The bippy revolution

If Hubert Humphrey had accepted an invitation to appear on NBC’s phenomenally popular comedy-variety series “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In� in the fall of 1968, we might never have had a Western White House in San Clemente, might never have heard of Watergate, might only think of “Deep Throat� as a film Linda Lovelace wished she’d never made.

Humphrey, the Democrats’ presidential nominee that year, reportedly said that part of the reason he lost the election that November to Richard Nixon was that the dour Republican nominee did a cameo on “Laugh-In,� which was then the hottest show on television, commanding 50% of the viewing audience. On the Sept. 16, 1968, installment, Nixon looked into the camera and offered his unique reading of the show’s catch phrase: “Sock it ... to me?�

“Nixon had a reputation for no sense of humor,� says the series’ producer-creator, George Schlatter. Nixon’s good friend, Paul Keyes, who worked on the show as a writer, told him that “Laugh-In� was the way to change his image. “Paul convinced him that this would expose him to a different kind of audience as a good guy, which in fact it did. We tried to get Humphrey to appear on the show. We chased him all over and he wouldn’t do it.�

The Nixon episode of “Laugh-In� is one of six memorable installments featured in Rhino Home Video’s new three-disc DVD set ($50) of the Emmy Award-winning series that aired on NBC from 1968 to 1973, and changed the face of television with its rapid-fire jokes, political humor, zany characters, fast-paced editing and irreverence. The series made stars out of many of its regulars, who included Goldie Hawn, Lily Tomlin, Arte Johnson, Henry Gibson, Judy Carne, Jo Anne Worley, Alan Sues, Gary Owens and Ruth Buzzi.

It seemed at once to sneer at the counterculture and revel in it -- the show’s name was adapted from the then au courant campus sit-ins and be-ins. It covered Hawn’s bikini-clad body in Day-Glo body paint on the one hand, and spotlighted the Republican standard-bearer on the other. Perhaps that’s why it never had the cachet of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,� another musical-variety show that aired roughly concurrently. Yet by sheer dint of its popularity, “Laugh-In� occupied a spot on the baby boomers’ comedy continuum, one that began with Mad magazine, continued with “Laugh-In,� then the National Lampoon and NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.�

“If you look at ‘Laugh-In,’ they deal with many of the same issues as the Smothers Brothers, the same jabs at the Johnson administration, but it’s done in the fun, lighthearted atmosphere,� says Ron Simon, curator at the Museum of Television & Radio in New York. “It was more cultural satire than strictly political satire. Obviously, it had the energy and pop culture to it, but its heart wasn’t entirely in politics as the Smothers Brothers became over time.�

Schlatter agrees. “There was a bubbling kind of political unrest into which the Beatles, Lenny Bruce and ‘Laugh-In’ came and kind of focused the attention on how crazy it all was.�

Numerous catch phrases quickly became part of the cultural vernacular including “Sock it to me!,� “Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls,� “Direct from beautiful downtown Burbank,� “verrry interesting� and “the flying fickle finger of fate.� The phenomenal success of the series even led the show’s stars, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, to appear in the now-forgotten 1969 feature comedy “The Maltese Bippy,� inspired in part by yet another of the series’ signature phrases: “You bet your bippy.�

Equally familiar was Owens’ announcer, always seen with one hand cupped over his ear. It originated when the radio veteran, who is currently heard on “fabulous 570� (KLAC-AM) went to lunch at the Smoke House Restaurant in Burbank with Schlatter, fellow producer Ed Friendly and others. “We went into the men’s bathroom to wash up and because of the acoustic tile on the ceiling in the men’s bathroom, I put my hand over my ear and said, ‘My, the acoustics are good in here,’ like the old radio announcers,� Owens recalls. “I never announced that way, but the guys from the 1940s and ‘50s who did live dance-band remotes would always put their hand over their ear so they could hear beyond the music that was playing in the background. George said, ‘That’s what you are going to do.’ �

A bit was born.

Among the favorite characters on the show were Buzzi’s plain Jane Gladys Ormfby who regularly met on the park bench with Johnson’s dirty old man, Tyrone F. Horneigh, Tomlin’s acerbic telephone operator Ernestine; Sues’ “Big Al� sportscaster; Owens’ perfect-pitched announcer; and Hawn’s giggling dumb blond.

During its run, some of Hollywood’s biggest and brightest appeared as guest stars or in cameos, including John Wayne, Bob Hope and Jack Lemmon. Sammy Davis Jr. helped propel the show into the upper reaches of the Nielsen ratings when he vamped through his “Here Come Da Judge� routine early in the show’s run.

“Laugh-in,� which replaced the spy series “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,� originally aired as a special on Sept. 9, 1967 and made its series debut on Jan. 22, 1968. “Laugh-In� was the No. 1 show during its first three seasons and won six Emmy Awards, including honors for best musical or variety series in 1968 and 1969.

“What we put into the mainstream was a new kind of brevity and the recognition of the shrinking attention span of the television viewer who had never before been challenged,� Schlatter recalls.

“Into that came Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, who had a very well-known, very successful nightclub act, and this group of performers who were not comics. They were young character actors, really.�

“George had known me from my days of appearing in a little club in New York with Jonathan Winters,� Johnson remembers. “We had mutual friends and ... one thing led to another and I was called in. I had the basic characters prior to going on the show. They were characters I used in radio and commercials and whatnot.�

Featured weekly segments included the Cocktail Party; Laugh-In Looks at the News, Past, Present and Future, and the Joke Wall, which ended each show.

The attempts at topical humor and the bits of burlesque that were part of the show led to periodic run-ins with network censors. “We were bawdy. We were controversial. We were political and sexy and we were even sexist,� Schlatter recalls.

The show’s fast pace and stock characters may have helped make it a sensation, but the performers weren’t always thrilled by it. Johnson, who spent the years after the show went off the air mostly doing voice-over work and occasional TV guest spots, and now is semi-retired, remembers how chaotic the show often was, and how hard it was for any of them to stand out.

“There is a tremendous confusion as to who did what and what did who,� Johnson said. “To this day, I am asked to do a poem by Henry Gibson and I have to explain to them that Henry Gibson is a real human being.�

It was fun while it lasted, but “Laugh-In� couldn’t run forever. By the fall of ’73 it was gone, replaced by two short-lived sitcoms. Hawn went off to a successful film career; Tomlin too has had a varied acting career that includes her one-woman show and a recurring part on NBC’s “The West Wing�; Schlatter continued to produce various TV programs; Rowan died of cancer in 1987; and Martin became a successful TV director.

But as with so much of vintage TV, “Laugh-In� has never really been off the air for too long. It is currently rerun on cable’s Trio Network, and now with Rhino’s DVD release, chances are it will find a new life.

If it was of the moment then, the museum’s Simon believes contemporary audiences may miss some of the humor. “I don’t know how much it communicates if you don’t know the era,� he says. “There are a lot of topical references that actually need footnotes.�

Not surprisingly, Schlatter sees it differently.

“We did jokes about the Pentagon, the oil companies,� the producer says. “We did jokes about employment and the economy, and we have the same problems. The problems we talked about on ‘Laugh-In’ remain unsolved today.