Last summer, Writers Digest Press published And Here's the Kicker a book of interviews I conducted with twenty-one humor writers, including Buck Henry, Bob Odenkirk, Dick Cavett, Harold Ramis, David Sedaris, and Marshall Brickman. Although he’s not a writer, I interviewed Ben Glenn II, a TV historian and expert in the history of canned laughter for the book. As I was talking to all of these people whose work produces laughter, it seemed appropriate to include at least one expert in producing fake laughter.
How did canned laughter come about?
The concept actually goes back at least five hundred years. History tells us that there were audience “plants” in the crowds at Shakespearean performances in the 16th century. They spurred on audience reactions, including laughter and cheering—as well as jeers.
How about more recently?
Canned laughter was used to a certain degree in radio, but its first TV appearance was in 1950, on a rather obscure NBC situation comedy, The Hank McCune Show. Remarkably, there are a couple of clips from the show on YouTube. Shortly after the show’s debut, there was an article in Variety noting that the show’s canned laughter was a new innovation, and that its potential for providing a wide-range of reactions was great. Of course, that eventually came true.
How odd did the laugh track sound to those early TV audiences?
I can only imagine that it seemed odd to viewers, but using a laugh track held many advantages for television producers. The most important was that it made it possible to film exteriors and on location. It gave producers freedom. For example, scenes from Leave It to Beaver were shot outdoors on RKO’s—and later Universal’s—back lot. With the laugh track, a studio audience was no longer absolutely necessary.
Who invented the canned-laughter machine?
Actually, its official name is the Laff Box, and it was invented by a man named Charles Rolland Douglass. He served in World War II, and when he returned to civilian life, he worked as a broadcast engineer at CBS. Douglass was responsible for everything from recording sound levels during production to adjusting them in post-production.
Shows often needed sound correction before broadcast. Sometimes a joke didn’t get a big enough laugh, or, in the case of a famous I Love Lucy episode, the laugh was too long and had to be cut down. This particular episode was broadcast in March 1957, and it was called “Lucy Does the Tango.” The laugh, in response to Lucy dancing the tango with raw eggs stuffed into her shirt, lasted about sixty-five seconds.
There were other reasons, too: For example, I once attended a taping of Alice in the seventies, and the actors kept blowing their lines. Of course, by the third or fourth take, the joke was no longer funny. A Douglass laugh was inserted into the final broadcast version to compensate.
How did Douglass originally invent the prototype for the Laff Box?
According to his wife Dorothy, Douglass would bring home tapes of television shows and then pore over them for hours and hours in his living room, finding and isolating the precise audience reactions he wanted. He spliced together tapes into spools—essentially tape loops. There was a keyboard for this machine, and each key was connected to a separate tape loop. At the bottom was a pedal that would either increase the volume or fade it out. So, really, it was like playing a musical instrument. And Charles Douglass was a virtuoso at the keyboard.
Where did the laughs on the Laff Box originate?
Reportedly, the earliest reactions came from a Marcel Marceau performance in Los Angeles in 1955 or 1956, during his world premiere North American tour. This would make sense, because Marceau was, of course, a mime, and therefore, the only sound in the theater was the audience’s reaction.
Other reactions are widely thought to have come from The Red Skelton Show, especially the show’s mime sketches. I can state this with relative certainty, as it has been reported repeatedly by various sound engineers who worked closely with Douglass. It’s interesting to note that the Skelton show aired on CBS, where Douglass worked. So, in theory, he would have had access to those tapes. But, in the end, it’s also important to note that we may never know his exact sources.
As far as my research shows, there were never any interviews with Douglass or with anyone who worked at his company, Northridge Electronics. The secrecy surrounding his work is Hollywood legend. Only a very few people witnessed him using his machine, and it was always kept padlocked when not in use. Part of this secrecy was to protect his invention, to be sure. But part of it, too, was that, for some, inserting a laugh track may have been the same as admitting that a show wasn’t funny—or not “funny enough.” There was a real stigma surrounding the use of the laugh track, which continues to this day.
Have you ever seen a Charles Douglass Laff Box?
I have seen photographs of it, but very few people, including myself, have ever seen this machine firsthand.
I’ve spent a lot of time talking to some of the original “laugh-track men” who worked with Douglass during his heyday. What they have to say is fascinating. What’s even more interesting is that they continue Douglass’s tradition of secrecy by speaking only off the record, and with the condition that I not reveal their names. It’s still a secret, even fifty years later.
