameo on 15 Laugh-In (9/16/68) not two months before election day (Anon. 1969f; Anon. 1969i; Anon. 1969e; Davidson 1970, 24; Mc- Ginnis 1971, 401–6; Healy 1969; Anon. 1969j). NBC initially disputed Keyes’s allegations, maintaining that Standards and Practices had imposed constraints on political digs and upheld the network’s policies on tasteful content. When NBC renewed Laugh-In for a fourth season amid “recurring stories of dissension,” programming chief Mort Werner denied accusations that the program was “getting racier and gamier” (Shain, 1970). The network nonetheless buckled to such dissension over taste just before season five (1971–72), when Rowan and Martin demanded that NBC eject Schlatter and rehire Keyes. According to Variety, Rowan and Martin “insisted on the change because of Schlatter’s ‘tastelessness’” and threatened to quit if he stayed (Anon. 1971). As Laugh-In’s offstage struggles suggested, the show remained ambivalent about the counterculture’s radical tastes, lifestyles, and political beliefs. Laugh-In represented both the counterculture and the Establishment as things that everyone could enjoy by not taking them seriously. The show’s high ratings and merchandising sales demonstrated consensus, a unification of social groups usually opposed due to generational, political, and cultural differences (Brodhead 1969, 19,

Introduction 41–44; Anon. 1968f). Much of this book scrutinizes how Laugh-In framed the counterculture through the point of view of the old-fashioned playboy hosts and their Vegas sensibility, encouraging dominant interpretations as a precondition for the show’s suitability as a prime-time network family program. This strategy could nevertheless not ensure preferred readings. As already suggested and explored further, cast members such as Lily Tomlin, Johnny Brown, Alan Sues, Chelsea Brown, and Jo Anne Wor- ley as well as guests such as Flip Wilson and Sammy Davis Jr. injected marginalized perspectives into the show that disen- 16 franchised audiences responded to. In the hands of Laugh-In’s dissident ensemble members, hip distanciation and camp aestheticism not only saved the show from appearing proscriptive or preachy but, in a more vital sense, ironized (and sometimes suspended) direct moral judgment and presented opportunities for oppositional interpretations. From the vantage point of countercultural sensibilities, the ironic, exaggerated, and playful comedy about race and racism, homosexuality, feminism, swinging, drug use, and vulgarity could be construed as celebrating transgressive deviance. Laugh-In demonstrated the radical possibilities underpinning mass camp ambivalence; if it afforded some audiences the acquisition of hipness without identifying with the margins, it also inscribed spaces for engaging marginalized audiences. The abundance of countercultural elements on Laugh-In in conjunction with the speed and discontinuity of the editing often communicated the comedic, utopian liberation of what Sontag famously coined the “new sensibility,” the fun of rebellious taste anarchy. Laugh-In’s routine segments recurrently showcased countercultural figures and sentiments: New Talent Time, when the hosts revealed their campy discoveries; Introduction

Laugh-In juxtaposed square nostalgia, as with Gary Owens’s radio announcer, and hip counterculture, as in the enduring Cocktail Party segments. the Cocktail Party, where celebrants in a chicly furnished den alternately frolicked and then froze as one or two partygoers quipped about politics, culture, and society; the Joke Wall,

Introduction when the cast popped out of psychedelically shaped doors in the wall and floor to crack jokes; and Billy Barnes’s satirical musical numbers, such as “What Would We Do without Censor- ship?” (2/5/68) and “We’ve Never Been to a Love-In” (3/11/68). African Americans wittily critiqued white supremacy, youthful druggies embraced “turning on and tuning out,” single women supported “swinging,” and “nellie” men ran amok. The mockery of Establishment figures through characters such as Tom- lin’s repressed Tasteful Lady and Ruth Buzzi’s icon of frustrated desire, Gladys Ormphby, often sprang from the young ensemble (dubbed “the kids” by Rowan and Schlatter); however, 18 even the program’s representatives of middle-aged Establish- ment culture participated in these put-ons. In its put-ons of the Establishment, its parade of countercultural types, tastes, and references, and its alternating signs of identification and repulsion, Laugh-In performed what Sontag (1966, 290) observed as the “propagandistic” function of camp, as “a solvent of morality. It neutralizes moral indignation, sponsors playfulness.” The show’s playfulness deliberately made feasible interpretations from numerous social, cultural, and political positions, part and parcel of Laugh-In’s inventiveness and commercial prosper- ity as a network comedy-variety show. Chapter 1 Between “Inherently Tasteful” and “Rebellious and Weird” Laugh-In’s Taste Tests

owan and Martin’s Laugh-In was the first prime-time net- Rwork television comedy to successfully locate, tap, and sustain a mainstream audience that desired a deviation from the tasteful, lower-middlebrow fare of network comedy and variety shows. By contrast to the provocative comedy-variety predecessors that commentators compared Laugh-In to—The Ernie Kovacs Show (1952–56, various networks) and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (CBS, 1967–69) as well as mass camp comedy previously attempted on network TV such as Batman (ABC, 1966–68) and The Monkees (NBC, 1966–68)—Laugh-In achieved vanguard status in television as a cultural provocateur and commercial blockbuster. Laugh-In intrigued and attracted audiences as well as cultivated their loyalty by refining “reverse sophistication” (Anon. 1968f) and “borderline taste” (Barthel 1968), a rebellion against middlebrow taste that tapped into highbrow, lowbrow, and countercultural sensibilities while deliberately obscuring ideological and cultural affiliations. This dynamic materialized brilliantly in the show’s third season through Lily Tomlin’s character the Tasteful Lady. Opening the

Chapter 1 first episode of 1970 (not long after Keyes quit over the issue of tastelessness), the Tasteful Lady sat crisply dressed in white gloves, beige jacket and skirt with white trim, and a white pill- box hat, her legs neatly crossed, greeting the television audience with cultivated enunciation: “Good evening ladies and gentlemen. From time to time the level of taste on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In has been a subject of great concern for many of us. That is why I, as an inherently tasteful person, have formed a group of mature, concerned and very effete intellectuals who will tastefully dedicate themselves to watching over this hotbed of blatantly bawdy, rebellious, and weird persons, to see that in the future, none of our sensibilities or sensitivities shall ever be 20 offended again. From hereon ladies and gentlemen, you may be assured of a more tasteful Monday evening, don’t you see. Thank you” (1/5/70). The punch line to this hilarious put-on of white, bourgeois puritanism consisted of the Tasteful Lady’s own distasteful behavior: rising to leave, she uncrosses her legs and quite abruptly spreads them wide open. By launching that evening’s episode with the Tasteful Lady’s appeal to good taste followed by her own “blatantly bawdy, rebellious, and weird” behavior, Laugh-In suggested the hypocrisy underlying the bourgeois rhetoric of cultural arbiters. Laugh-In increasingly exposed the duplicity of the Tasteful Lady’s civility, from spreading her legs at every exit to creaking sounds suggesting flatulence (2/8/71) and the revelation of her past as a stripper in Boston (12/7/70). On several occasions the show exposed the racialized dimension of good taste through the Tasteful Lady—for instance, her unashamed admission that the “tasteful” Leslie Uggams Show consisted of her only contact with African Americans (1/19/70) and her objections to Afri- can-American cast member Johnny Brown’s “tasteless” affirmation of black pride and critique of discrimination (2/8/71). A fourth-season installment concludes with a rich sequence that Taste Tests

Lily Tomlin’s Tasteful Lady unleashes her repressed vulgarity. punctuates the Tasteful Lady’s affiliation with censorship and right-wing nostalgia by juxtaposing it with childlike rebellion

Chapter 1 against impairments on free expression, such as propriety. First, the Tasteful Lady regrets the failure of “NBC censors . . . to eliminate those parts they considered distasteful . . . [because] they misplaced their crayons.” This cuts to Ruby Keeler imper- sonator Barbara Sharma tap dancing an absurdly affectionate salute to Vice President Spiro Agnew, a regular feature that season. Then Tomlin reappears as mischievous child Edith Anne, who affirms a list of planned misbehaviors against her parents’ wishes, including playing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony on her kazoo (2/22/71; Anon. n.d., script 1770-23, 86). Laugh-In exposed the Tasteful Lady’s refinement fetish as a mask for conservative, classist, and racist attitudes as well as for her closeted 22 desire for crudity, the personification of critiques of the Estab- lishment by the New Left, the Black Power movement, and yippies (Medovoi 1999, 163). Tomlin’s pitch-perfect mimicry of a WASPy matron embodied a countercultural, hip put-on of the Establishment square: middlebrow, sexually repressed, right- wing, and phony (Bell 1970, 19). The political valences of the Tasteful Lady remained more ambiguous, however, and in her inaugural monologue quoted above, it was possible to perceive, from the Establishment’s perspective, a satire of liberal hypocrisy, elitism, and vulgarity. Her self-proclaimed mantle as “effete intellectual” and elitist posture conjured Agnew’s phrasing in his infamous condemnation of liberal antiwar demonstrators as “an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals” (Healy 1969, 23). (Not long after, Agnew questioned the very need for higher education [Anon. 1969g, 54; Naughton 1969, 43].) The allusion to Agnew’s line—widely reported and quickly branded on his political persona—undermined a direct sense of the Tasteful Lady’s political meanings and whose attitudes she was mocking. Although the sketch implied the fondness for vulgarity and the put-on associated with various hip countercultural groups, the Tasteful Lady’s duplicity—her own tastelessness— Taste Tests did not necessarily validate vulgarity. Although countercultural chuckles could ridicule the Tasteful Lady’s sexual repression in an affiliation for bad taste, right-wing revelry could take aim at an elitist, hypocritically vulgar, intellectual imposter; even apolitical amusement could stem from her simple lack of self- awareness combined with her silly bowlegged walk. The Taste- ful Lady personifiedLaugh-In ’s strategic sensibility: mocking the middlebrow good taste of traditional network television by flirting with highbrow and countercultural taste, all without actually endorsing a cultural or sociopolitical position.

Taste Groups, Television, and Cold War Culture The discourse of taste remained central to defining a range of 23 identities in the United States throughout the Cold War period, class rank in particular in addition to social hierarchies pertaining to gender, race, and sexual orientation.1 In his widely influential 1949Harper’s article “Highbrow, Lowbrow, Middlebrow” (reworked in LIFE magazine soon after), Russell Lynes pondered, “It isn’t wealth or family that makes prestige these days. It’s high thinking.” Middlebrow taste represented the post–World War II American fantasy of social mobility and antielitism, the idea that “everyone has access to culture,” but it also remained a perpetual target of critics (Lynes 1949, 21). Highbrows viewed middlebrow culture as the final triumph of kitsch over art, while lowbrows purportedly saw it as preten- tiously elitist (Macdonald 1957, 63–65; Taylor 1999, 26–27). The new medium of commercial television played a central role in the national arbitration of taste and, in conjunction, in the social negotiation of identities and lifestyles (Spigel 2008, 14). Unprecedented in its synthesis of media, installation in the home, and potential reach, television figured centrally in the postwar mass culture debates; for middlebrows, according to Lynes (1949, 26), it was “potentially a new art form,” but it also threatened, in Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton Minow’s notorious accusation, to render American cul-

Chapter 1 ture a “vast wasteland” (Ross 1989, 105; Ouellette and Lewis 2004, 52; Spigel 2008, 228). This cultural dispute over television’s impact on norms of taste, taste publics, and the lifestyles associated with them resonates with Bourdieu’s (1986, 193) assertion that “At stake in every struggle over art there is also the imposition of an art of living, i.e. the transmutation of an arbitrary way of living into the legitimate way of life which casts every other way of living into arbitrariness.” Network television sought to stem any struggle over content or audience fears of sociocultural subversion (in conjunction with the dictates of sponsors and advertising agencies), opting for a patently middlebrow strategy for producing inoffensive programs: ad- 24 dressing television audiences as suburban or rural, middle-class adherents to bourgeois family values and norms (Marc 1998, 64, 136; Marc 1996, 42–43; Carr 1992, 6–7, 13). Considering such iconic sitcoms as Father Knows Best (CBS and NBC, 1954–60), Leave It to Beaver (CBS and ABC, 1957–63), and Ozzie and Harriet (ABC, 1952–66) or comedy- variety programs such as The Ed Sullivan Show (CBS, 1948–71), the networks were guided by what Lynes (1949, 27) had characterized as “lower-middlebrowism”: “the typical American family—happy little women, happy little children . . . framed against dimity curtains in the windows or decalcomania flowers on the cupboard doors. Lower-middlebrowism is a world pictured without tragedy, a world of new two-door sedans, and Bendix washers, and reproductions of hunting prints over the living room mantel. It is a world in which the ingenuity and patience of the housewife are equaled only by the fidelity of her husband and his love of home, pipe, and radio.”2 Network television’s task in the 1950s and most of the 1960s was to represent “lower-middlebrow” nuclear-familial comfort and “consensus” (Ross 1989, 42–47). Carr (1992, 13, 19) indicates, for example, how CBS deemed TV programming the “invited guest” expected to obey “living room protocol.” Notwithstand- Taste Tests ing the perception that the mores of NBC were, as one com- mentator reasoned, “more liberal than those of the other networks” (Brodhead 1969, 81), the network’s policy of adhering to public norms of taste approximated CBS’s position on “living room protocol” (Dallos 1968; Levine 2007, 44). Middle- class politeness demanded what Bourdieu (1986, 186) calls the “petty-bourgeois aesthetic,” which “subordinates art to the core values of the art of living.” According to this taste code, “an art worthy of the name . . . must aim to arouse the moral sense, to inspire feelings of dignity and delicacy, to idealize reality. . . . In a word, it must educate” (187). Marc (1996, 12, 15) confirms Bourdieu’s ideas in his discussion of 1950s and 1960s sitcoms such as Leave It to Beaver insofar as “actual humor (jokes or shticks) is always a subordinate concern to the proper solution 25 of ethical crises” as announced in the “climactic ethical pro- nouncements of Ward Cleaver.” Such paternalistic enlightenment at the expense of levity inevitably stood as the moral forti- fication of the bourgeois Eden that Lynes sarcastically rendered. Sitcoms took their moral precepts and tasteful exposition seriously, despite the banal settings, storylines, and ostensible goal to elicit laughs. The genre, medium, and audience might not have been high culture, but the moral ideas had to be lofty. A slightly different principle applied to the comedy-variety show; a historically low format, episodic variety remained associated with working-class audiences and pleasures, in contrast to linear narrative and its evocation of bourgeois audiences and tastes (Neale and Krutnik 1990, 112–16; Gans 1999, 118). TV comedy-variety shows compensated for this inferior ranking by maintaining standards of clean, tasteful content. The titular host of The Ed Sullivan Show served as an arbiter of taste for the national audience with such iconic and easily digestible guests as the Singing Nun, Topo Gigio, and Señor Wences. Even a potentially controversial performer such as Elvis Presley was introduced by Sullivan as “a nice decent boy” (qtd. in Ross 1989, 140–41), evoking petty bourgeois, lower-middlebrow civility (Gans 1999, 112, 118).

Chapter 1 Middlebrow taste provided a repressive, hegemonic Cold War–era cultural code that germinated “new audiences” and “cultural identities” born out of “disrespect” toward the middlebrow fetish for good taste (Ross 1989, 60). Such a concrete, conservative cultural regulation provoked the “middlebrow’s disgruntled fringes” to rebel (Taylor 1999, 87). Lenny Bruce’s “sick” stand-up comedy, Ernie Kovacs’s anarchic TV comedy, Playboy magazine, the popular sex comedy What’s New Pussycat? (1965), and Richard Lester’s art film crossover hitsA Hard Day’s Night (1964), Help! (1965), and The Knack . . . and How to Get It (1965) all challenged strict middlebrow normativity through “counter-distinction” defying the “normative standards of good 26 taste” (Spigel 2008, 199, 201).3 Laugh-In sported a comparable attitude through its “irreverence”—a descriptor commonly applied to the show—toward tasteful narrative formats and comedic restraint. As the New York Times posited, Laugh-In was “to television what Richard Lester, for one, has been to movies. It’s nouveau–Ernie Kovacs, today’s Helzapoppin’” (Barthel 1968, 141). In a virtual paraphrase, McCall’s called Laugh-In “the nou- velle vague of video, the boob tube’s Hellzapoppin Plus” (Van Horne 1969, 161). Lester’s films, Kovacs’s TV comedy, and the Ole Olson and Chic Johnson review Hellzapoppin’ (on Broad- way in 1938, adapted to film in 1941) all challenged bourgeois cultural boundaries by travestying the formal conventions, limits, and pretensions of the medium that each worked in. Such rebellious aesthetics of reflexivity personified counterdistinction; on one hand, they evoked the high modernism of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), Luis Buñuel and Salvadore Dali’s Un Chien Andalou (1929), and Jean- Luc Godard’s Contempt (1963), but they also drew from “lowbrow” forms such as slapstick comedy and Jerry Lewis movies (Selig 1990, 45–46). Rowan and Martin acknowledged Laugh- In’s debt to the late Kovacs (and commentators’ comparisons) during the first season with kudos (“He was brilliant” and “The Taste Tests best there ever was”) and a slapstick bit involving a depthless bathtub (3/25/68). Kovacs’s enduring impact arose, however, in Laugh-In’s incessantly reflexive humor that travestied televisual conventions and, more subtly, in the strategy of counterdistinction: appropriating highbrow and lowbrow influences toward an evasive position, dismissive of middlebrow norms yet unaf- filiated with any specific taste group. Laugh-In defined its content, style, and audience as well as achieved blockbuster ratings through counterdistinction. The show mocked middlebrow good taste and aesthetics by flirting with highbrow and countercultural vulgarity yet rendered its own taste position incoherent by never fully consummating those unions. Laugh-In established a fluid sensibility that could inhabit diverse living rooms, match different decors, and ac- 27 commodate a range of taste publics.

Art Films, Sex Comedy, and Counterdistinction: Leaving Beaver, Killing Sister George, and Kissing Marshall McLuhan Laugh-In treated TV audiences to forbidden countercultural delights and rarefied highbrow styles with an alibi; it never explicated if the show was mocking or celebrating the tastelessness and vulgarity of various countercultures and avant- gardes, the broader youth culture, and even members of the Establishment. This strategy figured into a seeming defiance of any definition of good taste (high or low, majority culture or minority) that contradictorily endowed Laugh-In with hip distinction. The strategy also gave Laugh-In a fruitful mecha- nism for comedy that distanced the show from serious issues while forging alliances with high and hip sensibilities. These tactics differentiated Laugh-In from its closest competitor and recurrently referenced precursor, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. As explored further in chapter 2, The Smothers Brothers committed two middlebrow gestures that differed markedly from Laugh-In’s hip and highbrow appearance: taking their ma-

Chapter 1 terial seriously and privileging function over form. The Smothers Brothers treated issues such as Vietnam, free speech, and countercultural ideals with gravity and used the traditional comedy- variety format rather than aesthetic innovation as a vehicle for its message. Moral seriousness and submission of form to function (education, moralizing) characterized petty bourgeois culture. Highbrow or legitimate taste embraced, as discussed in the Introduction, distanciation and aestheticism: refusing the vulgar seriousness and sincerity of lower-middlebrow culture while prizing the dominated aesthetics that middlebrows considered vulgar. Laugh-In’s irreverence and cool distance from its subject matter coincided with highbrow aspirations to update 28 the genre through avant-garde editing, Pop Art decor, and topical forms of comedy that personified dominated aesthetics. Network television in the 1960s more generally undertook a strategy of mining high culture, evidenced in detail by Spigel (2008, 15, 213–15, 228–29). This tactic reflected efforts to by- pass critiques of television as a “vast wasteland” (along with any attendant commercial or political problems) as well as reach a more lucrative market of viewers to sell to advertisers: young people and upper-middle-class adults. Ironically, the appeal to high culture also included an impetus for broadening the limits of sexual expression on network TV. All of these aims con- gealed in the importation of art and auteur cinema to network television. TV advertising drew from European art film styles, networks began airing critically heralded European and Holly- wood classics, and programs such as NBC Experiment in Televi- sion featured subjects including Marshall McLuhan, Federico Fellini, and Shakespeare (223–30, 232–37, 248–49). By 1965, hints of the provocative sexuality of notable art films and Eu- ropean-influenced Hollywood blockbusters began to appear in programs and commercials that evoked, in Spigel’s words, “the aura of swinging London and liberated sexuality” (237–42). Gleeful disrespect toward petty bourgeois mores and cul- Taste Tests tural dictates reigned in European sex comedies such as the Greek Never on Sunday (1960), the Italian Boccaccio ’70 (1962), the mod-era British filmsTom Jones (1963) and The Knack, and the Hollywood imitators What’s New Pussycat? and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966). The insouciance about sexuality in these films failed to deter movie audiences, let alone the “Condemned” ratings given to Never on Sunday, Boccaccio ’70, and What’s New Pussycat? by the Legion Of Decency, and these box office successes proved influential in broadening the self-censorship norms of network TV comedy. When NBC broadcast Never on Sunday in October 1967 with high ratings and no controversy (and eventually Tom Jones in 1969 and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in 1970), New York Times TV critic Jack Gould perceived a “Movie 29 Revolution” on television (Gould 1967a, 95; Gould 1967b). And in April 1968, New York Times reporter Robert E. Dallos similarly observed “TV’s Quiet Revolution” (Dallos 1968). Ac- cording to the executives from CBS and NBC whom Dallos in- terviewed, the highly rated broadcast of Never on Sunday (as well as auteur Billy Wilder’s Oscar-winning sex comedy The Apartment) provided “an overriding factor in TV’s uninhibited- ness toward matters relating to sex,” motivating original prime- time programs such as Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Although NBC’s prime-time sitcom The Monkees (1966–68) imported art-film–style jump cuts and discontinuity tricks popularized by Tom Jones, The Knack, and other films, the show lacked the corresponding European sexual freedom of 1960s art films and sex comedies, all of whichLaugh-In later flaunted. Never on Sunday extolled the charms of an unrepentant Greek prostitute alongside a critique of bourgeois, American puritanism; the omnibus filmBoccaccio ’70 included an installment by Fellini in which a gigantic revealing incarnation of voluptuous Anita Ekberg chases a puritanical censor through the streets of Rome and another installment by Vittorio De Sica involving a sex raffle.Tom Jones ultimately rewarded the eponymous

Chapter 1 libertine for his peccadilloes, and The Knack exalted its sexually adventurous young protagonists against choruses of ridicu- lously repressed harping old-timers. What’s New Pussycat? and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum furthermore celebrated fornication, mock marriage, and monogamy and flaunted queer innuendo. When Dallos (1968) reported on network television’s newly sexualized comedy, with Laugh-In a central example, the novel features he noted were most likely familiar to art film audiences and connoisseurs of sex comedy: “double entendre gags,” “hip swaying,” “undulating girls,” and “attacks on the American Establishment.” What’s New Pussycat? as well as The Knack and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way 30 to the Forum approximated further elements of Laugh-In’s comedic formula and sensibility: the address to youth culture; disobedience to tastefulness; character types such as swinging single girls, playboys, and randy wannabes; jokes derived from suggestive double entendres; drag and gay implications; and crazily jump-cut, discontinuous narratives.4 Laugh-In continually referenced as well as reflected the impact of sexy foreign films on American culture by adapting their comedic styles and satirizing both prudishness and the sexual revolution. These gestures enabled the show to reflexively distance itself from television’s antiquated, middlebrow definition of good taste while never explicitly embracing vulgarity or rejecting tastefulness. An exchange between Lily Tomlin and Italian film star Marcello Mastroianni on a fourth-season episode encapsulates this strategy. “Mr. Mastroianni, I’ve seen all of your pictures,” admits Tomlin. “I think they are quite sexy and rather tasteless.” When Mastroianni asks why she continues seeing them, Tomlin avers, “I happen to like that sort of thing” (2/1/71; Anon. n.d., script 1770–20, 81). A second-season sketch underscores these features more explicitly, when two “stag film” producers portrayed by Sammy Davis Jr. and Dan Rowan worry about “going broke” in the wake of big-budget Taste Tests mainstream “R” and “X-rated” features. “I think we have a big problem,” Davis frets, “with all of these Hollywood films that are coming out like Candy, The Fox, The Killing of Sister George.” Their solution is to pawn their work off as sex education films to the Los Angeles School System, but this yields a new question: what to entitle their latest feature? Davis knows: “We will call it Leave It to Beaver.” Rowan adds, “If we put it on ABC no- body gonna watch it anyway” (3/17/69). (Not only was ABC the lowest-rated network in 1968, but Leave It to Beaver had been one of ABC’s programs.) Laugh-In’s affronts to bourgeois respectability gave hip counterdistinction to the show and its savvy audience. Just as middlebrow “good taste” in the 1950s provided a means for achieving “sophistication and distinction” through “sick” 31 humor (Thompson 2011, 28), Laugh-In derived “sick” sexual double entendres by juxtaposing the hallowed, normative institutions of the home and the public school system with recent arrivals to the nation’s screens: hardcore pornography and X-rated Hollywood films. The expansion of sexual content in “beaver” films, beginning in 1967 amid the sexual revolution, coincided with the same permissive extension of social, legal, and consumer norms that led to the dismantling of the Production Code, the installation of the rating system, and an outpouring of Hollywood productions influenced by European art films (and the American underground avant-garde), replete with modernist aesthetics, pronounced sexuality, sociopolitical contemplation, and appeal to young audiences (Johnson 1999, 302–3; TIME Staff 1967). The Hollywood filmsThe Fox (1967) and The Killing of Sister George (1968), for instance, featured lesbian and bisexual protagonists; unprecedentedly explicit, artsy sex scenes; and bold, spectacular views of hitherto hidden lives. Candy (1968) was an adaptation of a best-selling “send- up of pornography” (Brackman 1967, 44) coauthored by Terry Southern, master of the literary put-on and screenwriter whose Chapter 1

Despoiling the tasteful Establishment, from Agnew to Bambi. hipster credibility ranked high among young readers and film Taste Tests audiences (Leland 2004, 9, 179).5 When Laugh-In appropriated the iconic family sitcom Leave It to Beaver to pun on beaver films and motivate citations of X- and R-rated Hollywood art movies, its violation of middlebrow good taste reflected an urbanity, sophistication, and youthfulness proportionate to the “sick,” vulgar connotations of its humor. Viewers could furthermore find their reward in the hip distinction of identifying Laugh-In’s charged and incongruous references to middlebrow Establishment culture, counterculture, art films, pornography, and kitsch sitcoms. They could appreciate, additionally, Laugh-In’s “irreverent” willingness and ability to “get away” with such violations.6 But the return on investing in Laugh-In also emerged in the show’s promise of discretion and its assurance of concealing vulgarity in double entendres, 33 suggestive props, and stereotypes. Even more, the creators and fans of the show could rationalize potentially inflammatory subject matter and dissuade deep contemplation through the highbrow preference for form and style over content. Laugh-In’s association with so-called media prophet Mar- shall McLuhan compounded its perceived fusion of highbrow, counterculture, and mass culture (Barthel 1968, 142; Porter 1968; Van Horne 1969, 80, 162; Erickson 2000, 15, 117) and also provided another basis for evading specific cultural and political positions. McLuhan ascended from obscure highbrow intellectual to countercultural guru and media star with utopian prognoses of television’s social and sensorial impact as well as by posing iconoclastic comparisons of commercials to art movies; a role model of counterdistinction, aestheticism, and distanciation, McLuhan disregarded taste distinctions, justified the merging of low and high culture, privileged style and form over content and meaning, and promoted himself as an “uncommitted” intellectual, not a political polemicist (Spigel 2008, 248–49; Bodroghkozy 2001, 38–43; Ross 1989, 114–20).7 McLuhan’s advocacy of televisual pleasures also gave a new meaning to “turning on” that provided Laugh-In with another means for expanding the parameters of sexual expression on

