"Gary in Buffalo," as he signs his message, wrote with this question…
I enjoy all the subjects you post about, but what really fascinates me are your remembrances of slipping into NBC in your youth to see tapings of various shows. As a TV-obsessed teenager in the golden era of Laugh-In, Dean Martin, etc., I think being able to watch shows live as you did would've been close to number one on my wish list. (Number one may have involved Joey Heatherton and/or Elizabeth Montgomery, but I digress.)
My question is, did seeing these live tapings adversely affect your enjoyment of the shows when viewing them later on TV? For instance did it take any of the magic away to see Laugh-In being shot tediously in pieces, rather than at the breakneck pace it had when edited for broadcast? I'm assuming there had to be a certain disappointment, in the same way learning how a magician does a trick is always a letdown. In my case I'm sure I would have been so starstruck that it wouldn't have mattered what the actors were doing on stage.
Anyway, any more details you could provide about being in the studios to see these shows created would be greatly appreciated!
No, it didn't take away any enjoyment…and actually, finding out how a magician does a trick is not always a letdown for some of us. I've been a member of the Magic Castle for more than half my life and just hanging around with magicians and (in my earlier days) doing a little of it myself, I've sometimes been more impressed to learn how a trick is done. Sometimes, they're a lot more difficult than you think. You kinda think it might be because the cards are marked or gimmicked but really, it's because the performer is doing a nearly-impossible sleight-o'-hand move that took years to master.
But no, no "magic" ever went away for me while attending tapings of TV shows. If anything, they seemed more magical. I never thought Laugh-In was done at that frenetic speed so being on that set was not disillusioning. Instead, you would have been struck by all the skill and devotion to craft that was involved in something that on your home TV appeared so effortless.
Also, some things are just funnier or prettier or better in person. I visited three rehearsals of The Dean Martin Show so I was there three more times than Dean was. I will confess that I was there in large part to ogle The Golddiggers with a vague fantasy motive of meeting one in particular. (Most of us have our little adolescent infatuations at that age…)
But I was also there once when Lou Jacobi was rehearsing a sketch with some other actors and Dean's stand-in. I have met some of the funniest human beings of the last century including Groucho Marx, George Carlin, Mel Brooks, Albert Brooks, Richard Pryor and Jonathan Winters. Lou Jacobi belongs on that list, too…and he was funnier in those rehearsals (and chatting during a break) than he even was on camera. Those Golddiggers were pretty darn adorable, too.
NBC was quite magical in those days. Not only were Laugh-In and Dean there but Bob Hope was sometimes taping a special and Johnny Carson, whose Tonight Show was then based in New York, was sometimes out in Burbank for a few weeks at a time. With all those programs taping there — plus Flip Wilson and Hollywood Squares and a few others — there was no telling who you'd run into in the halls. Or who'd be rehearsing on some stage or eating in the commissary.
Today, if there was a studio like that and if you wanted to get inside without a pass, you'd have to round up a team like in Oceans 11 and plan for months. Hell, even with a pass they sometimes put you through a strip search, a body cavity inspection and selective waterboarding. But back in the early seventies, if you carried a copy of Variety, acted like you knew where you were going and waved to the guards, you could waltz right in.
That was part of what made it seem like Wonderland. And it was a big moment for me years later when I walked into that building because I had an actual, scheduled meeting with a producer there who wanted me write for his show.
