September 16, 1968: Richard Nixon, former Vice President of the United States, and currently the Republican Party's nominee for President, appears on the NBC comedy variety show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In.
He was on screen for all of eight seconds. Those 8 seconds may have made, literally, all the difference in the world.
Judy Carne, a British actress, was the Sock It To Me Girl on Laugh-In: She would say, "Sock it to me!" or, "And now, folks, it's sock-it-to-me time!" And she would get water thrown on her. Or something else embarrassing would happen, like a trap door would be activated, and she would fall through the stage, or get the classic show-business prank of a pie in the face.
Judy inside the show-closing Joke Wall,
safe for the moment.
Probably.
The idea proved so popular that pretty much everybody who was anybody -- including non-Hollywood celebrities like the Rev. Billy Graham, Howard Cosell and William F. Buckley Jr. -- wanted to go on the show. Some of them even said, "Sock it to me!" and got the big splash, or some other mistreatment.
The show's creator and producer, George Schlatter, explained the routine's creation, as the show was being planned out in late 1967:
Aretha Franklin had a record at the time, "Respect," with the lyric, "Sock it to me." I'm in the car with my wife, Jolene, and she says we ought to do a "Sock it to me" piece on the show. And I say you can't, because it had sexual connotations. Simultaneously, my five-year-old daughter in the back seat starts going, "Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me." I went, "Uh-oh."
My wife had the idea to tie the phrase to visuals, like when we would drop Judy Carne through the trap door. The network was taken aback by us constantly using the phrase. But it took off.
Indeed, the phrase began to be used far from the show. Running in the California Primary, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was greeted with signs saying, "SOCK IT TO EM BOBBY." On June 4, he won the Primary, the crowd at his victory party at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles can be heard chanting, "Sock it to 'em, Bobby, sock it to 'em!" (Clap, clap!) Sadly, shortly after his victory speech, he was assassinated. Later that year, as the Detroit Tigers made their run to the American League Pennant, and then to win the World Series, fans carried "SOCK IT TO EM TIGERS" banners through the stands.
Laugh-In castmember Pigmeat Markham had turned his catchphrase, "Here come da judge!" into a hit record. But an attempt to copy that, with Carne singing, "Sock It To Me," flopped, mainly because Carne couldn't sing, and the song wasn't intentionally funny the way Markham's was.
Starting the show's 2nd season, which would include the Presidential election on November 5, 1968, Schlatter wanted to invite the 2 major-party nominees for President on the show, just long enough to be videotaped saying one of the fast-paced show's many catchphrases. He figured he had an inside man: One of the show's writers, Paul Keyes, was a friend of Nixon's. (Keyes, the token Republican among the show's writers, had created the show's "Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award.")
Getting the Democratic nominee, the current Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, was going to be harder. And Humphrey turned Schlatter down, thinking it was undignified. He was right. Except, that was the point: The idea was to make the candidates seem more human, more relatable.
At first, Nixon didn't want to do it, either. But his campaign staff, knowing how badly television had hurt him in his failed run for President in 1960, were using a very tight TV-friendly strategy, and talked him into it.
At first, Schlatter wanted him to say, "You bet your sweet bippy!" in response to something funny that someone else on the show said. Who it would be, and what it would be, would be decided later, in the editing process: The show's breakneck speed, with quick cutaways between the show's cast and various celebrity guest stars, sometimes with a new joke every 30 seconds, allowed for that.
Finally, Nixon agreed to say Carne's line. After all, if it was good enough for Milton Berle, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dinah Shore, it was good enough for Richard Nixon, right? But, to preserve his dignity, Schlatter wouldn't actually show anybody socking it to Nixon. Instead, he turns toward the camera, looks shocked, and asks, "Sock it to me?" Then there's quick cuts of him looking left and forward. After 8 seconds, it's all over. Nobody socked it to him.
It's important to remember that, before he became President, Nixon had a very different image. He wasn't yet universally seen as the "crook" of Watergate, grumbling about the media and the college kids "blowing up the campuses." He was Middle America's guy, standing up for traditional values. As Schlatter said, "Nixon defined square. He was the original cube, but he'd do anything Paul said, because he adored him."
In a 3-way race with Humphrey and George Wallace, the segregationist, law-and-order-demanding once-and-future Governor of Alabama, Nixon got 301 Electoral Votes, Humphrey 191, Wallace 46. The popular vote didn't matter, but it was exceptionally close: Nixon 43.4 percent, Humphrey 42.7, Wallace 13.5.
A shift of 224,000 votes in California, even though it was Nixon's home State, would have been enough to deny Nixon a majority of the Electoral Votes, and throw the election into the U.S. House of Representatives. An additional shift of 135,000 votes in Illinois would have given Humphrey the lead. An additional shift of 91,000 in Ohio, or 62,000 in New Jersey, would have pushed Humphrey over the threshold of 270 Electoral Votes.
In a 2018 interview, Schlatter admitted that he knew immediately that he'd gained a lot for his show, but may have done something awful for the country:
After the episode, I thought, what did I do? I made him into a nice guy. We decided to ask Humphrey to say, "Yes, please, do sock it to me," but he wouldn't do it. We followed him all over trying to get him. He often said afterward that he thinks not doing it may have cost him the election. Sometimes people say I helped get Nixon elected. I’ve had to live with that.
Show hosts Dan Rowan and Dick Martin agreed, going to their graves believing that Nixon going on Laugh-In, and Humphrey not, made Nixon just that little bit more relatable, and swung the election.
It was 23 years before Bill Clinton played his saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show, turning his campaign around. It was 40 years before Barack Obama appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show. And it was 47 years before Donald Trump rode his appearances on The Apprentice into, essentially, getting free advertising from the American TV news networks.
Like so many things in modern American life, it goes back to Tricky Dick.
*
September 16, 1968 was a Monday. These baseball games were played:
* The New York Yankees lost to the Detroit Tigers, 9-1 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. John Hiller, later better known as a relief pitcher -- in 1973, he set a major league record with 38 saves, lasting until 1985 -- went the distance for the win. For the Yankees, starter Joe Verbanic didn't get a single out. Norm Cash hit a home run. Al Kaline sat the game out. Mickey Mantle, in his final month as an active player, went 2-for-3 before being relieved defensively.
The Tigers beat the Yankees again the next night, and clinched the American League Pennant. They beat the St. Louis Cardinals to win the World Series in 7 games.
* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Boston Red Sox, 8-1 at Fenway Park in Boston. Brooks Robinson, Don Buford and Boog Powell hit home runs. Frank Robinson went 1-for-4 with a walk. Carl Yastrzemski went 1-for-2 with a walk and the Sox' lone RBI. Having batted .344 in his Triple Crown season the year before, in this "Year of the Pitcher," he led the AL with a .301 batting average, the only AL hitter over .300 and the lowest average for a batting champion ever.
* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 6-1 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. Roberto Clemente went 1-for-4 with an RBI. Willie Stargell went 0-for-3 with 2 walks.
* The Minnesota Twins beat the California Angeles, 4-3 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Rod Carew went 1-for-3 with a walk and an RBI. Harmon Killebrew appeared as a pinch-hitter, and did not reach base.
* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Atlanta Braves, 6-0 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Bill Singer allowed 9 hits, but didn't walk anybody, and kept the shutout. Hank Aaron went 1-for-4.
* And the San Francisco Giants beat the Cincinnati Reds, 8-4 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Willie Mays went 1-for-4. Willie McCovey went 2-for-4 with 4 RBIs. Pete Rose went 2-for-5 with 2 RBIs. Johnny Bench went 2-for-4.
No comments:
Post a Comment