Chapter 1 network TV and forged a link between legitimate culture and the counterculture that older audiences could use to justify their engagement. McLuhan’s technological determinism, formalism, and nonpartisan politics served the sensibility and cultural reputation of Laugh-In. Mainstream commentators lauded Laugh-In’s rapid editing procedures and nonlinear structure as the fulfill- ment of McLuhanism, in particular McLuhan’s catchphrase “the medium is the message” (Barthel 1968, 142; Porter 1968; Van Horne 1969, 80, 162). These features of the show also personified McLuhan’s arguments about television’s departure from the linear print-oriented mind-set and, as a “cool” medium, its 34 heightened demands on viewer participation. If the cool medium of television demanded the viewer’s participation, according to McLuhan, Laugh-In played on that promise through a nonlinear, episodic, fast-paced narrative that required close attention lest viewers miss gags or misunderstand them. Double entendres, puns, and campy put-ons on top of the rapid, disori- enting editing all materialized what McLuhan (1977, 210–11) called “the TV image that commands immediate participation in depth and admits of no delays,” demanding the viewers’ “do-it- yourself-ness and depth involvement” to decipher them (213). Not only did popular commentary on Laugh-In often cite McLuhan, but so did Laugh-In. The program trumpeted its awareness of the critic throughout the second season in Henry Gibson’s oft-repeated succinct poem “Marshall McLuhan/ What’re you doin’?”—so popular that Eric Norden launched his 1969 Playboy interview with McLuhan by quoting the rhyme (Norden 1995). A second-season sketch crystallized Laugh-In’s use of McLuhanism to ironically juxtapose antagonistic tastes in a gag that installed the cool McLuhan and his vaunted medium in the hot sexual revolution. The bit ensues amid the typical flurry of quick insert shots and blackout sketches, examples of Taste Tests

Jo Anne Worley heats up Henry Gibson’s McLuhan-lovin’ poet. Courtesy of the American Heritage Center, Dan Rowan Collection. Laugh-In’s McLuhanist exploitation of video technology and deviation from linear comedy-variety conventions. After Gibson

Chapter 1 repeats his ode to McLuhan, Jo Anne Worley—one of the program’s outspoken emblems for female sexual freedom—enters, towering over the diminutive Gibson. Worley’s exaggerated performance—a chuckling, fashionable, flamboyant, sexually active single girl—signaled the rejection of square, bourgeois tastes and designs for living. “Oh Henry,” Worley begins, “you and Marshall McLuhan are really weird!” Worley moves closer to her costar. “Listen, is he as short as you are?” Looming over Gibson, Worley compares their heights and then abruptly dips Gibson and kisses him passionately (11/18/68). Worley’s sexual audacity played off of McLuhan’s popular ideas and added to them by suggesting the sensual heat underlying the sensorial 36 “coolness” of television. The inversion of the usual gender roles (Worley active, Gibson passive) and the eruption of sexuality further situated McLuhan’s “weird” ideas within the sexual revolution, on TV and in society, and between the borders of tastefulness and vulgarity. As subversion for the entire family, Laugh-In was a new kind of guest to America’s living rooms, one that enticed entry by directing viewers’ attention to the other side of the boundary of middlebrow taste and bourgeois lifestyle. This guest offered its hosts the reward of hip distinction for gaining entry but also assured them that they need not change anything about their living rooms or their lifestyles. Chapter 2 Hip to the Put-On and Pitching Camp Vulgarity, the Counterculture, and “Beauti- ful Downtown Burbank”

n its fluctuating political positions, indecisive cultural alle- Igiances, and efforts to broaden the audience address, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In communicated ambivalence about the radical subcultures of the 1960s. Laugh-In surely advantaged from the counterculture’s “new popular avant-garde” (Taylor 1999, 20), which rebelled against Establishment culture and political belief, as a source of comedy and hip subcultural capital.1 Various countercultural types represented on the show could nevertheless never escape the bourgeois gaze. Musical guests such as the Holy Modal Rounders, Tiny Tim, and the Legend- ary Stardust Cowboy, featured guests such as Flip Wilson, Dick Gregory, Truman Capote, and Gore Vidal, and cast members such as Chelsea Brown, Lily Tomlin, Alan Sues, Jo Anne Wor- ley, Johnny Brown, Teresa Graves, and Judy Carne conferred hipness upon Laugh-In based on embodying facets of the counterculture offensive to conservative tastes: urban, empowered blackness; unrepentantly queeny gayness; unapologetic displays of single-girl sexuality and female strength; and turned on and tuned out hippies. Alongside their hip differences, how-

Chapter 2 ever, the middlebrow gaze of traditional network TV alternately rendered them childish, buffoonish, deviant, and tasteless. Barthel’s (1971) recollections in LIFE magazine about Laugh- In and its cultural role in 1968 prove particularly telling in this regard: “In 1968, a genuinely wretched year, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In was the smash of the new season. . . . [I]n its swift irreverence, its capacity to jolt, Laugh-In was a reflection of the times as well as counterpoint.” Laugh-In’s “reflection of the times” materialized in its “irreverent” satire of current events in addition to its equally irreverent camp put-ons, hip attitude, and flirtation with tastelessness, all of which resonated with countercultural sensibilities associated with the period’s 38 “genuinely wretched” events: violence toward civil rights and antiwar activists, including the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as intensified carnage in Vietnam. As a counterpoint to the social turbulence attributed to these movements and causes, Laugh-In also employed countercultural styles to mock the deviant, provocative, and con- frontational tastes of hippies, Black Power activists, and sexual revolutionaries, among others. Throughout the 1960s, Establishment critics consistently charged countercultural representatives with being vulgar and tasteless, and in turn, various countercultures of the period seized on the politicized dimension of disobeying taste codes.2 In sympathy with the counterculture, critic Kingsley Widmer (1971, 103) reckoned circa 1970, “The hierarchies of high culture, of values as well as of persons, fuse with those of institutional control and general social power,” which prompted the “protesting currents” of the “counter culture” and their “revolt against the elitist and repressive control of sensibility.”3 TIME magazine’s 1966 article “On Tradition, or What Is Left of It” epitomized the establishment position described by Widmer; as if penned by the Tasteful Lady, the article’s bourgeois lament linked “youthful irreverence” to the loss of “Puritan tradition” as Hip to the Put-On well as alluded to corruptive minority taste influences, namely African Americans and homosexuals (Anon. 1966b). Without using the word “camp,” TIME’s “On Tradition” could have been responding to the recent popularizing of camp, which was spilling out of gay urban subcultures and into highbrow circles before exploding into youth culture and mainstream discourse: TIME, Newsweek, LIFE, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune all devoted pieces to camp.4 The term “camp” signified a gleefully perverse delight in vulgarity and aesthetic malfunction as well as the preference for exaggerated, frivolous style over serious, deep content. The term also harbored such popular meanings as “homosexual,” “anti-Establishment,” “perverse,” and “Underground” (Anon. 1964a, 11; Anon. 1964b, 24; Meehan 1965, 30, 113). Gloria Steinem (1965, 86) encapsulated 39 camp as dissident and “homosexual” for LIFE magazine readers, qualities that prevailed as camp acquired widespread exposure through youth culture: “Homosexuals, who have always had a vested interest in knocking down bourgeois standards, are in the vanguard of Camp, though no longer its sole custodians.” The popular discourse on camp sensibility promoted some of the first positive (albeit stereotypical) portrayals of homosexuality in the post–World War II news media, but for many critics, the queer meanings clinging to camp foreboded cultural decline. LIFE reviewer Richard Schickel (1965) excoriated the filmWhat’s New Pussycat? as “a witless attempt to cash in on the spirit of Camp which now blights our land. Camp . . . has been defined as the esthetic view that something is good precisely because it is awful.” When Schickel noted that “those pathetically arrested people, the homosexuals, are leading Camp followers,” his ha- rangue against the “blight” of “regressive” camp trumpeted fears of an invading gay sensibility and its increasing cultural power.5 The rants of “On Tradition” conjured similar preconceptions in nervous references to the decline of “sexual morality” in higher education; the rise of “homosexuality,” “nudity,” and “hard-core pornography” in theater and literature; and (as one section of the article was titled) “The Virtues of Vulgarity” in architecture,

Chapter 2 music, recreational dancing, and fashion (Anon. 1966b). The popularizing of camp and other forms of minority taste through youth culture confronted Establishment fears of a fading bourgeois cultural hegemony. TIME’s “On Tradition” also insinuated trepidation toward African-American influences on youth culture and mainstream morality. The writer could not countenance, for instance, dances that “alarm the conventional,” such as the “frug” or “alligator, in which a couple lies down on the floor and starts writhing rhythmically” (Anon. 1966b). Although deracinated in TIME’s account, Eldridge Cleaver interpreted a racialized reason for this “stiffassed” position about youth culture’s dance trends. 40 Cleaver, the eventual leader of the Black Panthers, posited in his best-selling 1968 polemic Soul on Ice that “The white youth of today have begun to react to the fact that the ‘American Way of Life’ is a fossil of history. . . . They couldn’t care less about the old, stiffassed honkies who don’t like their new dances: Frug, Monkey, Jerk, Swim, Watusi” (qtd. in Medovoi 1999, 162). Cleaver’s impressions of white youth freeing themselves through African-American music and dance styles stemmed from his “racialized discourse of sexual repression” (as Medo- voi terms it), which impacted the white counterculture’s ideas (yippies in particular) and forcefully exposed the politicized in- terconnections among race, class, sexuality, taste and lifestyle. Cleaver’s appreciation for the white counterculture suggested a partial formula for rebellion through cultural pleasure: “the long hair, the new dances, their love of Negro music, their use of marijuana, their mystical attitude toward sex—are all tools of their rebellion . . . against the totalitarian fabric of American society—and they mean to change it” (138).6 Cleaver’s estimation of youth culture voraciously adopting African-American culture rendered a threatening scene, as Ross (1989, 100) observed: “a symptomatic shift in official taste.” The nexus of bad taste and minority taste publics further Hip to the Put-On manifested in a form of humor that surged in popularity in the 1960s: the put-on. The put-on remained connected to such minority taste labels as “hip,” “camp,” and the “new sensibility,” and the term “put-on” repeatedly surfaced in discussions of Laugh-In. TIME titled its first review ofLaugh-In “A Put-On Is Not a Put-Down” for instance, and titles originally considered for Laugh-In included “Put On” and “High Camp” (Brackman 1967, 40, 58, 69; Anon. 1968d; Anon. 1968f; Erickson 2000, 68).7 In his New Yorker article “The Put-on,” Brackman (1967, 72) even referenced an earlier collaboration of Laugh-In’s Schlat- ter, Rowan, and Martin, The Colgate Comedy Hour Special (NBC, May 11, 1967), because of its “new trends in comedy, including the put-on and the put-down.” Brackman’s examples of put-on artists include two Laugh-In favorites, Marshall McLuhan (re- 41 monstrated for “redefining art as anything you can put over on anybody”) and frequent guest Phyllis Diller, who personified stars “burlesquing themselves” (36, 70), a staple attraction of Laugh-In. The put-on imitated dominant forms in a parodic manner without clearly articulating the point of the parody or meaning (if any) of the satire. Brackman (1967) opened his piece with exemplary put-ons: an inexplicable Pop Art exhibit by Roy Li- chtenstein and the bizarre Hollywood spy spoof Casino Royale (1967). Brackman also offered more outré manifestations: Black Power leader Stokely Carmichael notifying an interviewer that African Americans should torch Harlem and Anschluss Scars- dale; outlandishly costumed student antiwar activists testifying for the House Un-American Activities Committee, one employing the pseudonym “James Bond”; and the off-off Broadway play Gorilla Queen (1967) featuring drag queens and a chorus line in gorilla costumes singing a Beethoven Chorale (34). Brackman eventually illustrated the put-on through hypotheti- cal testimonies from most of the dissident groups alluded to in the opening examples. One by one, a “rebellious adolescent,” a “militant Negro,” an antiwar “subversive,” a “hippie” and a “homosexual” puts on some innocent representative of the Estab-

Chapter 2 lishment through common strategies, “Relentless Agreement” and “Actualization of the Stereotype,” both of which involve ironically iterating dominant attitudes and naturalized clichés (57–58). Excess, theatricality, mimicry, incomprehensibility, and sociopolitical subversiveness marked the countercultural put-on and its intersection of vulgarity and radicalism, all les- sons for Laugh-In. Brackman’s illustrations of countercultural put-ons, whose irony and implicit vulgarity defied clear meaning, anticipated similar material in Laugh-In. On Laugh-In, for instance, Afri- can-American comedian Flip Wilson addressed the camera, and the ostensibly white audience, with cool confidence and 42 sincerity: “When we take over, I’m gonna look out for you” (2/5/68). During one Cocktail Party, Wilson proposed with similarly calm, subversive self-assurance, “I’ll make a deal with you. We’ll stop marrying your sisters if you’ll stop stealing our music” (10/21/68). Alan Sues approximated Brackman’s “homosexual” put-ons, fulfilling the stereotypes of flirting, batting eyelashes, lisping, and employing feminized argot, especially when performing as Big Al, a “sissy sports announcer,” as NBC executive Herminio Traviesas described him (Warga 1968). Big Al struck as a put-on of both gendered stereotypes and the limits imposed on representing sexuality, such as in stretches of ecstasy over his “tinkle”—the diminutive bell he routinely rang—and the suggestive content of his sports “featurettes”: “Hockey, hockey, hockey. Today, the L.A. Kings were purchased by Steve McQueen. They will be known as McQueen’s Kings. The poor gay blades can’t make up their mind whether to wear helmets, crowns or tiaras. All I say is, God save McQueen. Is that dirty? Ta-ta!” (12/30/68). In line with Brackman’s “hippie,” “subversive” and “rebellious adolescent,” Laugh-In’s “youth” av- atar Judy Carne likewise reaffirmed the “grass roots . . . politics of the young people” during one Cocktail Party (11/18/68) and Hip to the Put-On

Flip Wilson puts on the white Establishment. mused at another soiree that “Oh, you should have been in my neighborhood last night. We had a grass fire. You would have loved it!” (9/23/68).8 Brackman’s rebuke of the put-on and its sibling sensibility camp followed the same logic as the “custodians of high culture” reprimanded by Widmer (1971, 103). Widmer asserted the critical value in the counterculture’s “parodistic, cursing, and burlesque styles,” which communicate “great skepticism about our word culture,” but noted that authorities disregarded such critiques as “weird youth culture,” “student madness,” “the drug-entertainment scene,” and “the ‘dropout aesthetic.’”9 Brackman (1967, 35, 52, 73) considered the parodic burlesque, vulgarity, and the ambiguity of the put-on very similarly, as a “debasement of discourse” that “clogs critical judgment and scuttles aesthetic standards” and “deflates the seriousness of questions and replies,” despite acknowledging Chapter 2

Big Al’s tinkle ecstasy: gay stereotype and queer put-on.

that the put-on “communicates ‘real’ ideas and feelings” as a response to a “staggeringly confused and grotesque” world. Camp taste, fundamental to the put-on, especially rendered social and aesthetic value systems in crisis because it took pleasure either in “hyperbolic work that’s intended seriously” or in deliberate “self-mocking hyperbole” (69). Brackman neglected to consider that deflating “the serious” in the countercultural put-on occasioned resistance to the Estab- lishment’s rigid hierarchies. Camp taste was, after all, “the good taste of bad taste” (Sontag 1966, 291) a sensibility that exposed the fluidity of traditional high/low distinctions: success/failure, tasteful/vulgar, serious/frivolous, and masculine/feminine, among others. Sontag (1966, 284, 291–92) famously defined camp sensibility as a delight in artwork “that proposes itself seriously, but cannot be taken altogether seriously because it is ‘too much’”—“good because it’s awful.” Such cultural pleasures challenged the hegemony of “bourgeois good taste” (and the Hip to the Put-On ideological manipulations of kitsch); as Tinkcom (2002, 15, 20) elucidates, “in the act of disregarding the distinctions of high and low culture and good and bad taste, new possibilities, both political and exclusive at once, emerge in the landscape of commodities.” Staiger (2000b) demonstrates how this logic informed the New York underground film movement of the early 1960s. The campy films of Warhol, Smith, and others, featuring homosexuals, drag queens, trans women, and swinging women in addition to their mad, midnight movie screening setting, ne- gated highbrow definitions of “serious” art and embraced “low,” “vulgar” culture (i.e., failures) as a means of reversing social hierarchies that devalued deviant sexualities (homosexuality, transgender sexuality, interracial sexuality, or nonmonogamous heterosexuality) (131–44). The put-on and its social functions 45 appeared to Brackman (1967), by contrast, as grim symptoms of youth culture’s cynical conception of “‘the system’ . . . as a con game” (73). In contrast with countercultural sympathizers, the put-on offered in Brackman’s estimation is just another “cop out,” “fake out,” and “put-down,” a Pyrrhic “triumph of cool,” “a destructive device born out of desperation . . . to force people out, through confusion and loss of confidence, toward honesty” (40–44, 49, 72, 73), and, worse, reflected the elitist taste distinctions between “hip” and “square” (38, 58). The “cool” comedic style of the “hip trickster” also compared closely to the put-on and remained central to Laugh-In. Originating in African-American culture, Leland (2004) explains, the hip trickster’s “audience is willingly duped . . . to experience the conjuring of joy out of pain, and vice versa. It is the cool mask that hides the enlightenment of hip” (169). Far from Brackman’s highbrow, establishment perspective, the comedy of the hip trickster and the “cool mask” are essentially put-ons meant not to punish the audience but instead to enable it to persevere through pleasure and “enlightenment.” As opposed to Brackman’s concerns that the put-on provided phony cultural capital distinguishing hip countercultural adherents from the square Establishment, hip knowledge functioned as

Chapter 2 “an equalizer, available to outsiders as to insiders”—knowledge that reversed the related social polarities of bad/good and outside/inside (7, 24). Through Laugh-In’s extensive and seemingly endless parade of put-ons, the show both exploited and gave glimpses of the cool, hip, subversive intelligence germinating within African- American culture of the 1960s in addition to the youth counterculture, the women’s movement, and gay culture, presenting put-ons that purportedly welcomed the interpretations of audiences “steeped in hardship” (Leland 2004, 6). Subversive intelligence seemed to spring from Laugh-In’s put-on of the conventional comedy-variety show, an incoherent recycling 46 of Golden Age “vaudeo” shtick (e.g., Arte Johnson’s gibberish- speaking Soviet refugee Rosmenko and the pratfalls of “Sock- It-To-Me Time”) interwoven with politicized gags such as those cited above. Tomlin’s Tasteful Lady surely constituted a put-on of Establishment culture, and as the series proceeded into the third and fourth seasons without the supervision of Paul Keyes, her “wisdom” grew increasingly more politicized, such as this one-liner directed to the audience during a Cocktail Party: “We girls at the club decided very tastefully that we should know more about the Negro problem. So we formed a committee to watch The Leslie Uggams Show” (1/19/70). A put-on of the white bourgeois Establishment and its fetish for tastefulness and faux sensitivity to civil rights, the Tasteful Lady not only represented what Leland (2004, 6) refers to as “white supremacy posing as appreciation” but also implicated white members of the Laugh- In audience who assumed that watching this “liberal,” “integrated” program could substitute for actual social intercourse with African Americans. The Tasteful Lady’s one-liner also drew attention to the intersection of taste and social power dynamics, the association between vulgarity and marginalization. The Leslie Uggams Show (CBS, 1969) not only provided the requisite distance for the Tasteful Lady to interact with African Ameri- Hip to the Put-On cans, but the perception of the comedy-variety show as “white- inspired” (Gould 1969) connoted conformity to network television’s white, “stiffassed” “living room” etiquette. Inasmuch as Laugh-In employed the put-on to connect with the counterculture, that style of humor provided commercial advantages, namely its ironic ambiguity and hip cultural capital. The show ultimately deployed the indirection and double meanings of the put-on to address the youth audience (and related countercultures) in their own terms as well as to duck concrete associations with radical groups, attitudes, and tastes, thereby avoiding controversy, network intervention, and the alienation of mainstream viewers. Faced with the Federal Communications Commission’s rising concerns about sex in television and the restraints of network Standards and Prac- 47 tices (Anon. 1969c, 66; Barnouw 1990, 421, 474–76; Erick- son 2000, 210; Levine 2007, 46), in addition to the divergent sensibilities and political views among the creative personnel, Laugh-In strove to invoke the counterculture without subverting the Establishment and to maintain the value of hip as an inducement for “squares” to watch the program. In all these respects, deploying the put-on enabled Laugh-In to construct itself as both Establishment and countercultural, providing alibis to accusations that the show was tasteless or politically slanted and also multiplying opportunities for attracting hip and square audiences.

The Dawning of the Doris Day of Aquarius: Putting on the Squares Through its ironic, ambiguous put-ons, Laugh-In reconciled the antithetical young hipster and older establishment square, something that commentators implied when crediting the show with resolving the “generation gap” for an hour a week and “boosting America’s hip quotient by about 300 percent” (Van Horne 1969, 80; Brodhead 1969, 41–44; Anon. 1968f). Laugh- In provided the Establishment with role models for putting-on

Chapter 2 dominant culture without subverting it: Rowan, Martin, and a stream of classical Hollywood celebrity guests who mocked their ostensible wholesomeness and underwent what some might consider humiliation. As insiders to their own put-ons, these icons of the clean pictures of old could lead the audience in straddling the line between the tasteful, square Establish- ment and the vulgar counterculture. The incongruous merging of square and hip drove the put- ons of classical Hollywood stars within the world of Laugh-In, a hotbed of swingers seemingly anathema to the petty bourgeois refinement of classical Hollywood movies. In a quickly edited second-season sequence, for example, Mitzi Gaynor informs the 48 audience at the top of the episode, “I didn’t want my husband to know that I was going on the show tonight. So I told him I was going to an orgy.” The scene cuts to elderly Kentucky Fried Chicken magnate Colonel Sanders (also a guest) miming the toss- ing of feed and coaxing “Here chick, chick, chick” (10/14/68). Later in the second season, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., in a sketch as a sultan, sits with his son among the harem and proclaims, “Behold, my son. Someday, all this will be yours . . . if you’d only give up that nonsense about hairdressing school. Oi vey!” (12/16/68). That same episode, Doris Day’s former costar and fellow Eisenhower-era emblem Rock Hudson subjects himself to being the sex object of diminutive, repressive Gladys Ormphby (Ruth Buzzi). Gladys approaches Hudson with a wooden box, climbs up on it, wraps Hudson’s arms around her, kisses him passionately, and purrs, “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Clause.” Referring to fornication and homosexuality as well as inviting speculation about their own sex lives in lines that just a little time before would have been forbidden in a network prime-time program, these elder stars’ naughty, willing travesty of their own sanitized personas punctuated the difference between repressed, outmoded popular culture and the worldly, liberated Laugh-In.10 The put-on of classical Hollywood wholesomeness (in ad- Hip to the Put-On dition to the pretensions of celebrity) recurred on Laugh-In, but the iconic Doris Day provided a common reference point in the second season (when her eponymous sitcom premiered on CBS). Later on the December 16 episode, Hudson returns to mock his and Day’s Production Code–era star image. After Gladys pummels (as usual) her perpetual masher Tyrone Hor- neye, the would-be Casanova mutters “I’m going to the teeter- totter,” and the scene cuts to Hudson: “Doris Day would never say that. Come to think of it, she wouldn’t even know what it means” (12/16/68). The same could be said for audiences ac- customed to the films and star personas of Day and Hudson from the 1950s and early 1960s, or as Gary Owens intones while opening a subsequent episode, audiences from “the Doris Day Memorial Home for the Incurably Wholesome” (1/6/69). 49 Hudson’s reference to Day’s restraint and naïveté flagged a pos- sibly suggestive line too, encouraging audiences to consider if “teeter-totter” comprised a double entendre. The put-on here functioned to satirize sanitized old Hollywood content and establish the enlightened, swinging, urbane, hip distinction of Laugh-In, but it also served to deride the very process of in- terpreting any film or television show having to adhere to self- censorship codes. The repression of sexuality on TV invested terms such as “teeter-totter” with potential sexual significance or, more commonly on Laugh-In, “bippy,” “Funk and Wag- nall’s,” “ring my bell,” and “sock it to me.” (Recall Kasmire’s objections to “Funk and Wagnall.”) In that respect, Hudson’s line echoed a comment from producer Schlatter to the New York Times in 1968 on the question of the show’s tastelessness. With the characteristic duplicity of a put-on artist, Schlatter donned the innocence of Doris Day: “What upsets most of the critics are the jokes they don’t understand, and that’s more an educational problem than a taste problem. We say things like ‘You bet your bippy!’ . . . I’m sure some people attach a dirty connotation to those words. We don’t even know what they mean; they’re just funny” (Barthel 1968, 146). That Schlatter and his associates “don’t even know” what these terms signify, as dirty or tasteful,

Chapter 2 placed him and the program on the same level of clean, wholesome content as Doris Day. (As discussed below and in the next chapter, this remark and many more like it reflected a larger ambivalence about taste communicated on Laugh-In and, in tandem, the closeting of the program’s affiliation with the counterculture and its diverse taste publics, ideals, and identities.) During the Cocktail Party in the second-season debut, Hugh Hefner refers to Day and Hudson in a put-on of both archaic Hollywood movies and his own persona as sexually active bachelor, another instance in which Laugh-In mocked the figures of square culture in an effort to reinscribe them as hip. When Gladys asks what Hefner thinks about sex in the 50 movies, he replies earnestly, “Well, I consider myself sexually liberated. I like to go to Doris Day movies and root for Rock Hudson. To place” (9/16/68). Hefner’s joke mocked the puritanism associated with Doris Day and 1950s square popular culture but reconciled it with the hip mainstream sexuality of the late 1960s associated with Playboy and now Laugh-In.11 As Thompson (2011, 83–87) maintains about Hefner’s syndicated television program Playboy’s Penthouse (1959–61), the talk-variety show’s aspiration to sophistication involved appropriating the counterculture and its terms for assessing taste value: hip and square. Hefner tapped into the hip credibility of such underground guests as Lenny Bruce alongside mainstream successes such as Nat King Cole, and similarly, Laugh-In appropriated Hefner’s hip credentials to boost its own. The Day-Hudson joke indicated something of a divergence, though, from Hef- ner’s goal “to produce popular counterculture” (87). Hefner’s smirking admission that he watches Day-Hudson movies as an expression of being sexually liberated signaled the reconciliation of the Establishment and the counterculture, of squares and swingers (something also accomplished on Laugh-In that night by featuring a guest appearance from the prototypical square, presidential candidate Richard Nixon). It was doubtful, Hip to the Put-On however, that the cool evangelist of unadulterated male heterosexuality would want to see films such asPillow Talk (1959), in which Day’s refusal of premarital sex finally triumphed over Hudson’s playboy lifestyle. If Hefner’s racing terminology conjured a sexual competition in which the head playboy rooted for Hudson, betting place meant that the gambler doubted Hudson’s chances; Day might win. Hefner’s put-on further reconciled polarized taste publics by posing a double entendre (the horse race) that was no more suggestive than the gags in Pillow Talk.12 Inspiring humor from the seemingly incongruous pairing of the Playboy brainchild with the veritable quintessence of pent-up sexuality, Hefner and Laugh-In brought the countercultural sexual revolution out of the hip swinger’s penthouse and into the den of square Establishment culture.13 51

Squaring the Counterculture: Laugh-In’s Cop-Out Rowan and Martin, Laugh-In’s titular hosts, emphasized their participation in a put-on of conservative, Establishment comedy-variety shows, but they also served a normative function: to blur the program’s affirmation of countercultural tastes and values. The hosts played the key role in Laugh-In’s deployment of the hip, campy put-on and its refusal to clarify questions of meaning and taste; by playing at the borders between seriousness and frivolity, high and low, old and young, Establish- ment and counterculture, these elder symbols of mainstream showbiz could dislocate the put-on from the countercultural settings that charged it with subversive political significance (e.g., Greenwich Village, Haight-Ashbury, Berkeley, Oakland). The appearance of Tiny Tim on Laugh-In’s premiere episode (January 22, 1968) crystallized all of these strategies as the hosts fulfilled their function to mediate between Establishment and counterculture. For New Talent Time, Rowan introduced Tiny Tim as “The toast of Greenwich Village,” the Village having been a popular metonym for all things countercultural in the late 1960s, from hippies and bohemian avant-gardists to anti-

