George Schlatter didn’t set out to create a television legend, much less become one himself. In 1967, he just wanted to produce a free-form TV comedy show that would combine up-to-date satire with the visual blackouts of old-time burlesque and vaudeville. And so, in that candy-colored Aquarian era of sit-ins, be-ins, and love-ins, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In was born.
The show, which debuted on NBC in January 1968 and ran for 140 episodes, featured what may well be the greatest ensemble cast of comedians ever assembled in one hour. Besides its hosts, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin (who feuded bitterly off-air), the regulars included Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson, Jo Anne Worley, Henry Gibson, Gary Owens, Judy Carne, Teresa Graves, Goldie Hawn, and, eventually, a genius named Lily Tomlin. A very young Lorne Michaels was one of the writers, and the future studio executive Sherry Lansing spent a season, standing lissome atop a piano, proclaiming, “Sock it to me!”
Schlatter, goateed, grizzled, and going strong at 93, has recently published a memoir—titled, appropriately enough, Still Laughing: A Life in Comedy—co-authored with the veteran comedy writer Jon Macks, with a foreword by Tomlin and an afterword by Hawn. When we caught up with him in his memorabilia-crammed office in Los Angeles the other day, he was emphatic that laughter is still the best medicine.
“The need to laugh may be the secret to surviving the mess we’re in,” he says. “Somehow or other, laughter was my means of survival. It should be our means of survival today.”
Schlatter got his start performing as a teenage chorister at the St. Louis Municipal Opera Theater, went to work in the mail room at Lew Wasserman’s MCA (where he eventually became a junior agent), and then wound up booking bands at Ciro’s, the legendary Sunset Strip nightclub. Along the way, he became the first producer of Judy Garland’s ill-fated CBS variety show; a creator of Real People, the pioneering reality series; and a producer of innumerable special events, including presidential galas for George H. W. Bush. With his knockout wife of 67 years, the former dancer Jolene Brand, he has been a social lion of Hollywood for decades, a drinking buddy of Sinatra’s, a pal of Gregory Peck’s, and an impresario whose alphabetical list of collaborators runs from Paula Abdul to Pia Zadora.
The regulars included Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson, Jo Anne Worley, Henry Gibson, Gary Owens, Judy Carne, Teresa Graves, Goldie Hawn, and, eventually, a genius named Lily Tomlin.
Could Laugh-In’s anarchic mix of trapdoors, lightning-fast punch lines, and Zeitgeist-tapping topicality be replicated today? The program featured guest stars (John Wayne in a giant blue bunny suit). William F. Buckley showed up and unspooled one-liners. Episodes ended with the sound of a single pair of hands clapping. As Arte Johnson’s cigarette-smoking German soldier might have put it, it was a “verrrry interesting” show.
“To do that again would require somebody who would be young enough and outrageous enough and fearless enough and dumb enough to come on and challenge the system,” Schlatter says. “Laugh-In introduced new editing techniques, new talent, new sound effects, new visuals, and a new sense of outrage. We did things like, ‘Don’t go away; we’ll be right back,’ and we would dip to black and come right back and say, ‘See, we told you we’d be right back.’ The network went crazy. They said, ‘You just told the audience to tune out.’ I said, ‘No, I didn’t. I told the audience to come back.’”
He has been a social lion of Hollywood for decades, a drinking buddy of Sinatra’s, a pal of Gregory Peck’s, and an impresario whose alphabetical list of collaborators runs from Paula Abdul to Pia Zadora.
Schlatter is ambivalent about the current state of humor. “I’m not crazy about the taste on television. I don’t think you need to use that language. ‘Fuck’ is not a joke. You can say ‘fuck’ on the way to a joke, but it can’t be the joke.”
“I see pushing the boundaries of taste,” he adds. “I see people, very talented people, who have learned from the pioneers, but somehow they have pushed the boundaries and did not bring us along with them.” He says the old “sense of adventure” is missing.
In a life without many regrets, Schlatter does have one big one: his decision to let candidate Richard Nixon soften his image in 1968 by appearing on Laugh-In, jowls aquiver, to ask, “Sock it to me?” “It’s been 54 years, and I apologize every day,” he writes.
He is no fan of the 45th president. “They’re worried about how they’re going to defeat Donald Trump?” he asks. “The way to defeat Donald Trump is with humor. He cannot survive being made fun of. The audience, when they realize that this sexist, evil, lying, cheating rat bastard was president and could become president again—it’s a dangerous situation. We’ve got to find a way to convince them that he’s a dangerous buffoon.”
Still Laughing: A Life in Comedy, by George Schlatter, is out now
Todd S. Purdum is the author of several books, most recently Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution