BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: TELEVISION

THE LONGEST LAUGH IN TV HISTORY?
LUCY DOES THE TANGO
“Lucy decides to raise chickens and ends up hiding
dozens of eggs in her clothing—right before Ricky
suggests they practice the tango. Can Lucy keep the
eggs in one piece while Ricky tries to hold her close?
The episode ends with another Lucy mess. This
episode got what many say is the longest laugh in
TV history: sixty-five seconds!  The laugh was so long
It had to be shortened for TV,”

Pam Pollack and Meg Belviso.  Who Was  Lucille Ball
(New York: Penguin Viking, 2017)
**
  
OR WAS THIS THE LONGEST LAUGH?

 
Q. Paul, what is a good reason for pounding meat?
A. Paul Lynde: Loneliness!
  (The audience laughed so long and hard it took up almost 15 minutes of the show.)
 
On THE HOLLYWOOD SQUARES

**

FROM ANNA SHUSTER

In the early 1950s in Montreal, several Jewish families in the western part of the city decided it was time to form a new Synagogue. One of ways to raise funds was to raffle off a newly donated TV set (Canada had its 1st TV channel by then). My dad received a number of raffle books to sell on our block. He never had the time to go door-to-door so in the end he just put in his money, and guess what? We won the set, just in time for Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. In Quebec, the 1 channel ran 50% in English and 50% in French until CBC developed a 2nd channel.

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SOMETIMES SPONSORS CAN BE VERY WRONG

After the broadcast of the very first episode of I Love Lucy, “not all were pleased with what they saw. Perhaps the most discontented was the president of Philip Morris, one O. Parker McComas. After viewing the initial I Love Lucy he called the Blow agency to ask how much it would cost to cancel the show. The cigarette commercials came across well, he conceded, but as for the episode itself – in his view it was ‘unfunny, silly and totally boring.”



Stefan Kanfer. Ball of Fire: The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 2003)

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CBS CENSORS AND AN EPISODE OF M*A*S*H

“The most striking example to me was early in the series. Radar(Gary Burghof) is explaining to somebody that he’s unfamiliar with something . And he said, “I’m a virgin at that, sir.” With no sexual context. It was just  that he’d never done something before. And the CBS censor said: ‘You can’t say the word ‘virgin.’ That’s forbidden.’  So the next week (Larry) Gelbart  wrote a little scene that had nothing to do with anything. A patient is being carried through on a stretcher. And I say, ‘Where you from, son?’ And he says, ‘The Virgin
Islands.’

Alan Alda.,”The Heart of M*A*S*H Looks Back by
Saul Austerlitz in The New York Times (September22, 2022)
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COLUMBUS MAY NOT HAVE DISCOVERED AMERICA 
BUT AMERICA DISCOVERED COLUMBO

“It became clearly evident during rehearsals  that the plot of thenplay did not concern a doctor who murdered his wife and was subsequently apprehended by a bumbling detective. Rather itnconcerned a bumbling detective *who put together sufficient evidence to convict a murderer who happened to be a doctor. The detective’s name was Columbo. In later years, Peter Falk would don the same wrinkled trench coat and play to more viewers in one night than our
Rx: Murder tour could attract in fifty years, instead of a fifty-week run.”

* Thomas Mitchell was the first actor on stage to portray Columbo.

Joseph Cotton. Vanity Will Get You Somewhere (San Francisco: Mercury  House, 1987)..

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MAD ABOUT CRIMINAL TV

The September 1961 issue of MAD magazine featured a graphic spread called “Television Programs…aimed at Late, Late, Audiences” by writer Frank Jacobs and artist Wallace Wood. Among the imaginary shows was a TV program created especially for criminals, e.g:

     “The time is now 3:07 – just 23 minutes before
      nightwatchman Charlie Zorch, at Barney’s
      Diamond Outlet, takes off for his coffee break!
        And here’s a flash just handed me…the
        candy store at 12th and Main will be a snap
        tonight! Patrolman O’Malley is cross-town,
        raiding Overdue Library Book Borrowers. "                                         **
CAROL BURNETT

Carol Burnett
Cd take an unfunny line & turn it
Into something socko or something fine.
I wish she wd do the same for this final line.

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TV NOTE #7542

Howdy Doody
Was rarely moody.
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KATIE COURIC SIGNS OFF
BY QUOTING HAMLET, BY
ACKNOWLEDGING SHE HAD MET
RICHARD M. NIXON

Katie Couric,
Ending her newscast, sighed: "Alas, poor Yorick!
I knew him..."
Was it a new signature sign off, or merely a whim?