That’s astonishing—you can even find C.I.A. and F.B.I. agents who are willing to talk once they retire.
I know, but this is a very small industry. It’s a brotherhood—very insular.
When they spoke with me, they described Douglass’s method, which is quite fascinating. Producers would call Douglass into the studio to “laugh” a show. Douglass would show up with his Laff Box, which he carted around on a dolly that he invented. When he was finished, he’d pack up his machine, load it on his dolly, and drive off to the next job.
What made Douglass so good, exactly? Is there an art to canned laughter?
Oh, absolutely. First, Douglass knew his material inside out. He knew his library extremely well, which makes sense, because he had, of course, compiled it himself. He had dozens of reactions, and he knew where to find each one. In addition, he sped-up the reactions just a bit to heighten the effect.
Douglass’s work was crisp and clean. It was a real craft. And the range of reactions that he was able to find was incredible. Some of the big belly laughs are great. You just don’t hear laughs like that anymore. I also love the “shock” and “surprise” reactions, such as when a big audience says, in unison, “Whoa!” Those were used frequently on The Munsters when something extra-outrageous happened.
Douglass not only had a terrific “ear,” he also had a terrific memory. Over the years he would not just add new tracks, but he would revive old ones that had been retired and then retire the newer tracks. For example, tracks heard in sitcoms of the early 1960s resurface years later in the late 1970s. The ABC series Delta House, which was a spin-off of the movie Animal House, is a perfect example. However, by this time, Douglass was using his most extreme reactions almost exclusively, and the result was pretty awful. To my ear, it rings of desperation.
I’m not a fan of canned laughter per se, but some 1960s sitcoms were so poorly written that I can’t help but think that canned laughter only improved them.
No question! In my view, the laugh track only adds to the fun of these shows, whether they are well written or not. I mean, Mister Ed, which I think is quite well written, would be so much less fun to watch if it had no laugh track. As far as shows with weak scripts—take The Flying Nun, for example—the laugh track saved that show.
Do the laughs today differ from the ones in the past?
They most certainly do. Today’s sitcoms are based mostly on witty repartee and no longer rely on outlandish situations or sight gags, such as you would see in an episode of Mister Ed or The Munsters or Bewitched—and today’s muted laughs reflect that. Generally, laughs are now much less aggressive and more subdued; you no longer hear unbridled belly laughs or guffaws. It’s “intelligent” laughter—more genteel, more sophisticated. But definitely not as much fun.
There was an optimism and carefree quality in those old laugh tracks. Today, the reactions are largely “droll.”
In what sense?
In the past, if the audience was really having a good time, it shone through. Audience members seemed less self-conscious and they felt free to laugh as loudly as they wanted. Maybe that’s a reflection of contemporary culture.
In the fifties, the laughs were generally buoyant and uproarious, although somewhat generic, because Douglass hadn’t yet refined his structured laugh technique. In the sixties, however, you could hear more individual responses—chortles, cackles from both men and women. The reactions were much more orderly and organized.
I can actually tell you the exact year that a show was produced, just by listening to its laugh track.
Have you ever detected an actual, authentic laugh on a live-action sitcom?
Yes, just once. There is one episode of All in the Family in which a reaction is real. The next TV season I heard it on a canned-laughter series, and I thought, Hey! That’s the same laugh I heard on All in the Family! But that’s been the only time—so far. I’m always listening.
Who’s in charge of the canned laughter on sitcoms today?
As far as we know, Northridge Electronics still produces the majority of canned laughter on television, and Robert Douglass carries on the family tradition by remaining as tight-lipped as his father. But the business is no longer a monopoly. There are many postproduction houses doing this work. The Laff Box has been replaced by the laptop, and I’m told there are multiple sets of laugh tracks that contain laughs specific to certain countries and cultural groups. Whatever the case, the technique is certainly a lot more sophisticated than in Charles Douglass’s day—which, to my mind, is not always a great thing. Nothing will replace those classic, vintage tracks, and I wish they’d bring them back.
Thank you.
My pleasure.
[Applause]
Mike Sacks works on the editorial staff of Vanity Fair. He is one of the co-authors of Sex: Our Bodies, Our Junk, which will be published this August.
>>Have you ever detected an actual, authentic laugh on a live-action sitcom?
Yes, just once. There is one episode of All in the Family in which a reaction is real. >>
Does he mean that ALL laughter on live sitcoms is fake? Or was that answer just a joke…
I don’t know if Mr. Glenn is joking or not — I hope he’s joking — but most of the laughter on ALL IN THE FAMILY was real. Most of the shows he’s talking about were single-camera shows filmed without an audience, which used laugh tracks to simulate the reaction of the absent audience. ALL IN THE FAMILY was shot with an audience and used its real reactions.
