Did You Know?
The turnover rate was high, so much so that only four regulars remained on the show throughout its entire run: the two titular hosts, Gary Owens, and Ruth Buzzi.
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Dan Rowan was clean shaven during the initial airings in early 1968. By the first full season, he'd grown a mustache. A few years later, he was sporting a beard, but eventually shaved it off, keeping the mustache until the end of the series.
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Both front-running presidential candidates in 1968 were invited to make cameo appearances on the show just before the general election. Richard Nixon accepted and deadpanned, "Sock it to me?" on camera. Hubert H. Humphrey declined. Also, it was because of Nixon's appearance, that many credited Laugh-In with helping Nixon get elected to the presidency.
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One of the trademarks of the series was the fast cutting that happened in between videotaped segments. Blackouts, one-liners and sketches were edited together in such a way that the show had a very rapid, almost frenzied, pace. This was done before computer controlled editing machines were invented, so much of the show was edited by hand.
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One of the show's unusual features was the use of out-takes. If a sketch was flubbed due to a blown line (especially if the cast laughed), it would be included into the show before the perfected take was shown.
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It was producer George Schlatter's wife Jolene who, after listening to Aretha Franklin's "Respect" thought that "Sock It To Me" would be a good bit for the show.
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George Schlatter did not produce the final season, but he won the rights to those episodes in a subsequent court battle. He dislikes these episodes so much that he does not allow them to be shown on TV, nor are clips from them included in any retrospectives.
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The "Cocktail Party" segment often featured uncredited appearances by Playboy centerfold models including Janice Pennington (May 1971), whose appearance was part of her centerfold photoshoot. The models usually appeared as dancers or the objects of Dick Martin's clichéd propositions. Martin married, divorced then remarried playmate Dolly Read (May 1966).
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Was revived in the summer of 1979, with new episodes featuring Robin Williams and other guests (a relief during "rerun season"), but wasn't picked up.
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When the show went off the air, it was explained that they had run out of things to parody.
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The show's one-liner "Sock it to me!" was ranked #10 in TV Guide's list of "TV's 20 Top Catchphrases" (21-27 August 2005 issue).
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A number of reports from Dan Rowan's "News of the Future" segments came to fruition years later. Notable among them was Ronald Reagan's presidency; he was the governor of California during the original airing of the show, plus the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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The show originally aired as a one-time special on 9 September 1967. It was such a phenomenal success that it was given a regular one-hour time slot on Monday nights beginning on 22 January 1968, replacing The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. The program went straight to the top and was the #1 show on television during its first two full seasons, 1968-1970. It began to drop off subsequently as the best talent left to pursue careers in show business, and finally went off the air in 1973.
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The catch phrase 'Beautiful Downtown Burbank' was originated by 'Gary Owens' around 1961 as one of a number of descriptive phrases he would use for his radio show weather reports.
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Two groups of starlets were tested for the "Sock It to Me" girls: group 1 consisted of Lola Falana, Joey Heatherton, and Charo and group 2 consisted of Goldie Hawn, Judy Carne, and Teresa Graves. The second group of girls was eventually cast.
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