Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and
Speaker 1: there's chuck and this is short stuff, a very special
Speaker 1: sandwich edition between our very special two part episode on Sitcoms. Right, chuck,
Speaker 1: Insert Laugh track, Jerry. That's right, nicely done, Jerry. So Um,
Speaker 1: we're talking about laugh tracks. Everybody knows what a laugh
Speaker 1: track is. It's also sometimes called canned laughter and if
Speaker 1: you didn't realize that a lot of the sitcoms that
Speaker 1: you watch have laughter added in, well prepared to have
Speaker 1: your socks knocked off, because that is the thing and
Speaker 1: it's been around for seventies, seventy years a little over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's a really cool story, uh, and that they
Speaker 1: discovered there was a problem early on with live studio
Speaker 1: audiences and that sometimes they laughed at the wrong time,
Speaker 1: sometimes they didn't laugh at all, sometimes they laughed too
Speaker 1: loudly and for too long, and they had a laughter
Speaker 1: problem because people are stupid. And so, UH CBS sound
Speaker 1: engineer named Charlie Douglas said, you know what, I think
Speaker 1: I can crack this thing. They've been using laugh tracks
Speaker 1: and radio forever. Um. Why don't I see if I
Speaker 1: can put together a library of of laughter and use
Speaker 1: that to augment the laughter and sometimes entirely, entirely replaced
Speaker 1: the laughter of the real audience. Yeah. So, so Charlie
Speaker 1: Douglas started recording actual people laughing, and you can't like
Speaker 1: you have to be pretty selective when you're recording laughter
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of times where people are talking
Speaker 1: or actors are giving dialogue. Still. So Red Skelton had
Speaker 1: a show and he was a very famous, very physical
Speaker 1: comedic actor. He could go long stretches just entertaining people
Speaker 1: without saying a word. So he was a natural source
Speaker 1: of this Um laughter that Charlie Douglas went around and recorded.
Speaker 1: So was the mime Marcel Marceau, and so he started
Speaker 1: recording any kind of laughter. He didn't he put it
Speaker 1: all together, splice tapes together, and his first attempt at
Speaker 1: a very rudimentary attempt at a laugh track made his
Speaker 1: debut in nineteen fifty on a show I've never heard
Speaker 1: of before, chuck, the Hank mccune show, of you. Nope,
Speaker 1: never heard of it, but it's it's historic in that
Speaker 1: it was the first show that the laugh track debuted on.
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh, and Douglas got pretty into this. Uh,
Speaker 1: to put it lightly. He kind of obsessed, it seemed,
Speaker 1: over getting these laugh tracks just right. I don't think
Speaker 1: he was happy with just saying like, all right, we
Speaker 1: got some canned laughter, we got a couple of versions,
Speaker 1: let's just go with it, uh, and ended up getting
Speaker 1: sort of being like a conductor slash magician, and that
Speaker 1: he had all different kinds. I think he ended up
Speaker 1: with about three and twenty different kinds of laughs, from
Speaker 1: uproarious to like just a little bit, to a few
Speaker 1: people tittering to it rising and falling like a symphony.
Speaker 1: And the coolest thing about all of this is he
Speaker 1: did this and and put it in a literal physical
Speaker 1: machine right, actual like. It ended up being called the
Speaker 1: laugh box, although he tried to call it the audience
Speaker 1: response duplicator or, if you I could totally see in
Speaker 1: the fifties, pretending it's a robot and calling it R D. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and also audience response duplicator is a pretty good band name.
Speaker 1: I want to think about it. Now. What kind of
Speaker 1: music exactly? I don't know. That's your's special I go
Speaker 1: to math rock every time. I don't know what that
Speaker 1: would be. But yeah, so this this box, the laugh box,
Speaker 1: it was about the size and shape of a filing cabinet, well,
Speaker 1: a three FT tall filing cabinet, or one meter for
Speaker 1: friends outside of the US. Um and it was made
Speaker 1: by Charlie Douglas himself from like household appliances, um parts
Speaker 1: from an organ that he stripped, uh, and vacuum tubes
Speaker 1: and it was really heavy, but it was really really effective.
