Ruth Buzzi

One of the great strengths of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In was everyone did something unique. Jo Anne Worley was brassy. Goldie Hawn was a ditz. Judy Carne was picked on. And Ruth Buzzi came up with an ugly old maid character and took it all over the TV dial years after Laugh-In was laid to rest.

Laugh-In made stars out of the ensemble cast, but they all had been around the block a few times. Buzzi had shown up on Marlo Thomas’ That Girl series (in another case of being on fewer episodes than one recalls) and, before that, voiced Granny Goodwitch in Linus the Lionhearted.

She passed away yesterday at age 88.

This profile hit the news wires when Laugh-In was in its second season, December 20, 1968.

Ruth Buzzi Is Repulsed by Own Laugh-in Character
By VERNON SCOTT
United Press International
HOLLYWOOD – The most courageous woman in all of show business is Ruth Buzzi, the misbegotten old baggage of “The Rowan and Martin Laugh-In" Show.
The NBC-TV top rated series features Miss Buzzi as a forelorn old maid in futile search for a man—any man.
But even the Boston strangler would recoil at sight of Gladys Ormphby, the character played by Miss Buzzi. By comparison, Phyllis Diller is a bewitching beauty.
Gladys has a face that would top a sundial.
The thought of her in a bikini would sicken a marooned sailor. She is the repulsive female loser, a modern Medusa.
While Miss Ormphby is a real dog, Miss Buzzi is an attractive, charming young lady from Wequetequock, Conn., who frets at the thought viewers think Ormphby is the real Buzzi.
"GLADYS IS SO repulsive I can barely watch her on the show," Ruth said the other day.
"She wears a tight hairnet and is completely stripped of makeup. To make her even more convincing I brush my eyebrows together so they meet above my nose. Then I dress in a baggy dress, a boy's sweater, brown lisle cotton stockings for women over 90 and black oxfords with laces and Cuban heels.
"Gladys Ormphby is utterly without style. And you'd be surprised how many people think that's the real me."
Ruth Invented Gladys when she was playing the role of Agnes Gooch in a road company version of "Auntie Mame" in Pennsylvania. When she appeared on stage for the first time in her revolting costume she stopped the show cold. The audience laughed for 10 minutes.
“I had to turn my back to the audience in every performance to stop the laughter," Ruth said with pride.
“When I left the show I decided to keep the character, but I had to give her a new name. I was working at my desk as a secretary between acting jobs and I dreamed up Gladys Ormphby.
"I played the character a couple of years ago on the old Carol Burnett Show, 'The Entertainers.' But she didn't speak."
RUTH WAS ASKED why, if Gladys is so man-hungry, she repulses the passes of Arte Johnson, who plays the old lech in the park bench sketches on "Laugh-In.”
"Look," Ruth said. "No woman, no matter how desperate, would allow that dirty old man to get near her—not even Gladys."
Ruth confuses viewers who aren’t quite certain whether Gladys and Ruth are separate people on the show because Miss Buzzi frequently appears in routines as herself.
"About 90 per cent of the time I'm Gladys," Ruth said mournfully. "The rest of the time I'm me."
And Ruth Buzzi wants the whole world to know that.

She talked a little less about Gladys in this feature story in the Charlotte News of December 7, 1968. With the American election over, Ruth expressed the same opinion as executive producer George Schlatter about a famous guest shot.

