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 genu- inely 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, in- spiration 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 con- tinues 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 com- mercial 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, so- cially 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 seri- ousness, and safe aesthetics of Lawrence Welk, the Cleavers, Ed Sullivan, and the like. The show’s unifying appeal garnered fur- ther 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 rep- resentation 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, empow- ered 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 perform- ers 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.

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