COVER STORY
Verrry Interesting . . . but Wild
Richard Nixon? Making jokes on a TV comedy show with a bunch of weirdos? You bet, as they say, your sweet bippy. Everybody and his myna bird wants to make a cameo appearance on Rowan and Martin's manic Monday night affair. It is the smartest, freshest show on television. President Johnson, Igor Stravinsky and Jean-Paul Sartre have not yet appeared at the stage door, but if they do, they'll just have to get in line behind Marcel Marceau, Bing Crosby, Pat Boone, Dick Gregory and Jack Benny. And they will do anything once they get before a camera. Marceau in future programs will perform pantomime bits, but most of the other guests will utter senseless non sequiturs, or the reigning catch phrase of the moment, such as "irky perky!" and "Sock it to me!" Sammy Davis Jr., who last season turned his here-come-de-Judge antics into a rollicking miniballet, now reports that when he strolls through a Negro neighborhood, all the kids trail after him squealing the phrase in chorus. It would be only moderately surprising if next week J. Edgar Hoover popped onto the screen and said, "Here come de Judge!"*
Laugh-In was last season's biggest TV hit, and is already a solid Nielsen winner so far this year. But that alone would hardly be enough to draw such a motley assortment of celebrities to the show for $210 per appearance. What appeals is the program's extraordinary ambiance: it has an artful spontaneity, a kind of controlled insanity, emerging from a cascade of crazy cartoon ideas. In yet another TV season of pale copies, Laugh-In is unique. It features no swiveling chorus lines, no tuxedoed crooners. Just those quick flashes of visual and verbal comedy, tumbling pell-mell from the opening straight through the commercials till the NBC peacock turns tail. Often the first-time viewer can hardly believe the proceedings. Silly punch lines fly like birdshot. Childish name games produce outrageous amalgams of sound:
"If Shirley Temple Black had married Tyrone Power, she'd be Shirley Black Power."
"If Jan Sterling had married Phil Silvers, divorced him and married Robert Service, she'd be Jan Sterling Silvers Service,"
There are graffiti:
FOREST FIRES PREVENT BEARS
THIS IS YOUR SLUM KEEP IT CLEAN
JACKIE GLEASON TAKES SILICONE
There are off-color, high-school-caliber homilies:
"The snake that striketh at the jeet of the hunter is naught but a pain in the grass."
Absurd definitions:
"A myth is an effeminate moth."
And sniggering questions:
"Truman Capote: Man or Myth?"
Public Notices:
LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE CALL THE EYE BANK
GEORGE WALLACE YOUR SHEETS ARE READY
Fresh one-liners:
Spy: "It isn't that I wanted to work for the CIA, but I still have family in Washington."
Unbelievable two-liners:
Man: "How can I believe you, Elizabeth? That child doesn't even look like me!"
Woman: "You're looking at the wrong end, stupid!"
Ancient three-liners:
He: "I've heard plenty about your lovemaking."
She: "Oh, it's nothing."
He: "That's what I heard."
And passable four-liners: