October 31, 1974: "The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast" Premieres

October 31, 1974: The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast premieres on NBC. The concept had begun a year earlier, as a segment on The Dean Martin Show, but was now extended to a full hour all to itself.

A roast is a form of comedy in which a specific individual, a guest of "honor," is subjected to jokes at their expense, intended to amuse the event's wider audience. In addition to jokes and insult comedy, such events may also involve genuine praise and tributes.

The assumption is that the roastee can take the jokes in good humor, and not as serious criticism or insult. The individual is surrounded by friends, fans, and well-wishers, who can receive some of the same treatment during the evening.

For example: Dean Martin, legendary singer and actor, and the host -- and, once, the subject of an installment -- was a member of "The Rat Pack," which also included Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. The 3 of them were close friends, had done movies and TV specials together, and knew how far they could go with each other. Many of the "panelists" were friends of theirs, including Don Rickles, the king of insult comedy.

(In real life, just as comedian Jack Benny wasn't actually a cheapskate, and Martin and Foster Brooks, also a frequent participant, weren't really heavy boozers, people who knew Rickles said he was a wonderful guy, and particularly supportive of young comedians and actors.)

The show was based on the roasts at The Friars Club, a New York-based club for comedians. It was taped at the Ziegfeld Room at the MGM Grand Hotel, in the Rat Pack's adopted hometown of Las Vegas. (In 1986, it was bought by Bally's, and rebranded as Bally's Las Vegas. In 1993, a new hotel opened elsewhere in Vegas as the MGM Grand.) (UPDATE: In 2022, the former MGM Grand/Bally's was bought by Caesar's, and rebranded again, as the Horseshoe Las Vegas.)

Since the show was on NBC, Tonight Show host Johnny Carson was a regular guest. So were members of the cast of the now-canceled Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, including Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. For some strange reason, Laugh-In's Ruth Buzzi always appeared in character as frumpy, handbag-swinging Gladys Ormphby.

The show was bipartisan: It roasted Republicans such as Governor Ronald Reagan of California and Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, but also Democrats such as former Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

It wasn't all old guys, or even all "establishment" guys. Shortly after Muhammad Ali, hardly an establishment figure at the time, regained the Heavyweight Championship of the World, he was invited -- probably at the insistence of Sinatra, a huge boxing fan. Among the roasters were ABC Sports' Howard Cosell, and a young comedian who did impressions of both Ali and Cosell: Billy Crystal. Crystal and Ali had never met before, but Ali was so impressed, he called the diminutive Crystal "Little Brother," and they were friends for the rest of Ali's life.

In addition to Ali, sports personalities roasted included baseball's Leo Durocher (a close friend of Sinatra's), Joe Garagiola and Hank Aaron; football's Joe Namath; basketball's Wilt Chamberlain; and tennis' Bobby Riggs.

Three men were "Man of the Hour" twice: Namath, Michael Landon, and Jack Klugman, although, the 1st time, Klugman was roasted along with his Odd Couple castmate Tony Randall.

On November 21, 1980, a fire broke out at the MGM Grand, killing 85 people. The damage done to the hotel meant the end of the show, except for a brief revival in 1984.

*

October 31, 1974 was a Thursday. And it was Halloween. I was 4 years old, going on 5, and I was dressed as a cowboy. Unfortunately, this was also the day that Ronald O'Bryan killed his 8-year-old son Timothy by poisoning his candy, becoming the source of all the myths about tainted candy. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball season ended 2 weeks earlier, with the Oakland Athletics beating the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series. Football was in midweek. There were 3 games in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Atlanta Hawks, 93-90 at Madison Square Garden. Earl "The Pearl" Monroe scored 35 points.

* The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Detroit Pistons, 118-101 at The Coliseum in the Cleveland suburb of Richfield, Ohio. Austin Carr scored 33 for the Cavs. Bob Lanier scored 41 in defeat.

* And the Houston Rockets beat the Washington Bullets, 95-92 at the Hofheinz Pavilon (now the Fertitta Center) in Houston.