Speaker 1: Like you said, it had all sorts of different laughs
Speaker 1: of all types on it. I think it could hold
Speaker 1: up to three hundred and twenty different laughs. And again,
Speaker 1: this is nineteen fifty and this guy basically created a
Speaker 1: laughing computer. Yeah, there were thirty two reels, ten laughs each,
Speaker 1: and it had, like you said, it had these it
Speaker 1: looked more like these giant typewriter keys to me as
Speaker 1: far as like literally how you would engage it, and
Speaker 1: but you could play it almost like an instrument, and
Speaker 1: that it wasn't just hit one button. You could hit
Speaker 1: a combination of buttons if you wanna get a very
Speaker 1: specific kind of laughter. I had no idea this is
Speaker 1: how this worked. I just thought it was all done
Speaker 1: in post by just kind of splicing it together, uh,
Speaker 1: with like, you know, hey, just put track one on
Speaker 1: there or something like that. I had no idea it
Speaker 1: was a literal machine. It's very, very cool. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and Um, one of my favorites of all time is
Speaker 1: the one person lightly laughing at a time. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was really used to great effect in Scooby Doo. If
Speaker 1: you think back, like there was very often times when
Speaker 1: just one person was kind of like, was that on
Speaker 1: a laugh track? Uh Yeah, yes, it was, because the
Speaker 1: scooby Doo animated characters were not performing live in front
Speaker 1: of a studio audience. Well, I know that. I don't
Speaker 1: remember there being laughter on Scooby Doo. Oh, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: Anytime Scooby or shaggy, did you know built like a
Speaker 1: seven foot sandwich, there was a laugh track. Exactly that
Speaker 1: would have gotten a laugh track. I haven't seen it
Speaker 1: a long time. I'm sure it's totally full of laughter,
Speaker 1: but I just don't remember. It really holds up, man,
Speaker 1: does it really? Yes, especially the original one from like
Speaker 1: nine nine. All right, well, let's take a break. I'M
Speaker 1: gonna go watch some of those and we'll be back
Speaker 1: to talk about how laugh tracks were received right after this.
Speaker 1: All right. Did People like laugh tracks? No, yes and no.
Speaker 1: Studio executives a lot of them loved it because it
Speaker 1: solved a big problem, but it seems like almost exclusively
Speaker 1: outside the studio executives, most people weren't too keen on it. No,
Speaker 1: and I mean like this started right out of the gate.
Speaker 1: Um the laugh check was derided as phony or Corny
Speaker 1: or whatever, and Charlie Douglass, the inventor of that laugh box,
Speaker 1: the guy who originated this, he became, I don't want
Speaker 1: to say a recluse, but as far as the media
Speaker 1: was concerned, you could not get an interview out of
Speaker 1: him because I don't know if he took it personally
Speaker 1: or took it hard or just to want to put
Speaker 1: himself out there. But he, as far as I could tell,
Speaker 1: he got very wealthy off of this thing. Between the
Speaker 1: fifties and the seventies, if you heard a laft track
Speaker 1: in a show, it was from Charlie Douglas. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: bet you anything. He was hurt because, I mean there
Speaker 1: were people that said, like this has ruined television in
Speaker 1: some cases. Yeah, like an auto tune Kinda. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: invented auto tune too. Not many people know that. Right,
Speaker 1: he did it at all. He ruined everything and the
Speaker 1: sound of airplane toilets flushing. Oh Wow, that's a good one,
Speaker 1: especially if you're playing one person lightly laughing over the
Speaker 1: air airplane toilet flushing. I still can't believe they haven't
Speaker 1: solved that yet. Uh Yeah, I know, because and now everybody,
Speaker 1: like everyone, look over at the door. I'm about to
Speaker 1: come out. It's terrible and I plugged my ears. It's
Speaker 1: just so grating and uh, in your face. Anyway. So
Speaker 1: in the seventies is when the laugh track Um kind
Speaker 1: of hit its heyday, along with the heyday, as you
Speaker 1: have now learned in our Sitcom's episode of the Live
Speaker 1: Studio Audience Multi camera taped show. But it was also
Speaker 1: the time when it became sort of more of a
Speaker 1: object of scorn. So that's when you started hearing the
Speaker 1: famous announcement film before live studio audience just to let
Speaker 1: people know like, uh, maybe we use some can laughter,
Speaker 1: but there are also real people here laughing. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a boast. I had no idea why they said that,
Speaker 1: but it was almost like a disclaimer the way they
Speaker 1: said but really they were telling you, like the laughter
Speaker 1: you're hearing is is human laughter, like genuine stuff, and
Speaker 1: those were we're filmed in front of studio audiences. The
Speaker 1: ones that are weird are the shows like Mash that
Speaker 1: we're not filmed in front of a studio audience. But
Speaker 1: there was still that laugh track, but you never thought
Speaker 1: about it. You were just so used to it. It's
Speaker 1: very weird, especially if you stop and think about laugh tracks.
