LAUGH-TRACK

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31984, 10 May 1969, Page 5

LAUGH-TRACK

Comedy Crutch For TV

(By

MARTIN KASINDORF)

“It’s a tool of treachery,” cried the outraged producer, “used by people who have no real confidence. They sit in high offices in New York, so uptight about everything that they wouldn’t know what’s funny if it hit them on the head; and they assume that others wouldn’t know either.”

The outraged producer is Hal Kluiter, resident genius behind “Julia,” the only new hit of the recent TV season, and that “tool of treachery” is the old familiar com- ' edy crutch, canned laughter. Ranter’s real coup this sea-; son is not to have been' allowed on the air with a' show about a Negro, but to 1 have been allowed on with a comedy minus a laugh-track.: Others before Ranter had tried to dispense with this tool of treachery, but the net-; works always took a blank look at the pilot, listened in 1 vain for the non-existent 1 cues and finally ordered giggle-belts or else. Ranter tried a frontal approach at N.8.C., walking in with a rough cut of “Julia” and a dare. “1 asked them to tell me exactly where to put the laughs in a certain scene, and how big they should be,” he remembers with a fine catcanary . smile. “There wasn’t one man in the room willing to stick his neck out.” Off !his record, Ranter clearly wins this round, but it is too early to say that he has started a trend. Harry Ackerman is preparing a trackless pilot of a series based on the old Gary Cooper movie, “Mr Deeds Goes to Town,” but of course he hasn’t sold it yet—with or without canned laughs. Old Tradition The tradition for piped-in laughter goes all the way back ! to Fred Alien's first days in : radio in the early 19305. ' Allen, a vaudeville and Broad- 1 way comedian, hated the idea ! of working to four unsympathetic walls, so he pulled ' in a studio audience and sent l its spontaneous, unfaked' laughter out over the air l along with his nasal wisecracks.

corded applause was born. When television came along, the same formula prevailed. Those shows that really inspired laughter—the early “Lucy,” for exampleused only the natural audience reaction, while the others mixed theirs in a can. Of all 28 comedy shows on the air this season, only one rides with the straight, unadulterated audience reaction —“The Mothers-in-law,” so help us all. All the other studioaudience comedies even “Lucy” herself—augment the natural laughter with skilful machine-made supplements. So, for that matter, do such comedy shows as “Bob Hope” and “Carol Burnett.” Thereare, of course, many reasons, some of them honourable for using a laughtrack. Bob Hope’s opening monologue is always edited down to shorter length, and the laughs help cover the jumps. A machine-made laugh can also prevent embarrassment. "If something dies a horrible death and it was supposed to be funny,” says George Sunga, who produced “The Smothery Brothers,” “that’s the time we put a laugh in.” Rowan and Martin have the best excuse of all for “sweetening” their sound-track. “Laugh-in” is taped in bits and pieces over the course of 22 hours, and the size of the open-house audience varies from 400 to 50 or less. The show needs a machine just to even things out The main reason for a laugh-track, of course, is that producers are convinced that it helps the show to go over better at home. “There’s no argument,” points out the producers Of “Gomer Pyle,” Mr Sheldon Leonard, “that when a house is full a joke gets a bigger laugh than when it is half full. Laughter feeds on itself.” True enough, but too much laughter also turns itself off. ‘.‘l’m not against canned laughter—only how it’s applied,” says the producer of “That Girl,” Mr Sam Denoff. “A discriminate use is an aid to an audience. It’s.up to a producer’s taste.” Most producers rely not only on their own taste but that of a secretive former C.B.S. technical director named Charley Douglass, inventor and sole proprietor of the Laff Box. Wide Range No joke. The Laff Box is a battered old suitcase-like object, complete with broken hinges, set on rollers. It comes attached to a 32-key keyboard and organ-like foot pedals, and it plugs into a wall socket. And brother do they laugh when Charley sits down to play. From the 320 taped heehaws inside the box, Charley’s console can summon forth every shade of risible reaction from the half-titter to the double-beaded stadiumwrecker.

Soon everyone in radio had the idea that a big-time comedy show had to include audible laughter, spontaneous or otherwise, and the re-

Douglass is so possessive about the Laff Box that only he and two assistants are allowed to play it or even to look inside it. If something breaks, Charley takes it into a closet to fix it. The secrecy makes sense when you realise that Douglass earns $300,000 a year playing his laughmachine in harmony with nearly every comedy show on TV. That income is all the more impressive because there is no evidence that dubbed laughter helps a show's ratings. Not only is there “Julia’s” hint that laugh-tracks don't count. Long ago in the heyday of radio they broadcast some episodes of “Henry Aldrich” with a laugh-track and some without, and the audience did not notice any difference at all.—“ Newsweek” Feature Service.