Chapter 2 war activists and gays (Abraham 2009, 187, 230; Stone 1966). As Erickson (2000, 112) states, “The spectacle of a 36-year- old man with a white-chalk complexion, shoulder-length curly black hair, and Margaret Hamilton hook nose was simply not an everyday occurrence in 1968. And when . . . he launched into a medley of ‘On the Good Ship Lollipop’ and ‘A Tisket a Tasket’ in a canary-like falsetto, and greeted applause by blowing sweet kisses to the crowd, it was crystal clear that Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In was not then and never would be The Lawrence Welk Show or Wonderful World of Disney.” Although absent from Er- ickson’s account, Rowan and Martin’s dialogue openly encouraged speculation about Tiny Tim’s sexuality through a flurry of 52 euphemisms for homosexuals in addition to the “Greenwich Village” reference, seemingly soliciting accusations of perverse tastelessness. Following Tiny Tim’s kiss-blowing farewell, the action cuts to actor and TV producer Sheldon Leonard, dressed as a typical 1930s gangster, who declares in New Yorkese, “If you ask me, the guy is nuttier than a fruit cake.” The camera returns to the hosts, now laughing, when Rowan asks, “You like that? Real surprise for ya?” Martin responds, “You searched high and low for that one, didn’t you?” Rowan intones, dead- pan, “Kept him out of the service,” to which Martin adds, “I’ll bet the army burned his draft card.”14 These examples surely support Erickson’s (2000, 113) assertion that “As alien and uncontrolled as the show might seem at times, the audience could always count on Dan and Dick to be the stabilizing rudders, bringing things safely back to port at the end of each weekly excursion.” Anchors for the Establishment, awash in a sea of “alien and uncontrolled” countercultural “fruit cakes,” the hosts clearly provided the program’s normative navigation. Rowan and Martin nevertheless also functioned as guides for the Establishment to appreciate the counterculture, a conspicuous show of taste that endowed hip distinction. Deflecting both good taste and the moral sense that it supposedly trans- Hip to the Put-On mitted, Rowan and Martin used Tiny Tim to confirmLaugh- In’s unique sensibility, their hip awareness of the sociocultural fringes and appreciation of “the good taste of bad taste.” The old-fashioned gangster and middle-aged Vegas comedy team, macho representatives of an earlier generation, stood in stark opposition to the utter queerness of Tiny Tim. Such total difference also translated, though, to the distinction between Laugh-In and conventional comedy-variety shows, emblematized by The Ed Sullivan Show, The Lawrence Welk Show, and The Glen Camp- bell Goodtime Hour. If the hosts’ banter and laughter suggested condescending confirmation of traditional definitions of taste, gender performance, and sexual orientation, the acquisition of hipness was only possible by appreciating Tiny Tim as a put-on of a network variety show act and as such an ironic mockery 53 of normative tastes in people and cultural forms. The hosts’ delight in the strangeness of Tiny Tim and his performance simultaneously defused the threats of the counterculture—here, a kind of queered vulgarity—and invited the counterculture into the Establishment. The repulsion and attraction of Tiny Tim along with other countercultural types of the era paraded on the show situated Laugh-In’s taste in an ambivalent, strategic play of desire and disgust to garner a range of audiences.15 Laugh-In’s treatment of the underground rock band the Holy Modal Rounders early in the second season (10/14/68) likewise mocked the counterculture’s tastes and imputed lifestyle while also suggesting the comedic agency and desirability of countercultural types and tastes. The group of five young men typified a camp put-on of underground rock and traditional gender roles. Camp’s fondness for the vulgar, failed seriousness of over-the-top performances applied to gender roles, which as Sontag (1966) notably remarked were subjected to the same ironic appreciation as cultural objects: “Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It’s not a lamp, but a ‘lamp’; not a woman, but a ‘woman.’ To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the far- thest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater”

Chapter 2 (280). Mainstream culture condemned the “failed” performance of gender as deviant or perverted, but camp taste reveled in it, transforming failure and repulsion into beauty and desirability: “The androgyne is certainly one of the great images of Camp sensibility. . . . What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine” (279).16 The Holy Modal Rounders’ exaggerated, put-on performance style applied to camp aesthetics, as did the gaunt physiques, long hair, billowy shirts, and snug trousers that feminized them. The Rounders’ lead singer, Peter Stampfel, clothed in skin- tight silver lamé pants, shaking a Beatles shag, and shrieking 54 the suggestively titled song “You Got the Right String Baby, the Wrong Yo-Yo,” personified camp androgyny. As the Rounders play, the pouting, curmudgeonly Gladys wanders the stage flirting with each band member. She produces a yo-yo for the lead singer, feeds treats to the bassist, plays triangle with the drum- mer, and devotes special attention to the keyboardist, strok- ing his hair, caressing his face, and blowing in his ear (a nod to Laugh-In’s catchphrase “Blow in his ear and he’ll follow you anywhere”). The band members smile and chuckle at Gladys’s flirtatious antics, signifying that they are in on the joke and are playfully making fun of themselves. Such clowning hinted at the wild, comedic scenes of the Rounders’ “underground” musical performances, “rare wine indeed for the connoisseur of the unusual,” as a New York Times critic called their work in 1968, “the aural equivalent of a stoned Mad magazine. It is ragged, inventive and happy . . . good avant-garde art” (Nelson 1968).17 Once the scene cuts away from the playful, countercultural Rounders—with their flamboyant costumes, coiffure, and protopunk caterwauling—and back to the hosts Rowan and Martin, staid and respectable in suits and ties, the perspective reframes the trickster stunt to the perspective of the square Establishment. The hosts clap and beam but make it clear that Hip to the Put-On they are less “connoisseurs of the unusual” than onlookers at a freak show. Rowan commences with the reminder, “And that, as everybody knows, was the lovely and talented Holy Modal Sextet.” (The misnomer “sextet” was Gladys’s to begin with, introducing them as a “sextet” with the reasoning “Just hoping.”) Martin continues the pun, “Well, that’s the way the sex tets,” followed by Gladys’s surprise reentry, whereupon she blurts, “Today, the Holy Modal Sextet. Tomorrow, The Tijuana Brass. Pucker-up, Herbie!” (10/14/68). Rowan’s description of the Rounders as “lovely and talented” struck as a put-on of a variety show host’s generic phraseology, but the misplaced expression also emphasized one of the Establishment’s means of belittling countercultural men, feminizing them for their long hair, tight clothes, and flamboy- 55 ant behavior. As Leland (2004, 14) clarifies, “To be a hipster was to be labeled a hoodlum, hooligan, faggot, nigger-lover, troublemaker, derelict, slut, commie, dropout, freak. When America had a center, hip was outside it.” The entire sequence centered on feminizing the Rounders as sex objects for raven- ous Gladys, a jesting inversion of the male gaze that they were apparently hip to and enjoyed: grinning, laughing, encouraging Gladys’s attentions, reacting cheerily to her touches, and feigning surprise when elderly Tyrone waddles on to remove the increasingly wanton Gladys. By finally effacing the band’s agency in producing the mad fun, however, the program undermined the Rounders’ trickster power—self-aware irony and comedic duplicity—and rendered them ridiculous, unknowing victims of the trick.18 The Rounders’ countercultural agency as campy tricksters, self-parodying put-on artists, and role models for a new androgynous masculinity remained obscured by effacing them at the conclusion, reframing the perspective to that of Rowan and Martin and supplanting the band members as objects of desire with a mainstream music star (and former Laugh-In guest), the undeniably middlebrow Herb Alpert. (His recent album Herb Alpert’s Ninth, for instance, might have made Dwight Macdonald weep, with pictures of Alpert and Beethoven

Chapter 2 on the cover and a playlist including the Beatles, Cole Porter, and Bizet’s Carmen.) By emphasizing the irony and polysemy of the put-on in addition to removing it from a countercultural context and scrubbing it of any serious, moralistic intentions, Laugh-In avoided the pitfalls experienced by The Smothers Brothers Com- edy Hour, a program often compared to Laugh-In in popular discourse and cancelled after its third season for persistently, earnestly and “tastelessly” espousing countercultural causes, particularly the free speech, antiwar, and hippie movements.19 Carr (1992, 3–4) indicates the proximity of the two shows when calling Laugh-In “a spinoff of The Smothers Brothers Com- 56 edy Hour,” but by characterizing it as “NBC’s ‘hip’ nod to the comedy hour” he suggests how Laugh-In distinguished itself as a put-on of the conventional comedy-variety show. The Smoth- ers Brothers took their platform seriously, finally sacrificing the irony and ambiguity of the put-on for the clarity and purpose of the petty bourgeois aesthetic, submitting their comedy to political, moral, and educational functions. The Smothers Broth- ers surely indulged in numerous put-ons, such as the presidential campaign of comedian Pat Paulsen (10/20/68), guest Harry Belafonte singing the calypso number “Don’t Stop the Carnival” alongside documentary footage of the 1968 Demo- cratic Convention (9/29/68), and American Time Capsule, a lightning-fast barrage of stills showcasing the history of U.S. atrocities from slavery to Native American genocide (12/15/68). Audiences and CBS executives objected to the so-called tastelessness of these ironic, self-mocking put-ons of conventional forms (political candidacies, variety show production numbers, patriotic documentaries) not for their irony but instead for earnestly moralizing and educating in support of a lifestyle and an ideology that directly challenged bourgeois society (Carr 1992, 13–16). As Laugh-In departed from the morass of taste, politics, and censorship by “playing an ideological and generational Hip to the Put-On balancing act” (Bodroghkozy 2001, 149), The Smothers Broth- ers violated “living room protocol” by elucidating their put-ons, invoking protest, free speech, and pacifism (Carr 1992, 17–20; Bodroghkozy 2001, 143–45, 151–56). If Laugh-In let loose an even wilder menagerie of countercultural denizens to march into audience’s living rooms, the irony, ambiguity, and ambivalence of their put-ons prevented them from leaving any lasting footprints. As Rowan (1969, 20– 21) stated, The Smothers Brothers and NBC’s short-lived satirical news program That Was the Week That Was (1964–65) had “a definite direction and philosophy and are simply using comedy as a platform for a doctrine. Whether or not we agree with the Smothers (and we generally do) we aren’t doing that thing. We have writers who range in political color from hard rock 57 reactionaries to far left liberals. Our players represent a broad spectrum of political opinion. . . . It’s for FUN, and laugh-time. And we have a ball.”20 Boston Globe critic Percy Shain (1968b, 32) concurred with Rowan’s sense of how the two shows differed and asserted that The Smothers Brothers sacrificed the evasiveness of Laugh-In’s comedy for “bitter and rueful” critique: “Where the latter [Laugh-In] relies on slapstick and speed and a shifting focus, the Smothers are methodical and undeviating— and sometimes quite solemn—in their aim.” The “shifting focus” of Laugh-In’s put-ons enabled the show to obey Rowan’s mandate for “laugh-time.” As Bodroghkozy (2001, 150–51) encapsulates, Laugh-In’s “blackout, rapid-fire manner of the delivery tended to blunt the political implications of much of this humor. By the time the viewer got the message behind the joke, two or three other nonpolitical jokes or blackouts had already whizzed by.” Besides rapidly cutting from one subcultural spectacle to another, Laugh-In oscillated between political and nonpolitical, Establishment and counterculture. In one episode, for instance, Rowan’s over-the-top war hawk parody General Bullright could advocate pacifism in a tirade against “commie pinkos that pussyfoot around bad mouthing this skirmish in Vietnam” (9/29/69). In the same monologue

Chapter 2 there was also the outrageous howler “Instead of bringing them home we should send another million men to Vietnam. Bomb ’em! Strafe ’em! Burn those villages! Let’s show those savages we want peace!” If this countercultural put-on communicated Rowan’s well-reported pacifism, within the overall episode’s rapid pace and numerous gags (usually numbering more than two hundred), the general’s provocations remained momentary and forgettable. The fragmented spectacle of countercultural delights also helped obscure Rowan’s pacifist put-on, that night featuring frequent black-out gags mocking homosexuality: a British cast member (Jeremy Lloyd) referring to cigarettes as “fags [that] may be hazardous to your health,” two bits about 58 Gore Vidal’s transgender novel Myra Breckinridge (1968), a marriage counselor bit with the punch line that her clients are a male couple, a news-of-the-future piece from Fire Island about Governor Truman Capote “saying mixed marriages are against the natural law,” and Flip Wilson in drag, crawling into bed with Dick Martin and explaining, “The devil made me buy this dress” (9/29/69). The shifting perspectives of Laugh-In’s put- ons, in terms of Establishment and counterculture as well as the diverse groups lumped into the label “counterculture,” represented what Rowan (1969, 20–21) called “a broad spectrum of political opinion” and occasioned the primary goal: “FUN.” Laugh-In typified, in this respect, utopian entertainment. Adapting Dyer’s (1985) classic ideological critique of Holly- wood musicals, Laugh-In evaded the measured gravity, attention to social ills, and perceived divisiveness of The Smothers Brothers through its energetic speed, abundance of put-ons, lavish settings, and cockamamie community of “cuckoos” (as the cast was called). Laugh-In’s urge to merge disparate generational, social, political, and taste groups also suggested utopian consensus combined with comedy that was perceivable at face value as transparently silly. Speed, abundance, diversity, Hip to the Put-On

Rowan puts on the military-industrial complex. community, and playfully uncommitted social satire produced utopian irony as well as distraction on Laugh-In, all of which differentiated it from the more serious The Smothers Brothers. These disparities crystallize when comparing how each program represented the student and antiwar movements, particularly, as Erickson (2000, 18) suggests, through references to folk singer Joan Baez, recently jailed at the time for antiwar activism. Tommy Smothers tellingly introduces the singer with a put-on line that quickly transitions to earnest respect. In his childlike rushed and halting monotone, he informs the audience that “she’s been on the cover of TIME magazine, and in LIFE magazine, and in jail in Oakland, California.” He pauses to smile as the audience laughs and then continues: “And tonight she’s on our show. We admire her very much and we admire her individuality and her integrity. And we’re happy to have her on the show.” Baez remains genuine throughout her performance, in particular when plaintively dedicating “Green, Green Grass of Home” to her husband David Harris, facing impending in-

Chapter 2 carceration for disobeying the draft (3/30/69). As a stand-alone musical act, Baez’s performance exemplifiedThe Smothers Broth- ers’ traditional comedy-variety show format, while her slow pace matched the mournful, nostalgic mood of her numbers.21 Laugh-In almost entirely evaded such sentiments and political positions through its utopian aesthetic, demonstrated when Judy Carne cheerily chirps amid a first-season Cocktail Party, “Oh, I love Joan Baez. I even got an autographed set of her fingerprints!” Carne spills the line during a sequence of approximately twenty-one jokes, including many antiwar witticisms and quips critical of the United States—all imparted briskly in a frivolous, insouciant tone within a disarming envi- 60 ronment of conspicuous luxury. That night’s fete, for instance, begins with a puerile joke about breast implants scrolling at the bottom of the screen (“Silicone is a bust”). The camera follows Rowan and Martin into the room of twisting revelers when guest star Tim Conway pauses to remark that he and his girlfriend had been expelled from the house for “dancing to an Everett Dirksen record.” (Dirksen was a Republican senator notorious for his war hawk politics and Grammy Award–winning record Gallant Men.) Carne’s line about Baez follows, and subsequently there is a put-on of a stereotypically racist Texan oilman (Larry Hovis). Several innocuous witticisms then whiz by about Dick Martin’s life as a swinger, marijuana use, the ve- nality of organized religion, and Jimmy Hoffa. Toward the end of the party there is another political joke (from Barbara Fel- don): “It’s not the hawks or doves that I’m worried about, it’s those cuckoos in Washington who are trying to make pigeons out all of us.” The penultimate exchange follows, combining references to both Vietnam and the recent uprising in Detroit over racist discrimination. Rowan questions fellow reveler Dave Madden: “Do you think we should escalate or negotiate?” Mad- den responds, “In Vietnam or Detroit?” The final spoken joke of the party remains a harmless pun about the stock market, Hip to the Put-On but then a scroll appears that revives awareness of racial strife in the United States alluded to in Rowan and Madden’s chat: “Congress unanimously passes Civil Rights bill . . . for Rhode- sia.” The party doors close upon Rowan and Martin’s exit, and the action cuts to the slapstick violence of “Sock-It-to-Me Time” (4/22/68). The Cocktail Party typified the utopian features of Laugh-In’s shifting perspectives and ironic put-ons. The vigor- ous, hyperactive pacing as well as the theatricality, the diverse jokes and social types, and the classily fashionable setting bespoke the energy, abundance, and unity in the show’s frivolous confusion of critique and merriment and its cheerful obscurity of political perspective. Uncommitted politics, quick pacing, non sequitur illogic, and a nonstop generation of gags also characterized Richard 61 Nixon’s self-parodic put-on in the first episode of the second season (9/16/68).22 And similar to one of Laugh-In’s classical Hollywood guest stars, Nixon enabled a reconciliation of Es- tablishment and dissident sensibilities as much as he risked humiliating himself (and the presidential race) in this “vulgar” environment.23 Approximately two minutes into the episode following a quickie with Bob Hope and Wolfgang (Arte John- son) and a slapstick sequence of sock-it-to-me jokes, Carne climbs into a phone operator’s chair to answer a call: “Oh, hello Governor Rockefeller. . . . Oh no, I don’t think we could get Mr. Nixon to stand still for a sock-it-to-me.” A medium close-up of Nixon abruptly cuts in; the stone-faced candidate turns his head to the camera and asks, “Sock it to me?” Nixon blinks, and then the scene jumps to Gary Owens in the broadcast booth: “And now, the second half of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, a conglomeration of America’s leading comedic thespians!” Next comes a stream of sexualized one-liner double entendres from cast members and guests. Barbara Feldon blurts, “Look that up in your Funk ’n’ Wagnall’s.” Goldie Hawn informs, with the ac- companying subtitle “Funk And Wagnall’s,” “That’s a dictionary you know.” Then Jack Lemmon puns, “The Funk And Wag— now there’s an odd couple.”

Chapter 2 Laugh-In’s hip, cool utopia built on a foundation of ironic put-ons coalesced in Nixon’s appearance. It lasted only a few seconds and inspired laughs through the incongruity and ab- surdity of a dignified politician appearing on a low comedy- variety show to utter an African-American sexual euphemism. This put-on could be interpreted as either mocking Nixon or, to his credit, as attributing a sense of hip, self-deprecating humor to the stony presidential candidate. Couched between silly slapstick and double entendres, the program also positioned Nixon in the middle of square and hip. Was he an ambassador of the Establishment temping among the weirdos to court votes for himself and higher ratings for the show? Was the pro- 62 gram mocking the presidential race as mere entertainment and mocking Nixon as a failed entertainer? Was Nixon naive camp unaware of his failed seriousness, or was he a hip trickster in on the joke? Apropos for the put-on, Laugh-In refused to answer. Chapter 3 Mass Camp, Open Secrets, and the Agency of Otherness Laugh-In’s Hip Closets

owan and Martin’s Laugh-In had always nurtured the per- Rception of a fragmented address, one that correlated with diverse views on taste and politics. The sense of the program’s intentional ambivalence and ambiguity saturated popular reports, in particular how Laugh-In’s fragmented address appealed to audiences. Brodhead’s (1969) Inside Laugh-In, for instance, lauded the program’s “ability to talk to one generation without turning off the other two” (41), which democratized pleasure and achieved consensus. Children adored the slapstick, young adults identified with the “flower child” or the “black brother” in satires of the Establishment, and elders enjoyed the “seman- tic traps” (41–42). Alluding to the possibility of adults taking offense at the anti-Establishment humor, Brodhead assured that the combination of brief sketches, rapid delivery, and brisk, nonlinear editing deterred one audience from taking offense at another’s sensibilities: “it all happens so fast that if you stop to sneer at the tastes of your juniors or your elders, you’ll miss what’s intended for you. . . . So you don’t even pay attention to what turns them on: you just do your own thing and enjoy it”

Chapter 3 (41). In the spirit of countercultural pluralism—“do your own thing,” “whatever turns you on”—both Laugh-In and its audiences could circumvent fixed affiliations in terms of age, politics, and taste through the happy coexistence of separate but equal addresses.1 On the other hand, these coexisting addresses were also viewed as conflicting, with the subversive suggestions prevailing over the Establishment meanings. In this conception, spectators who saw through Laugh-In’s playful evasions and discerned the radical meanings were rewarded with hip cultural capital. A “hip mind” was needed to follow the show, Van Horne (1969, 80) asserted in a McCall’s article, “to get the point. (And that tinge of blue.)” The Lawrence Welk Show served 64 as a counterexample in the same article to define distinctions of generation, class, and cultural capital for the fans of Laugh- In: “better-educated viewers and those with higher incomes seem more disposed to laugh at Laugh-In. The Lawrence Welk crowd, we may safely say, has mixed feelings about it” (161).2 What Van Horne failed to recognize was that Laugh-In had “mixed feelings” that were likely shared with “the Lawrence Welk crowd” about its hip, blue, anti-Establishment implications, dramatized in the behind-the-scenes turmoil during the third and fourth seasons but also codified byLaugh-In as a quasi-mission statement: Keyes’s mantra “Let us be naughty but never vulgar” (Barthel 1968, 146); Schlatter’s coy prevarica- tions, such as “I’m sure some people attach a dirty connotation to those words. We don’t even know what they mean; they’re just funny” (Barthel 1968, 146); and Rowan’s assurances that performers and writers represented a “broad spectrum of political opinion” and the show purposed its comedy “for FUN, and laugh-time,” not “as a platform for a doctrine” (Rowan 1969, 20–21). Laugh-In’s “open secrecy” about incorporating forbidden taboos of taste, social behavior, and identity in its suggestive references and multiple double entendres rewarded viewers who recognized the radical subtext (Joyrich 2009, Mass Camp, Open Secrets, Agency of Otherness 21–22, 29–30), but ensured that everyone could acquire hip recognition just by watching Laugh-In, the seeming antithesis of The Lawrence Welk Show. Transgressive pleasure and hip, sophisticated distinction were only possible when viewers recognized the simultaneity of addresses—the tasteful/old/square and the vulgar/young/ hip—and sensed that one was privy to a secret that not everyone else could access. Alongside the joy of transgression and the sense of distinction, however, Laugh-In rewarded its audience with a compensating sense of the naive, the innocent, and the old-fashioned: ancient jokes, vaudeo shtick, and musical numbers (Dietz 1968, 33; Van Horne 1969, 80, 161; Anon. 1968f; Brodhead 1969, 41–45). Even New Talent Time satisfied the desire for innocence due to the seeming naïveté of guests 65 who blithely performed bizarre entertainments, from an elderly female crocodile wrestler to Tiny Tim and the Holy Modal Rounders. Innocent content both defused the program’s countercultural, radical meanings and contributed to them. Through the manifest interplay of innocent family entertainment and arch adult entertainment, new and old-fashioned, mainstream and counterculture, radical and conventional, vulgar and tasteful, Laugh-In’s ambivalence functioned to distinguish the show from the competition (The Lawrence Welk Show and The Smoth- ers Brothers) and closet its radical meanings. The show’s borderline taste ultimately corresponded to its borderline politics, all of this integral to its (and NBC’s) commercial strategy: deliberate ambiguity as a means to maintain “taste” (Broadhead 1969, 51–52, 72, 78–79, 83–85). Laugh-In closeted its vulgarity and countercultural affiliations in a fashion comparable to one of the show’s predecessors, the Batman series, and a successor, The Flip Wilson Show. All three programs embraced minority sensibilities (camp, hip, the put-on) to cultivate a reputation for “mainstream chicness” and reward their audiences with “social hipness and superiority, without the ‘stigma’ of subcultural affiliation” (Klinger 1994, 140). Mass camp rendered subcultural affiliation a closeted,

Chapter 3 open secret whose partial presence safely ensured everyone’s deniability, from the network and the producers to the spectators. The open secret of campy Batman was, of course, that the caped crusader and his sidekick were queer (following psy- choanalyst Fredric Wertham’s infamous, enduring diagnosis); the show was vulgar for being a children’s show and a comic book adaptation, privileging style over content, and being a campy put-on, in addition to its queer meanings. Camp also endowed Batman with artistic credibility (Torres 1999, 334–36) by being relocated from gay culture to highbrow and youth culture (Gans 1999, 105–6; Wolters 1965). Torres explores how camp endowed Batman’s fans with taste distinction through a 66 dual address that invited the historically gay meanings of camp without striking a concrete connection to gay culture (334–40). Batman’s dual address appealed to those hostile to mass culture, highbrows eager to laugh at the queerness of this American icon that kitsch sincerity repressed and to appreciate the camp/pop aesthetics. At the same time, Batman appeased sincere younger viewers enamored of the exaggerated performances and storylines. Camp afforded a means to sustain taste status, because (recalling Bourdieu’s discussion of aestheticism explored in previous chapters) it expressed the distinction of recognizing and appreciating attributes that conventional tastes repudi- ated as vulgar. Identifying the high features of low culture and relishing vulgarity reflected a discriminating taste elite able to locate what remained elusive and repugnant to the majority. If camp presented “dangerous territory” for its associations with a stigmatized gay culture (335), Torres reasons, Sontag’s (1966) “Notes on ‘Camp’” had already ratified straight culture’s appropriation of camp, with a slew of popular commentators following suit (Torres 1999, 336–37). The irony of camp taste and its affection for elusiveness, frivolity, and connotation further enabled both the disavowal and the enjoyment of homosexual implications (339–40).3 The discerning spectator able to both Mass Camp, Open Secrets, Agency of Otherness recognize and enjoy the show as a camp put-on, with and without queer meanings, could feel superior to those who took the show seriously (in the preferred terms of mass culture) and re- ceive a sense of hip distinction in return. The comedy-variety series The Flip Wilson Show, Laugh-In’s younger NBC sibling, also courted an open secret about its forbidden meanings and closeted them. A frequent guest and vital contributor to Laugh-In during its first two seasons, Wilson refined such characters as Geraldine through his repeated appearances in drag. He also honed his prime-time variety show host persona as an ambivalent combination of “contained, clean, and uplifting” material signifying assimilationist ideals, and, a “hipness” that signified “blackness” (Acham 2004, 71). Sutherland (2008, 1–15, 37–47) also discusses the ambivalence that suf- 67 fused Wilson’s comedy-variety show—its historically specific treatment of race (as well as class, gender, and sexuality)—in addition to the ambivalence that more generally informs the comedy-variety genre and its representations of otherness. The genre’s “aesthetic ambivalence” (xxv) stems from rejecting real- ism and narrative coherence through stand-alone comedy and music acts, which widens opportunities for addressing multiple constituencies and rendering meanings and moralizing ambiguous (xxv–xxvi). For Wilson, ambivalence also stemmed from the historical roots of American comedy-variety in the minstrelsy, in addition to performing characters that hitherto were the private reserve of African-American audiences and venues (Sutherland 2008, xxvi–xxix). The aesthetic ambivalence prac- ticed on The Flip Wilson Show also resulted from the commercial imperatives of a network prime-time show to reach across sociocultural divides for acquiring a mass audience (14–15, 17–18). As Sutherland explains, aesthetic ambivalence involves “any strategy or discourse that the show employs to inscribe a full range of conflicting viewing positions, interpretive possibilities, political sensibilities, and audience demographics into its ostensibly singular address” (xv). Inasmuch as aesthetic ambivalence proliferates meanings and multiplies the interpre-

Chapter 3 tive possibilities for a range of spectators, it coincided with the conservative challenge to maintain the appearance of unity and coherence. Acham (2004) adds to the discussion of ambivalence in her attention to different but coterminous addresses on The Flip Wilson Show. In a variation of classical Hollywood’s coexisting addresses to “innocent” and “sophisticated” viewers, the show addressed mainstream (e.g., Anglo-European) audiences alongside delivering “hidden transcripts” addressed to knowing African-American viewers (72–73). The address to African- American audiences included “taboo subjects” ranging from assertions of black power to characters and styles that might 68 appear stereotypical to ignorant white audiences and also ap- proached issues such as feminism and black homosexuality (Acham 2004, 73–75; Sutherland 2008, 37–43). Acham argues that while white audiences were not meant to notice the concealed African-American address, The Flip Wilson Show expected them to recognize its black style. The show rewarded white audiences with a sense of hip, cool distinction because Wilson “expressed a black, urban vibe”; however, his “contained, clean, and uplifting” presence differentiated him from “so-called angry inner-city mobs” and “more critical black comedians” (71). The success of The Flip Wilson Show, as its popular reception suggested, was derived from concealing any vulgar undertones of African-American style, anger, and critique, which widened the program’s appeal. The mainstream discourse of the show likewise emphasized the bourgeois qualities of Wilson’s rags-to- riches biography, the relatively apolitical meanings of Wilson’s comedy, and the program’s universal appeal (even to racists such as Archie Bunker, as in a 1972 All in the Family episode).4 The aesthetic ambivalence of both mass camp and the comedy-variety genre produced the hip open secret of Laugh-In: its rebellious, ridiculous expressions of “reverse sophistication” and “borderline taste”—through comedic characters, themes, Mass Camp, Open Secrets, Agency of Otherness and the show’s overall style—represented an endorsement of the counterculture. Laugh-In’s open secret enabled audiences to partake of the counterculture without risking involvement, which attracted viewers who otherwise might have found mass culture distasteful or feared the counterculture. And audiences who recognized the open secret were endowed with a sense of hip cultural capital in the overlapping eras of radical and bisexual chic.

