From the WSJ Opinion Archives
LEISURE & ARTS
Charlie Douglass, RIP
Two cheers for canned laughter.
No one was rude enough to laugh out loud when the father of the television laugh track, Charlie Douglass, landed a part in that great sitcom-in-the-sky last month. But, typically, more than a few self-appointed culture mavens and media snobs were snickering under their breath. As one particularly pinheaded TV critic put it, "Because of his primary contribution to the medium, he is likely to only be mourned by his family and colleagues."
I know what you're thinking. Surely this fool of a writer is not a fan of the canned laughter that has littered such fine television programming as "I Love Lucy," "The Tonight Show" and "Seinfeld" for the past half century? No, I'm not a huge fan. What I am, however, is someone who understands the marginal utility of a good laugh, canned or not. No matter how passé some critics may find them, there are plenty of good reasons why laugh tracks are still the rule rather than the exception in American television comedy, some practical, others psychological. We'll get to them later. But first, some history:
Canned laughter debuted in the 1950s on the short-lived "Hank McCune Show," a show within a show not unlike HBO's "The Larry Sanders Show" (which, incidentally, won critical praise for forgoing canned laughter). Apparently Mr. McCune wasn't getting enough laughs, so the producers spliced in tape of laughter from other live-audience shows. "The Hank McCune Show"--laughs or no laughs--soon faded into oblivion, but the technique lived on, thanks in large part to Charlie Douglass.
A former radio man and World War II veteran who helped develop radar for the Navy, Mr. Douglass was a technical director for other live shows and soon heard of the laugh-loop technique. An entrepreneurial sort, he immediately saw the value of such a contraption and promptly invented what he called the "Laff Box," which before long became the industry standard. Mr. Douglass understood that prerecorded laughter did more than just "sweeten" the material; it also allowed the technicians to better control the quality of the recording. Taping dialogue, sound effects and audience reactions all on one soundstage was tricky back in the 1950s, regardless of how good the laughs were.
The question of where the first laughs in Charlie's Laff Box came from is still subject to debate in TV geek circles. Some say they were sampled from a Marcel Marceau concert; others claim they came from a classic Red Skelton performance; still others say he recorded live audiences from early "I Love Lucy" shows. All of these shows relied heavily on sight gags, which would have simplified the recording process. (Mime, of course, is deathly quiet, though I can't imagine Americans chortling hysterically to a Marcel Marceau routine.)
Sometimes called the Laugh Organ, the first Laff Box stood just over two feet tall and was operated something like an organ. Different buttons could be pressed to combine different types of laughter--belly laughs or chuckles, hoots or guffaws--and the operator could even choose the sex and age (man, women or child) of the laughter. Foot pedals were used to control the timing and duration of the laughter.
Mr. Douglass used his machine to sweeten countless lines and gags on dozens of TV shows. And in recognition of his contribution to American television, he was awarded a special engineering Emmy in 1992. Mr. Douglass's L.A.-based company, Northridge Electronics (now run by his son Bob), still produces laugh machines, but they've long since gone digital. About the size of a laptop computer, they offer scores of possible audience reactions, including a multicultural spattering of laughter from around the world.
Like it or not, laugh tracks appear to be here to stay, and for good reason. The producers of such mega-hits as "Cheers," "Seinfeld," and "Friends" chose to go the laugh-track route because they work. As your local laughter therapist (don't laugh, they exist) can explain, laughter is a "communal activity," and simulating a community with recorded laughter can help induce it. Pavlovian as it may be, humans tend to laugh more when they hear other humans laughing.
That said, no amount of canned laughter can make a bomb a hit. NBC's decision to add a laugh track to this season's tiresome episodes of "Watching Ellie" (poor Julia Louis-Dreyfus!) hasn't made the show any funnier.
In fact, the programming may be more expendable than the canned laughter. Some offices are installing canned conversations and laughter at barely audible levels to drown out the deafening--and depressing--silence. According to the Christian Science Monitor, a few years back the BBC hired a sound consultant to pipe laughter and other communal sounds into its London offices to ward off something called "pin-drop syndrome." Sad, and more than a little funny. Seems Charlie Douglass gets the last laugh after all.
Mr. Judge is an assistant features editor for The Wall Street Journal's editorial page.
