Trivia / Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In

• The Cast Showoff: In season six, Jud Strunk became this as he was already an established Country Music singer-songwriter who eventually became a One-Hit Wonder on the pop charts with 'Daisy a Day'. Willie Tyler too, as he also operates Lester as well and was an established ventriloquist, but could do most sketches pretty decently without him, too.
• Colbert Bump:
  • Richard Nixon made an appearance on the show during his presidential campaign. His opponent, Hubert Humphrey, was also invited, but declined. The election was very close, and the surge in popularity for Nixon after his appearance may have been the reason for his victory. George Schlatter has said that he must live with being responsible for Nixon's victory.
  • Pigmeat Markham, a legendary comedian in the African-American community who was almost unknown to white audiences, experienced a career revival from the show in 1968, starting when Sammy Davis Jr. re-enacted his classic judge routines and made "Here come de judge!" one of the show's first big catchphrases. Then the show invited Markham (in his 60s at the time) on as a semi-regular, doing the judge sketches. Markham even got a hit single out of the deal, "Here Comes the Judge", sometimes cited as an early Rap song.
• Corpsing: Notable examples include but are not limited to...
  • Dan Rowan, despite his Only Sane Man nature, was a frequent corpser whenever Dick was involved. Some other ones who made him crack include Arte Johnson, Ann Elder and Barbara Sharma.
  • Dick Martin was not above cracking himself up, as the San Clemente dateline bloopers he repeatedly tried to correct had shown. It happens repeatedly again in season five with a wedding sketch that Dan and Ann Elder had either he had corpsed, or Dan himself had corpsed due to Dick... or unexpectedly, Ann corpsing both of them with a raspberry. However, he DID crack up Willie Tyler in season six as well as Dan in a western sketch.
  • Arte Johnson cracked himself up whenever Robot Theatre was involved. He also made Dick corpse at times, too. Then there's what he and Don Rickles did to each other back and forth in outtakes...
  • Richard Dawson is the king of making people corpse in his time during the series, combining this with Meta Guy to the point where he managed to make Lily Tomlin, Larry Hovis, Johnny Brown and Barbara Sharma corpse all at once in season five during a doctor sketch. He did it again with Barbara in another episode as their newlywed characters, to which he tried to make Dennis corpse by placing Barbara in his arms as a 'tip', but only succeeds in causing Barbara to completely laugh throughout the sketch. Season six saw him making Dan, Sarah and Dennis crack in record time and visibly making Dan laugh from the sheer force of the W.C. Fields impression and during the rest of the series, cracking nearly everyone in any sketch he did, including guests like Robert Goulet, with two exceptions: Jud Strunk and Ruth Buzzi.
  • Goldie herself as Sparkle Farkel near the end of season three in the Founding Farkels sketch made Dan, Dick and Ruth crack up along with herself, making Teresa and Jo Anne somewhat corpse as well.
  • Lily Tomlin absolutely lost it in the Joke Wall in season four at one point, to the point where Dennis Allen made her corpse even more when he pulled Shoulders-Up Nudity. Dennis proved to be the one thing making Lily corpse in some spots, as the end of season four proved.
  • Don Rickles manages to corpse Arte Johnson in an outtake, who in turn corpses him. He does this to Lily Tomlin in season six while she's dressed up as Carmen Miranda in a sketch and later on in another sketch, Ruth Buzzi as well.
  • Dennis Allen surprisingly did this to Patti Deutsch in season six at one point, where both of them started laughing a bit after flinging mashed potatos at each other and a few other things. Donna Jean Young corpsed just by seeing him come in as a butler in the final episode, as well.
  • In an season three outtake, Pamela Rodgers was ultimately Smarter Than You Look by making Dick (and everyone by extension) crack up bigtime when Dan asked her about what she'd do if she was on a plane and said airplane losing altitude. Her answer subverts everything that she played up on the show, proving she could play comedically with the big kids and win.
• Creator Backlash: The brief stint of Lorne Michaels as a writer is often brought up as a link between this show and Saturday Night Live, but by his own account Michaels got very little of his material on the air and he doesn't much like to discuss his time there.
• Dueling Shows: The series had a reasonably friendly rivalry with The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which was as innovative in content as Laugh-In was in form.
• Edited for Syndication: Everytime it was shown in reruns (ranging from Nick-at-Nite during the 80's to Trio) it cuts off a few minutes from its original broadcast. Trio's edits had been the most known since those edited were shown on DVD before Time-Life shown the original uncut version from the original airings.
• Executive Meddling: As Paul Keyes exerted more influence over the show — as a writer, then a producer, then a head of programming — any humor that was judged to be radical, immoral, or attacking Nixon was phased out, and the writing staff were given unofficial quotas of jokes to be made against liberal targets (George McGovern, the New York Times, Daniel Ellsberg, and so on).
• Hostility on the Set: Head writer Paul Keyes was not only very conservative, but a close acquaintance of Nixon's and determined to make him relatable in the medium of television, which had not flattered him in the past. As The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was facing a lot of heat on CBS for their subversive and controversial left-wing material (partially due to Paul himself urging the Nixon administration to put on pressure), Rowan and Martin had no desire to rock the boat, and let Keyes, as a speechwriter and unofficial Nixon rep, and his writing hires gradually take over the show. This caused much frustration among the liberal and left-wing writers, Schlatter included, and communication between the two camps broke down completely when Chris Bearde, one of the few that had friendships on both sides, left the show. By the time the writing duo of Lorne Michaels (see above) and Hart Pomerantz joined Laugh-In in its final season, they found every single joke of theirs facing scrutiny and censorship from Keyes and what few original staffers remained.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The series was seen again on Decades after Trio left the airwaves 12 years earlier. Also Time-Life released the entire series on DVD where previous releases were only a selected number of episodes. It's been suggested that the reason why the last season was never seen until recently is due to the rights which was why Decades had released it, provided by Proven Entertainment who had the rights to all six seasons. Officially subverted as Amazon Prime Video and Tubi has all six seasons within their services through Proven as of late 2019/early 2020.
• The Other Darrin: Dick Martin missed a taping, so the producers ran over to The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and drafted Johnny Carson himself to play Dick's part. Carson was essentially playing Martin's on-screen character — during Dan & Johnny's monologue segment, Dan continually called Johnny "Dick."

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