There were no games in the American Basketball Association. There were 3 games in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Philadelphia Flyers, 5-1 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Washington Capitals, 3-0 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.

* And the St. Louis Blues and the Los Angeles Kings played to a tie, 1-1 at The Forum outside Los Angeles.

And there were 3 games in the World Hockey Association:

* The New England Whalers beat the Indianapolis Racers, 6-1 at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.

* The Cleveland Crusaders beat the Michigan Stags, 4-2 at Cobo Hall (now Huntington Place) in Detroit. The Stags didn't finish the season as the Michigan Stags. They became the Baltimore Blades. They didn't finish the season under that name, either. They didn't finish the season at all.

* And the San Diego Mariners beat the Chicago Cougars, 4-3 at the San Diego Sports Arena (now the Pechanga Arena). 

September 16, 1968: Richard Nixon Appears On "Laugh-In"

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.

February 5, 1969: "Turn-On" Turns Everybody Off

An ad for the show in TV Guide

February 5, 1969: The sketch comedy show Turn-On airs on ABC. It was intended as a weekly series. It didn't make it to a 2nd week. Worse than that: It became the 1st American TV show ever canceled during its 1st episode.

Previously, 2 American TV shows were canceled after just 1 airing. On October 31, 1948, CBS aired The Dennis James Carnival, a variety show. The premise is that it was a show-within-a-show: Host James was trying to honor his uncle's memory by keeping his carnival going. Viewers didn't buy the premise, and the show was quickly shelved.

On June 25, 1951, CBS aired the quiz show Who's Whose. Four celebrity panelists tried to guess which of 3 male contestants was married to which of 3 female contestants. It didn't work, and it, too, was removed from the schedule after just 1 airing. Neither show was offensive, they just didn't work.

The title "Turn-On" was based on psychologist and LSD advocate Timothy Leary's line: "Turn on, tune in, drop out." The show was created by Ed Friendly and George Schlatter, who had produced Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, which had debuted on NBC a little over a year earlier. Production executive Digby Wolfe described it as a "visual, comedic, sensory assault, involving animation, videotape, stop-action film, electronic distortion, computer graphics -- even people."

But, having accepted Laugh-In, NBC rejected Turn-On. So did CBS, where an official confessed, "It was so fast with the cuts and chops that some of our people actually got physically disturbed by it." Besides, CBS didn't need its own Laugh-In: They'd already had, and canceled, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

Turn-On's premise was that it was produced by a computer. Now, why would a computer be trusted with comedy? In the 1990s, after IBM proved that a computer could beat a world champion at chess, somebody wrote, "Someday, a computer will be able to write poetry, but only another computer will be able to appreciate it."

Distinguishing characteristics of the show were its use of the Moog synthesizer and a lack of sets, except for a white backdrop. Unlike Laugh-In, where the subject matters was varied but included veiled references to sex, Turn-On "focused almost exclusively on sex as a comedic subject," using various rapid-fire jokes and risqué skits, but, unlike Laugh-In, no laugh track.

The show was also filmed, instead of presented live or on videotape. Several of the jokes were presented with the screen divided into four squares resembling comic strip panels. The production credits of the episode appeared after each commercial break, instead of conventionally at the beginning or end.

The writing staff included Albert Brooks, who had already begun to make a name for himself as a standup comedian. (And he was born with the name Albert Einstein. He renamed himself after comedian Mel Brooks, a friend of his father's.) Among the castmembers were folksinger Hamilton Camp, comedian Chuck McCann, and black singer Teresa Graves.

Like Laugh-In, the show was meant to have a guest host each week. For the premiere, at 8:30 PM Eastern Time, on February 5, 1969, the guest host was Tim Conway, who had already become known as part of the casts of The Steve Allen Show and McHale's Navy.

The show was a disaster. WEWS-Channel 5 in Cleveland had their switchboard lit up with protest calls, and station general manager Donald Perris, saying the show was "in excessive poor taste," refused to return to the show after its 1st commercial break: For over 45 minutes, they used their emergency procedure, a black screen with live organ music.