Speaker 1: We'll get into that in a second, but it is
Speaker 1: a very weird concept the way it supplied. But Um,
Speaker 1: I saw that almost went away as early as the
Speaker 1: mid sixties, that some CBS studio executives tested uh, the
Speaker 1: pilot of Hogan's heroes with a laugh track with one
Speaker 1: focus group without a laugh track with another focus group,
Speaker 1: or maybe the same focus group, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: the focus group chose the laugh track episode, of the
Speaker 1: Laugh Track version, and that just cemented laugh tracks for
Speaker 1: decades to come. You can thank that one focus group
Speaker 1: for it. Yeah, interesting pick for the show to do
Speaker 1: that with. I think like it was interesting enough to
Speaker 1: have a Sitcom about uh PO WS and Nazis. I
Speaker 1: love the show. That's pretty good. As a kid thoughts
Speaker 1: heroes is great, but Um, yeah, the laugh track is
Speaker 1: weird and it's even weirder when you think about animated sitcoms.
Speaker 1: We talked about the flint stones. I believe that will
Speaker 1: be coming up in part two of the sitcoms up.
Speaker 1: But Flint stones and the Jetson's they had laugh tracks two,
Speaker 1: which doesn't make any sense at all, but people just
Speaker 1: bought it because they were used to it. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's you just don't even notice it unless you notice it,
Speaker 1: and then once you notice it it's hard to stop. But,
Speaker 1: like you said, even mash had one and apparently the creator,
Speaker 1: Larry Gilbert, said he wanted mash to air without laughs, quote,
Speaker 1: just like the actual Korean War. Um, but he still lost.
Speaker 1: But they gave him the out to not have a
Speaker 1: laugh track during the medical like surgery scenes. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: all kind of flowed though I never really noticed that stuff,
Speaker 1: like when they were in the O R, that there
Speaker 1: wasn't a laugh track going. Generally right. Uh. In other
Speaker 1: countries they have done some interesting things. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a very American slash UK thing, but in Latin America
Speaker 1: apparently they would actually hire laughers to come in like
Speaker 1: professional laughers Rayo doors and they would say laugh at
Speaker 1: this moment and that moment, and I don't know if
Speaker 1: it was like that. They were just plants in the
Speaker 1: audience that we're supposed to laugh to get everybody else laughing,
Speaker 1: or the entire audience were made of ray a door.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure. But either way I guess they
Speaker 1: issued the laugh track. Generally, I think it was probably
Speaker 1: multiple plants to get people going because, uh, they have done, Um,
Speaker 1: I guess, studies, but they have shown that laugh tracks
Speaker 1: people find things funnier when other people are laughing so aterly,
Speaker 1: when there as can laughter, people are more apt to
Speaker 1: think something is funny. Yeah, fifteen to twenty percent funnier
Speaker 1: when you add can't laughter to it, which is that's
Speaker 1: funny in and of itself. This is fifteen funnier. That's
Speaker 1: Hilarious to me. How do you how do you measure that? So,
Speaker 1: if you think back, even Seinfeldt Chuck, one of the
Speaker 1: funniest shows of all time, had a laugh track, and
Speaker 1: this was into the nineties, right. The Simpsons managed to
Speaker 1: launch with that one. They never had a laugh track.
