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When Time Magazine Spotlighted One Of TV's Most Innovative Shows
There's a feature on the Time Magazine site that is a tremendous but wonderful time waster. It's called "The Time Vault" and allows you to read every single article and ad it published since 1920. That's where I found this gem of an article spotlighting one of my all time favourite TV shows - "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In".
The program, which debuted in 1968, was unlike anything that had ever aired on television anywhere in the world. Quick cuts, strange visual blackouts, bizarre lines that became national catchphrases ("You bet your sweet bippy!" "Look that up in your Funk & Wagnall's," etc.) and even then would-be U.S. President Richard Nixon asking, "Sock It To Me?", another famous catchphrase. Some say that appearance helped him win the highest office in the land.
Not to mention your first glimpse at future stars like Goldie Hawn.
It's a great article on the show back when it was still new and was different than anything ever seen on the tube. I'm still a fan all these years later and it's still available on a few free streaming sites like Tubi, where it can be watched gratis without a VPN in Canada.
You can read the Time lookback here. You'll need the "Zoom" function in the top left corner to be able to see the entire page. In the words of Arte Johnson's Wolfgang character, it's "Very Interesting." Goodnight Lucy...
- newsguy1
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Re: When Time Magazine Spotlighted One Of TV's Most Innovative Shows
A while back Youtube was putting up episodes of Laugh In, and I watched with what I hoped would be a fun time seeing the old pop icon.
To my surprise I found it dated, cringy and by and large not really standing up to time.
I found the comedians delivered their lines in a rather stilted and laborious fashion, not at all like the snappy and hip delivery I remembered.
Also many jokes were cringingly sexist, racist and misogynist.
Not to mention homophobic.
I was quite surprised.
Also the episodes were peppered with very conventional song and dance sequences that were not much hipper than other variety shows of the times.
The one thing that I did enjoy was seeing the old stars who went from unknowns to being stars overnight like Ruth Buzzy, Joanne Whorley, Judy Carne, Goldies Hawn, Arte Johnson etc.
I have read in more recent times that Rowan and Martin ended up despising each other.
Apparently Dan Rowan was a very unpleasant human being.
So, too bad, I'm sad to discover the show was really not what it is imagined to have been.
The show no longer can sock it to me.
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Re: When Time Magazine Spotlighted One Of TV's Most Innovative Shows
I still love the show and its concept, and yes, it was definitely a product of its time. And that's the way you have to approach it. You cannot expect something from the 1960s to approximate the standards of today. It just isn't possible.
That said, I don't know what it was about Dan Rowan, but boy was he hated. In a previous post somewhere on here, I noted that Peter Marshall, the long running host of Hollywood Squares, wrote in his autobiography that he originally did not want to be associated with a game show and turned the job down. But when he heard they were going to offer it to Rowan, he changed his mind.
He didn't want the gig, but he was bound and determined that a man he truly despised would not get it. And that's how Marshall became the "Master" of the original Hollywood Squares and why Rowan was free to do Laugh-In when it debuted several years later.
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Thread Starter- mace
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Re: When Time Magazine Spotlighted One Of TV's Most Innovative Shows
At the time I loathed Laugh-In. Why? Because it replaced my then favourite tv show. The Man from U.N.C.L.E.