Most sitcoms today either use an audience or, if they do not use an audience, do without a laugh track. It’s not a good idea to continue the traditional confusion between real audience reaction, which improves the timing and energy of the show, and a “laugh track,” which is fake.
It appears that the original question has been misconstrued by our readers. When asked if I ever detected a real laugh that later was picked up and used for a laugh track, I cited an episode of All in the Family. (Since then, I have discovered additional such sources.) In essence, I am saying that All in the Family’s live audience supplied a laugh that was later deployed in the standard laugh track.
While the vast majority of the show’s audience reactions were absolutely genuine, to be perfectly exact, early episodes of All in the Family were at times sweetened with the Douglass laugh track, augmenting or smoothing-out the reactions of the show’s live audience as was (and remains) industry practice.
In its final seasons, All in the Family was taped without an audience and then screened for a live audience prior to airing, with their (very real) reactions recorded and used. Does this constitute canned laughter? It’s an interesting question.
I live in LA and have friends in the TV business, and from what I understand laugh tracks are used to “sweeten” audience laughter for live, multi-camera shows. I’ve been to live show recordings and was amazed at how uproariously audiences laughed at the most mundane jokes, even ones that were being repeated in retakes of scenes. Of course there’s also a comic to keep the audience laughing between takes, so everyone’s pretty giddy by the time they witness take five. I know the common wisdom among the learned — maybe because of that great scene in “Annie Hall”? — is that shows are crammed wall to wall with canned laughter, but I think the real shocker is that audiences in Hollywood and Burbank really do laugh at a lot of this stuff… or did, back when there were so many multi-cam sitcoms on the air.
Sounds like a modifies Mellotron to me…
I also recall hearing a story, details of which now escape me, about how the laugh track became a point of contention during the production of “MASH” — someone (perhaps Alan Alda, perhaps the writers, I don’t know) argued that the laugh tracks undercut the larger message the show was trying to deliver. Anyone have details?
Hey, Lex. Larry Gelbart talks about that at length in my book “And Here’s the Kicker.” He hated the laugh track and wanted it left out. In the UK, the MASH DVDs don’t have the laff track, and it becomes a different sort of show.
Thanks, Neal for your comment. You’re right — having sat in a live TV audience myself, the audience often really *does* laugh at the jokes. In this case, when the producer is pleased with the reactions, a laugh track either isn’t used or, for sound continuity, is used to “smooth out” the audience’s reaction.
Thanks again!
I’ll never forget hearing the “uh oh” from the audience in the I Love Lucy episodes … again and again … whenever Lucy was about to do something that might not work out
Wow, what a great piece!
One thing I want to ask Ben is this: On many of the 60′s shows I and several friends have noticed a very strange sound similar to a cat meow. It may happen more than once in a show or not at all.
Now it’s probably just a very strange form of laugh or exhort that given the technology at the time (and many generations of tape to create the track itself) has been distorted from the original sound to such a degree as to sound like a cat. Have you ever heard this? I’ve mentioned it to others and they think I’m just hearing things…
My recollection of the laff track on MASH was that they, of course, didn’t want one, but were forced to have one by CBS. But am I imagining this part… didn’t they avoid the laff track during the operation scenes? And wasn’t there a famous episode, shot like a documentary, that didn’t have a track? Another example is Aaron Sorkin’s sublime Sports Night, which was forced to have a laff track, but he Sorkin managed to dial it down so much by the end of the two season run that you barely heard it. I can’t remember the last comedy I watched regularly that HAD a laff track; I guess the thursday night powerhouses of the 80s on NBC had them, but did Seinfeld?
I remember that MASH was always shown without a laff track in the UK. We had no idea it even originally had one until an episode was shown with the laff track left in. There were so many complaints!
I remember watching some of the DVDs of “Get a Life” where they had deleted the laugh track. The problem was, it was a multicamera sitcom with real audience reactions, and so you had actors reacting to the (now nonexistant) audience by pausing to wait for laughter to die down. It took on the feel of some wierd absurdist off-off-broadway production (which is probably what Chris Elliot was going for, anyway).
Since multicamera sitcoms are essentially filmed plays, audience reactions are essential to them. You “feel” you are in the audience even if you never see it, (and if there is a real audience, the actors are timing their performance to their reactions, so you need to hear them) But laugh tracks imposed on single camera setups are just unnerving, with a phantom audience following these characters around for no descernable reason.