In effect, Perris had canceled the show during the 1st episode. He sent an angry telegram to ABC president Elton Rule: "If your naughty little boys have to write dirty words on the walls, please don't use our walls."

KBTV-Channel 9 in Denver (which is now KUSA, and an NBC affiliate) released a statement saying, "We have decided, without hesitation, that it would be offensive to a major segment of the audience." KOMO-Channel 4 in Seattle also chose not to show it at all. And WFAA-Channel 8 in Dallas decided to air it in a "death slot," the following Sunday night, at 10:30 local (Central) time, so that as few people as possible would watch. They still got an overwhelmingly negative response.

On February 7, ABC announced that Turn-On would go on hiatus. Three days later, the show was formally canceled. Instead of the scheduled February 12 episode, the ABC Wednesday Night Movie (The Oscar) started 30 minutes early. This announcement came after the following week's TV Guide went to press; it published a listing for the scheduled February 12 episode, which would have starred Robert Culp and his then-wife France Nuyen as hosts. The network eventually replaced Turn On with a revival of the overly-wholesome The King Family Show. 

What happened? Had American culture shifted that much in the one year and change since Laugh-In debuted? Was the culture now demanding less Laugh-In and Mod Squad, and more Walt Disney and Lawrence Welk? Did the election of Richard Nixon as President signify that much of a change, to the point where Middle America was no longer willing to accept it?

It's hard to say, because it's hard to see: Except for a few brief clips, I've never seen the debut of Turn-On. Unless you were watching it at the time, neither have you. I don't know if it's ever been shown again, anywhere, not even on nostalgia TV networks like TV Land, MeTV or Decades. It's never been released on VHS, DVD or Blu-Ray. If a complete copy of the debut episode, and the never-aired 2nd episode, exists anywhere, it's probably in a vault at ABC, or maybe at the Museum of Broadcasting in New York. So we only have contemporary reviews to go by.

Those reviews seem to suggest that, while Laugh-In had jokes about sex and the changing mores thereof, it also mixed in jokes about late-1960s drug use, fashions, politics, and popular culture in general; while Turn-On seemed to be one sex-themed joke after another. And the only thing that this aroused in viewers was their ire.

This was 1969, but it was also American television, which, then as now, was always a few years behind the times. America wasn't ready for a show that focused on that much on sex talk in prime time. Four months later, Dr. David Reuben, a psychiatrist, published a book titled Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask). Most of America was not only afraid to ask about the things Turn-On was talking about, but furious that anybody was facing their fears and asking about it. Middle America didn't want to know.

Conway said in 2008 that Turn-On was "way ahead of its time. I'm not sure, even if you saw it today, that maybe that time has also passed." Looking at comments on the brief clips available on YouTube, some people have compared it with more recent fare like Adult Swim -- but that's on pay cable, suggesting that prime-time TV, even after more than half a century of prime-time sex subjects, comedic and otherwise, from innuendo to showing couples appearing to get it on, still isn't ready.

Fortunately for those involved, Turn-On didn't destroy careers. Conway got his own sitcom in 1970, but The Tim Conway Show only lasted 13 weeks. In 1975, he joined the cast of The Carol Burnett Show, and remained a castmember for the rest of its run. He had another Tim Conway Show in the 1980-81 season, and remained a beloved comedian until his death in 2019.

Teresa Graves not only survived the bad comparisons to Laugh-In, she was hired as a member of that show's cast, replacing their original black female castmember, Chelsea Brown. She also lasted just 1 season. In the 1974-75 TV season, she starred as a policewoman in Get Christie Love! 

Chuck McCann resumed his comedy career. He and Gilligan's Island star Bob Denver co-starred in a Saturday morning live-action kids show titled Far Out Space Nuts. He's probably best remembered for starring alongside Bill Fiore in commercials for Right Guard antiperspirant, where their adjoining houses shared a medicine cabinet: "Hi, guy!" And while Hamilton Camp never became a big star, he did become a regular guest star on sitcoms.