Closeting Otherness on Laugh-In Ambivalence enabled Laugh-In’s counterdistinction and NBC’s permissiveness to flourish.Laugh-In closeted a range of countercultural perspectives, that is, revealed and concealed them 69 through innuendo, double entendre, and rapidly paced asso- ciative editing. The conditions for a hip exchange between audience and show hinged on suggestive winking and knowing recognition. Within the presumably tasteful public community of mainstream television, countercultural pleasures such as dancing, drugs, fornication, homosexuality, and sociopolitical critique had hitherto been considered private and secret, too tasteless and vulgar for national airing. Visibility meant acceptance, to a certain degree. The new permissiveness altered these terms of visibility by acknowledging a commercial demand for television that featured hitherto anti-Establishment ideas about sexuality as well as racial and gender equality, but a question remained as to how to reconcile them with middlebrow taste and bourgeois ideology. Laugh-In’s closet revealed and concealed the underground counterculture as well as the show’s own conflicted positions on the “private” issues of taste, sexuality, lifestyle, and politics. In all of these respects, Laugh-In typified the ambivalent play between public and private that, as Joyrich (2009, 23) argues, regulates the social functions of U.S. commercial television and the foundations of the televisual closet: “By both mediating his- toric events for familial consumption and presenting the stuff of

Chapter 3 ‘private life’ to the viewing public, the institutional organization of US broadcasting situates television precisely on the precarious border of public and private, ‘inside’ and ‘outside.’ Here it constructs knowledges identified as both secret (domestically received) and shared (defined as part of a collective national culture).” Tastefulness both guided and contained Laugh-In’s negotiation of secret, private, and implicitly vulgar knowledges in the shared, public, prime-time setting of the nation’s living rooms. Controversial subjects such as gay liberation and black power consequently remained “definitionally in suspense” (D. A. Miller, qtd. in Joyrich 2009, 22) through connotative play around the representational borders of tasteful/vulgar, secret/ 70 shared, and public/private as well as real/fictional and inside/ outside (Joyrich 2009, 22–25). This logic of the closet fueled Laugh-In’s aesthetic of distanciation, aestheticism, and counterdistinction and guided the show’s ambiguous representations of race, gender, sexual orientation, politics, and subcultures. Two sequences from a second-season episode (3/24/69), in addition to historical commentary about their production, reveal the ambivalence of Laugh-In, the contours of the show’s closet, and how the play of tasteful/vulgar dictated the dissemination of secret outsider knowledge about homosexuality and race: a sketch about an interior decorator for the marines and an extended gag involving blackface minstrel performance. The pressures of tastefulness rendered the literal representation of so-called vulgar homosexuality impossible in the marine sketch, requiring double entendre, innuendo, and stereotyping to substantiate this “tasteless” (in the parlance of NBC’s censors) secret. Joyrich (2009, 29–30) calls this “conferring sexuality” and attributes it to TV comedies that address “knowing viewers,” “cheerfully” encouraging them “to prick at its ostensibly heterosexual surface . . . [and] spurred on to ever more imagi- native . . . explanations of the characterological and narrative dynamics.” The marine sketch broached an outrageous, titillat- Mass Camp, Open Secrets, Agency of Otherness ing secret to hip viewers: that male homosexuality abounded and that such manly institutions as the military cultivated it. Laugh-In’s identification of racial difference likewise raided a televisual closet constructed around the mandate of tastefulness. Since the cancellation of Amos ’n’ Andy in 1953, Gray (2004, 76) explains, network television had largely maintained an Anglo, racially homogeneous universe; when African Americans occasionally appeared (Diahann Carroll on Julia, Bill Cosby on I Spy), the networks “contained” their “blackness” by making it “if not culturally white, invisible”; they were “present but contained.” Laugh-In revealed the vulgar secrets of TV’s racial closet through African-American performers self- identifying as black, merrily critiquing racism with undertones of anger, and participating in gags involving racialized tropes 71 long banned from TV as tastelessly racist, such as blackface and (on a regular basis) quoting from Amos ’n’ Andy. Several elements worked to diminish black critical agency on Laugh-In, however, and reconstitute a white viewpoint: editing sequence and speed, white actors performing racialized tropes, and the authenticity and complicity functions of African-American cast members and their secondary status in the hierarchy of the ensemble. If the queer closet on Laugh-In regulated, through connotation, homosexual visibility, subjectivity, and the critique of heteronormativity, then the racial closet acknowledged African- American visibility and critical agency but also contained them within the reassuring Anglo perspective of the white, laughing hosts and ensemble as well as the rapid barrage of content.

Marines, Minstrels, and Mass Camp The marine interior decorator sketch underwent close scrutiny for taste by NBC censor Sandy Cummings, who personally oversaw Laugh-In with Herminio Traviesas (Brodhead 1969, 79, 86, 92). Cummings would permit the sketch only “if they play it straight. That business of their hands touching, any faggy stuff—it’s OUT” (Brodhead 1969, 79). In the sketch, U.S. Ma-

Chapter 3 rine Corps captain Butch Beegleman (Dick Martin) meets with interior decorator Steve Shtarker (Tony Curtis) to review plans for the makeover of his base. Curtis and Martin do indeed “play it straight” according to Cummings’s edict, without a hint of the “sissy” stereotype that Alan Sues brought to his characters. The machismo of the performers and setting underscore, however, queer innuendo in the dialogue and staging, what Cum- mings quaintly considered “faggy stuff” but clearly failed to notice before the episode aired. The decorator’s lines continually ironize Curtis’s macho performance style and character name (“Shtarker” is Yiddish for, roughly translated, “manly man”). Shtarker proclaims, “A pink marine is a happy marine,” envi- 72 sioning “see-through outfits” and, for dinner attire, “blouses.” Captain Butch’s moniker also bursts with overdetermined masculinity that italicizes the irony of such lines as “You’ve ar- ranged for flowers and candlelight, oh marvey.” Midway into the sketch, Curtis’s and Martin’s measured intonation and deliberate delivery evoke seduction, revealing the actors’ awareness of a queer subtext. When Shtarker proposes eliminating bunk beds, Captain Butch contemplates, “That means the men would have to double up.” Shtarker responds delicately, “That’s right.” “I like your thinking,” Captain Butch affirms. Shtarker explains, “Well, as an ex-marine, I think I know what the boys want,” after which Butch queries, “Did you see any action?” Shtarker nods and in a hushed, husky voice utters, “You better believe it.” A brief silence ensues, and then the sketch draws to a close. Captain Butch happily squelches Shtarker’s plan to reenlist and then informs him, “I’m getting out next Thursday, you big ninny,” playfully jabbing the interior decorator’s chin. The preproduction treatment and execution of the marine sketch exemplify Laugh-In’s queer closet, producing the opportunity for audiences to garner a hip payoff from recognizing the double entendre, innuendo, and connotation and providing plausible deniability for the audience, the show, and the net- Mass Camp, Open Secrets, Agency of Otherness work. Keyes explained this closeting strategy in a New York Times interview. Regarding suggestive jokes such as “You don’t have to be happy to be gay” and “Luther Burbank dug pansies” (both of which Cummings ratified), Keyes reasoned that “You can say something like that if it has an alternative. . . . It is a historical fact that Luther Burbank dug pansies; it is a historical fact that Luther Burbank was a botanist. If a little old lady writes in and says, ‘My son is a faggot and you insulted him,’ we can write back and say, ‘We didn’t mean that’” (Barthel 1968, 142). These comments enforcing, commending, and rationalizing the closet resonate further when considering Inside Laugh-In’s appreciation of the ostensibly de-gayed marine sketch (following Cumming’s enforced alterations) as “more hilarious than lavender” (Brodhead 1969, 86). The question arises, though, about 73 what else there was to laugh at besides the irony of “lavender” marines (or “pink” and “psychedelic chartreuse,” as Shtarker preferred). As the closet of connotation worked to contain the literal visibility of queer desire through the maintenance of taste, at least for some audiences, the secrecy that it ensured enabled hilarity to erupt from the (un)acknowledged breakdown of heteronormativity. The tasteful restraint of the closet in avoiding “faggy stuff” in the sketch ironically, with its put-on of both gay and heterosexual masculine stereotypes, punctuated its joke about the macho, homosocial military harboring homosexuals. These elements presciently forecast the comedic exploitation film The Gay Deceivers (1969) released a few months later, in which a draft-dodging seemingly straight young man eludes the military by masquerading with his ambiguously straight roommate as a gay couple. Benshoff (2007, 88) asserts that the film “the- matizes the performativity of gender,” including its portrayal of the military as guardians of “the homosocial/homosexual divide.” This element factors into the film’s twist ending, when the officer investigating the young men for fraud is revealed as a happy gay man. The seeming protectors of homosocial/ homosexual distinctions actually collapse the two, providing

Chapter 3 for one reviewer “a nice dirty dig at the military establishment” (86). The same could be said for Laugh-In’s interior decorator sketch if, that is, the viewer recognized these signs. The popular discourse about Laugh-In’s determination to slip controversial material past Cummings gave reason for audiences to look deep into the innuendo and double entendres, but the closet strategy unpacked by Keyes allowed spectators (as well as the show and the network) to duck allegations of queer meanings (Brodhead 1969, 84; Dietz 1968, 33; Van Horne 1969, 161). In contrast to these connoted bursts of homosexuality and critiques of masculinity, the racist traces of the blackface minstrel performance were identified almost immediately. Fol- 74 lowing a stream of brief sketches, the scene cuts quite alarm- ingly to a medium shot of white cast member Judy Carne in full blackface, Afro, top hat, and exaggerated yellow tuxedo. After introducing the News segment in an accent redolent of, as Carne informs, “de tradition of de old great old minstrel show,” the camera pulls back to reveal African-American ensemble member Chelsea Brown entering in whiteface but dressed identically, including the wig. Brown roars, with anger uncharacter- istic of her diminutive, sweetly tempered persona, “All right, Judy. Now you’ve all gone too far! I mean look at this!” Carne replies in her usual Cockney accent, “You know what Chelsea? I’ve only been black for five minutes and already I’m fed up with you white chicks.” Brown silently mouths “What?!” and the scene cuts to the Laugh-In News chorus (most of the female cast) made up in blackface, with Brown in whiteface, shaking tambourines as they dance. (Tony Curtis lacks black makeup and an affected accent but wields a banjo and is costumed, as the women are, in yellow satin tails.) After Martin delivers the News of the Present, Rowan enters for his News of the Future segment and greets Goldie Hawn (still in blackface): “Thank you Chelsea.” Rowan’s report includes jokes mocking racism: one about New York City as a giant high-rise in which the resi- Mass Camp, Open Secrets, Agency of Otherness dents living on top won’t pass through the “ghetto” in the lobby and another imagining Agnew as interplanetary ambassador who says of the Martians, “If you’ve seen one fat little greenie, you’ve seen them all.” A sketch with an antiracist punch line follows, in which Byron Gilliam (another new African-American member of the second-season cast) plays a reporter interview- ing a corrupt congressman (Tony Curtis). When the dialogue concludes, the congressman asks the reporter, “Will you bring the bags, boy?” This cuts immediately to a close-up of Brown, in whiteface, who proclaims, “That’s what this show needs, is more whimsy.” The scene cuts to Jo Anne Worley in blackface, about to introduce Big Al’s sports segment, rolling her eyes and exclaiming, “Now this is a fried chicken joke!”—a variation on Worley’s catchphrase “Not another chicken joke!” The minstrel 75 chorus eventually returns to conclude the News segment. Brown’s replication of minstrel performance might have constituted a profound moment of “critical mimicry,” which Sutherland (2008, 42) explains was an integral feature of Af- rican-American vaudeville traditions and involved performers whose imitations of blacks and whites “denaturalized the boundaries between him or herself and the role he or she plays, and likewise moves to denaturalize the various identities he or she takes on.” Mimicry made manifest, through African-Amer- ican actors donning blackface or playing multiple character types, combated essentialist assumptions about race as well as about gender and other social categories (43). Both of Brown’s featured moments potentially exposed dissent, and the whiteface stunt recalled a recent off-Broadway hit by African-Ameri- can playwright Douglas Turner Ward, Day of Absence (1965), a broad satire of racist ideology in which African-American actors donned whiteface to portray Anglo southerners despairing over the mysterious disappearance of the African-American popula- tion. The sole black character, Rastus, was (as the name im- plies) a blatant put-on of racist cultural constructs, described in Chapter 3

Chelsea Brown in whiteface, outraged over Judy Carne’s blackface. the stage directions as “Stepin Fetchit, Willie Best, Nicodemus, Mass Camp, Open Secrets, Agency of Otherness B. McQueen and all the rest rolled up into one” (Ward 1974, 709).5 Although proportionately few of Laugh-In’s viewers probably saw Ward’s stage comedy, they might have read LIFE magazine’s laudatory 1966 review or seen coverage in Ebony and Jet, both of which included production photographs of characters in whiteface (Taubman 1965; Prideaux 1966; Anon. 1967b, 60-1; Bailey 1969). Day of Absence engaged minstrelsy to mo- bilize critical mimicry toward denaturalizing stereotypes at the same time as reversing a historically racist power relationship in American popular entertainment. Putting on whiteface in Day of Absence signified putting-on whites and racism; the delight of the show stemmed from, apart from the satire of white su- premacism, theatricalizing whiteness. The illustrations featured in Jet underscored this pleasure in the exaggerated, cartoonish 77 facial contortions of the whitefaced actors (Anon. 1967b). Day of Absence appropriated minstrelsy and reinscribed it by outing the critical mimicry implicit in black performance styles as well as satirizing racist institutions, such as the minstrelsy, that sen- timentalized and simplified blackness as a means of vicarious intimacy and control (Leland 2004, 29–31). Laugh-In initially clarified, through Brown’s critique, that the minstrel performances were a put-on. This was a momentous event: the vocal critique of racism on network prime-time TV by Laugh-In’s first recurring African-American cast member, in whiteface no less. In a series of recuperative gestures, though, the segment closeted Brown’s dissent as well as her hip, trickster agency. As one of the ensemble’s stars, Carne exerts power by interrupting Brown, appropriating the power of critical mimicry and trickster agency, and steering the comedic irony toward a white perspective. In the logic of Laugh-In, identifying with black culture, condemning racism, and performing a subversive sleight-of-hand game with racial identity by donning blackface immediately exempt Carne from being racist and confirm her hip, trickster agency (Leland 2004, 6–7, 37, 166–67), largely to the exclusion of Brown’s. The sequence also invests Rowan with hip trickster agency, first in his ironically racist salutation

Chapter 3 to Goldie and then in his stoic, journalistic mockery of racism. Later in the same episode, one of Gary Owens’s non sequitur announcements confirms Rowan and Martin’s hip identification with black culture, even if they appear to be squares: “Dan and Dick are at Flip Wilson’s house getting a soul transplant.” Laugh-In’s revolutionary video editing also plays a role in closeting the critique of racism and silencing Brown. The perspective of the entire minstrel segment could have been struc- tured around Brown’s viewpoint as a means of satirizing racist comedy tropes. Brown gets to assert hip comedic agency a second time when she comments, “That’s what this show needs, is more whimsy!” Had the sequence of minstrel performances fin- 78 ished here, Brown’s racialized commentary on the show’s humor (or lack of it), in addition to her hip critical mimicry, would have framed the segment according to a playfully subversive African- American gaze. Instead, Worley’s blackface performance and “fried chicken” joke as well as the closing minstrel chorus eclipse Brown’s perspective with blackface performances devoid of any reflexive critique.Laugh-In mobilized the critical mimicry of black popular culture and tapped its hip value but did so for the “empowerment” of white performers and audiences.6 Collapsing the real and fictional Chelsea Brown together on Laugh-In further contributed to the closet that confined her within the program’s racial discourse. Television stardom typi- cally encouraged confusion between an actor with her or his role (Mann 1988, 61–62), a play between real and fictional identity that also regulates the televisual closet. Joyrich (2009) ponders this dynamic when considering a popular 1990s TV drama that presented an episode about homophobia featuring a recently outed leading cast member: “His very silence is itself suggestive of the way in which television’s construction of the fictional and real may create a closet door that swings both ways, on the one hand entrapping gay actors in a redoubled logic of the closet (for how can this in-character-actor speak Mass Camp, Open Secrets, Agency of Otherness out?) and, on the other, opening a space (however small) for them to stand in visible if unvocalized condemnation of this logic” (26). Considering Brown’s persona on Laugh-In—essentially playing “herself”—and her marginalized critical perspective, Joyrich’s argument resonates with Gray’s (2004) ideas about African-American visibility in 1960s television as “present but contained” (76). Laugh-In contained Brown’s critical agency through “a closet door that swings both ways”: establishing her complicity with the minstrel routine, which authenticates it as a satire of racist stereotypes, and delimiting her agency in producing the satire, the opportunity for “this in-character-actor [to] speak out.” As an Ebony magazine reporter explained in a 1969 story on Brown, “the real-life Chelsea . . . can sound amazingly like the TV Chelsea” (Anon. 1969h, 55). The piece 79 opens by establishing Brown’s critical agency, with a description of her as a “very tough sister” and a quote of one of her lines: “This is the season for forgiving and forgetting. I’m willing to forgive George Wallace; now let’s send him to Africa and forget him” (55). Alongside her critical agency, the article establishes Brown’s awareness of the tokenism behind her casting: “There were lines he [producer George Schlatter] wanted to use that he could only do with a Negro,” Brown explained (60). The article also suggested the hip value she brought to the show as an African American: “Comedy’s hip changes soar on the wings of Chelsea,” stated a caption for one illustration (56). Collaps- ing the real and fictional Chelsea Brown proved empowering in the pages of Ebony, investing her presence on the program with both political and cultural influence. A 1969 TIME magazine article on African-American television comedy also enlisted the equation between the real and fictional Chelsea Brown (“the show’s sassy Negro comedienne”), assuming that Brown’s complicity in the minstrel performance meant that it was not racist (Anon. 1969a). Brown’s appearance in whiteface and participation in the musical number presumably ratified the donning of blackface and the invoking of black stereotypes by white performers and also permitted the

Chapter 3 pleasurable engagement of white audiences. The TIME article actually articulated the precarious position of Brown and other African-American performers on Laugh-In, “caught somewhat nervously between the stereotypes of Supernegro [the positive image pushed by integrationists] and a campy version of old St- epin Fetchit.” The last line of the article renounced, however, any doubts that the prior comment introduced: “No matter what the show or how limp the humor, the ‘Yassuh, boss’ jokes are still, basically, satire.” The blanket supposition that the repetition of black stereotypes constituted satire required the belief that Afri- can-American performers complied and that white viewers could discern the campy version of the stereotype from the racist one. 80 In the realm of mass camp, however, recognizing the exis- tence of irony was sufficient in itself. If mass camp offered the spectator “social hipness and superiority, without the ‘stigma’ of subcultural affiliation,” the appreciation of white prime-time TV harboring black culture rewarded hipness, not investigating the racial satire. This pertains to Joyrich’s (2009) point that the televisual closet positions viewers as both “innocent” and “sophisticated” whereby they are able to “decod[e] TV conventions without necessarily being particularly ‘knowing’ about the stakes and implications of this very decoding” (23). With this sort of “smug knowingness” (27), viewers of the minstrel sequence might recognize the program’s ironizing of racial stereotypes absent any critical insight into how the show marginalized Brown and contained her agency. This knowingness of Laugh-In’s racial closet ironically demonstrates “one of hip’s central prem- ises. Popular culture becomes a virtual world detached from the thornier realities of race” (Leland 2004, 37). If whites and blacks together enjoy “the same [black] stereotypes that in other ways divide them,” this “perpetuates stereotypes even as it undermines them.” It also rewards white audiences for their risk-free brush with blackness (31). The hip reward for white spectators was not Brown’s critical agency, but her visibility mattered as permission Mass Camp, Open Secrets, Agency of Otherness for white audiences to enjoy the minstrel performance and Amos ’n’ Andy references uncritically (289). Laugh-In’s negotiation of difference played between the poles of visibility and invisibility, exemplifying Hall’s (1992, 24) assertion that “the ‘spaces’ won for difference are few and far between, that they are carefully policed and regulated. . . . [W]hat replaces invisibility is a kind of carefully regulated, segregated visibility.” The closet emerged not by hiding difference per se but instead through the “regulated, segregated visibility” that typified the dominant culture’s permissiveness. Visibility in Laugh-In took different forms, such as the show’s distinction between racialized and sexualized differences and its navigation between real and fictional identities. When the real and fictional collapsed with Brown in her racialized performances, 81 the closet that arose diffused and delimited her agency. Her ethnicity made a difference as far as diversifying the cast and jokes, but the question of Brown’s agency—how she was making a difference—remained unanswered: Was Brown a critic of the Establishment, a participant, a hip trickster putting on racist stereotypes? The show indeed cast her in all these roles, but unlike male performers, such as frequent guests Flip Wilson and Sammy Davis Jr. and, beginning in the third season, ensemble member Johnny Brown (Good Time’s Bookman), Chelsea Brown neither played an array of goofy characters nor had access to the patriarchal, playboy authority that ruled Laugh-In’s sensibility and informed the agency of most male performers, black or white. On a few occasions the program enabled Brown to form a community of sorts with other African-American performers, such as the October 21, 1968, episode. At the top of the show Brown introduces the hosts together with Wilson, and during the News segment she presents a sketch about racist real estate practices featuring Wilson. Ironically, Brown is dressed in a stereotypical tribal outfit (Skull Island, ca. 1933) when she initiates the bit, another symptom of the “regulated, segregated visibility” that defined the program’s racialized closet. For the most part, however, Brown’s moments of critical agency emerge

Chapter 3 in isolation and amid the show’s fast-paced comedic flurry. Chelsea Brown and other minority performers on Laugh-In, such as Johnny Brown and closeted gay actor Alan Sues (both discussed in chapter 4), in addition to female performers such as Goldie Hawn, Judy Carne, and Lily Tomlin (an unabashed feminist and closeted lesbian), shared that cringe-worthy imposed silence that the permissive parent culture enforced. Pointed, angry critique was deemed tasteless (as the Smothers brothers discov- ered) or as petty bourgeois, outmoded moralizing, or it undermined the cause of entertainment, all of which motivated Laugh- In’s ambivalent politics of difference and identity. As TIME put it in October 1968, “Laugh-In offers something for—and against— 82 everybody. One week it pelts a Republican. . . . The next week it zeroes in on the President. . . . And the once risky subjects of race, religion, and nationality are treated just as irreverently” (Anon. 1968f). “Irreverence” once again serves two contradictory ends: pointed political satire and, as Rowan summed it up, the final “cop out”: “That’s all it is—comedy” (Barthel 1968, 149). Chelsea Brown maintained diplomatic quiet about her role of integrating Laugh-In and licensing the use of racial humor. This became ironically clear when her joke about NBC’s supposedly color-blind integration policy pivoted on showcasing Brown’s blackness: “To show that NBC is integrated, here they are integrating another commercial” (11/18/68). Brown’s human- istic desire “to be judged as just another person,” as she put it in a 1970 interview following her tenure on the show (qtd. in Erickson 2000, 160), and not serve as a prop to “show that NBC is integrated” suggested the pressures of the burden of representation that Ebony had pronounced a year earlier: “Comedy’s hip changes soar on the wings of Chelsea” (Anon. 1969h, 56). Jokes about race and sexuality trumpeted Laugh-In’s hip changes in the area of prime-time comedy-variety. The program’s ambivalence over such subject matters manifested in a fragmented address that nimbly closeted potentially radi- Mass Camp, Open Secrets, Agency of Otherness cal content by keeping it “definitionally in suspense” through speed, editing, performance styles, the framing of content through the hosts’ perspective, and material whose radical meanings required hip viewers to read into the innuendo and formulate meaningful associations among the bits. During the closing moments of the March 24, 1969, episode, following the marine sketch, the minstrel number, and scores of other bits, a stream of sequences punctuated the closeting of radical content, beginning when Big Al, the flamboyantly queeny sportscaster, reappears ringing his petite bell: “Mad about my bell. Don’t you like a little tinkle? Don’t you like a big tinkle?” Sues removes a larger bell and rings it, laughing in ecstasy: “Love it! Oh!” Following two split-second edits, a tuxedoed Rowan appears posed next to a similarly bedecked Martin: “Well, it’s time to say 83 good night, Dick.” This cuts to Tony Curtis, recalling Shtarker’s planned rendezvous with Captain Butch: “Goodnight, Dick. See you in the barracks.” The scene jumps to epicene movie star Laurence Harvey, another guest that night and a recurrent reference point on Laugh-In for deviant sexuality (during a prior episode that season, for instance, one gag linked Harvey to the lesbian erotica filmTherese and Isabelle, joking that he would star in the sequel, The Son of Therese and Isabelle).7 Har- vey says, “I just found out that when Warner Brothers makes The Lawrence Harvey Story, Larry Parks will dub me?” He pouts and poses, and the scene cuts to Flip Wilson, speaking in his Geraldine/Sapphire voice: “What you say? Whooooh!” Radi- cal differences burst throughout this sequence in a permissive flurry, restrained from full disclosure through editing, indirection, innuendo, and irony. Laugh-In’s distanciation, aestheticism, and ambivalence molded the show’s response to debates about identity politics. African Americans, feminists, and lesbian/gay activists raised questions about their representation in mainstream dominant culture in terms of visibility, stereotyping, and social empowerment.8 And underlying these concerns, taste often- times informed discussions. Laugh-In negotiated these debates

Chapter 3 with particular strategies, namely recirculating old stereotypes as hip, satirical put-ons seemingly liberated from the dictates of bourgeois taste and morality. The program embraced the politics of civil rights in antiracist witticisms that signified with serious content while recycling dialogue, characters, and performance styles from Amos ’n’ Andy, minstrelsy, and Chitlin’ Circuit comedians. Although Laugh-In never took gay liberation or feminism seriously, numerous jokes, gags, and characters on the show stemmed from these movements’ mainstream notoriety. The titular Establishment ambassadors Dan Rowan and Dick Martin—white, straight, male, and middle-aged—played at the thresholds of numerous closets maintained in American 84 living rooms related to race, sexual norms, gender roles, generational difference, and taste and enabled viewers to do so as well. Rowan and Martin flauntedLaugh-In ’s “open secrets”— the desire for vulgar, defiant countercultural pleasures—despite publicity statements to the contrary by Keyes, Rowan, and NBC. By mingling among the marginalized, Laugh-In’s hosts acquired hip credibility—a “soul transplant”—as well as comedic material generated from the preposterous pairing of hip and square, such as jokes about homosexuality and masculine failure aimed at Martin. Considering the comedy-variety show’s blockbuster success alongside its confrontation of prime-time audiences with minority issues, actual minorities, and social outsiders (Staiger 2000a, 19–20, 86–89), Laugh-In also provided a means for the marginalized to occupy majority culture. Par for the course, the closet door swung both ways—for the hosts, the creators, the cast, and the audience. Chapter 4 ”Verrry Integrated” Laugh-In’s Identity Politics and “Other” Humor

opping off the second-season episode on March 17, 1969, TArte Johnson’s smug German Stormtrooper Wolfgang pops into sight, as usual, ostensibly to utter his catchphrase “Verrry interesting” and bid goodnight to Laugh-In’s CBS rival, Lucille Ball. “Verrry integrated,” Wolfgang remarks instead. “And mildly amusing, too. If you go for dat ethnic humor.” Laugh-In cultivated a general reputation for ethnic humor (Staiger 2000a, 87; Anon. 1969a; Dietz 1968, 33–34; Van Horne 1969, 162; Anon. 1968d), and this episode had organized much of it around guest star Sammy Davis Jr. An early bit featured Davis playing himself in a mouthwash commercial. Relaxing in “the exclusive Birmingham Hunt Club,” Davis pooh-poohs his halitosis, because “in this club, who’s going to come near me, anyway?” The evening’s most provocative stunts, however, arose in a running gag involving the white hosts and cast cracking racist remarks and quoting from Amos ’n’ Andy in Davis’s presence, beginning when Rowan referred to Martin as “Darkie” rather than “Dickie.” Each time this occurred, Davis furiously interjected “That’s one,” “That’s two,” keeping tally on the epithets. All of