There’s No Hairnet To Be Seen
Boo-Boo Gave Ruth Buzzi Funny 'Laugh-In' Skit
By EMERY WISTER
News Entertainment Writer
HOLLYWOOD— "If Hubert Humphrey had accepted our invitation to appear on the 'Laugh-In' TV show, he and not Richard Nixon would have been elected President."
The speaker was Ruth Buzzi, the plain-Jane girl with the hairnet on her head who yocks it up with the rest of the gang on the NBC-WSOC laughfest each Monday night.
"If Mr Humphrey had done it he would have been elected," she repeated, sipping on her orange juice at a mid-morning breakfast. "We made a pitch to get him. He came out to the NBC studio to tape a newscast. But we couldn't get to him. We couldn't get any farther than his aides and they said no.
"NIXON DID the bit, the sock-it-to-me thing, I mean. But it was done with taste. The fact we had Nixon say 'Sock it to me? as a question made the difference. That made it tasteful."
And the show's publicist, sitting at the table with her, confirmed her opinion by saying that Humphrey's refusal to appear on the new show was "a colossal mistake."
"It's not a very nice thing to think that a simple thing like that could influence the election but with so many people hesitating to go one way or the other, it could have had an effect." he said.
Now, how about the off-screen Ruth Buzzi? Is she the same homely mournfully man-hungry girl she is on the air?
NOT ON your life. She's a short, bouncy lass and though not pretty is decidely on the attractive side. And there's no hairnet to be seen.
"Tell you about that," she giggled as she poured herself another cup of coffee. "I was putting on a net one morning and got it on wrong. But it looked so funny just decided to leave it.
"A lot of men may not know what it is but all the women will. Some people say it makes me look as though I have a bullet hole in the head."
Does she write the funny lines she says on the show? Well— "I have to give the writers credit," she said. "They create the material. But some of the funniest things I have done I thought of myself."
Until the "Laugh-In" came along, practically no one had heard of Ruth Buzzi. She was just another face in the crowds of shows on and off Broadway in New York. She was featured in the production of "Sweet Charity" and wound up in Hollywood mainly because the show closed there.
l YOU WOULDN'T believe her home town.
"Write it down," she said. "It's Wequetock, Conn. That's near New London."
She was in Julius Monk's "Baker's Dozen" show in New York's Plaza Hotel and later worked on the Garry Moore "The Entertainers" and Mario Thomas "That Girl" TV shows. And then came the "Laugh-In."
"We started with a special and then they brought us back for the series," she said. "I thought the thing was sheer bedlam at first but I was never so wrong. I have to remind myself now that it's work.
"Our morale is great. We have so many people no one has to learn very many lines. That keeps us all relaxed. We all had a tight schedule on the Marlo Thomas show and believe me I can appreciate what I have now. I had no life of my own shooting “That Girl.”
WHAT KIND of schedule does she have now? Well, the “Laugh-In” parties are taped each Wednesday at noon. They rehearse on three other days and that’s about it.
“People may think it’s tougher this year since we have parties in the beginning of each half hour instead of just one in the beginning. But the only thing different is we split it up. Before we each had two lines to say in one party. Now we have one line in each of the two segments. So it’s the same thing.
“To make it easier, we have cue card holders off camera to help us with our lines. Actually, we tape from 60 to 65 minutes of material a week. Nothing is thrown away.”
And there’s the thing that the producers call “The Library.”
“That’s when they bring in those celebrities,” she said. “They tape those things at various times. That’s why I’m not working today. We have so much material in the library they gave us the day off. And we have two weeks off at Christmas plus the summer vacation.

When Laugh-In left the air (she and Gary Owens were the only originals remaining besides Rowan and Martin), she turned to cartoons and children's programming. She explained why in this story syndicated by the Washington Post. One paper printed this on Christmas Day 1993.

'Laugh-In' regular joins ‘Sesame Street.’
Ruth Buzzi, long active in children's TV, plays the owner of Finder's Keepers thrift shop.
By Scott Moore
WASHINGTON POST
The image of dowdy Gladys Ormphby may be etched into the minds of many adults, but Ruth Buzzi has found a new identity among viewers too young to remember her many roles on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1968-73).
Buzzi, 57, brought on board with seven new Muppets for the 25th season of PBS's Sesame Street, plays the proprietor of the Finder's Keepers thrift shop.
"It's me," Buzzi said of the Ruthie character, who explores the shop's treasures and entertains children and Muppets with her storytelling.
"I love this opportunity to be me. Plus, there's nothing better than being able to be you and also be other characters. Because then, when people see you being a character and being yourself, I think they can enjoy more what you're able to do."
Though she has not been as visible in her post-Laugh-In career as co-stars Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin, Buzzi has been busy with children's programming.
"Agents don't like it, because there's not enough money in it for them, but I always like to do children's shows because to me it's like money in the bank for the future," she said. "The children grow up very, very quickly, and before you know it, you have fans who are adults. I'm not afraid to act like a nut for kids. I love to make them laugh."
In addition to her scheduled 40 appearances this season on Sesame Street (which runs three times a day weekdays and twice a day on Saturdays and Sundays on Channel 12), Buzzi provides the voice of an Neanderthal woman in the Children's Television Workshop-produced Cro. The animated science and technology program airs Saturdays on ABC (8 a.m., Channel 6).
She also has provided voices for Linus the Lion-Hearted, The Beren-stain Bears, Pound Puppies, Paw-Paws and The Nitwits (with Laugh-In's Artie Johnson), and appeared in nine movies. She has won four Emmy nominations along the way.
To teenagers, Buzzi is known as the mother of Screech in NBC's Saved by the Bell. Her picture sits in his dormitory room on the new Saved by the Bell: The College Years.
Buzzi obviously likes the work, though the current Sesame Street role almost didn't come about. "They tried to get me [for a guest spot] about 10 years ago, but my agent at the time said I wasn't interested." Not true, she said.
Luckily, Sesame Street writer Judy Freudberg suggested that they try to get Buzzi for the show's new cast located "around the corner" from Sesame's main street.
"Not only are they giving me a chance to be crazy funny for the kids ... they're also allowing me to do things every now and then that are delicate, and I can show a sweet, easy side of myself," Buzzi said. "I love it when I have a reason to have to put my hand on a little Muppet and feel sorry for it or try to make it understand a point."
That's not to say there is no Gladys Ormphby zaniness. Last month, in acting out a fairy tale about a grouchy princess, Buzzi even incorporated some of Gladys' apparel.
"They asked me if I would be willing to do [Gladys] a couple times on the show. I said absolutely. The original dress is put away, but ... I'm wearing the original shoes and the original sweater, which is getting really, beat up.
"The designers of this show ... are looking to see if they can find me another sweater like the Gladys sweater. What I got originally was a boy's sweater ... but for some reason or another they're just not making brown cardigans for boys anymore. I can kind of see why, can’t you? Who would want to wear one?"