Since Turn-On, 5 other American scripted TV shows have been aired on the major networks, and canceled after 1 episode:

* October 30, 1996: Public Morals, CBS, about a New York Police Department vice squad. Too much "vice" was shown for anyone's taste, even after 3 years of ABC's NYPD Blue, whose character John Irvin, played by Bill Brochtrup, was brought in for this show, and then returned after this show was quickly canceled.

* March 22, 1997: Lawless, Fox, with former football star Brian Bosworth as a private investigator. This one wasn't offensive, it was just bad. The Boz couldn't act.

* December 8, 2000: Dot Comedy, ABC, an attempt to turn Internet humor into TV humor, that fell flat.

* January 9, 2006: Emily's Reasons Why Not, ABC, starring Heather Graham as a single career woman, who made decisions based on lists of reasons why, and why not. Another one that wasn't offensive, just bad.

* February 26, 2008: Quarterlife, NBC, an attempt at filler during a screenwriters' strike. Even under such difficult circumstances, the Peacock Network decided it wasn't worth it.

*

February 5, 1969 was a Wednesday. Singer Bobby Brown and actor Michael Sheen were born on this day.

Baseball and football were out of season. There were 5 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 111-102 at the Milwaukee Arena. In 1974, it was renamed the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena.

* The Baltimore Bullets beat the Boston Celtics, 124-112 at the Baltimore Civic Center (now the CFG Arena).

* The Chicago Bulls beat the Detroit Pistons, 120-108 at Cobo Hall (now Huntington Place) in Detroit.

* The San Diego Rockets beat the Cincinnati Royals, 110-93 at the San Diego Sports Arena (now the Pechanga Arena).

* And the Philadelphia 76ers beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 119-115 at the Seattle Center Coliseum.

There were 5 games played in the American Basketball Association:

* The New York Nets lost to the Miami Floridians, 111-99 at the West Palm Beach Auditorium in the Miami suburb of West Palm Beach, Florida.

* The Indiana Pacers beat the Denver Rockets, 125-109 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum (now the Corteva Coliseum) in Indianapolis.

* The New Orleans Buccaneers beat the Kentucky Colonels, 114-108 at Freedom Hall in Louisville.

* The Dallas Chaparrals beat the Houston Mavericks, 120-116 at the Moody Coliseum in Dallas.

* And the Los Angeles Stars beat the Minnesota Muskies, 110-107 at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena.

There were 4 games in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Pittsburgh Penguins, 3-2 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs and the Minnesota North Stars played to a tie, 5-5 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. Ron Ellis scored a hat trick for the Leafs.

* The Boston Bruins beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 7-2 at the Chicago Stadium. Phil Esposito had 2 goals and 2 assists.

* The Oakland Seals beat the Montreal Canadiens, 5-1 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

* And the Detroit Red Wings, the Philadelphia Flyers, the St. Louis Blues and the Los Angeles Kings were not scheduled.

January 22, 1968: "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" Premieres

Dan (left) and Dickie, holding

"The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate" award

January 22, 1968: Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In premieres on NBC. It was a rapid-fire sketch show, with some jokes going past so fast, it was "Blink and you'll miss it." It took the sketch work of shows like Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, The Ernie Kovacs Show, and That Was the Week That Was, and upped the ante considerably.

Dan Rowan and Dick Martin had been a comedy team since 1952. As the show's hosts, Dan was the "straight man," setting up most of the jokes, and "Dickie" played the guy with the punchlines. Many of these revolved around the fact that Dan was married and culturally conservative, with only the slightest of hipness; while Dick was the swinging bachelor and not very bright.

To paraphrase a later saying, Dick wasn't a dummy, he just played on one TV. He was very bright, as he later proved as a panelist on Match Game. He was a gourmet cook. And, about halfway through the show's run, he got married to British actress-model Dolly Read.