Chapter 4 this culminates after Wolfgang’s concluding declaration. Davis rises into the shot dressed identically, in German helmet and gray overcoat (something that guests did occasionally). Smok- ing a cigarette and facing Wolfgang, Davis utters in a German accent, “Verrry interesting. But don’t you have a relative in Har- lem named Rubie Begonia?” Then Davis addresses the camera, smiling: “Goodnight, Julia, you little chocolate pussycat.” Wolf- gang turns to the camera and growls, “Das is numer ein,” now taking over in enumerating ethnic slurs. Having protested racist comments as well as performed the Chitlin’ Circuit routine “Here comes de judge,” Davis finishes with a reverse ethnic caricature (an African American mimick- 86 ing a German) and another Amos ’n’ Andy reference with suggestions of interracial sexuality (Wolfgang’s “relative in Har- lem named Rubie Begonia”). Davis’s final triumph arises when he replaces Wolfgang’s goodnight to Lucy with an address to Julia (1968–71), the titular African-American heroine of NBC’s groundbreaking sitcom.1 Davis’s expression of black pride soon becomes deracinated, however, in the rapid sequence of jokes and when his white counterpart Wolfgang/Johnson appropri- ates critical agency. Wolfgang’s ensuing protest against Davis’s impersonation redefines the blackness of “verrry integrated” and “ethnic humor” to mean any ethnicity, in the color-blind gesture of integration. Davis’s critical agency as African-Amer- ican trickster transforms into a universal comedic tactic that anyone in the American melting pot can employ. Throughout the March 17 show, the diverse array of jokes and gags involving race, racism, and stereotyping contributed to Laugh-In’s ambivalent, incoherent irreverence toward taste and also hinted at the politicized crisis of representation raging at the time, “debates . . . about how to depict blackness realisti- cally” (Bodroghkozy 2001, 194). Disputes orbited around two models of African-American identity, according to Gray (2005): the integrative model, prizing middle-class values, assimilation, Identity Politics and color blindness in the pursuit of equal opportunity, and the distinctive model, which “rejected the principle of invisibility and the slide toward whiteness as the universal subject of television and the imagined American nation” (89–90, 101–2). Laugh-In incorporated both models. The show invoked the sameness underlying the integrative model in gags and sketches that flaunted images of ethnic equality and pointedly challenged that position with racialized, provocative humor. Laugh-In’s parodies of racial constructs and stereotypes engaged the distinctive model by adopting the distanciation and aestheticism of Broad- way comedies such as Purlie Victorious and Day of Absence in addition to hip stand-up comedians such as Dick Gregory.2 The hip irreverence toward petty bourgeois taste central to asserting blackness was balanced with the middlebrow aesthetics and 87 ideology of sameness usually enlisted by integration narratives. Confronting the disinfected white world of network comedy and the careful self-presentation of African-American civil rights culture, Laugh-In also contained the difference and autonomy asserted by black power and the related “threat” perceived by the Establishment (Bodroghkozy 2001, 193–96). Building on the discussion in chapter 3, Laugh-In deployed African-American performers and creative staff strategically to reflect the show’s integrationist attitude of sameness and, contradictorily, to motivate provocations of middlebrow taste through performers who bespoke the difference of blackness. Sammy Davis Jr. and Flip Wilson remained heralded Laugh- In guests with regular returns (and eventually their own NBC comedy-variety shows). Ebony magazine treated the hiring of Chelsea Brown and director Mark Warren as events worthy of extensive stories (Anon. 1969h; Anon. 1970d). The addition of cast members Teresa Graves (following Chelsea Brown’s departure) and Johnny Brown also merited attention in Jet magazine (Anon. 1970c; Anon. 1970e, 58–60). African-American performers, according to Laugh-In’s popular reception, punctuated the program’s hipness by reflecting diversity, distinguishing their blackness, satirizing racism, and (ostensibly) mocking de-

Chapter 4 rogatory stereotypes (Anon. 1969a; Anon. 1969h, 56, 60). Although Laugh-In regulated expressions of African-Ameri- can critical agency, Davis, Wilson, Johnny Brown, and on occasion Teresa Graves and Chelsea Brown managed to communicate a gleeful, cool anger and trickster agency. These performers often appeared to lead Laugh-In’s white hosts and ensemble in dismantling the white, bourgeois, middlebrow conventions of network television. At key moments, the critical agency trans- mitted by Wilson, Davis, and Johnny Brown competed with the Anglo, patriarchal hosts in framing the show’s perspective, even as the requirement for interracial harmony and compli- ance among the cast members disguised any misgivings about 88 the racialized humor. The debates among African-American critics and audiences over the integrative and distinctive representational modes coincided squarely with Laugh-In’s ambitions to disrupt the middlebrow conventions of network TV. By 1967 and 1968, Ed Guer- rero (1993) explains, many African-American audiences and critics had grown disenchanted with the “middle-brow” strategy of 1950s and 1960s social problem pictures (72). In the wake of the Detroit and Newark uprisings and amid the rise of the Black Power movement in addition to the free speech movement and antiwar activism (71), it was no longer sufficient to replace the “‘Rastus’ stereotypes” with “sterile paragons of virtue completely devoid of mature characterization or of any political or social reality” (72), such as in filmdom’s Sidney Poitier (71–78). The middlebrow aesthetic of Julia, however, seemed to present in Dia- hann Carroll’s title character another of these “sterile paragons of virtue.” According to Gray (2004, 76), Julia rendered “the social and cultural ‘fact of blackness’ . . . as a minor if not coincidental theme—present but contained.” Bodroghkozy (2001, 193) adds that due to Julia’s “easy-to-integrate comic sweetness,” certain audiences disregarded the show for “reassuring white America that blacks could be just like them.” For some critics, Julia compared Identity Politics more closely to The Lucy Show or The Doris Day Show (each about a middle-class widow and single working mother) than to any realities about African-American life or black popular culture in 1968 (Barnouw 1990, 437; Marc 1996, 18). The distinctive model provided Laugh-In with hip distinction; differentiating the show from programs such as Julia by un- dermining the middlebrow integrative aesthetic, the distinctive model also personifiedLaugh-In ’s reputed irreverence to taste. The color-blind aesthetics of integration nevertheless also emerged. This diversity of representational modes and types of jokes suggested the program’s ambivalence, at once encouraging African- American critical agency and critiques of racism while stemming Establishment fears of black power. The ambivalent negotiation of integrative and distinctive identity materialized with particu- 89 lar force in Laugh-In’s jokes about Julia. During a Cocktail Party early in the second season, Chelsea Brown comments, “That new program Julia is a television first. It’s the only black and white show that’s done in real color” (10/21/68). Brown’s persona radiated an “easy-to-integrate comic sweetness” similar to Diahann Carroll’s, but Brown’s line reversed the color blindness associated with Julia’s casting and realist style (Sutherland 2008, 59). Later the same season, a Confederate soldier (Dick Whittington) attests that he and his kin refuse to watch Julia, “and if those freckles fill in, we won’t watch Doris Day, either” (11/18/68). The Confeder- ate’s joke underscored Julia’s progressiveness—for some, its radicalism—based on the character’s ethnicity, but comparing Julia to Doris Day hinted at the middlebrow whiteness of both shows. By 1970, Julia’s integrative approach lacked any credibility, as in Lily Tomlin’s fourth-season quip about the TV season: “There was only one [show] that seemed to avoid the black issue completely. That was Julia” (12/28/70). Another fourth-season episode contained a sketch that imagines (but never shows) Julia in an interracial marriage (“Well, there’s an item, I’m sure”) alongside gags that affirmed both integrative and distinctive perspectives. A scrolling caption indicated, for example, the cultural politics of Afros—“Natural Hairdos Are Real Racy”—while several digs at

Chapter 4 white supremacy upheld integration: an extended sketch during the News segment mercilessly mocking resistance to school de- segregation in Texas, a Tasteful Lady testimonial about her club’s “tasteful policy of extending invitation memberships to minority groups” as long as no one accepts, and a southern belle (Nancie Phillips) who informs us that “All the people down South aren’t having trouble with integration. Just the black folk” (10/12/70). Laugh-In’s support of integration existed alongside the assertion of black difference, giving even more power to its critiques of Julia. Similar problems about black critical agency arise, however, as discussed in chapter 3. The integrative mode functioned to soften the critical content of pointedly antiracist 90 jokes delivered by African-American performers, whose smiles and calm delivery made it easier to assimilate or downplay their appraisals. The attitude of color blindness served the progres- sive purpose of implicating all cast members in the promotion of antiracist views but also rationalized relocating the critique of racism from black cast members to white performers. The show also failed to exploit the radical potential of color-blind casting, which might have presented further opportunities for African-American agency to flourish. Imagine, for instance, if Flip Wilson had played the Confederate soldier or Teresa Graves had portrayed the southern belle. Vacillating between integrative and distinctive modes, Laugh- In mingled restrained antiracist satire with theatricalized travesty in a rapid, nonlinear succession of styles and political attitudes, often confusing the point of both the satire and the theatricality. On one second-season episode, for example, the Cocktail Party banter of Flip Wilson and Chelsea Brown consisted of antiracist quips in the restrained performance styles typical of the integrationist mode, but their lines suggested the anger of black power critics. First, Brown cheerily informs, “My psychiatrist finally convinced me to stop looking at the dark side of things. Now if they could only convince the real estate people.” A few lines Identity Politics later Wilson coolly imparts, “You know it’s all in how you look at it. What you call riots, we call group therapy.” The News segment that night mingles modes almost incomprehensibly. The chorus introducing the News segment dons tribal costumes and black makeup styled after King Kong (1933), King Solomon’s Mines (1937), and any number of colonial fantasies, and later Brown introduces a sketch about “the racial problem” while still dressed in the tribal costume. In the sketch Wilson plays a well-spoken decorated veteran seeking housing in an “integrated community.” The white southern-accented realtor (Arte Johnson), however, declines his application: “It’s an integrated community, all right, it’s just that we already have our Negro family.” The scene cuts to Goldie Hawn, also outfitted in Skull Island duds, who blurts, “Tell it like it is, Sapphire” (10/21/68). The real estate sketch ar- 91 ticulated integrationist politics and aesthetics; the blatant critique of racist discrimination and support of equal opportunity, in the aftermath of President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Fair Hous- ing Act, coincided smoothly with Wilson’s assimilated character and realistic performance style. The chorus costumes and Hawn’s rejoinder, however, perplexed any simple interpretation in the incoherent mingling of elements: the reference to racist popular culture, Amos ’n’ Andy in particular; the catchphrase “Tell it like it is,” drawn from urban African-American culture, popularized in Aaron Neville’s 1966 song, and embraced as a cliché by youth culture (Ferguson, Partridge, and Beale 1994, 125); and the white blonde woman in virtual blackface quoting Neville’s song and Amos ’n’ Andy in the same sentence. Racialized comedy in mainstream television transgressed the traditional taste codes of both network policy and civil rights discourse and proved particularly risky when recycling lines, characters, and styles that had long been exclusive to African-American spectators and cultural contexts. In Chitlin’ Circuit theaters, for instance, spectators could enjoy racialized humor as a mockery of stereotypes, but under the Anglo gaze of mainstream culture, the same material was assumed to bolster racist attitudes (Suther- land 2008, 40–42). The 1968 article “Here Come Da Judge” from

Chapter 4 the Boston-based African-American newspaper Bay State Banner concretized all of these features and related them to Laugh-In:

Black people were hypersensitive to any racial designa- tion that would set them apart from the majority. But now times have changed. “Black is beautiful” and racial des- ignations are no longer always offensive. The new racial confidence makes it possible for blacks to laugh at themselves. Amos-and-Andy-type jokes would bring gales of laughter in all-black company, but let someone make such a reference in a racially mixed crowd and stony silence would follow. But recently Rowan and Martin’s 92 Laugh-in immortalized the senseless minstrel lines “Here Come Da Judge,” and the whole country, including the ghetto, roared with laughter. (Anon. 1968b)

Laugh-In’s recirculation of “senseless minstrel lines” signified for some audiences the “new racial confidence” in mainstream culture. Davis and Markham’s “Here comes the judge” routine presented the most famous example of recycling African-American comedy on Laugh-In. Amos ’n’ Andy also provided a common reference point in Laugh-In’s provocations of taste, responding to the larger debates over black representation that singled out the notoriously popular program (Sutherland 2008, 8, 45; Gray 2004, 75–76; Leland 2004, 30). Guest stars Davis and Wilson and ensemble regular Johnny Brown frequently invoked Amos ’n’ Andy, as did white cast members. Stage directions in numerous episode scripts in the fourth season actually specify in Brown’s dialogue a “Kingfish” voice, referring to television actor Tim Moore’s distinctive drawl (Anon. n.d., script 1770-16, airdate 1/4/71, 45; script 1770-18, airdate 1/18/71, 41; script 1770-10, airdate 11/16/70, 66). Davis and Brown also performed together in an Amos ’n’ Andy parody during the fourth season (1/4/71). The Bay State Banner related the recirculation of “senseless Identity Politics minstrel lines” to an “ability to laugh at oneself,” all of which signaled “black progress” and “black power” (Anon. 1968b). A bit between Johnny Brown and Tomlin’s Tasteful Lady manifested all of these features, in addition to satirizing racist pre- sumptions. “Mr. Jonathan Brown,” the Tasteful Lady inquires, “where do you stand on unemployment?” Brown responds, “I stand in line under the B’s . . . for Black, Beautiful and Broke.” Insulted by this racialized critique, the Tasteful Lady scolds, “Why don’t you stand under the T’s for tasteless? I am so tired of you Hawaiians.” Upon her huffy exit, Brown exclaims in what sounds like Kingfish, “Aloha, mama!” (2/8/71). Brown mocks middlebrow pretensions that rationalize African-American invisibility, and the exchange racializes the Tasteful Lady’s cultural disdain. His paraphrase of the slogan “Black is Beautiful,” use of 93 the expression “mama,” subtle evocation of Amos ’n’ Andy, and cheerfully mocking attitude toward the Tasteful Lady’s preju- dices coalesce the social critique and confident self-mockery that, for some audiences, expressed black pride. Some spectators viewed the recirculation of “senseless minstrel lines,” however, as signs of regression. In 1971, with the blockbusters The Flip Wilson Show on television and Melvin Van Peebles’s filmSweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971) in movie theaters, Ebony magazine editor Lerone Bennett Jr. (1971) expressed concern over the “insidious reincarnations of all the Sapphires and Studs of yesteryear” (106) and asserted that the destructive legacy of Amos ’n’ Andy in particular popularized demeaning stereotypes of African Americans (108). Although the Bay State Banner (Anon. 1968b) construed black audiences’ pleasure in “Amos-and-Andy-type jokes” as a reflection of an empowered, proud community, Bennett (1971) invoked civil rights discourse to condemn these old tropes as “symbolic de- bris of the white man’s attempt to control and define black reality” (106). Laugh-In collaborator Digby Wolfe corroborated Bennett’s views when he opined to TIME magazine in 1969 that a “here-come-de-judge syndrome can be very dangerous, because it is apt to convince white audiences that Negroes are,

Chapter 4 after all, just kidding” (Anon. 1969a). Wolfe confronted an issue akin to ideas about mass camp: that white audiences have nothing to lose in laughing at racial stereotypes because the stigma that such tropes communicated did not implicate them. Aside from the immediate issue of derogatory stereotypes raised by Bennett, laughter at racialized comedy threatens to be a regula- tory force reducing African-American issues to a stream of gags. Laugh-In spoke directly to this controversy over representation, identity, and agency in an episode that enlisted Amos ’n’ Andy as a centerpiece (1/4/71). That evening’s topic in the Mod World segment was “Ethnic Humor,” featuring the usual production number interspersed with blackouts, inserts, and sketches. 94 Sammy Davis Jr., cast against type as Uncle Sam with a gray Afro, leads a chorus outfitted in diverse ethnic folk garb singing “Why Can’t I Be Just an American?” The plea to view every American the same articulates the integrative mode’s “homogenized view of the nation[,] . . . race and culture” (Gray 2005, 90). After Davis belts in a cultivated accent “These heavy ethnic labels/bug me a lot/ Don’t we know America’s/that old melting pot,” a slew of quick bits interrupt the production number until Rowan and Martin appear. Rowan says, “Some of the greatest humor of all time was performed weekly on the old Amos ’n’ Andy radio show.” Mar- tin concurs: “All America would roar at lines like”—imitating Andy—“Miss Blue, buzz me.” The scene jarringly cuts to Davis in another location, who protests, “Wait a minute,” and then cuts back to Rowan, who quotes another line from Amos ’n’ Andy. A brief volley ensues, the white hosts mimicking lines and Davis interjecting “Wait a minute,” until Davis finally roars, WAIT“ A MINUTE!!!” Entirely unfazed by Davis and spatially separated from him, Rowan continues, “Amos ’n’ Andy, they were so great. But if they were on television today it just might be that a lot of the edge of that earthy, happy ethnic humor might be changed. It just might be.” A sketch ensues that mocks middlebrow, integrative Identity Politics

Sammy Davis Jr. and Johnny Brown’s critical mimicry: appropriating the racist stereotypes of Amos ’n’ Andy and assimilationist “positive” images. aesthetics, with Davis as Andy, now a swank stockbroker, and Brown as Amos the dapper investor, both dressed formally and speaking in refined society accents. Reviewing Amos’s stock portfolio, Davis chirps, “You’re in the black,” to which Brown responds, “Now that’s what I mean when I say, ‘Black is Beauti- ful.’” The polite conversation continues until Davis/Andy notices that the stocks are plunging, leading to the disintegration of their bourgeois facades. Gradually, Davis evokes the vocal style of Amos ’n’ Andy actor Tim Moore: “Ooowah! . . . Well, Amos, let me put it to you dis way. I is still da broka, but, as of dis here minute, you is the brokee.” The two both exclaim, “Ooowah!” This cuts to a go-go dancer with body paint reading “OOOW WAAAH” and then to the Tasteful Lady, who comments, “I

Chapter 4 wanted so very much to help members of minority groups who are being discriminated against, I just couldn’t find any, in my neighborhood.” Davis returns to add yet another “Wait a minute” followed by a series of sketches and one-liners, including another one with Davis and Brown. Performing African-American identity according to the distinctive mode, Davis and Brown play close friends who meet on a city street, slapping five and ex- changing expressions such as “my main man,” “lay it on me,” “right on, baby,” and “dig it.” Davis commences telling Brown a joke about “two white cats,” in which “one white cat says to the other white cat”—Davis then alters his voice to a refined “white” accent—“I say, those brown shoes of yours are certainly excit- 96 ing.” The joke falls flat, which is the point. When the Mod World segment concludes, Rowan, Martin, and Davis reflect on the pro- ceedings. “I hope we didn’t offend anybody,” worries Rowan, but Martin assures, “Well if we did, it was probably just a small minority.” Rowan asks Davis, “Hey Sam, what did you think of tonight’s look at ethnic humor? . . . You know, people are constantly poking fun at each other’s ethnic backgrounds.” Davis, entirely negating his earlier protestations, responds, “Well it all depends,” breaking into his Kingfish voice, “whether you’re the poker or de pokee.” Not long after that, Davis recycles the “Here-comes-da- judge” routine that he had originally brought to the show and popularized the first season.3 The pose of hip counterdistinction charged the entire Mod World segment and communicated an ambivalence about modes of black representation that established room for coexisting, clashing perspectives as well as the opportunity for derogatory and perhaps racist laughter. As the examples above demonstrate, Rowan and Martin’s counterdistinction engaged in put-ons that simultaneously expressed their disaffiliation from and hip connection to black culture; they quote and imitate Amos ’n’ Andy and also impart clichéd concerns that “minority” audience members might have been offended. The Identity Politics irony of the hosts’ put-on confuses their position, begging the question of whether their romanticized recollections of Amos ’n’ Andy were intended as critiques of racism or as racist nostalgia. Dialogue about “the old Amos ’n’ Andy radio show” when “all America would roar” conjured memories of a time prior to the civil rights and Black Power movements, when white audiences could unify in delight over “that earthy, happy ethnic humor.” At this point another “Wait a minute!” from Davis would have been in order, as the reminiscence immediately closets the racist significance ofAmos ’n’ Andy as well as the different stakes of power involved in white audience pleasure versus that of African-American spectators. If the comedy of Amos ’n’ Andy had an “edge” to it, as Rowan initially proposed, this primarily pertained to African-American audiences, who took the risks in 97 laughing at material that ignorant whites could interpret as con- firming an array of degrading assumptions (Gray 2004, 75–76). The urbanity about racial equality radiated by Laugh-In’s hosts helped ensure the program’s hip counterdistinction. Rowan personified in particular the square hipster through jokes and characters that struck affiliations with black culture and politics as well as the antiwar movement. When Flip Wilson coolly tells Rowan during a second-season Cocktail Party that “We’ll stop marrying your sisters if you’ll stop stealing our music,” Rowan’s humbly humorous concession signifies hip self-parody: “Let’s see, uh, that leaves us with ‘White Christmas’ and ‘Mairzy Doats’” (10/21/68). Rowan’s rejoinder diffuses the image of interracial sexuality daringly broached by Wilson and, typical for Laugh-In, refocuses critical, antiracist agency to Rowan. In the spirit of integration, Wilson and Rowan can unite over the mockery of sterile white culture and racist paranoia about interracial sexuality, but Rowan retains the authority by poking the last jab. Inasmuch as Rowan and Martin inscribed a space for interracial affiliation, they also reproduced the white hegemony of that space at the expense of black subjectivity and critical agency. Despite Rowan’s and Martin’s positioning as the central squares-cum-hipsters, the critical mimicry of Davis and Brown

Chapter 4 invests the sequence with signs of black agency and community. As done in the second season with Davis’s appearance on March 17 (as well as the minstrel number discussed in chapter 3), the voice of critique is overtly woven in by intercutting Davis’s objec- tion of “Wait a minute!” and including the bit between Brown and Davis about the lameness of white comedy. Set against these gestures, numerous put-ons spring from Davis’s and Brown’s ethnic imitations: their alternation between integrative and distinctive personas of blackness as well as their mimicry of “WASPs” (Davis’s Uncle Sam), “Russians,” “Jews” and, earlier in the episode, dueling impressions of Ed Sullivan, that paragon of white taste making. Davis’s and Brown’s critical mimicry denaturalized the 98 concept of racial-ethnic identity and exposed it as a production, an act: neither the integrative nor the distinctive model provided the real version of blackness. Davis’s role throughout the Mod World segment also blurred any concrete definitions of black identity. He expressed integrationist perspectives in his lyrics as Uncle Sam (desiring to be seen as “American” without a qualify- ing ethnic label) and in his protest against Rowan and Martin’s Amos ’n’ Andy impressions. Davis also articulates the black pride of distinctive identity in his willingness and agility to alternately imitate stereotypes of blacks and whites at a moment’s notice, in the delight he takes in performing an urban working-class black man, and in mocking “white comedy” as an oxymoron. Davis and Brown also forge a space for forming black community in their racialized, satirical exchanges and ethnic mimicry.4 In all these respects, Davis and Brown embodied the mixture of pride and self- parody that signified what theBay State Banner called the “new racial confidence.” Laugh-In’s Queer and Feminist Camp As Laugh-In romped through the stigmatized politics and pleasures of the countercultures, Rowan and Martin acted as permissive mediators for mainstream TV audiences. The Identity Politics hosts’ personas shifted from urbane sophisticates to voyeuris- tic squares patronizing the counterculture for thrills. Rowan, Martin, and Laugh-In primarily responded to feminist and gay politics as gawkers, mining the movements’ radical theatricality visible in news reports of political demonstrations. Feminist activism presented newsworthy events for Laugh-In’s playboys: the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the formation of the National Organization for Women, the work of Planned Parenthood, protests against the Miss America Pageant, and reports about feminists doffing their bras.5 Lesbian and gay activism also provided spectacular news: the Stonewall Riots, protests against the American Psychiatric Association and homophobic television (Alwood 1996, 124–32, 139–40), and a particular fourth-season favorite of Laugh-In, the Gay Libera- 99 tion Front’s plans to take over Alpine County, California (Alt- man 1971, 144–46). The infusion of flamboyance brought by Alan Sues also contributed, combining with the show’s numerous references to current cultural avatars of lesbian-gay sexuality such as Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal’s novel Myra Breckinridge (1968) as well as the film adaptation (1970),6 and the filmsThe Boys in the Band (1970), The Killing of Sister George (1968), and Therese and Isabelle (1968). Laugh-In’s perspective on feminism and homosexuality emerged quite directly in Rowan and Martin’s mocking reac- tions, which maintained a playboy gaze. They granted their put-on honor the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award, for instance, to the EEOC during the second season. Rowan relates with ironic vigor that “the commission ruled that classified job ads can no longer be listed under separate male and female headings. Because that’s discriminating on the basis of sex.” Martin interrupts, “And if there’s one thing I don’t wanna do is discriminate, it’s against sex.” The EEOC deserved the Fin- ger, chirps Rowan, “for deciding there’s absolutely no difference between men and women.” Alongside Rowan’s scorn toward gender equality,7 Martin’s role as the irrepressible swinger also helped to contain female power within a male gaze. As the

Chapter 4 EEOC bit continues, Martin adds, “I decided to be the first on my block to go along with this ruling. . . . Today I went out and hired a new houseboy.” He looks in the direction of offstage and yells, “I’ll be right there, Hortense!” (2/3/69). The conclusion of the Fickle Finger of Fate bit exemplified Martin’s “swinger” persona; by relentlessly asserting his heterosexual playboy gaze, Martin diffused potentially incendiary subjects such as feminism and homosexuality. In addition to a lin- gering dimwittedness, the persona of swinger defined him and funded most of his humor. As Buzzi’s Gladys testifies, “Boy, that Dick really swings” (9/23/68), a reputation jokingly confirmed in the TV Guide article “Some Swinger!” (Diehl 1971, 18–21).8 Mar- 100 tin also served as the butt of jokes that questioned how hetero this diehard swinger was. Sexual fluidity indeed adhered to the label “swinger” based on associations with bisexuality that arose toward the end of the 1960s and even in its proximity to the playboy. Hetero masculinity purportedly characterized the 1950s playboy, yet as Cohan (1997) argues, questions of latent homosexuality arose around the playboy’s perpetual bachelorhood and reliance on a cultured lifestyle to “accessorize his virility” (266). The playboy could not simply be heterosexual; he had to theatrically perform his heterosexuality, requiring cultural props and scenery (Cohan 1997, 268–75). The playboy and swinger commonly valued uninhibited sexual freedom, but the term “swinger” came to signify either gender and included implications of bisexuality (Eisner 1999, 256–59), or as the eponymous Myra Breckinridge celebrates, “a polymorphic sexual abandon in which the lines between the sexes dissolve, to the delight of all” (Vidal 1968, 90). While Martin’s performance as swinger ostensibly confirmed his heterosexuality, constantly flirting with women and recounting his hetero sexcapades, queer implications routinely arose, such as in the gender confusion of the “houseboy” named Hortense that Martin hired. Although Rowan scoffed at the idea that “there’s absolutely no difference between men and Identity Politics women,” Martin often emerged as the proof. Laugh-In queered Martin frequently with characters such as Captain Butch in the marine interior decorator sketch, but especially prominent were instances when Martin was playing “the lovely Dick Martin” (as he was often introduced).9 In a second-season installment of the Discovery of the Week segment (cousin to New Talent Time), Martin cringes at the caterwauling of Legendary Stardust Cowboy when cast members run onstage to revel in the awfulness. Alan Sues capers in, then he and Martin begin dancing cheek to cheek, with Martin hold- ing Sues in a couple of dips before parting (11/18/68). The interlude recalled a recent episode when Martin informed Rowan that he had “a date to go dancing with a sailor. . . . This is no ordinary, able-bodied seaman. . . . He’s an FBI lady. . . . Last 101 week she was a bartender in Phoenix. . . . You should have been there.” As the tale proceeds, just about every line drips with queer innuendo, and his date’s gender ultimately remains unclear (10/7/68).10 Similar connotations erupted when Mar- tin recounted disguising himself as Lyndon Johnson: “Have you ever tried to sleep with four secret service men? . . . Those badges are murder, woo-hee!” He laughs and then says, “Sure peps up the shower, though!” An abrupt cut to Gladys punctuates the sexual scene: “I’ll bet it does,” she mutters (9/23/68). A third-season episode tied Martin to the transgender character Myra Breckinridge when the scandalous novel was once again making headlines as Twentieth Century–Fox produced the film adaptation (Diffrient 2013, 50–55). At the end of the episode Martin confides, “I got a heavy date and I want to catch her before she changes . . . Myra Breckinridge.” “Oh, well give her my best,” says Rowan, and Martin concludes, “I’ll give her your best, give him my best” (9/29/69). Martin also emerged as queer by association, recounting events about his nephew Cynthia’s “sex change” operation (1/19/70) and the time his aunt was “trapped in a lighthouse on Fire Island with the male chorus of the Beautiful Downtown Burbank Opera Company and Ballet and Storm-Door Makers. . . . They are versatile.” The

