Short Stuff: Laugh Tracks

Laugh tracks have been around since the early 1950s and it’s all thanks to one (reviled) sound engineer who invented them. But as much as people like to hate laugh tracks most shows wouldn’t be at all funny without them.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and
there's chuck and this is short stuff, a very special
sandwich edition between our very special two part episode on Sitcoms. Right, chuck,
Insert Laugh track, Jerry. That's right, nicely done, Jerry. So Um,
we're talking about laugh tracks. Everybody knows what a laugh

(00:24):
track is. It's also sometimes called canned laughter and if
you didn't realize that a lot of the sitcoms that
you watch have laughter added in, well prepared to have
your socks knocked off, because that is the thing and
it's been around for seventies, seventy years a little over. Yeah,
and it's a really cool story, uh, and that they

(00:44):
discovered there was a problem early on with live studio
audiences and that sometimes they laughed at the wrong time,
sometimes they didn't laugh at all, sometimes they laughed too
loudly and for too long, and they had a laughter
problem because people are stupid. And so, UH CBS sound

(01:07):
engineer named Charlie Douglas said, you know what, I think
I can crack this thing. They've been using laugh tracks
and radio forever. Um. Why don't I see if I
can put together a library of of laughter and use
that to augment the laughter and sometimes entirely, entirely replaced
the laughter of the real audience. Yeah. So, so Charlie

(01:29):
Douglas started recording actual people laughing, and you can't like
you have to be pretty selective when you're recording laughter
because there's a lot of times where people are talking
or actors are giving dialogue. Still. So Red Skelton had
a show and he was a very famous, very physical
comedic actor. He could go long stretches just entertaining people

(01:51):
without saying a word. So he was a natural source
of this Um laughter that Charlie Douglas went around and recorded.
So was the mime Marcel Marceau, and so he started
recording any kind of laughter. He didn't he put it
all together, splice tapes together, and his first attempt at
a very rudimentary attempt at a laugh track made his
debut in nineteen fifty on a show I've never heard

(02:14):
of before, chuck, the Hank mccune show, of you. Nope,
never heard of it, but it's it's historic in that
it was the first show that the laugh track debuted on.
That's right. Uh, and Douglas got pretty into this. Uh,
to put it lightly. He kind of obsessed, it seemed,
over getting these laugh tracks just right. I don't think
he was happy with just saying like, all right, we

(02:36):
got some canned laughter, we got a couple of versions,
let's just go with it, uh, and ended up getting
sort of being like a conductor slash magician, and that
he had all different kinds. I think he ended up
with about three and twenty different kinds of laughs, from
uproarious to like just a little bit, to a few
people tittering to it rising and falling like a symphony.

(03:00):
And the coolest thing about all of this is he
did this and and put it in a literal physical
machine right, actual like. It ended up being called the
laugh box, although he tried to call it the audience
response duplicator or, if you I could totally see in
the fifties, pretending it's a robot and calling it R D. Yeah,

(03:21):
and also audience response duplicator is a pretty good band name.
I want to think about it. Now. What kind of
music exactly? I don't know. That's your's special I go
to math rock every time. I don't know what that
would be. But yeah, so this this box, the laugh box,
it was about the size and shape of a filing cabinet, well,

(03:43):
a three FT tall filing cabinet, or one meter for
friends outside of the US. Um and it was made
by Charlie Douglas himself from like household appliances, um parts
from an organ that he stripped, uh, and vacuum tubes
and it was really heavy, but it was really really effective.
Like you said, it had all sorts of different laughs

(04:04):
of all types on it. I think it could hold
up to three hundred and twenty different laughs. And again,
this is nineteen fifty and this guy basically created a
laughing computer. Yeah, there were thirty two reels, ten laughs each,
and it had, like you said, it had these it
looked more like these giant typewriter keys to me as
far as like literally how you would engage it, and

(04:26):
but you could play it almost like an instrument, and
that it wasn't just hit one button. You could hit
a combination of buttons if you wanna get a very
specific kind of laughter. I had no idea this is
how this worked. I just thought it was all done
in post by just kind of splicing it together, uh,

(04:46):
with like, you know, hey, just put track one on
there or something like that. I had no idea it
was a literal machine. It's very, very cool. Yeah, and
and Um, one of my favorites of all time is
the one person lightly laughing at a time. Yeah, that
was really used to great effect in Scooby Doo. If
you think back, like there was very often times when
just one person was kind of like, was that on