After their opening dialogue (there were 2 of them, so it was not a "monologue"), there would be "the party sketch," with the castmembers (sometimes in character) and the night's guest stars, dancing to mod music, kind of a combination of old-time Big Band stuff and up-to-date rock. When the music stopped, everybody stood still, no matter what position they were in, except for one person, who told a joke, usually about the changes in pop culture or politics going on. Once the joke finished, everybody would start dancing again.

There would frequently be words shown in graphics crawling across the bottom of the screen. After the 1968 New Hampshire Primary, one read, "LBJ CALL... ALLIED VAN LINES." In other words, President Johnson was going to have to move out of the White House. Which came true, but not in the way the writers expected.

Among the castmembers, and the classic characters they created:

* Gary Owens, already a star disc jockey in Los Angeles, who played the show's announcer, and made the town where NBC had its studios a household name: "Beautiful downtown Burbank." It was, of course, sarcastic.

* Arte Johnson, who played Wolfgang, a Nazi soldier who would sneak out of a bush, and say that the sketch the audience had just seen was, in a German accent, "Verrrry intereshting, but... " and add something. Frequently, it was, "but shtupid."

* Ruth Buzzi, who played Gladys Ormpby, a frumpy society matron. Johnson played Tyrone F. Horneigh (a play on "horny"), a dirty old man who would make a pass at her, and she would hit him with her purse.

* Judy Carne, a British actress who had already been married to and divorced from actor Burt Reynolds. She was the Sock It To Me Girl: 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.

* Henry Gibson, who would sometimes come out in a wildly colored suit, holding a bouquet of paper flowers, and recite a short poem. He also played a minister, who could be seen in the party sketch sipping coffee (never booze), and delivering a church-related joke, such as, "My church accepts all denominations, but my favorite is the five-dollar bill!"

* Jo Anne Worley, who wasn't slim and trim like the other women on the show. But she could sing. Her main shtick was that she would do takeoffs on popular standards. For example, "When you're down and out, lift up your head and shout, 'I'm down and out!!!!'" She had a wild, never-seen boyfriend named Boris.

* Goldie Hawn, and if you only know her as having long hair and being Kate Hudson's mom, you might be shocked to see her with very short hair and a very slim, Twiggy-like figure. She would dance in a bikini with jokes "tattooed" on her body. Example: Above her bra would be "TOP SECRET," and beneath her tush would be "BOTTOM SECRET."

In the run-up to the 2nd season, the writers invited both major-party nominees for President, Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon, to come onto the show. Humphrey refused, thinking it undignified. Nixon accepted, and, on September 16, 1968, for the season premiere, he looked into the camera, appearing stunned, and said, "Sock it to me?" Nobody threw water on him, or did anything else that would embarrass him.

Humphrey, Rowan and Martin all went to their graves -- Hubert in 1978, Dan in 1987, Dick in 2008 -- believing that Nixon going on Laugh-In, and Humphrey not, made Nixon just that little bit more relatable, and swung the election.

Among the newcomers for the 2nd season was black comedian Pigmeat Markham, who made the phrase "Here come da judge!" iconic. Also added were "The Fun Couple," the married-in-real-life Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall. Also added was Alan Sues, who, like game-show panelists Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly, did everything to confirm he was gay except actually say so. Which made it especially weird that he played a sportscaster on the show.

Oh yes, there was a sportscast, because there was a "Laugh-In Looks at the News" segment. Dick would deliver the News of the Present. And Dan would deliver the News of the Future. On 2 occasions, he came damn close to nailing it:

* "Item: Washington, D.C., 1988, 20 years from now: President Ronald Reagan announced today that he will not be a candidate for the office of Governor of California." (At that point, Reagan was the Governor, and the idea of him becoming President one day was a joke. It happened in 1980, and 1988 was his last full year in office, and the joke was on America.)

* "Berlin, 20 years from now, 1989. There was dancing in the streets as the Berlin Wall finally came down. However, the joy was short-lived, when the Wall was replaced with a moat full of alligators."

