TFTP Variety: "Laugh-In" from NBC (Feb. 10, 1969)

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"Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" was a turning point in the TV variety show when it premiered in early-1968. Both in terms of content and in terms of form, "Laugh-In" upended 20-year-old traditions in the genre: its use of sexually-suggestive and permissive humor was part of TV's mainstreaming of the counterculture, while the quick cuts and very short comic bits (assembled through editing in post-production) countered the longer sketches and staging traditionally used in TV variety programs.

Although a departure from the TV variety show as it had been known, "Laugh-In" was massively popular--becoming the #1 show on TV for the 1968-69 and 1969-70 seasons. This episode is from February 1969, when the show was at its peak of popularity and influence. It includes several of the show's signature segments: a party where random guests turn to the camera and recite jokes, the elderly couple on a park bench played by Ruth Buzzi and Arte Johnson, the Fickle Finger of Fate award given by Rowan and Martin, Arte Johnson's wisecracking German World War I soldier, and the show's most well-known bit, the "joke wall" (in which cast members tell short jokes after emerging from small doors opened in a wall painted in "Laugh-In"'s trademark psychedelic colors).

We also see in this episode (from a recording when the series was rerun on cable network Trio in the late-1990s/early-2000s) the classic cast of the show, including hosts Dan Rowan and Dick Martin as well as Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson, Goldie Hawn, Joanne Worley, Henry Gibson, and Judy Carne, and guest stars Davy Jones (of The Monkees), Greer Garson, and Robert Wagner.