Speaker 1: I don't think they even jokingly used one. Um. But
Speaker 1: my point is even Seinfeld, up into the nineties, had
Speaker 1: one and it wasn't until I saw the U K's
Speaker 1: version of the office credited as the one that really
Speaker 1: turned the tide. I think the HITCHHIKER's guide to the
Speaker 1: galaxy in the UK. Um really broke out and said
Speaker 1: we're not going to use this, but it was still
Speaker 1: used extensively. It wasn't until the office came along and
Speaker 1: just change comedy. The comedy involved was presented and written
Speaker 1: in a way that a las check just would not
Speaker 1: make sense because it was so cringe e. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's hard to imagine something like either version
Speaker 1: of the office or arrested development or thirty rock or
Speaker 1: curb your enthusiasm with a laugh track. It would be
Speaker 1: very strange. Uh. And speaking of strange, one of the
Speaker 1: most fun things you can do is just spend a
Speaker 1: few minutes of your day watching Um sitcoms without the
Speaker 1: laugh track, like classic sitcoms. Uh. They've notably done this
Speaker 1: on youtube with episodes of friends and clips of friends
Speaker 1: and it's just weirdly disconcerting. Uh. It's not as funny
Speaker 1: and one of the weirdest things is know, you don't
Speaker 1: realize that when you're watching a show with a laugh track,
Speaker 1: but they're like a stage play. They're waiting for a
Speaker 1: beat while the people are laughing to stay their next line,
Speaker 1: and it's never more apparent than when that laughter is gone.
Speaker 1: It's very disjointed and weird because it's just silent, right.
Speaker 1: But then also without the laugh track, I think you
Speaker 1: are very, very generous to say it's just not as funny. Um,
Speaker 1: I found it like not funny at all and actually
Speaker 1: kind of upsetting, to tell you the truth. Like they're
Speaker 1: the jokes are like deeply juvenile. They're supported every single
Speaker 1: one by like a funny facial expression that's not actually funny.
Speaker 1: It looks kind of hostile instead, and you it becomes
Speaker 1: clear that, friends, is like in no way funny on
Speaker 1: its own. It like really leaned on the laugh track
Speaker 1: to make it funny. Did you see the one, uh Ross,
Speaker 1: without laugh track psychopaths? Now I know what I will
Speaker 1: be doing right after we finished recording. Yeah, check it out,
Speaker 1: because not only did they remove the laugh track for
Speaker 1: the scene, but they they made it. They changed the
Speaker 1: color so where it was black and white, and they
Speaker 1: put like this brooding music. It's really, really good. Um.
Speaker 1: And while we're at just this general thing, also should
Speaker 1: just recommend music lists, music videos. Yeah, those, those are great.
Speaker 1: Those are some of the funniest things on Youtube when
Speaker 1: it just shows like people dancing around with like sneaker
Speaker 1: squeaks and then going like all good stuff. Um, the
Speaker 1: opposite is pretty funny too, where you take something that's
Speaker 1: not intended to be funny and add a laugh track,
Speaker 1: like way before space coast coast to coast. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it was the same friends of ours, Dave Willis,
Speaker 1: who did this too, but somebody put like old episodes
Speaker 1: of space ghost from the sixties on cartoon network at night,
Speaker 1: even before adults swim, and just added laugh tracks so
Speaker 1: like inappropriate places and made it like genuinely funny. I
Speaker 1: would like to say I wonder if anyone's done that
Speaker 1: with like the office. I'd be curious just to see
Speaker 1: what that feels like. Yeah, yeah, I'm just gonna go
Speaker 1: spend the rest of the day on the Internet watching
Speaker 1: this stuff. I think I agree. All right. Well, chuck agreed.
Speaker 1: I said I was gonna go do something else. That
Speaker 1: means short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is
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