Some were off the mark, but still funny: "Los Angeles, 2 years from now: The problem of race relations has been solved, because the smog is so thick, no one can tell what anyone's color is."

No, they didn't shy away from the topic of race. Once, during the party sketch, black comedian Flip Wilson said, "You know, it's all in how you look at it: What you call 'riots,' my people call 'group therapy.'"

And they certainly didn't shy away from the subject of war. During another party sketch, Danny Kaye, Brooklyn-born Jewish master of accents, put on a Southern accent, and came up with a line that you wouldn't expect someone with that accent to deliver: "According to the Department of Internal Revenue, we can deduct $600 for everyone we support. Well, this year, I'm claiming the government of South Vietnam!"

Both Rowan and Martin had served in World War II. On what may have been show's most poignant sketch, Rowan struggled to fit into an old Army uniform, as Frank Sinatra's voice was heard singing, "When I was 17, it was a very good year." Putting aside his real age, Dan (who turned 17 in 1939) said, "When I was 17, we were smack dab in the middle of World War II.

Frank: "When I was 21, it was a very good year." The math doesn't add up, but that's not the point. Now, Dan was wearing Sergeant's stripes, and he said, "When I was 21, the reserve unit was called back to Korea.

Frank: "When I was 35, it was a very good year." Dan: "When I was 35, we were called up to Vietnam."

Frank: "But now, the days are short, I'm in the Autumn of the year," and the recording is replaced by the sounds of flying artillery, machine-gun fire, and an explosion. Dan: "Gotta go now: They're playing my song again."

And, as it turned out, except for Markham, Dan was the 1st member of the cast to die. Although that was due to smoking -- another subject they didn't shy away from. Ken Berry, briefly a castmember, delivered this one-liner: "Sure, I saved money by rolling my own. How do you think I could afford this swell iron lung?"

Season 3 (1969-70) saw some turnover. Lily Tomlin joined, playing The Tasteful Lady (a precursor to Dana Carvey's Church Lady on Saturday Night Live), 5-year-old Edith Ann in a huge chair ("And that's the truth," and delivering a raspberry), and Ernestine the telephone operator ("One ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy... A gracious good afternoon, is this the party to whom I am speaking?")

Season 4 (1970-71) saw even more turnover. Almost all of the people we now think of as Laugh-In stars were gone, except Dan and Dickie. Among the new ones were former Hogan's Heroes star, and future Match Game panelist and Family Feud host, Richard Dawson. Patti Deutsch and Ann Elder were both promoted from writer to star.

(A lot of Laugh-In castmembers became Match Game panelists. In addition to Dawson, there was Johnson, Carne, Worley, Deutsch, Elder, Larry Hovis, Chelsea Brown, Johnny Brown and Sarah Kennedy. Brill and McCall both served as panelists, but never together.)

That was also the year that ABC began broadcasting Monday Night Football, which sucked up a lot of ratings. It didn't matter much, though: By this point, the show was still funny, but what was once edgy now seemed tame. All In the Family had premiered on CBS. At the start of the 1972-73 season, CBS had also premiered M*A*S*H. That would be Laugh-In's last season.

Many of the performers went on to other shows, and Hawn became a top-flight movie star. Lorne Michaels had written for Laugh-In, so it is difficult to imagine the creation and execution of Saturday Night Live without that experience.

*

January 22, 1968 was a Monday. Celebrity chef Guy Fieri was born.

Baseball and football were out of season. There were no NBA games scheduled, and no NHL games scheduled, as this was during both leagues' All-Star Breaks. There were 2 games played in the American Basketball Association, then in its 1st season:

* The New Jersey Americans beat the Houston Mavericks, 111-104 at the Sam Houston Coliseum in Houston. The Americans moved to Long Island the next season, becoming the New York Nets.

* And the Kentucky Colonels beat the Indiana Pacers, 100-91 at Freedom Hall in Louisville.