@Dave Doyle:
>>>”On many of the 60′s shows I and several friends have noticed a very strange sound similar to a cat meow.”
You’re NOT crazy, and just hearing things. I’m pretty sure I know EXACTLY the sound you’re talking about, and have heard it in dozens of different shows from the 1960s. I, too, have mentioned it to people who must simply be less attentive than I am when it comes to audio, because they’ve never noticed it, or simply don’t remember it.
I always thought that noise sounded like someone was playing notes on an oboe that seemed to simulate the hiccuping cadence of a real laugh. And if I recall correctly, there are a couple different versions of the “oboe laugh.”
Is that an actual Laff Box seen in A FACE IN THE CROWD (1957, Elia Kazan)?
It is introduced in the final third of the film and is a crucial part of the final collapse of Lonesome Rhodes (played by Andy Griffith) at the end of the film .
To Dave Doyle:
Thanks for your terrific comment and question!
One reason that laugh track reactions sometimes sound a bit “unnatural” is that often they were sped-up to enhance the sense of gaitey.
Still, so that i can answer your question with accuracy (I *think* I know the reaction you’re referring to), you could try finding it on a clip on YouTube and send that to me at benglenn2@gmail.com. Depending on the year(s) that the track was used, you might try finding it in a clip of “The Munsters” or “Bewitched.” Just a thought/suggestion/offer.
Thanks again for your question!
To Hal Rommel:
Thanks for your question!
One of the great things about forums such as this is that I learn things, too…especially on a topic such as this in which theregenerally is little information out there.
Hal, I have not seen A FACE IN THE CROWD but am immediately adding it to my Netflix queue and will let you know. This could be a new discovery! Thanks for the info/adrenaline rush!
To Richard:
Hi Richard…you are correct that “to have laugh track or not to have laugh track” was an ongoing debate throughout much of MASH’s run. Mike sachs chronicles this in his terrific book. While MASH did have a laugh track throughout its run, Larry Gelbart managed to have it removed during the operating room scenes. This may stem from the episode you are recalling which was meant to document “a day in the life of the operating room” which included a small clock at the bottom corner of the screen and had no laugh track at all. From that point onward, Larry Gelbart was able to convince CBS to not have a laugh track in the operating room scenes. While the show, like most others, moved to Carroll Pratt’s “looser”-sounding (intended to sound more natural) laugh track circa 1977, MASH retained a laugh track throughout its run.
Regarding the presence of a laugh track today…if you watch virtually any filmed/taped sitcom with an audience reaction, you likely are hearing laughter that at the very least has been “sweetened” to either augment the reaction or smooth-out anonalies in the soundtrack. And, yes, “Seinfeld” was no exception.
Thanks for your comment/question!
@Dave Doyle: I know that sound, too! I always noticed it as a kid watching those shows. Also, another one, a male voice, sort of “dry” sounding, making a laugh that sounds like “Hoo-hoo-hoo ha!” Does anyone know what I am talking about? I believe it was on Gilligan’s Island a lot.
To Greg:
Thanks for sharing your favorite laugh track reaction. I *think* I know the one you’re referring to!
Wouldn’t it be fun if we all could watch laugh track-filled sitcoms together?
I look forward to more well-researched pieces focusing on how early TV was produced! By the way, I loved Ben’s piece in “TV Party” too on TVParty.com!
Ben, I just remembered a funny story about that “Hoo-hoo-hoo ha” laugh: As a kid, I was so sensitive to sound that I noticed when that laugh was in both the Brady Bunch and Gilligan’s Island. I didn’t know what a laugh track was at the time, and I saw Sherwood Schwartz’s name in the credits for both shows, so I assumed it was his laugh! I pictured him in a little director’s chair off-screen, laughing away. I noticed the one Dave mentioned above as well–I thought of it as the “a-mew-sing” sound. (Yes, I suppose I was a weird kid.)
Hi Greg,
For a young person who had a keen ear but didn’t know what a laugh track is, that’s pretty smart!
In a similar vein, in some of Lucy’s more outrageous moments on “I Love Lucy,” you sometimes can hear Desi Arnaz laughing off-camera.
It occured to me that the device in A FACE IN THE CROWD is more accurately an “audience response box” (cheers,etc.). Are these different devices? In terms of automating/enhancing audience response, did the need for laughs come first or the need for applause and cheering on cue?