Over on Facebook, Skeeter Ullman sent me this message. Don't fault me for his punctuation…
so I wanted to ask about a laugh-in taping. how many were involved.obviously the joke wall and music numbers had the complete cast, but when taping blackouts did everyone hang around and how much time devoted to taping of a single blackout? that really fascinates me how they got that show togather wold love to find a mod world song from it
During that little period of my life when I was occasionally trespassing over at the NBC Studios in Burbank, I would occasionally drop in on Stage 3 where Laugh-In taped. They had no real studio audience but there were bleachers and anyone could come by and sit in them if they behaved themselves. Often, the NBC tour would wander through and if something interesting was being done, they'd stay for a while.
It was hit-or-miss. Sometimes, nothing would happen for a long stretch and sometimes, I'd catch them doing a batch of eleven blackouts, six of which might be in one show, two of which might wind up in another and three of which would never air. They were always taping stuff for different episodes and I believe one way they lured some big guest stars in to do quick cameos is by promising that the bits they did with the person would air in multiple programs, which meant multiple paychecks.
Another way: The Laugh-In folks kept a close eye on what else was taping in the building. At the time, there was a lot: Bob Hope specials, The Flip Wilson Show, The Dean Martin Show, Hollywood Squares, all sorts of other specials, Johnny Carson whenever he brought The Tonight Show out from New York for a few weeks, etc. If they found out that, say, Jack Lemmon was appearing with Carson next week, they'd go to Lemmon's agent and ask, "Hey, while he's on the premises, would he come by and do some bits for us?
Sometimes, they wouldn't ask in advance. They'd write some gags for a celebrity and then George Schlatter or someone would go visit the celeb in their Tonight Show dressing room and say, "Hey, you've got an hour before taping. Want to come over to our set and do some spots?"
In 1983, I was one of the writers on The Half-Hour Comedy Hour, a short-lived series that was darn near a Laugh-In clone in every way but ratings, produced by Chris Bearde, one of the main folks behind Laugh-In. Though the series was on ABC, we taped at NBC on the same stage Laugh-In had used, Stage 3, and we did the same thing, finding cameo guests in the corridors there. Once, game show host Bob Eubanks was taping Card Sharks Dream House across the hall in Stage 1 — the stage Mr. Carson used, though his show was in reruns that week. We wrote some Bob Eubanks lines and one of our producers went over and talked him into coming over between Card Sharks Dream House episodes and taping a few for us.
The following week when Johnny was back, one of his guests was Christopher Reeve. We wrote up some short blackouts for him and then our Exec Producer Dick Clark and I and one other writer went over to his dressing room to see if we could get him to come to Stage 3 and do a few of them. I hadn't written any of the jokes but Dick took me along because he was aware I was a comic book expert and figured that might give me some rapport with Mr. Reeve.
Christopher Reeve was about as nice and polite as human being as I've ever met. He read the jokes which all referenced Superman and then said he'd be glad to do anything we wanted as long as it wasn't about Superman. He was on with Johnny to promote a non-Superman film of his and was trying to remind the world that he was an actor who could do other things. He said it so graciously that you couldn't fault him…and he absolutely understood when Dick said that he didn't think it would work to have him on if he wasn't going to refer to Superman. (We weren't asking him to don the costume or even pretend to be Clark Kent, understand; just to appear as Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman.)
Laugh-In worked the same way and I'm sure they had similar turndowns. Most of the time though, these things were planned. Once, I snuck a peek at the taping schedule and saw an item: "5:00, Zsa Zsa Gabor cameos." It was 2 PM and I decided not to stick around for Zsa Zsa.
My observation was that no performers were on the stage or nearby unless they were in the bits being taped or waiting to be in the next one or two things on the schedule. I never saw Gary Owens there because he taped most of his spots in the morning so he was free to do his radio show and various voiceover gigs with the rest of the day. He'd sometimes go back to NBC after his afternoon radio broadcast so he could be in one of the "group" segments. Those seemed to mainly be done in the early evening.
There was no set time for how long it might take to tape a blackout — and they rarely did one at a time. I watched once as Ruth Buzzi and Arte Johnson did about twenty of the park bench spots. I think twelve or so had been written and they did each in 1-3 takes, then they ad-libbed a few more or some writer on the set would invent one on the spot. That whole segment probably took 40 minutes and then Ruth and Arte ran off to get changed while the crew taped some wild lines from Goldie or JoAnn or someone.
It was a very fun place to be at times (so was the set of our knock-off) but it was on-again, off-again, like a party that stops for twenty minutes at a time then resumes. The fast pace was in the editing room, not on the stage. On the stage, some of those things seemed to drag on forever but I still liked being there.