Chapter 4 punch line of the story comes when he mimics a queeny Alan Sues line from earlier in the episode (1/6/69). Martin’s put-on of himself as queer remained as much an act as his imitation of Sues or the many other queer-inflected characters that Martin played, including his portrayal of Captain Butch. Although the show always distinguished Martin’s hetero swinger persona as the real one, his constant performance of “Dick Martin” made it possible to consider that “Dick really swings” both ways. Despite any queer implications in host Martin’s swinger lifestyle, Laugh-In wasted no support on feminism or gay liberation, but the show certainly trumpeted their increasing presence. Feminism and gay liberation remained culturally vulgar, 102 socially troublesome, and ridiculous on Laugh-In because of their challenges to gender distinctions and activists’ spectacular displays of difference. Citing and reporting about them on Laugh-In remained a constant activity in the acquisition and expression of hip counterdistinction, particularly during the show’s “tasteless” fourth season (1970–71, after which NBC fired Schlatter). As gay liberationist Dennis Altman (1971, 108) observed, “By the end of 1970 the television show, Laugh-In, which may be one of the finer barometers of American mores we have, was including roughly one joke about gay liberation per program. Along with Black Panthers, Weathermen, women’s liberation, Young Lords, etc., gay liberation was recognized as part of the radical pantheon.” Altman might have been recalling a recent production number about the events of 1970—“A Year to Forget”—that singled out gay liberation, feminism, and the 1970 filmMyra Breckinridge (another symptom of a polymorphic revolution of gender and sexuality) alongside the student movement and antiwar activism (12/28/70). Romping in clown suits, cast members belt out “We hope the movies straighten out at least a smidge/’Cause we can’t take another Myra Breck- inridge.” And as another stanza runs, “What with the women’s lib and gay liberation/with the violence and student unrest/The Identity Politics three-sixty-five/May keep you alive/The last one didn’t do their best!” Johnny Carson interrupts the number with a one-liner that renders the feminist and gay movements as a laughable spectacle of gender equality and androgyny: “Last year, the Women’s Liberation group and the Gay Liberation front tried to solve their differences—only to find out there were none.” Sub- sequent references that season include a cop (Dennis Allen) who reports arresting activists at “a Gay Liberation riot” for “assault with a deadly purse” (2/14/71; Anon. n.d., script 1770-22, 43) and a society matron (Nancie Phillips) whose niece was “asked to resign from her Brownie troop when she demonstrated for Women’s Liberation by burning her T-shirt” (11/23/70). Put-ons of gay liberation and feminism mingled with ironic validation throughout the fourth season, with assimilation- 103 minded gay activists disapproving of Laugh-In for being stereotypical and offensive (Alwood 1996, 345n3) and with leftists such as Altman appreciating the radical potential of such exposure. Film critic Parker Tyler confirmed such ambivalence in his study Screening the Sexes (first published in 1972) when comparing Laugh-In to the quasi-underground film Women in Revolt, a 1971 satire of feminism with a drag queen and a transgender cast. Tyler opined that “you can never be sure which side Rowan and Martin . . . are on” (230) and applied the demeaning label of “the Laugh-In response” (232), but combined with his earlier comments about gay themes on Laugh-In, he underscored how Laugh-In brought opportunities for radical visibility and identification despite rendering feminist and gay activism infantile and theatrical (185-86).11 On December 14, 1970, the “Laugh-In response” was aimed at Gay Liberation with a slew of jokes, including a segment about a recent Los Angeles Times story, “Homosexuals Weigh Move to Alpine County” (Anon. 1970a).12 “Hmmm,” Martin considers, “according to this article, members of the Gay Liberation Front believe if enough of their persuasion move in on Alpine County they can become the dominant force in the area.” Rowan continues, explaining that the Gay Liberation Front’s “plans to turn

Chapter 4 sleepy little Alpine County into a tourist mecca” made some in- habitants “a little angry.” A sketch ensues with one homophobic Alpinian (Arte Johnson) objecting to the “weirdos coming in here.” Two more citizens (Dennis Allen and Lily Tomlin) neu- trally enumerate the economic advantages, after which the ho- mophobe responds (“very lightly,” as the stage directions put it), “Sweetie, could I hear those figures again?” (Anon. n.d., script 1770-14, 17–18). Laugh-In’s ambivalence about gay liberation especially occasioned radical identification when the show’s general affiliation with so-called social weirdos and cuckoos inter- sected with its validation of the sexual revolution. At the Cocktail Party segment on December 28, 1970, for example, Alan Sues 104 reappears as Boomer, the jock tennis pro: “This season I left the tennis tour and joined the Sexual Freedom League. Guess what? I was voted Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player.” He swings his racket victoriously and the party moves on, eventually stopping on a dancing cop (Dennis Allen), who confesses, “I was on special detail in Central Park and you know I had to dress up in women’s clothes. I didn’t catch any molesters, but I did have a wonderful evening of dinner and dancing with a sailor from the USS Oklahoma.” Following the party, Phyllis Diller pops in to say, “I asked my doctor recently if I should undergo a change of sex. He said, ‘From what?’” On the season’s Halloween episode, Barbara Sharma approaches Lily Tomlin and moans, “Beware of the big bad fairy!” Tomlin asks, “Well, who is the big bad fairy,” to which Sharma answers, “He’s the mayor of Fire Island.” “What’s he do,” Tomlin kids, “Fly into your house in the middle of the night and rearrange your furniture?” And Sharma quips, “Yeah, if you’re not very careful, he’ll give you a permanent” (10/26/70). Aiming the “Laugh-In response” at “the Women’s Movement for Liberation” just a few months earlier (9/28/70), the program made no secret of its contempt for feminism yet failed to fully contain it with a patriarchal, Establishment perspective. As Rowan, portraying a supporter, relates women’s demands in his Identity Politics introductory dialogue with Martin, the buffoonish playboy Mar- tin twists all of Rowan’s reasons for why “modern women want to be equal” into patriarchal responses or sex jokes. At the end of the segment Martin announces “I’m against it,” although he reaffirms his support of bra burning. During the series of Women’s Move- ment sketches that follow, however, the emergence of Martin’s queer persona in addition to the feminist agency of performer Lily Tomlin might have challenged this patriarchal mentality or at the very least suggested its instability. In a complete reversal of the usual gender roles, and once again attributing gender fluidity to Martin, one sketch opens with a female audience gathered at a burlesque house to watch a male stripper, Dick “Boom-Boom” LaTouche (Martin). Tomlin portrays the MC, cracking bad jokes and objectifying the talent in the style of male comics: “He’ll be 105 out just as soon as he can get his costume out of the thimble.” Her smooth, confident delivery and her charisma and chic attire contrast with Martin, decked out shirtless with pasties, a blond wig, and ruby-red spangled shorts with matching pumps and on the verge of hysteria. After his female agent slaps him, he performs before the hooting female crowd, including his mother (“My son the stripper,” she boasts). Albeit sandwiched by the dissenting hosts and other shtick antagonistic to feminism, the sketch not only plays upon the ambiguity of Martin’s swinger persona but also briefly subjects him to the kind of objectification he usually controls (9/28/70). Tomlin’s appropriation of the macho stand-up comic role also impresses, in terms of the assured power she radiates as a comedian in control of the stage and her willingness to eschew traditional femininity and embrace grotesque masculine manner- isms and phrasing. Discussing women in comedy with the New York Times in early 1970, Tomlin commented that men “don’t appreciate the grotesque in a woman,” a limit of the gaze that motivates her performances in the opposite direction (Klemesrud 1970). Tomlin also professed to another New York Times reporter that “I don’t think much about getting married” and implied in- difference to heterosexual courtship (Bell 1970, 31), attitudes

Chapter 4 that converge with her affinity for the grotesque in another one of the bits in the Women’s Movement segment. As a hysterical housewife, she throws down her mop and rips at her dress in wild desperation. “That’s it! I’ve just joined the Women’s Libera- tion. . . . No woman should have do this sickening, crumby, sickening. . . . No woman!” Her nervous explosion remains both disturbing and funny; as her angst appears overpowering, her disgust with demeaning housework becomes more compel- ling. When her husband (Rowan) asks what she wants, the wife’s punch-line response is obviously intended to undermine any activist appeals: “A maid.” Tomlin’s overwrought performance as the housewife might provide the perfect comedic contrast to her 106 low-pitched punch line, but her emphasis on the woman’s ab- jection provides a brief instance of feminist truth. Considering Tomlin’s public statements such as “we don’t have to get married to be identified” and “I never had any middle-class pressure on me,” she inspires a similar subtextual challenge to Establishment meanings in the “Year to Forget” number later that season. Al- though her assigned lyrics disparage feminist and gay activism, she appears to subtly counteract the hostility by smiling and rais- ing her voice while belting out the line “What with the women’s lib and gay liberation” (12/28/70).13 Prior to the Stonewall Riots in 1969 and the more politically provocative fourth season of 1970–71, representing homosexuality on Laugh-In remained a regular activity but relied almost entirely on euphemisms such as “Fire Island” and stereotypes such as fem men. On the inaugural installment of the series, for instance, Martin referred to one former cast member who “became the Kumquat Queen at the annual Fire Island Fruit Festival” (1/22/68).14 The show’s maintenance of tastefulness depended on the closet strategy, suggestively communicating hip knowledge of homosexuals, a standard that motivated the casting of Alan Sues (a closeted gay man at the time) as Big Al. NBC executive Herminio Traviesas admitted trepidation Identity Politics about the “sissy sports announcer”: “We were worried how it read. . . . Once we saw it done [by Sues] it was obviously funny and not at all in bad taste” (Warga 1968).15 Sues’s camp performance of stereotypes functioned to de- note “Here’s a homosexual!”—to borrow Tyler’s (1993, 10) expression—even if the word “homosexual” was never applied to his characters (the word “gay” appeared occasionally but euphe- mistically in his dialogue). Expressions such as “fruit,” “fairy,” and “camp” as well as traits such as effeminacy, theatricality, and loudness and occupations such as hairdresser, underground filmmaker, and artist all connoted the queerness of Sues’s characters.16 Sues’s parodies of gender role conventions and his performance as an innocently, unself-consciously queeny man represented, to borrow Tyler’s (1993) comments about movies of the 107 period, the “nelly-clown type” (53) who acts “as if only shrieky homosexual convention ruled society” (10–11). Sues’s apparent complicity with dominant culture might have gratified the topical sensibility of “hip homophobia” (Sar- ris 1993, xi), with suggestive stereotypes of gay men as masculine losers blissfully unaware of themselves: closeted, reduc- tive comedic props. Sues’s characters and persona nevertheless were among the first recurrent glimpses of homosexuals on a prime-time series (Alwood 1996, 139; Simonson 2011). Sues illuminated queer difference and even dissident agency precisely because he always behaved “as if only shrieky homosexual convention ruled society.” Although closeted, Sues—in all his Laugh-in personas—came out by behaving according to stereotype. Although assimilationist homophile groups such as the Mattachine Society attacked Laugh-In for its stereotypes (Alwood 1996), radicals such as Dennis Altman (1971) appre- ciated the program for including gay liberation in “the radical pantheon.” In his 1970 “A Gay Manifesto,” Gay Liberation Front activist Carl Wittman defended, more generally, “the queens and the nellies” because “they came out and withstood disapproval before the rest us did,” and in the same declaration he rejected the position of “homophile groups” (1972, 334).

Chapter 4 Sues’s best-known character was Big Al, an unapologetic sissy who infiltrated two macho institutions: competitive sports and sports journalism. Other of Sues’s characters presented the opportunity to accentuate gender incongruity, such as the Cow- boy, Grabowski the football player and Boomer the tennis pro. Sues’s implicitly gay characters often expressed subversive delight, taking ecstatic pleasure in the coded references that both closeted and communicated homosexual desire. On one occasion, Big Al encourages two particularly violent hockey teams to “keep skating, girls! You silly bunch of gay blades!” (9/23/68). Three months later he praises Steve McQueen and his new hockey team, the L.A. Kings, referring to them as 108 “McQueen’s Kings” and highlighting the diverse selection of headwear that the “gay blades” have: “helmets, crowns or tiaras.” Closing with the pun “God save McQueen,” Big Al continues with a question that relishes the gay meaning: “Is that dirty? Ta-ta!” (12/30/68). Big Al’s unapologetic glee in his gayness arises with particularly sexual suggestiveness while explaining football referee signals early in the fifth season. Big Al exclaims, “Here’s a cute one!” He poses, arms akimbo, and translates: “This means off-sides, or I suppose it could mean ‘Hi Mr. Quarterback! New in town?’” (9/13/71). Allusions to sexual pleasure flourished especially when Big Al rang his diminutive bell, which usually inspired ecstatic paroxysms such as “Oh! My tinkle is beautiful! The sound is so pure it makes me”—he giggles—“giddy.” Glee continues to abound in this report, laced with innuendo, on “the annual lumberjack con- test”: “The mighty forest rang with the sound of his big happy axe. But I knew he was the winner when I saw his wild plaid jacket with a little fur collar. Mink, mink, nothing thrills me like mink!” He rings his bell, laughing and rolling his eyes, exclaiming “Too much! Ta-ta!” He then kisses the audience good-bye (9/29/69). Laugh-In occasionally permitted Sues gay male camarade- Identity Politics rie, most extensively on February 17, 1969, when Tiny Tim returned for a guest appearance. Following Sues’s Old West saloon bits on prior episodes (when he ordered a “frozen daiquiri”), Sues and Tiny Tim portray lonesome cowboys in a series of running gags opposite James Drury and Doug McClure from NBC’s western series The Virginian (1962–71). In the first installment, Drury and McClure ask the bartender where they can store their firearms, and then the shot pulls back, revealing Tiny Tim with his ukulele and Sues next to him. “Where can I plug in my electric ukulele?” asks Tiny Tim, followed by Sues’s request for “a frozen daiquiri.” In another instance, Tiny Tim comments to Sues about Drury and McClure: “They’re aw- fully husky. Maybe we should mix in.” The improbability of their mixing in arises in the final entry, when their queer in- 109 filtration of the macho western genre finally proves threatening. After Drury explains to McClure why he wears leather for cowpoking, Tiny Tim adds, “Yeah, and besides, you can’t wear silk on a round-up.” As Drury reaches for his rifle, Sues escorts Tiny Tim out, arm in arm: “C’mon Tiny, we know when we’re not wanted.” The queer duo of Sues and Tiny Tim produces a virtual invasion of gay stereotypes, from effeminacy to sexual fetishism (the leather versus silk debate), that intimidates the macho cowboys; the genre just cannot contain them. And for those who can identify, the safe escape of the gay couple from an implicit gay bashing presents a touching triumph. Laugh-In consistently paired Sues with cast mate Jo Anne Worley, enabling the two to forge a camp duo: a sexually liberated, powerful woman and an unapologetically nelly gay man. More sexual revolutionary than feminist, Worley’s persona emphasized excess, exaggeration, and theatricality, such as in this typical Cocktail Party banter about her lover Boris: “Boris and I decided that we’ve been seeing too much of each other. Sooo-oooo,” she belts like Ethel Merman, “last night we turned out the lights!” (3/24/69). Worley and Sues forged a kinship of camp sensibility and social weirdos from the sexual revolution that made sense according to the heteronormative equation

Chapter 4 between strong women and effeminate men or, by the same token, between camp women and their queeny male acolytes. Camp informed Laugh-In’s style generally, already alluded to in the work of Lily Tomlin, Flip Wilson, and Ruth Buzzi, in addition to Barbara Sharma (whose Agnew-loving, tap-dancing patriot—inspired by Ruby Keeler—provided politicized camp satire during the fourth season). Focusing on Worley and Sues as a camp couple unearths subversive teamwork that, however closeted, challenged Laugh-In’s heteronormative assumptions and patriarchal, playboy perspective. Worley’s affiliation with queer camp sprang from “alienation from the normative gender and sex roles assigned . . . 110 by straight culture” (Robertson 1996, 9–10). A New York Times article about female comics (Klemesrud 1970) implied as well as reinforced Worley’s estrangement from gender roles. Render- ing the comedian in exaggerated, unfeminine terms, Klemesrud described Worley’s physical bulk and how she “horse-laughed her way to fame on Laugh-In.” Worley evoked her own disaf- fection with conventional constructs of femininity as well as her corresponding identification with queerness: “When I’m out with a man I do make an effort to cool it. . . . Besides, the only guys who really adore that kind of behavior offstage are the gay boys.” Worley’s comment sealed an affiliation with gay men related directly to her inclination for theatricality and the social requirement to subdue herself with heterosexual men. The “effort” for Worley was not to perform flamboyantly “offstage” with “the gay boys” but instead was “to cool it,” to perform de- mure femininity for straight men. On Laugh-In, Worley embodied a camp put-on of the swinging single girl, a woman ostensibly fashioning herself for marriage, installed in the regimes of heterosexual gender roles but also sexually and materially independent (Radner 1999, 14–16). Worley generated a powerful presence on Laugh-In through signature features: hearty laughter, for instance, and Identity Politics routinely criticizing the show with the interjections “Boring!” and “Not another chicken joke!” She also blatantly parodied traditional femininity by proudly recounting her swinging sexcapades, always touching her cheek in mock innocence, and defying traditional standards of feminine beauty and comport- ment. Worley’s single girl character and her physical comedy and verbal wit provided a comedic counterpart to Emma Peel on the campy spy series The Avengers (ABC, 1967–69), which briefly played oppositeLaugh-In. Worley, like Peel, embodied “mobile femininity”: the single woman as powerful, public, youthful, and intelligent, embracing “femininity” yet rejecting passivity and objectification (Luckett 1999, 281–82). Worley continually showed her physical strength as an extension of her size, vocal potency, flamboyance, and sexual desire, perhaps 111 best exemplified when she accosted, overpowered, and objectified male cast members (recall her embrace of Gibson’s poet

Jo Anne Worley as the resident swinging single girl. character) as well as guest stars. In an interlude with “adorable Van Johnson,” as she addresses him, Worley grabs the elder

Chapter 4 star’s legs and jovially forces him to reveal his signature red socks: “Lemme see ’em!” she demands (10/21/68). In a gender- bending harem sketch, the visual punch line reveals Worley as the anonymous brawny figure toting Tony Curtis. Gender-role reversals continue later when Worley objectifies Curtis: “Oh Bernie, you Brooklyn beauty, you! I tell you what honey, if you got the sand, I got the bucket. Wahhhhahahahah!” (3/24/69). These instances also exemplify the single girl’s empowering narcissism, which—as Luckett (1999, 288) argues—fractures the unidirectional, objectifying power of the male gaze. Worley delighted in her own larger-than-life presence, invested with the trickster power signified by her hearty laughter, aggres- 112 sive commentary on the show, innuendo-infused stories about swinging, and brazenly mocking feminine innocence with that definitive touch of the cheek. In all of these respects, Worley manifested the feminist undercurrents of the single girl’s trip through the sexual revolution, described by Rowan the following season in the Women’s Movement segment as wanting “to get out and have a little fun, swing a little” (9/28/70). For Wor- ley, that was an understatement. Season three consistently brought the camp of Worley and Sues in close proximity. The cast introductions on an October episode identified them as virtually interchangeable; the camera shows Sues in the Joke Wall as Owens declaims, “Alan Sues, who tonight will appear as the beautiful and talented Jo Anne Worley,” leading to the revealing of Worley in the Joke Wall (10/6/69).17 Worley regularly introduced Big Al’s sports reports during season three, always littering them with queer euphemisms and double entendres: “Okay now, sports lovers, drop your socks and grab your tinkle, ’cause,” she rings a bell, “here’s the loveliest sport of them all, Big Al himself, take it away you old tinkle” (9/22/69). On one installment, Worley’s costume from the News production number enabled a special emphasis on both her and Sues’s contortions of gender. Dressed like a Identity Politics biker out of Scorpio Rising (1963), Worley announces, “Wher- ever sports get together, there’s one sport that drives them all mad—Hutton! Hutton! Betty Hutton! No, here’s the number one sport with the sporting folk . . . the sporting-girl’s best friend, Big Al, take it away, you big sport, you” (9/29/69). Wear- ing macho leather garb, Worley underscored Sues’s effeminacy, in addition to her camp references to Betty Hutton and “the sporting-girl’s best friend.” Worley’s enthusiastic, affectionate introduction suggested that she and Sues were best friends, but the gender-bending made it ambiguous as to who played “the sporting-girl” in their relationship. Sues and Worley’s relationship revealed the duality of the pre-Stonewall alliance between closeted gay men and heterosexual women. Doty (1993, 86) explains this, from the gay 113 man’s perspective, as a “love-hate relationship with the gender he recognizes his affinities with even while he feels restricted by conventional straight definitions of that gender.” Sues could show hostility to Worley, for instance, when she inverted gender roles: “Jo Anne, you’re adorable,” he says after one of Wor- ley’s Big Al introductions, “for a fullback you’re really adorable” (3/17/69). He also signaled sissy fear when she trumped his performance of masculinity. Still decked out in biker’s gear, Worley approaches Big Al after his featurette and asks if he wants to see her bike; he shrieks and scrambles away (9/29/69). Worley’s gender reversal yielded similar results later that season when she and Sues portrayed football players, she center and he quarterback. After Sues slaps Worley’s rear, she turns around angrily and slaps back. “Ow!” screams Sues. “I didn’t know it was you! . . . Oh! Vicious woman!” (3/9/70). Sues’s performance as the sissy misogynist articulated frustration with patriarchal, heteronormative perceptions of male homosexuality that regulated Laugh-In’s permissive displays of queerness, “as an imitation of straight femaleness” (Doty 1993, 88). Sues’s array of queeny male characters could not imitate, however, one pronounced feature of straight femaleness among the women of Laugh-In and especially Worley: sexual activity. Sues had his

Chapter 4 “tinkle,” but Laugh-In denied him a “Boris,” Tony Curtis, Van Johnson, or any number of the men whom Worley seduced on the show. When Worley outed Sues through coded references in her Big Al intros and when they traded offhand exchanges at the Joke Wall, a mutually liberating dynamic emerged with comedic force, defined by Doty (1993, 88) as “gay femininity con- necting with straight femininity”; this connection flourished even after Worley left Laugh-In at the end of season three. Sues began performing in drag as Worley and her Fairy Godmother character during season four (10/26/70, 11/23/70), and in one instance he belted out a lovingly narcissistic tribute to “herself” 114 (11/16/70). Impersonating Worley, Sues had the opportunity to redeem his queeny effeminacy as a sign of strength rather than failure, antics that his pansy characters were most often denied. He tapped into the power and pleasure of Worley’s larger-than- life persona, the visibly narcissistic glee she took in her own exaggerated, excessive behavior that armed her against being fully objectified. As Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother, Sues wears a pink gown and black wig and, in Worley’s style, touches his cheek with his index finger and sings out words (elongating their syl- lables). In one bit when the Fairy Godmother can only offer the waif “two tickets to Boys in the Band,” the Fairy’s laughter, spin- ning, singing, and putting finger to cheek suggest delight in the ironic combination of the fairy tale Cinderella and the popular gay-themed film (11/23/70). A rapid-fire sequence later in the season allowed for Sues the female Fairy to undercut negativity toward Sues the male “pervert”: a sketch shows Sues, according to the script’s directions, “perverted looking in leather, carrying a whip and chains,” in an adult bookstore, followed by the punch line “Do you sell ‘Newsweek’?” This cuts to Sues as the Fairy/Worley, who comments “Boring” (2/22/71; Anon. n.d., script 1770-23, 85). Although Sues’s perverted-looking leather Identity Politics

115

Jo Anne Worley and Alan Sues in Fairy drag. man and the adult bookstore setting emblematized Laugh-In’s “burlesque depictions of queers as thrilling objects of scandal”

Chapter 4 (Spigel 2008, 268), his rejoinder in drag as Worley pooh-poohs the sensationalism with camp ennui. If Worley’s flamboyant introductions helped to out Sues, Sues’s impersonations of Wor- ley enabled him to replace the failed masculinity of his closeted gay persona with the triumphant, powerful femininity embodied by Worley. The fleeting sense of radical individuality and community among Laugh-In’s outsiders temporarily pointed the spotlight at their critical agency and pleasure, briefly disrupting the hegemony of the hosts, NBC, and the evasive ambiguity of the program’s politics. Flip Wilson’s assertive, charismatic distinction complemented the community formed through Johnny 116 Brown and Sammy Davis Jr.’s interactions, all of which refo- cused the program’s racial discourse to the complex perspective of African Americans negotiating varied versions of black (and white) identity. Such subtle disruptions also emerged through the feminist individuality of Lily Tomilin and the connection of queer and feminist camp forged between Worley and Sues. These and other ensemble members indicated a subculture within the cuckoos invested in putting on conventions of race, gender, and sexuality and also ripping them away. Conclusion Put-Ons, Closets, Cop-Outs, and Legacies

117

ithout slipping into simplistic historical reflection, it Wwould seem that Altman (1971, 108) was correct in his assessment that Laugh-In “may be one of the finer barometers of American mores we have.” Laugh-In traipsed into the counterculture, guided by the permissive exercise of taste. If the show flaunted its irreverence to tastefulness in a grand put-on of comedy-variety shows, politics, and culture, it never entirely jettisoned its grounding in tradition. Citations of radical chic gave the show currency (“Now, that’s black power,” “You don’t have to be happy to be gay”). And in the same gesture, the show recycled racial and sexual stereotypes that signaled the difference of minority groups at the same time as it sealed them in time-tested personas, from Amos ’n’ Andy references and the catchphrase “Here come the judge” to the euphemisms and stereotypes associated with women and gay men. Dan Rowan and Dick Martin acted as referees and occasional players among the hip cuckoos in their midst. Rowan and Martin’s gambit redeemed the Establishment as hip through courting the counterculture; while mocking the prudish fears of the Establishment, they also neutralized the counterculture’s threats to conventional society. Ambivalence, ambiguity, and open secrecy ruled Laugh-In. A fourth-season installment with Conclusion William F. Buckley Jr. demonstrated this stratagem with particular force (12/28/70). Rowan asked the right-wing columnist, National Review editor, and talk-show host about his recent interview with Playboy and his appearance that night on Laugh-In: “Would this indicate you’re becoming more hip? Have you decided to loosen up, a little bit, becoming a swinger as they say?” The key status words here are “hip” and “swinger,” two former provinces of countercultural vulgarity (black culture and the sexual revolution) that the permissive Establishment had increasingly colonized throughout the 1960s. Buckley eventually answers Rowan’s question at the end of the episode in his re- 118 sponse to a similar one posed by Ruth Buzzi: “Now that you’re here . . . will it hurt your image or ours the most?” Buckley replies, “Well I suppose it will make you more respectable and me less so, and both of those are probably to be desired.” Laugh-In and Buckley explicated the exchange of cultural status involved: Buckley’s traditional high culture and Laugh- In’s borderline taste. In a sober setting and format utterly out of character for Laugh-In, Buckley sat behind a desk, flanked by hosts Rowan and Martin, before an audience of cast members. The show’s closeted vulgarity nevertheless infiltrated the panel session through the put-ons, irony, and ambivalence lacing the questions of ensemble members Alan Sues, Johnny Brown, and Lily Tomlin. Sues asked Buckley with a tone of friendly sarcasm, “Did you see Myra Breckinridge, and why not?” The reference to this campy, controversial flop drew attention to Buckley’s homophobic feud with novelist Gore Vidal (a recent Laugh-In guest who returned throughout the season in cameos). Sues also punctuated the relationship between taste and countercultural lifestyles, since Myra Breckinridge had acquired the reputation of being a “loathsome,” “vulgar,” “anti-American” paean to the sexual revolution and gay liberation.1 Brown asked, “In Burbank Mr. Buckley, ninety-eight percent of the people who Conclusion can read read The National Review, and all four of them like it. Conversely, what is your reaction to Burbank?” Brown’s question veered around such implications as the stupidity of far- right conservatives such as Buckley and the dire need for lit- eracy. Par for the course with the put-on, who Brown’s joke was putting down remained unclear: conservatives, Burbankites, or the illiterate. Although the rigidity of the guest and the setting precluded any vulgar displays of difference by Brown and Sues, since they were playing themselves, Tomlin benefited from playing a character, Ernestine the phone operator, another of the show’s intrepid single girls: “I wanted you to know I’m a big fan of yours Mr. F’Buckley. I was curious, what does the ‘F’ stand for? You needn’t tell me, I’ll come up later and inspect your pencil. . . . There are a great many books out now, like 119 Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Sex but Were Afraid to Ask, the Masters and Johnson’s book, and then there’s The Sen- suous Woman, not unlike myself. What position do you hold on these books, and where are you staying in Burbank?” All three cast members conveyed subversive difference through the devices of the hip trickster—connotation, duplicity, suggestion, and innuendo—as well as their own personas: the humorously critical black man, the camp (gay) man, and the sexually hungry, assertive single career woman. Posed in the persona of Ernestine, Tomlin pushed the sexual suggestion in her question; the stream of associations ignited a sense of subversive hilarity, from “F’Buckley” and the letter “F” to Buckley’s pencil, his position on sexual self-help best sellers, and his local whereabouts. As Brown, Tomlin, and Sues brought hip credibility to the conversation with square Buckley through countercultural deviance, the lucidity of their critiques remained closeted within irony and indirection. That was the charm of Laugh-In: its primary draw, commercial strategy, and aesthetic. The larger project of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In remained to reframe the “radical pantheon” (Altman 1971, 108), the related countercultures, and all that they represented—the anger, visibility, and joy of Black Power activists, feminists, gay liberationists, and young people—accordingly for the Estab- Conclusion lishment. Recalling Laugh-In’s seeming sympathy with the margins of radical youth culture, cartoonist Matt Groening’s passing reference encapsulates several key aspects of Laugh-In’s popular significance in the late 1960s: “I had a couple of decent teachers, teachers who weren’t scandalized by Laugh-In. . . . A lot of my social life was built around anti-war protests. We were totally into the counterculture. We read underground papers and bought Zap comics and worshiped R. Crumb. And this was totally without the support of the school” (Anon. 1999). If Laugh-In proved to be only an incidental interest for the counterculture, who preferred underground media, the popular 120 program signaled affection for countercultural values and aesthetics sufficiently enough to demarcate particular social positions: the “decent” adults not “scandalized by Laugh-In,” and presumably not hostile to the counterculture, from everyone else. Groening’s The Simpsons (Fox, 1989–present) fulfilled a similar function in its early seasons when Establishment figures such as President George H. W. Bush enlisted the sitcom as a limit point in the culture wars, a symptom of decaying family values. Laugh-In also impacted Groening’s comedic style, his strategy to “mask his countercultural agenda” with comedy and “irreverence” (Rushkoff 2004, 295). Both the Smothers Broth- ers Comedy Hour and “the fast-paced Laugh-In” influenced the “subversive comedy” of The Simpsons: “We do jokes very fast,” Groening stated, “so if you’re mad about a joke, it’s too late” (Bianculli 2009, 353).2 Disenfranchised taste publics did, however, take liberating pleasure in Laugh-In’s citations of minority culture, as the Bay State Banner (Anon. 1968b) and Altman (1971) testified at the time. In 1995, the comedy collective Funny Gay Males fondly cited Laugh-In cast member Alan Sues as one of the “campy comedians” of television who appealed to “gay kids” and served as an early means of coming out (Cohen, McWilliams, and Conclusion Smith 1995, 127). When Sues passed away in 2011, the recollections of an associate confirmed that “Many gay men came up to him and said how important he was when they were young because he was the only gay man they could see on television,” despite the fact that Sues and his characters never literally came out (Slotnik 2001). Laugh-In’s impact on the emerging queer culture of the 1990s manifested in both mainstream and subcultural settings. On the sketch comedy show Kids in the Hall (CBC, 1988–95), for instance, Scott Thompson devised an out variation on Big Al in his iconic character Buddy Cole. Buddy poses quips while lounging in a gay bar and sipping a drink, a Cocktail Party of one. Both Big Al and Buddy address the audience directly as outspoken queens, a familiar stereotype, but only one of them is out (a fact also pertaining to the ac- 121 tors playing them). This vital difference relates to “the ways in which different historical moments have redefined these same stereotypes to serve different sociopolitical purposes and material orders” (Sutherland 2008, 103). Big Al materialized the transition from complete queer invisibility on TV to a closeted presence in the wake of increasing gay activism (and other social, cultural, and economic changes); his stereotypical humor and partial presence played off the tensions of the closet. Buddy Cole personified an out queen characteristic of the new queer sexual revolution that materialized at the end of the 1980s as a response to oppressive homophobia and the devastating AIDS crisis. If Big Al reveled in his “tinkle” and used “queen” and “gay” as euphemisms, Buddy luxuriated in unabashed queer sexual pleasure while recognizing how politicized this was: “They say that blacks are inferior because they like to dance and screw around. Excuse me? I love to dance, and as far as I’m concerned, screwing is next to godliness. And I’m the smartest person I know” (10/16/88). Queer echoes of Laugh-In also emerged during the same period in the Greenwich Village drag festival Wigstock, another forum that radicalized queer stereotypes. The drag show’s visual and musical style inspired comparisons to Laugh-In (Stewart 1987; Pokorny and Tracey 1990), and in 1995 featured “2 Laugh-in inspired segments with dozens of Conclusion go-go dancin’ queens telling rotgut jokes” (Lady Bunny 2011). The appropriation by radical queers in the late 1980s of Laugh- In as a camp inspiration for liberated sexual expression confirmed the program’s anti-Establishment reputation, its capacity for addressing marginalized audiences, the ironic delights and political potential of stereotypes, and the power of fans to engage in so-called perverse interpretations. Laugh-In’s impact on African-American comedy remains more ambiguous, especially considering arguments about the legacy of The Flip Wilson Show. Sutherland (2008, 103–4) traces a genealogy of tropes introduced on The Flip Wilson Show and 122 recirculated on programs such as In Living Color (Fox, 1990– 94) and Chappelle’s Show (Comedy Central, 2003–6). Although Laugh-In inaugurated the new dissemination of stereotypes and Chitlin’ Circuit characters on network television with appearances by Wilson, Sammy Davis Jr., and Dewey “Pigmeat” Markham, and while some African-American audiences affirmed this at the time, Wilson’s program impacted African- American culture more directly and enduringly. As the hosts of their own programs, Wilson, Chappelle, and the Wayans brothers recycled stereotypes that implicated themselves and other African Americans, a huge difference from the white hosts and producers of Laugh-In. All of these shows deployed distanciation, aestheticism, and counterdistinction in their incorpora- tion of racialized humor and their efforts to shock the bourgeoisie. However, the risks of political ambivalence differed for Laugh-In. Sutherland (2008, xxiii–xxiv) cites Dave Chappelle’s concern over white audiences laughing at stereotypes rather than the social satire they were supposed to provoke, whereas the producers and hosts of Laugh-In invited political ambivalence and the possibility for derogatory laughter as a condi- tion for the show to work. All four programs furnished a hip payoff for responsive audiences, but the rewards as well as the Conclusion losses differed based on the proximity of Wilson, the Wayans, and Chappelle to their provocations. As white Establishment squares, Rowan and Martin could maintain utter distance.3 In its put-ons of radical, countercultural types alongside those of the Establishment, Laugh-In alternated its identification between various sides of the political and cultural spectrum of the late 1960s and early 1970s. If the program served as a permissive “solvent of morality” (Sontag 1966, 290), it also reclaimed a space for the Establishment to safely perch between stuffy, square, traditional tastefulness and the hip, radical, tasteless counterculture. Laugh-In left it for the audience to decide whether or not to pull any punches when Nixon asked, “Sock it to me?” Was this a radically democratic and original approach to television comedy, or was it a brilliant but cynical commer- 123 cial strategy? This question exemplifies the program’s cop-out strategy, as does a typical Laugh-In cliché imported from the counterculture: “Whatever turns you on.” Or, differently put: whatever compels you to turn the TV on. If this position let Laugh-In, its producers, NBC, and Establishment-minded audiences off the hook, it also inspired relocating the power of signification from the program, the network, and the majority culture to the minds and perceptions of outsider audiences.

Notes

Introduction Research for this book was based in part on Barbara Dixon, “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” interview with cast and crew, Paley Center Seminar, February 28, 2003; Jenni Matz and Bill Dana, interview with George Schlatter, American Comedy Archives Oral History Proj- ect, Emerson College, March 8, 2005; and Jenni Matz and Bill Dana, interview with Dick Martin, American Comedy Archives Oral His- tory Project, Emerson College, January 27, 2006. I accessed episodes 125 of Rowan and Margin’s Laugh-In through scripts in the Dan Rowan Collection housed at the American Heritage Center archive and taped episodes in the Paley Center collection in addition to Rhino Home Video collections of syndicated episodes. In some cases, I had access to both script and video for the same episode and created my own transcripts for the episodes screened exclusively on video. 1. I am indebted to the Wayne State series editors for helping me clarify this point. 2. Air dates for Laugh-In episodes as well as episodes for other television shows are given in parentheses in the format month/day/year. 3. For a discussion of taste, morality, lifestyle, and ideology and their historical intersection in U.S. popular consciousness, see Levine (1988). His discussion of Sontag and “the new sensibility” (243–45) remains especially applicable to the examination of Laugh-In. 4. It is interesting to consider Keyes’s image of the American living room as a space for both wholesome (or at worst “naughty”) entertainment and as a space for breaching middle-class taste and morality by telling dirty jokes. One wonders if such sentiments were imparted by the producers and writers of prior comedy-variety shows or sitcoms. Keyes’s statement publicly acknowledges the cohabitation of dirti- ness and taste in the sanctified family living room. 5. Critics and commentators continually allude to the “dirty” meanings underlying Laugh-In’s “irreverent” humor. See Van Horne (1969), Notes Porter (1968), Rowan (1969), Compton (1968), Barthel (1971, 62), Anon. (1968f), Shain (1968d), Gordon (1968), Anon. (1968c), Brodhead (1969, 81), and Dietz (1968). 6. As Dave Madden kids the second season, “I’d like to tell you right from the start that I don’t do dirty jokes. Wholesome is as wholesome does” (9/16/68). 7. References to the show’s liberal stances also include Anon. (1968f), Anon. (1968d), Compton (1968), Dallos (1968), Shain (1968b), and Anon. (1969d). 8. A month later Rowan stated to TIME magazine, “We put everybody on, but we never put anybody down” (Anon. 1968d).

Chapter 1 126 1. See, for example, Spigel (2008), Ross (1989) and Carr (1992) for analyses of how taste operated in the United States after World War II in relation to an array of social categories and hierarchies. 2. That Lynes specifies “advertisers” as exploiting this lower-middlebrow image is significant in the context of network television in the 1950s and early 1960s, when sponsors and advertising agencies had more control over television content. 3. For further analyses of the postwar rebellion against middlebrow taste, see Thompson (2011), Taylor (1999), and Feil (2009). 4. Levine (2007, 165–77) highlights comedic trends innovated in television by Laugh-In: “suggestive” double-entendres and the incorpora- tion of socially satirical, sexual humor. 5. It is interesting to consider Williams’s (2008, 165–70) discussion of Barbarella (1968) and its place in youth/antiwar culture at the time with respect to Southern, who wrote the screenplay. 6. Then again, the dialogue is designed to downplay “Leave It to Beaver” as the punch line, which would call attention to the double entendre, making the final joke about ABC’s low ratings. See, for instance, references in the Introduction to Schlatter’s strategies for circumventing censorship. 7. For an interesting historical critique of McLuhan, written in 1970 from a vantage point sympathetic to the counterculture and its uses of the media, see Widmer (1971). See also Ross (1989). Notes Chapter 2 1. Taylor (1999, 120) explains that film culture’s “new popular avant- garde strove to overturn middlebrow judgment entirely. This was not a matter of carefully discerning ‘the best that is known and thought,’ but of totally redefining ‘popular art’ on individual and subcultural terms.” 2. See Paul’s discussion of the “dirty words” movement (1994, 38–43), for instance, and Taylor’s examinations of cult, camp and their links to the youth counterculture of the 1960s (1999, 94–95, 119). 3. Two young letter writers articulate this sentiment in their defense of the critically mauled What’s New Pussycat? See Kent (1965) and Feil (2009, 146–47). 4. For an exhaustive list of popular articles on camp published from 1964 to 1966, see Cleto (1999, 461–64). 5. For a fuller consideration of how camp and homosexuality conjoined in popular discourse of the mid to late 1960s, see Feil (2009, 141– 127 48). My work here on Laugh-In builds upon this earlier effort. 6. Consider, for instance, Shana Alexander’s affirmative musings about camp (1966) and “the loony humor of the yippies” (1968) in her “Feminine Eye” column in LIFE magazine. 7. Two years earlier in the New York Times, Meehan (1965, 113) had defined the put-on as one manifestation of camp sensibility, and in a reversal, Brackman figured camp as a cultural manifestation of the put-on. 8. Carne’s style and appearance evoked that of the British fashion model Twiggy, whom Brackman (1967, 34) describes as a “mod,” “camp” put-on of fashion models due to her boyish figure. TIME (Anon. 1966a) also associates Twiggy with camp. 9. For a similar discussion in the context of underground “comix” culture, see Abel (1971, 423). 10. Erickson (2000, 114) notes the gay connotations associated with Hud- son in a series of News jokes on the series’ premiere episode (1/22/68). 11. Hefner, Day, and Hudson all rose to stardom during the early 1950s, but Hefner’s philosophy did not acquire mainstream acceptance until the 1960s, when popular films such asKiss Me, Stupid and How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying began citing Playboy. 12. For two fascinating interpretations of Pillow Talk, its ambiguous “Playboy” sensibility, and the use of sexualized double entendres, see Cohan (1997, 265–83) and Wojcik (2010, 116–21). 13. It is worth noting Hefner’s normative reputation as a square disguised as a hipster who reduced hipness to mere lifestyle and consumer Notes choices: “He was a square with a sporty wardrobe and a hard-on, congratulated by a magazine that told him this was hip” (Leland 2004, 153–54; see also 247–48). 14. As Levine (2007, 173) explains, “Though the joke depended upon the stereotypical association between homosexuality and effeminacy, it also managed to critique the draft and the military’s intolerance for homosexuals, complicating the humor’s sexual politics.” 15. Dollimore’s (1991, 247) discussion of ambivalent desire helps illu- minate the baffled, disgusted fascination with Tiny Tim expressed in popular discourse, such as Shearer (1968) and Anon. (1968e). 16. For a historical example of the view that camp is deviant or perverted, see Velde (1966). 17. The Rounders’ “The Bird Song” was also featured on the soundtrack 128 for Easy Rider. Referring to the Rounders as “good avant-garde art” recalls Taylor’s (1999, 120) comment about film culture’s “new popular avant-garde,” which “strove to overturn middlebrow judgment entirely.” 18. I am drawing from Leland’s (2004, 162–64) analysis of the hip trickster. 19. Carr (1992) and Bodroghkozy (2001, 153-56) explore the accusations of “tastelessness.” Among the numerous comparisons of The Smothers Brothers to Laugh-In in popular discourse, see Dallos (1968), Brodhead (1969, 80–83), Barthel (1968, 140), Anon. (1968f), Anon. (1969d), Anon. (1969b), Anon. (1969c), Shain (1968b), and Rowan (1969, 20–21). 20. Bodroghkozy (2001, 149) briefly considers Rowan’s comments as symptomatic of Laugh-In’s political evasiveness, but her insightful analysis of the two shows fails to explore the contradictions involved: that Laugh-In’s comedic style mattered in inscribing—no matter how duplicitously—a countercultural address. 21. For discussions of Baez on both programs, in addition to stylistic differences, see Carr (1992, 4), Bodroghkozy (2001, 148–49, 150–51), and Erickson (2000, 18–19). 22. As Carr (1992, 19) summarizes, “Laugh-In had Richard Nixon inton- ing ‘Sock it to me’; The Smothers Brothers had Pete Seeger singing ‘Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.’” Seeger’s song, like Baez’s, stood as a solemn, sincere Vietnam War protest song. His performance on Notes February 25, 1968, also represented a triumph of free speech, as CBS executives had initially and noisily forbidden the number (Bodrogh- kozy 2001, 129–34). 23. Such a reconciliation might have won Nixon the presidency, in addition to Laugh-In being the number-one rated show. See Neuwirth (2006, 75–76) and McGinnis (1971, 401–6.)

Chapter 3 1. Consider, though, the TV networks’ calculated efforts to address youth audiences without alienating older ones. See Carr (1992, 7, 11–14), Bodroghkozy (2001, 61–69), and Levine (2007, 21–23). 2. It is interesting to consider the mildly hostile reaction to Laugh-In by the Saturday Evening Post (see Dietz 1968, 34), a favorite periodical of viewers of The Lawrence Welk Show (Gans 1999, 118). 129 3. On the political and social valences of Batman’s dual address, see also Spigel and Jenkins (1991, 122–26). 4. Sutherland (2008, 7) compares The Flip Wilson Show to All in the Fam- ily, along the lines of shows with social relevancy, but this fellowship is also forged in the popular reception of Wilson’s comedy-variety series (Anon. 1970b, 89). TIME magazine also discusses the episode of All in the Family in which Archie Bunker’s racism is challenged because he enjoys The Flip Wilson Show (Anon. 1972a; Anon. 1972b). 5. The news report structure of Ward’s play, combined with its vaudeville, sketch-like comedy, also forecasts the type of bits featured on Laugh-In, especially the News segments. The use of whiteface reemerges in Melvin Van Peebles’s film Watermelon Man (1970), in which Godfrey Cambridge plays a white racist for the first act of the film. 6. The NBC special Soul! (October 17, 1968, produced by Schlatter- Friendly) was one attempt at an all-black cast comedy-variety show, including Chelsea Brown, Redd Foxx, Lou Rawls, and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. Many reviews compared Soul!—with jokes and gags that mingled recycled stereotypes with social satire and with director Mark Warren at the helm—positively to Laugh-In. Erickson (2000, 187–88) explains that NBC refused the program as a series because of either legal threats from Rowan and Martin over owner- ship of the Laugh-In format or fears that it would alienate southern white viewers. See also Anon. (1969a, 83), Shain (1968c), and Anon. (1970d, 114). Notes 7. References to Harvey as bisexual include episodes during Season 2 (2/3/69), Season 3 (9/29/69), and Season 4 (2/1/71 and 2/8/71). 8. Debates over representation involved not only minority publics’ concerns over what dominant audiences experienced but also what the minority publics experienced (Sutherland 2008, 84–85). Gains over dominant hegemony were viewed not just in terms of how mainstream pleasure impacted perceptions of minority groups; there was also the question of whether the mainstream culture industry was addressing and entertaining minority groups. Minority pleasure, in other words, became a category to factor into the political struggle.

Chapter 4

130 1. Julia and Laugh-In signaled NBC’s efforts to integrate its programming, as discussed by Marc (1998, 29), Marc (1996, 18), and Staiger (2000a, 98). 2. Ossie Davis’s 1961 Broadway smash Purlie Victorious (as well as the 1963 film adaptionGone Are the Days) and Douglas Turner Ward’s 1965 comedy Day of Absence (discussed in chapter 3) had rejected the middlebrow, integrative aesthetic with stylized parodies of racist stereotypes that exposed, according to Hatch (1974, 654), “the ab- surdity of segregation.” But Hatch argues that both plays subscribed to integrationist ideals, suggesting how the distinctive model of representation can serve the ideological goals of integration. Dick Greg- ory’s provocative stand-up comedy routines (he was a second season guest on Laugh-In) wielded the distinctive approach by embracing his blackness as a means of identifying and critiquing racist distinctions that “slid himself and the [white] audience into territory where the points of guilt and race began to shift” (Leland 2004, 162; see also 161, 167). 3. Davis also performs this routine in the spy spoof One More Time (1970), costarring his Rat Pack comrade (and frequent Laugh-In guest) Peter Lawford. Davis’s two films with Lawford (includingSalt and Pepper, 1968) prompted Bogle’s (1991, 215) reprimand that Davis “returned to his comic coon figures” as “loyal man-Friday to Lawford.” 4. Where Laugh-In signified concern over its representations of Afri- can Americans (flawed as it was) and address to African-American audiences (albeit geared to a constructed white mainstream viewer), Notes the program showed no concerns over Asian representations or spectators. Racist humor about Asians abounded in jokes about physical features and pronunciation, and both white and African-American performers cracked those jokes. In a second-season episode, for instance, Ruth Buzzi and Arte Johnson appeared in stereotypical makeup and garb to discuss the Hong Kong flu, she “Miss Fong” and he her “coolie” (3/3/69). On another episode the same season, the News segment chorus dressed as geishas, with cast members altering pronunciation according to stereotype (3/17/69). The critical mimicry of the show’s African-American humor could surface through performers such as Flip Wilson, Sammy Davis Jr., and Johnny Brown, but Asian performers only made occasional appearances on Laugh-In. Pat Morita appeared in the first and fifth seasons (3/11/68, 9/13/71), and France Nuyen appeared in the second season (10/7/68)—both of them participating in racialized put-ons. 5. Episodes that contain braless feminist jokes include 12/28/70, 131 1/4/71, 1/11/71, among many more. 6. Episodes that reference Myra Breckinridge include 9/22/69, 10/6/69, 12/29/69, 1/12/70, 2/2/70, 2/16/70, and 3/9/70. 7. Rowan’s rants against feminism emerge unfiltered in a letter to friend John D. MacDonald about his divorce, motivated by the desire of Adriana Van Ballegooyen (his wife) to be liberated. See Rowan and MacDonald (1986, 225). 8. The label “swinger” circulated widely in the late 1960s and early 1970s, indicating a cultural sensibility, such as in the Chicago Tri- bune’s “Swinging Things” listings of film and theater, and a sexual lifestyle, such as in the New York Times story “Young ‘Swingers’ Touted as Market for Apartments” and Gore Vidal’s controversial best seller Myra Breckinridge. See, for instance, Fried (1967), Anon. (1967a), Leighton (1967), Anon. (1965), Vidal (1968, 90), and Eisner (1999, 256, 259). 9. A case could surely be made for the homoerotic/homosocial pairing of Rowan and Martin similar to analyses of other male comedy duos. See Cohan (1999). 10. This is the episode that MacDonald objected to for its “queer” humor. See Rowan and MacDonald (1986, 76). 11. Tyler spends considerable time (185-186), for instance, describing a fourth season Laugh-In sketch about the gay son of a Mafia boss that climaxes with an offscreen kiss between two brothers, a stereotypical

Notes gangster assigned to execute his queer sibling, dressed as a balle- rina. Tyler reasons that the comedy reflects the new possibility for gay desire to infiltrate popular entertainment. It is also worth mention- ing that Tyler was Gore Vidal’s inspiration for the character Myron Breckinridge, the gay film critic who, through gender reassignment surgery, transforms into Myra Breckinridge. 12. This episode also includes six innocuous running gags about Planned Parenthood. See Anon. (n.d., script 1770-14, 10, 22, 35, 49, 72–73, 81). 13. Tomlin’s aversion to marriage and bourgeois values might have also suggested her lesbian orientation, which she closeted at the time. 14. Episodes using Fire Island as a gay euphemism include 12/28/70, 9/29/69, 12/29/69, 3/17/69, and 1/6/69. 15. For a retrospective consideration of Sues’s queer significance, see Slotnik (2011). 132 16. Episodes with Sues in stereotypical roles include artist, 11/8/71, 3/9/70, and 12/1/69; underground filmmaker, 9/22/69 and 11/3/69; hairdresser, 10/21/68; prisoner, 2/10/69; and associated with camp, 9/16/68 and 10/14/68. It is also vital to address Sues’s recurrent character Uncle Al the Kiddies’ Pal, an irascible, alcoholic childrens’ television show host who clearly despises his target audience. Uncle Al resides uneasily next to homophobic social beliefs linking homosexuality with pedophilia. Sues plays the character along the lines of a gay W. C. Fields, a comedic decision that also appears as a choice of one stereotype—the bitchy, alcoholic queen—over a much more threatening and less funny one. 17. Erickson (2000, 159) mentions that “some accounts” claimed that Laugh-In’s producers hired Sues “as a male counterpart to the outrageous Jo Anne Worley.”

Conclusion 1. The reception of Myra Breckinridge has been explored in terms of New Hollywood, national taste codes, and the role of camp as an instrument of gay satire. See Benshoff (2008), Hoberman (2008, 153–80), Feil (2011), and Diffrient (2013). 2. Variations on Laugh-In’s borderline taste, reverse sophistication, ambivalent politics, and use of provocative stereotypes recurrently resurface in subsequent television comedy, both sitcoms and vari- Notes ety shows, beginning with All in the Family (Staiger 2000a, 89). Al- though Saturday Night Live (NBC, 1975–present) might appear as an obvious offspring, since producer Lorne Michaels had written for Laugh-In, Kids in the Hall, the producer’s Canadian counterpart to Sat- urday Night Live, owes a greater debt. Michaels dismisses Laugh-In’s influence onSaturday Night Live, but the pace-setting variety show was viewed as impacting network variety shows of the 1970s, such as Cher. Laugh-In’s ambivalent political humor does compare to that of Saturday Night Live, and speculations exist about the voter influence of both shows; also comparable are the shows’ ardent (but very different) tapping of the counterculture for comedic material. See O’Connor (1975), Leonard (1975), and Kolbert (2004). 3. The exception to this would be director Mark Warren, who was directly implicated in Laugh-In’s racialized humor.

