TFTP Game Shows: "Letters to Laugh-In" from NBC (Sep. 30, 1969)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Million Colors of Light 2'

Perhaps one of the most curious spin-offs ever, "Letters to Laugh-In" was spun off of the #1 hit "Laugh-In" that had taken the country by storm in 1968 (and which TFTP featured in a post a couple weeks ago). "Laugh-In" of course was a revolutionary program for its time, both in terms of content (the mainstreaming of the "counterculture") and in terms of form (quickly edited blackout spots assembled in post-production). "Letters to Laugh-In" was somewhat more traditional in format as a game show, although the game play of using applause meters to measure the audience response to jokes sent in by "Laugh-In" viewers was nonetheless unorthodox.

Not that "Letters to Laugh-In" ever got anywhere near the popularity of its progenitor--it lasted only a few months between September and December of 1969 on NBC's daytime schedule. It's interesting to watch now simply for its gaudy production design (borrowed from its parent show), for the lame humor evident both in the jokes that are competing and in the cringe-worthy banter between the celebs, and for the fact that it was ever on the air at all. The fact that it was is a sign of just how big "Laugh-In" was in the late-1960s.

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

Posted to YouTube by user 'Anna'

"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.