(05:08):
a laugh track? Uh Yeah, yes, it was, because the
scooby Doo animated characters were not performing live in front
of a studio audience. Well, I know that. I don't
remember there being laughter on Scooby Doo. Oh, yeah, totally.
Anytime Scooby or shaggy, did you know built like a
seven foot sandwich, there was a laugh track. Exactly that

(05:29):
would have gotten a laugh track. I haven't seen it
a long time. I'm sure it's totally full of laughter,
but I just don't remember. It really holds up, man,
does it really? Yes, especially the original one from like
nine nine. All right, well, let's take a break. I'M
gonna go watch some of those and we'll be back
to talk about how laugh tracks were received right after this.

(06:09):
All right. Did People like laugh tracks? No, yes and no.
Studio executives a lot of them loved it because it
solved a big problem, but it seems like almost exclusively
outside the studio executives, most people weren't too keen on it. No,
and I mean like this started right out of the gate.

(06:30):
Um the laugh check was derided as phony or Corny
or whatever, and Charlie Douglass, the inventor of that laugh box,
the guy who originated this, he became, I don't want
to say a recluse, but as far as the media
was concerned, you could not get an interview out of
him because I don't know if he took it personally
or took it hard or just to want to put
himself out there. But he, as far as I could tell,

(06:54):
he got very wealthy off of this thing. Between the
fifties and the seventies, if you heard a laft track
in a show, it was from Charlie Douglas. Yeah, I
bet you anything. He was hurt because, I mean there
were people that said, like this has ruined television in
some cases. Yeah, like an auto tune Kinda. Yeah, he

(07:14):
invented auto tune too. Not many people know that. Right,
he did it at all. He ruined everything and the
sound of airplane toilets flushing. Oh Wow, that's a good one,
especially if you're playing one person lightly laughing over the
air airplane toilet flushing. I still can't believe they haven't
solved that yet. Uh Yeah, I know, because and now everybody,

(07:36):
like everyone, look over at the door. I'm about to
come out. It's terrible and I plugged my ears. It's
just so grating and uh, in your face. Anyway. So
in the seventies is when the laugh track Um kind
of hit its heyday, along with the heyday, as you
have now learned in our Sitcom's episode of the Live

(07:56):
Studio Audience Multi camera taped show. But it was also
the time when it became sort of more of a
object of scorn. So that's when you started hearing the
famous announcement film before live studio audience just to let
people know like, uh, maybe we use some can laughter,
but there are also real people here laughing. Yeah, it

(08:17):
was a boast. I had no idea why they said that,
but it was almost like a disclaimer the way they
said but really they were telling you, like the laughter
you're hearing is is human laughter, like genuine stuff, and
those were we're filmed in front of studio audiences. The
ones that are weird are the shows like Mash that
we're not filmed in front of a studio audience. But

(08:39):
there was still that laugh track, but you never thought
about it. You were just so used to it. It's
very weird, especially if you stop and think about laugh tracks.
We'll get into that in a second, but it is
a very weird concept the way it supplied. But Um,
I saw that almost went away as early as the
mid sixties, that some CBS studio executives tested uh, the

(09:01):
pilot of Hogan's heroes with a laugh track with one
focus group without a laugh track with another focus group,
or maybe the same focus group, I don't know, but
the focus group chose the laugh track episode, of the
Laugh Track version, and that just cemented laugh tracks for
decades to come. You can thank that one focus group
for it. Yeah, interesting pick for the show to do

(09:23):
that with. I think like it was interesting enough to
have a Sitcom about uh PO WS and Nazis. I
love the show. That's pretty good. As a kid thoughts
heroes is great, but Um, yeah, the laugh track is
weird and it's even weirder when you think about animated sitcoms.