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144 Index

ABC (TV network), 1, 19, 24, 31, representations of feminism, 145 111, 126n6 98–116 passim; and media Acham, Christine, 68 representations of homosexuality, aestheticism. See Bourdieu, Pierre; 71–75, 83–84, 103–4; 98–116 camp; counterdistinction; passim; and the put-on, 57; and distanciation; hip; taste, strategy of deliberate ambiguity, highbrow; taste, minority 2, 9, 14, 22, 57, 63, 118, 132n2; Agnew, Spiro T., 15, 22, 32, 75, 110 and taste codes, 2, 9, 11, 15–16, All in the Family, 1, 68, 129n4, 133n2 50, 53, 83–84; and taste politics, Allen, Dennis, 103, 104 6, 14, 37, 50, 65, 86–87. See Alpert, Herb, 55–56 also borderline taste; camp; Altman, Dennis, 102–3, 107, 117, closeted signification; hip; put-on; 120, reception; taste ambiguity. See ambivalence; and Amos ’n’ Andy: cited on Laugh-In, closeted meaning 6, 14, 71, 81, 84, 85, 86, ambivalence: aesthetic, 67–69 117; and debates over media (see also Sutherland, Meghan); representations of African and closeted signification, Americans, 91–98. See also 65, 69–71, 118, 128n15; and Brown, Johnny; Davis, Sammy Jr. fragmented address, 82–83; Apartment, The, 29 and mass camp, 16, 68–69; and Avengers, The, 111 media representations of African Americans, 67–68, 75–82, 83–84, Baez, Joan, 59–60, 128n21 86–98 passim, 122–23; and media Barnes, Billy, 18 Barthel, Joan, 8, 38 Bourdieu, Pierre, 6–8, 24–25. See Batman (ABC, 1966–68), 1, 19, also camp; counterdistinction; Index 65–66, 139n3. See also camp: hip; taste mass camp Boys in the Band, The (film), 114 Bay State Banner, 92–93, 98, 120 Brackman, Jacob: “The Put-On,” Ball, Lucille, 85, 86. See also Lucy 41–46. See also put-on Show, the Brodhead, James E. See Inside Laugh-In Beatles, the, 54, 56 Brown, Chelsea, 87, 88, 129n6; and beaver films, 31, 33 closet, 74–77, 78–82; expressing Belafonte, Harry, 56 marginalized perspective and Bennett, Lerone, Jr., 93–94 critical agency, 16, 77–78, 90–91; Benshoff, Harry M., 73 and hip reputation of Laugh-In, 37, Best, Willie, 77 79, 89; and racial/ethnic comedy, Big Al (character), 12, 42, 83, 5, 6, 89, 91. See also Black Power; 112–14. See also put-on: media closeted signification; taste: race; representations of gays; camp; minstrelsy Sues, Alan Brown, Johnny, 87; and Amos ’n’ 146 Black Panthers, 40, 102 Andy, 92 (see also Amos ’n’ Andy); Black Power, 3, 7, 14, 41, 120; and closet, 82; and debates over and closeted signification, 70, media representations of African 77–79; and the counterculture, Americans, 96; expressing 22, 38; and debates about marginalized perspective and media representations of critical agency, 16, 20, 88, 93, African Americans, 90–91, 93, 95, 98, 118–119; and hip, 37; 97; and Flip Wilson Show, The, and put-on, 119 68; “Now that’s black power!” Buckley, William F., Jr., 118–19 (catchphrase), 6, 117. See Buddy Cole (character), 121 also Brown, Chelsea; Brown, Buñuel, Luis, 26 Johnny; Cleaver, Eldridge; Bush, George H. W., 120 Flip Wilson Show, The; put-on: Buzzi, Ruth, 4, 110, 118, 131n4. See media representations of African also Gladys Ormphby (character) Americans; taste: race; Wilson, Flip Cambridge, Godfrey, 129n5 Boccaccio ’70, 29–30 camp, 7, 18; and aestheticism, 16; Bodroghkozy, Aniko, 57, 88, 128n19, and ambivalence, 68–69; and the 128n20, 128n21, 129n1 counterculture, 43–45, 51–55, borderline taste: and reverse 65–66, 68–69, 127n2, 127n6; sophistication, 8–9, 19, 65, feminist, 110–12; gay, 7, 39–40, 68–69, 70, 118, 132–133n2 44–45, 119, 127n5; and hip, 7, Boston Globe, 57 13, 16 (see also hip); mass, 8, 9, 16, 19, 66–67 (see also Batman; Flip Wilson Show, The); and Nixon, CBS (TV network): and middlebrow Index Richard, 62; and the put-on, taste, 24–25; and sex comedy on 43–44, 51, 53–55, 127n8; queer, TV, 29, 49, 85. See also Smothers 121–22; and race, 4–6, 39–41, Brothers Comedy Hour, The, and 79–80, 94; and Sues, Alan, 13, tastelessness 107–109, 120, 132n16; and censorship/self-censorship, 29, Worley, Jo Anne, 109–16 (see 57; and NBC’s policies, 65, 70, also camp, and Alan Sues; camp, 71–74; parody of, 3, 18, 22, feminist; single girl). See also 49; and Schlatter’s attempts to closeted signification; hip; Myra circumvent, 14. See also NBC; Breckinridge; put-on; reception; reception; Schlatter, George Sontag, Susan; Sues, Alan; taste, Chappelle, Dave, 122–23 minority; taste: subversion of Chappelle’s Show. See Chappelle, Dave bourgeois/middlebrow; Wilson, Cher (comedy-variety show), 133n2 Flip; Worley, Jo Anne Chien Andalou, Un, 26 Candy, 31, 33 Chitlin’ Circuit, 84, 86, 91–92, 122 Capote, Truman, 37, 58, 99 Cleaver, Eldridge, 40 147 Carmichael, Stokely, 41 closeted signification: and open Carne, Judy: and camp, 127n8; and secrecy, 8, 11, 64–69, 84, media representations of African 118–19; and representing the Americans, 74, 76, 77; as youth counterculture, 50, 69; and counterculture stand-in, 37, 42, representing gender, 69–70, 73, 60, 61 84, 101–5; and representing Carr, Steven Alan, 24–25, 56, homosexuality, 70–74, 83–84, 126n1, 128n19 106–16, 121, 132n13; and Carroll, Diahann. See Julia representing race, 70–71, 74–82, Carson, Johnny, 103 84, 97; and Rowan and Martin, Casino Royale (film, 1967), 41 84, 97. See also Brown, Chelsea; catchphrases, 2; “Blow in his ear Sues, Alan; taste: closeting and he’ll follow you anywhere,” vulgarity; Tomlin, Lily; Worley, 54; “Here come the judge,” 86, Jo Anne 92, 93–94, 96; “Look that up in Cocktail Party (segment), 18; and your Funk ’n’ Wagnall’s,” 2, 10, hip/square, 17, 50–51; and racial 49, 61–62; “Not another chicken satire, 42, 46, 89, 90–91, 97; joke,” 75, 78, 111; “Now that’s and sexual satire, 104, 109, 121; Black Power,” 6, 117; “Sock it and utopian aesthetics, 60–61 to me,” 46, 49, 61 (see Nixon, Cold War, 23, 26 Richard); “You bet your bippy” Colgate Comedy Hour Special, The 49. See also Amos ’n’ Andy; Big (1967), 41 Al; McLuhan, Marshall Colonel Sanders (Harland David Sanders), 48 comedy-variety, 1, 13, 18, 36, 4–5, 85–86, 92, 94–98, 122, 62, 82, 132n2; and aesthetic 130n3. See also Brown, Johnny; Index ambivalence, 67–69; and Amos ’n’ Andy; stereotypes; hip minority audiences, 16, 84; and Day of Absence, 75, 77, 87, 129n5, the put on, 46, 51, 53, 55–56, 130n2 117; and race, 47, 87, 129n6. Day, Doris: as icon of classical See also Flip Wilson Show, The; Hollywood wholesomeness, Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, 12–13, 47–51, 127n11. See also The; taste, and 1950s/1960s Doris Day Show, The network comedy and variety De Sica, Vittorio, 30 programs Diller, Phyllis, and the put-on, 41; Contempt, 26 and gender, 104 Conway, Tim, 60 Dirksen, Everett, 60 Cosby, Bill, 71 Discovery of the Week (segment). counterculture. See Black Power; See New Talent Time (segment) camp; Carne, Judy; closeted distanciation: and aestheticism, signification; hip; Holy Modal 6–7, 28, 33, 70, 83; and hip, 148 Rounders; put-on; taste; Tiny 16; and mass camp, 8, 16; and Tim media representations of African counterdistinction: 26–27; and Americans, 87, 122–23. See ambivalence, 69, 70; as hip, 31, also Bourdieu, Pierre; camp; 102; of Marshall McLuhan, 33; counterdistinction; hip; taste, of Rowan and Martin, 96–97; highbrow; taste, minority and racialized humor, 122. Doris Day Show, The: and See also aestheticism; camp; middlebrow network TV comedy, distanciation; hip; taste 8, 89. See also Day, Doris Cummings, Sandy, 10–11, Doty, Alexander, 113–14 71–74. See also censorship/self- double entendre. See ambivalence; censorship; NBC closeted signification; sex Curtis, Tony, 72, 74, 75, 83, 112, comedy 114 drag, 30, 41, 45, 103, 121–22. See also camp; Sues, Allen; Wilson, Dallos, Robert E., 29, 30 Flip Davis, Ossie, 130n2. See also Purlie Drury, James, 109 Victorious Dyer, Richard, 58 Davis, Sammy, Jr., 87; expressing marginalized perspective Ebony, 77, 79, 82, 87, 93 and critical agency, 16, 86, Edith Anne (character), 22 88, 94, 98, 116, 131n4; and Ed Sullivan Show, The, 25–26, 53. middlebrow/bourgeois satire, See also Sullivan, Ed; taste, and 30–31; and racial/ethnic comedy, 1950s/1960s network comedy Fetchit, Stepin (Lincoln Theodore Index and variety programs Monroe Andrew Perry), 77, 80 editing, 1, 3–5, 12, 16, 28, 48, 63; Fire Island: as gay euphemism, 58, and closeted signification, 69, 101, 104, 106, 132n14 71, 78, 83. See also McLuhan, Flip Wilson Show, The: 1, 129n4; Marshall and mass camp, 65–68; See also Ekberg, Anita. See Boccaccio ’70 camp: mass; Wilson, Flip Equal Employment Opportunity Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award Commission (EEOC), 99, 100 (segment), 99–100 Erickson, Hal, 52, 59, 127n10, Fox, The, 31 129n6, 132n17 Foxx, Redd, 129n6 Ernie Kovacs Show, The, 1, 19, 26–27 Friendly, Ed, 10, 129n6 Establishment. See NBC; Owens, Funny Gay Males, 120–21 Gary; put-on; Rowan, Dan; taste; Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Tasteful Lady the Forum, A, 29–30 Evans, David T. See permissiveness: interventionist Gabor, Zsa Zsa, 4 149 Everything You Ever Wanted to Know Garson, Greer, 5, 6 about Sex but Were Afraid to Ask Gay Deceivers, The, 73–74 (book), 119 gay liberation movement, 3, 14, 70, 83–84; mocking or Fairbanks, Douglas Jr., 48 satirizing, 99, 102–4, 106, Fair Housing Act, 5, 91 107–8. See also Altman, Dennis; Fairy Godmother (character), Myra Breckinridge; Sues, Alan; 114–16 Wittman, Carl Father Knows Best, 24 Gaynor, Mitzi, 48 Federal Bureau of Investigation, 13, gender: and censorship, 3; and 101 camp, 53–54, 110–13; and Federal Communications hip, 53; and homosexuality, Commission, 24, 47 73, 107–8; and the put-on, Feldon, Barbara, 60, 61 42; subversion of, 5–6, 36, 75, Fellini, Federico, 28, 29 100–103, 105–6; and taste, 23. feminism, 3, 83–84, 120; and See also camp; feminism; Martin, the critical agency of female Dick; playboy; swinger; taste; performers, 105–6, 109, 116; Tomlin, Lily; Worley, Jo Anne and The Flip Wilson Show, 68; General Bullright (character), 4, mocking or satirizing, 14, 68, 57–58, 59. See also Rowan, Dan 99–101, 102–3, 104, 131n5, generation gap, 14, 47, 63–64 132n12; and the single girl, 112. Geraldine (character), 4, 67, 83 See also camp, feminist; gender; Gibson, Henry, 111; and Marshall Tomlin, Lily; Worley, Jo Anne McLuhan, 4, 34–36 Gilliam, Byron, 75 Power; camp; put-on; mass Gladys Ormphby (character), 18, camp; reception; taste: minority Index 48, 49, 50, 54–55, 100, 101 Hollywood, 58, 68, 132n1; and Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, The, middlebrow Establishment, 5–6, 53 61; Production Code, 11, 31, Godard, Jean-Luc, 26 49; and the put-on, 41, 48–50; Gone Are the Days. See Purlie and sexual explicitness in R and Victorious X-rated films, 28–33 Gone with the Wind, 4–5 Holy Modal Rounders, 37, 53–55, Gorilla Queen, 41 65 Graves, Teresa, 37, 87, 88, 90 homophile groups, 107–8 Gray, Herman, 71, 79, 86–87, 88 Hoover, J. Edgar, 13 Greenwich Village, 51–52, 121 Hope, Bob, 4, 61 Gregory, Dick, 37, 87 House Un-American Activities Groening, Matt, 120 Committee, 41 Hovis, Larry, 60 Hudson, Rock, 4, 48–51, 127n10, 150 Hamlet, 2 Hard Day’s Night, A, 26 127n11 Harris, David, 60 Harvey, Laurence, 83, 130n7 I Spy, 71 Hawn, Goldie, 6, 61, 74, 82, 91 In Living Color, 122–23 Hefner, Hue, 50–51, 127n11, Inside Laugh-In, 10, 13, 63–64, 73 128n13. See also Playboy irreverence: to racial decorum, 82, Hellzapoppin’, 26 89; and The Simpsons, 120; to Help!, 26 tastefulness, 13, 26, 33, 38, highbrow. See taste: highbrow 39, 126n5. See also taste: and hip: and aestheticism, 16; and closeting vulgarity African-American cultural politics, 45–47, 67–69, 71, Jet, 77, 87 77–82, 84, 87–98, 122–23; and Johnson, Arte, 46, 61, 85–86, 91, camp, 7; and the counterculture, 104, 131n4 50, 51–56; Hugh Hefner’s Johnson, Lyndon B., 91, 101, status as, 50–51, 128n13; and Johnson, Van, 5, 6, 112, 114, media representations of gays, Joke Wall (segment), 18, 112, 114 71, 72, 83, 102, 106–7; and Joyrich, Lynn, 69–71, 78–79, 80 permissiveness, 13–14; and Julia (sitcom), 71, 86, 88–90, 130n1 square, 12–13, 17, 48–51, 62, 117–18; taste status of, 4, 6, 8, Kasmire, Robert D., 9–10, 49 27–28, 31–36 passim, 47, 52, Keeler, Ruby. See Sharma, Barbara 65–68; trickster, 45, 77–78, Kennedy, Robert F., 38 81, 119, 128n18. See also Black Kentucky Fried Chicken. See Liberace, 4 Index Colonel Sanders Lichtenstein, Roy, 41 Keyes, Paul: and closeted Life (magazine), 23, 38 signification, 73–74; and taste, Little, Cleavon, 2 8, 15, 20, 46, 64, 125n4. See also Lloyd, Jeremy, 58 closeted signification; Nixon, Luckett, Moya, 112 Richard; NBC Lucy Show, The, 89. See also Ball, Kids in the Hall, 121, 133n2 Lucille Killing of Sister George, The, 31, 99 Lynes, Russell: and “Highbrow, King, Martin Luther, Jr., 38 Lowbrow, Middlebrow,” 23–25, Kingfish (character).See Amos ’n 126n2 Andy King Kong (1933), 81, 91 MacDonald, Dwight, 56 kitsch, 23, 33, 45, 66 MacDonald, John D., 12–13, 131n7, Knack . . . and How to Get It, The, 26, 131n10 29, 30 Madden, Dave, 4, 60, 61, 126n6 Kovacs, Ernie. See Ernie Kovacs Show, Marc, David, 25 151 The Markham, Dewey “Pigmeat,” 92, Ku Klux Klan: mocked, 4, 5 122 Martin, Dick: political ambiguity of, L.A. Kings, 42, 108 14; as queer, 58, 84, 100–102, Laugh-In response, the. See 105, 131n9; and representations ambivalence: media of feminism and gay liberation, representations of 53, 72, 83, 99–100, 103–5, 106; homosexuality; Tyler, Parker as swinger, 13, 60, 100, 102, Lawford, Peter, 130n3 105. See also permissiveness; Lawrence Welk Show, The: and playboy; Rowan, Dan; swinger middlebrow taste publics, 2, 52, mass camp: and media 53, 64–65, 129n2 representations of race, 79–81, Leave It to Beaver, 2, 24, 25; and 94. See also camp: mass middlebrow taste publics, 2, Mastroianni, Marcello, 30 24–25, 31, 33, 126n6; satirized, Mattachine Society. See homophile 31, 33, 126n6 groups Legendary Stardust Cowboy, 101 McCall’s. See Van Horne, Harriet Leland, John, 7, 45, 55, 128n18 McClure, Doug, 109 Lemmon, Jack, 62 McLuhan, Marshall, 28, 33–36, Leonard, Sheldon, 52 126n7; and catchphrase, 4, 34; Leslie Uggams Show, The, 30, 46–47 and the put-on, 41. See also Lester, Richard, 26 Gibson, Henry; reception Levine, Elana, 2–3, 126n4, 128n14, McQueen, Steve, 42, 108 129n1 McQueen, Thelma “Butterfly,” 77 Medovoi, Leerom, 40 New Talent Time (segment), 16, Michaels, Lorne, 133n2 51–52, 65, 101 Index middlebrow, 23–26. See also sex New York Shakespeare Festival, 2 comedy; taste: middlebrow New York Times. See Barthel, Joan; establishment culture; taste: Dallos, Robert E.; reception 1950s/1960s network comedy New Yorker (magazine), 41 and variety programs; Doris Day Nixon, Richard, 4, 15, 61–62, 123, Show, The; Ed Sullivan Show, The; 128n22, 129n23 Lawrence Welk Show, The; Leave It to Beaver; Smothers Brothers Olson, Ole, and Chic Johnson Comedy Hour, The (comedy team), 26 mimicry, 22, 42; and racial satire, One More Time, 130n3 75, 77, 78, 95, 98 open secrecy. See closeted Minow, Newton: on TV as “vast signification wasteland,” 24, 28 Owens, Gary, 5, 6, 12, 17, 49, 61, minstrelsy, race and: in comedy- 78, 112 variety, 67; on Laugh-In, 74–81, 152 Ozzie and Harriet, 24 92–93 Monkees, The, 19, 29 Partridge Family, The, 4 Moore, Tim, 92, 95 Paulsen, Pat, 56 Myra Breckinridge, 131n6; film, 99, permissiveness, 9, 31, 69, 99, 123; 101, 102, 118, 132n1; novel, 58, and African-American cultural 100, 131n8; and Parker Tyler, politics, 81–83; and hip taste, 132n11 117–18; interventionist, 10–11; and media representations of National Organization for Women, politics and activism, 12–14; 99 and media representations of National Review. See Buckley, William queerness, 113. See also camp; hip; F., Jr. sexuality: counterculture; taste NBC (TV network), 69; and self- petty-bourgeois aesthetic. See censorship policies, 3, 10–11, Bourdieu, Pierre; middlebrow; 14, 22, 25, 102, 107. See also taste, and middlebrow censorship/self-censorship establishment culture; taste, and NBC Experiment in Television, 28 1950s/1960s network comedy Never on Sunday, 29–30 and variety programs Neville, Aaron, 91 Phillips, Nancie, 90, 103 News (segment): and sexual comedy, Pillow Talk, 51 58, 112, 127n10; and racial Pirandello, Luigi, 26 comedy, 74–75, 81, 90, 91, Planned Parenthood, 99, 132n12 129n5, 131n4 playboy (character type), 16, 30, 81, Newsweek, 14, 39, 114 99–100, 105, 110 Playboy (magazine), 9, 26, 34, 50, race: and censorship, 3; media Index 118. See also hip; Hefner, Hue representations of, 16, 70–71, Playboy’s Penthouse, 50 75–82, 85–92, 130n2 (see also Presley, Elvis, 25 Amos ’n’ Andy; Flip Wilson Show, Production Code. See Hollywood The); and reception, 2, 92–94 Purlie Victorious, 87, 130n2 (see also reception: and minority put-on, 7, 18; in Batman, 66–67; audiences); and sexuality, 4–6, and camp, 44–45, 53–54, 40, 42, 45, 52, 96, 97; and taste, 127n7; commercial advantages 23, 39, 45–47, 93. See also Bay of, 47, 56, 123; and the State Banner, The; Black Power; counterculture, 41–44, 46–47, Brown, Chelsea; Brown, Johnny; 50, 51–62, 123; of Establishment camp; closeted meaning; Davis, film and TV, 20–22, 46–47, 48– Sammy, Jr.; hip; Wilson, Flip 51; and hip, 45–47; and The Flip Rawls, Lou, 129n6 Wilson Show, 65; and the Holy Reagan, Ronald, 9 Modal Rounders, 53–56; and reception, Rowan and Martin’s media representations of African Laugh-In: and ambivalence, 63– 153 Americans, 41–43, 75, 77, 96– 65; and camp, 14, 41, 120–22; 98; and media representations and censorship, 9–11; and hip, of feminism, 99, 103; and media 11–12; and Marshall McLuhan, representations of gays, 41–43, 5, 34; and minority audiences, 44, 55, 73, 103; and media 16, 119–23; and the put-on, 41; representations of Joan Baez, 59– See also ambivalence; camp; hip; 60; and media representations of put-on; taste Richard Nixon, 61–62; and the Reeves, Martha and the Vandellas, single girl, 110; and The Smothers 129n6 Brothers Comedy Hour, 56–60; reverse sophistication. See borderline and stereotypes, 39, 42, 44, 60; taste and taste status, 45–46, 47, 50– Ross, Andrew, 40 51, 55–56; and Tiny Tim, 51–53. Rowan, Dan, 41, 60–61; and Martin See also Black Power; Brown, as Establishment representatives, Johnny; camp; Davis, Sammy 3–4, 16, 48–52, 53–56, 84, Jr.; Day, Doris; Hefner, Hue; hip; 99, 116, 117, 123; as hip, 11, Martin, Dick; reception; Rowan, 31, 36, 52–53, 78, 118; and Dan; Southern, Terry; Sues, Alan; hip identification with black taste; Tasteful Lady, the; Wilson, culture, 78, 84, 96–98; and Flip; Worley, Jo Anne nonpartisan comedy, 14, 57, 64, 82; as pacifist, 13, 58; and queer signification.See camp; gay racial comedy, 5, 71, 74–75, 94, liberation; Sues, Alan; Tiny Tim; 122–23; and representations Worley, Jo Anne of feminism and gay liberation, 53, 99–101, 103–5, 131n7, interracial, 45, 52, 86, 97; 131n9; and Schlatter, 15. See media representations of, 5–6, Index also General Bullright; Martin, 16, 18, 42, 52–55, 58, 73–74; Dick; permissiveness: hip taste; and network self-censorship, taste: middlebrow Establishment 2–3, 9–10, 28–31, 32–33, culture 47–51, 69–72; and the sexual revolution, 7, 13, 34, 102, Salt and Pepper, 130n3 104, 110, 112, 118–19; and Sapphire (character). See Amos ’n’ taste, 23, 39–40, 73. See also Andy Batman; camp; censorship/ Saturday Evening Post, 10, 11, 12, self-censorship; closeted 13, 129n2 signification; gay liberation; Saturday Night Live, 1, 133n2 gender; permissiveness; playboy; Schlatter, George: and The Colgate race; sex comedy; single girl; Comedy Hour Special, 41; and Sues, Alan; stereotyping; censorship, 10–11, 14, 126n6; swinger; Tomlin, Lily; Worley, Jo Anne 154 and hip audiences, 11–12; and nonpartisan comedy, 14; and Shain, Percy, 57 racial comedy, 79, 129n6; and Shakespeare, William, 2, 28 tastelessness, 13, 15, 49–50, 64, Sharma, Barbara, 22, 32, 104, 110 102 Simpsons, The, 120 Scorpio Rising, 113 single girl, 30, 38, 119; Jo Anne Sensuous Woman, The, 119 Worley as, 36, 110–13 seriousness: and camp, 39, 44–45, Six Characters in Search of an Author, 62; and highbrow taste, 27, 43– 26 44; and middlebrow/bourgeois Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, taste, 6, 28; and reception, 15, The, 1, 8, 19, 127n22; and 67; and representing political middlebrow style, 27–28; issues, 84; of The Smothers and the put-on, 56–60; and Brothers Comedy Hour, 56, 59 tastelessness, 82, 127n19. sex comedy, 26, 29–30, 51, 61, 105, See also Baez, Joan; CBS; sexual revolution, 9, 10, 13, 30, put-on: counterculture; taste: 34, 36; and film, 31; and 1950s/1960s network comedy gay liberation, 104, 121; and and variety programs Myra Breckinridge, 102; and Sontag, Susan, 7, 16, 18, 44, 53, 66, Playboy, 51; Jo Anne Worley, 125n3. See also camp Jo Anne, 109, 110, 112. See Soul!, 129n6 permissiveness; swinger Southern, Terry, 31, 126n5 sexuality: and the counterculture, Spigel, Lynn, 28, 126n1, 129n3 16, 22–23; and gender, 14, square. See hip: taste status of; 36, 38, 110–11, 113–14, 119; Rowan, Dan Staiger, Janet, 45 also closeted signification); and Index Stampfel, Peter. See Holy Modal gender roles, 3, 36, 44–45, 53– Rounders 54, 105–6, 110 (see also camp, stereotyping, 33, 42, 117, 132n2; feminist); highbrow, 6–8, 23, of African Americans, 6, 77–81, 26–28, 33, 39, 43–45, 66, 118; 87–88, 91–98, 122, 129n6, and middlebrow Establishment 130n2; of Asians, 130n4; of gay culture, 6–7, 11–12, 22–28, men, 44, 72–73, 107–9, 121–2, 30–31, 69, 87–89, 103–5, 132n16. See Amos ’n’ Andy; 127n1; minority, 8, 11, 27, 39– Bennett, Lerone, Jr.; Black Power; 41, 65–66 (see also camp; hip; Brown, Johnny; Davis, Sammy, put-on); and network comedy Jr.; feminism; gay liberation; and variety programs, 2, 24–26, race: media representation of; 29, 31, 33, 49, 125n4; and race, sexuality, media representations 2–7, 16, 40, 74–78, 80–82, of; Sues, Alan; Tyler, Parker 86–90, 122–23; and sexuality, Stonewall, 99, 106, 113 2–3 (see also camp; closeted Sues, Allen, 4–5, 82; playing signification; permissiveness; 155 closeted characters coded as sexuality); subversion of gay, 12–13, 14, 42, 72, 83, 99, bourgeois/middlebrow, 6–9; 101–2, 104, 106–9, 118–19, and youth counterculture, 132n16 (see also Big Al); and 2–4, 6–8, 11–14, 15–18, camp collaboration with Jo Anne 22–23, 33–36, 119–20 (see also Worley, 109–10, 112–14, 116, put-on: counterculture). See 132n17; and drag, 114–16; also aestheticism; ambivalence: and gay audiences, 120–21, and taste politics; borderline 132n15. See also gay liberation; taste; camp; censorship/self- put-on, and representing gays; censorship; counterdistinction; stereotyping; Worley, Jo Anne distanciation; hip; irreverence; Sullivan, Ed, 98 NBC; permissiveness; race; Sutherland, Meghan, 67–68, 75, reception 122, 129n4 Tasteful Lady, the (character), 4, 14, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, 93 18, 20, 21, 22, 46, 93. See also swinger, 3, 4–5, 16, 18, 28, 45, 48– Tomlin, Lilly 51; as cultural sensibility, 131n8; That Was the Week That Was, 57 and hip, 118; in 1960s sex Therese and Isabelle, 83, 99 comedy, 30; and sexual fluidity, Thompson, Scott, 121 100, 104. See also Martin, Dick; Tijuana Brass. See Alpert, Herb single girl; Worley, Jo Anne Time. See reception Tiny Tim (Herbert Khaury): taste: and closeting vulgarity, 8–9, representing the counterculture, 11, 65–67, 69–71, 118–19 (see 37, 51–53, 65; representing gays, Wallace, George, 79 52–53, 119, 128n15 Ward, Douglas Turner, 75, 130n2. Index Tom Jones (film), 29–30 See also Day of Absence Tomlin, Lily, 14, 16, 30, 37, 89, 118; Warhol, Andy, 45, 99 and camp style, 110; as feminist, Warren, Mark, 87, 129n6, 133n3 82, 105–6; and gay liberation, Watermelon Man, 129n5 104, 132n13. See also Edith Wayans, Keenen and Damon, 122–23 Anne (character); Ernestine Wayne, John, 4, 14 (character); feminism: the critical Werner, Mort, 15 agency of female performers; What’s New Pussycat?, 26, 29, 30, 39, Tasteful Lady (character) 127n3 Torres, Sasha, 76 Whittington, Dick, 89 transgender, 45, 58, 101, 103, 131n11 Widmer, Kingsley: on Traviesas, Herminio, 42, 71, 107 countercultural taste politics, trickster: and African-American 38–39, 43, 126n7 critical agency, 88; Sammy Davis Wigstock, 121–22 Jr. as, 86; Holy Modal Rounders Wilder, Billy, 29 156 as, 54–55; Richard Nixon as, 62; Wilson, Flip, and Amos ’n’ Andy, 83; George Schlatter as, 14; Jo Anne and camp/drag, 4–6, 58, 67, Worley as, 112. See also hip 110; expressing marginalized Tyler, Parker: on “the Laugh-In perspective: 4–6, 16, 42–43, response,” 103; on gay 37, 81, 42–43, 68, 81, 116; and stereotypes, 107, 131n11 media representations of African Tyrone Horneye (character), 49, 55 Americans, 87–88, 90–93, 97, 122–23. See also Bennett, Lerone, utopian aesthetics, 16, 58–62 Jr.; Flip Wilson Show, The; hip; put-on: Black Power Movement Van Horne, Harriet, 9–10, 64–65 Wittman, Carl, 107–8 Van Peebles, Melvin, 93, 129n5 Wolfe, Digby, 14, 93–94 Variety, 15 Wolfgang (character), 61, 85–86 vast wasteland. See Minow, Newton women’s movement. See feminism Vidal, Gore, 37, 118. See also Myra Worley, Jo Anne, 14, 35–36, 75, 78; Breckinridge and camp community with Alan Vietnam War, 3, 12–13, 28, 38, 58, Sues, 109–10, 112–16, 132n17; 60, 129n22 and feminist camp, 110–12 (see Virginian, The, 109 also single girl) vulgarity. See NBC, and self- censorship policies; taste, closeting vulgarity