(09:44):
We talked about the flint stones. I believe that will
be coming up in part two of the sitcoms up.
But Flint stones and the Jetson's they had laugh tracks two,
which doesn't make any sense at all, but people just
bought it because they were used to it. Yeah, exactly.
It's you just don't even notice it unless you notice it,
and then once you notice it it's hard to stop. But,
like you said, even mash had one and apparently the creator,

(10:07):
Larry Gilbert, said he wanted mash to air without laughs, quote,
just like the actual Korean War. Um, but he still lost.
But they gave him the out to not have a
laugh track during the medical like surgery scenes. Yeah, it
all kind of flowed though I never really noticed that stuff,

(10:27):
like when they were in the O R, that there
wasn't a laugh track going. Generally right. Uh. In other
countries they have done some interesting things. It's kind of
a very American slash UK thing, but in Latin America
apparently they would actually hire laughers to come in like
professional laughers Rayo doors and they would say laugh at

(10:49):
this moment and that moment, and I don't know if
it was like that. They were just plants in the
audience that we're supposed to laugh to get everybody else laughing,
or the entire audience were made of ray a door.
So I'm not sure. But either way I guess they
issued the laugh track. Generally, I think it was probably
multiple plants to get people going because, uh, they have done, Um,

(11:10):
I guess, studies, but they have shown that laugh tracks
people find things funnier when other people are laughing so aterly,
when there as can laughter, people are more apt to
think something is funny. Yeah, fifteen to twenty percent funnier
when you add can't laughter to it, which is that's
funny in and of itself. This is fifteen funnier. That's

(11:34):
Hilarious to me. How do you how do you measure that? So,
if you think back, even Seinfeldt Chuck, one of the
funniest shows of all time, had a laugh track, and
this was into the nineties, right. The Simpsons managed to
launch with that one. They never had a laugh track.
I don't think they even jokingly used one. Um. But
my point is even Seinfeld, up into the nineties, had

(11:55):
one and it wasn't until I saw the U K's
version of the office credited as the one that really
turned the tide. I think the HITCHHIKER's guide to the
galaxy in the UK. Um really broke out and said
we're not going to use this, but it was still
used extensively. It wasn't until the office came along and
just change comedy. The comedy involved was presented and written

(12:19):
in a way that a las check just would not
make sense because it was so cringe e. You know. Yeah,
I mean it's hard to imagine something like either version
of the office or arrested development or thirty rock or
curb your enthusiasm with a laugh track. It would be
very strange. Uh. And speaking of strange, one of the
most fun things you can do is just spend a

(12:40):
few minutes of your day watching Um sitcoms without the
laugh track, like classic sitcoms. Uh. They've notably done this
on youtube with episodes of friends and clips of friends
and it's just weirdly disconcerting. Uh. It's not as funny
and one of the weirdest things is know, you don't

(13:00):
realize that when you're watching a show with a laugh track,
but they're like a stage play. They're waiting for a
beat while the people are laughing to stay their next line,
and it's never more apparent than when that laughter is gone.
It's very disjointed and weird because it's just silent, right.
But then also without the laugh track, I think you
are very, very generous to say it's just not as funny. Um,

(13:23):
I found it like not funny at all and actually
kind of upsetting, to tell you the truth. Like they're
the jokes are like deeply juvenile. They're supported every single
one by like a funny facial expression that's not actually funny.
It looks kind of hostile instead, and you it becomes
clear that, friends, is like in no way funny on
its own. It like really leaned on the laugh track

(13:45):
to make it funny. Did you see the one, uh Ross,
without laugh track psychopaths? Now I know what I will
be doing right after we finished recording. Yeah, check it out,
because not only did they remove the laugh track for
the scene, but they they made it. They changed the
color so where it was black and white, and they
put like this brooding music. It's really, really good. Um.

(14:07):
And while we're at just this general thing, also should
just recommend music lists, music videos. Yeah, those, those are great.
Those are some of the funniest things on Youtube when
it just shows like people dancing around with like sneaker
squeaks and then going like all good stuff. Um, the

(14:28):
opposite is pretty funny too, where you take something that's
not intended to be funny and add a laugh track,
like way before space coast coast to coast. I don't
know if it was the same friends of ours, Dave Willis,
who did this too, but somebody put like old episodes
of space ghost from the sixties on cartoon network at night,
even before adults swim, and just added laugh tracks so

(14:51):
like inappropriate places and made it like genuinely funny. I
would like to say I wonder if anyone's done that
with like the office. I'd be curious just to see
what that feels like. Yeah, yeah, I'm just gonna go
spend the rest of the day on the Internet watching
this stuff. I think I agree. All right. Well, chuck agreed.
I said I was gonna go do something else. That
means short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is

(15:16):
a production of I heart radio. For more podcasts my
heart radio, visit the I heart radio APP, apple podcasts
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,