Laugh-In's Englishman

Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In burst forth onto the scene at the start of 1968 and made stars of the regular cast members.

Well, almost all of them.

As a Toronto newspaper asked in 1983, whatever happened to Roddy Maude-Roxby?

Unlike other players on the show, it doesn’t appear he was interviewed in print at the time it rocketed in the ratings, and he was the only regular besides Larry “Hogan’s Heroes” Hovis who didn’t return for a second season (Eileen Brennan was supposedly a regular in the first season, but didn’t appear every week).

In 1969, Maude-Roxby was back on television in England. He was a performer in the six-episode London Weekend Television series The Complete and Utter History of Britain, written by Terry Jones and Michael Palin, soon to be of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Jones was quoted in “The Pythons” (Thomas Dunne Books, 2003) he was very frustrated that Maude-Roxby would constantly ad-lib and never learn lines.

As well, Maude-Roxby was signed in May 1969 (according to Hollywood Citizen-News) to voice the villainous English butler in the Disney feature The Aristocats. It would appear much of the rest of his career was on the stage, which is where he came from (in New York, he appeared in a comedy directed by Mike Nichols) before joining the Laugh-In gang.

Maude-Roxby wasn’t only a comedian. One of Australia’s newspapers, The Age, of October 10, 1968 revealed:

Roddy has a connection with Melbourne and indeed with this newspaper dating back to 1947 when he came to Australia with his brother, Chris, who worked as a cadet journalist on “The Age.”
For a short period during the three years the brothers stayed in this country, Roddy drew a weekly cartoon strip—Bulgy the Frog—for “Junior Age” know in those days as “The Age” Junior Section.
He also appeared in a local children’s radio series. When the brothers returned to England, Roddy enrolled at the Royal College of Art.
Apart from his work in the theatre, in cabaret and on television, he has exhibited his paintings (described as abstract-cum-figurative) in London.

The closest thing to a biography about him I’ve found is in the Ottawa Journal of April 9, 1977. He was part of a four-man improv comedy group that was brought to Canada from England at the behest of the Ottawa Board of Education drama consultant. We’ve snipped out extraneous copy to focus on Maude-Roxby’s past.

Theatre Machine
Wheeling and dealing in free-form comedy
By Jean Southworth
Journal Arts Writer
When Roddy Maude-Roxby was studying at the Royal College of Art in London, England, in the late 1950s he found that his main interest lay in theatre. His imaginative work with the student drama group at the college led to a professional engagement in a West End revue, One to Another, and he has been involved in theatre ever since.
He now is active in a group called Theatre Machine which has developed a unique type of improvisational theatre. He and two other members of the group, Ben Benison and Richardson Morgan, arrived in Ottawa this week for a series of high school and university appearances. They will conclude their visit with a public performance in the University of Ottawa's Academic Hall next Saturday at 8.30 p.m. John Muirhead, the fourth member, was unable to make the trip because of commitments, in London. ...
Roddy Maude-Roxby was born in London but grew up in Somerset and attended Brambletye School in Devon. When he was in his early teens he produced two books containing stories and drawings for children. On leaving school he went to Australia with his two brothers. He got some acting experience there through working for a children's newspaper which sponsored a radio program. When he returned to England he did a period of national service and took up art studies.
He explained in an interview that there was a connection between the Royal College of Art and London's Royal Court Theatre, which had become primarily a "writers' theatre". When he staged Beckett's Endgame at the college, for instance, he was able to borrow the dustbins which had been used in the original Royal Court production of the play.
During the 1960s he took part in various plays at the theatre in Sloane Square. These included the original productions of N.F. Simpson's One-Way Pendulum and Joe Orton's Erpingham Camp, and a production of Chekhov's The Three Sisters in which Glenda Jackson, Marianne Faithful and Avril Elgar played the title roles. He said the Simpson play received unfavorable reviews when it opened in Brighton but it was a success at the Royal Court. ...
Some years ago Maude-Roxby performed in New York with The Establishment, a company based in the Soho section of London. He went on to Hollywood to appear in the Laugh-In TV series. He also spoke the part of the butler in the Walt Disney animated feature film The Aristocats.
During 1973-74 he played in Habeas Corpus, with Alec Guinness, at the Lyric Theatre in London's West End. He appeared in Relatively Speaking at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield in 1975 and returned there last fall to play Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady.

The Establishment appeared once on TV. A one-hour special, written by Peter Cook, aired on March 30, 1964, taped in New York and broadcast on WNEW-TV and at least two other stations in syndication. Maude-Roxby, Peter Bellwood, Francis Bethencourt, Carole Simpson and non-Brit Alexandra Berlin appeared in satirical sketches that targeted heterosexuality, which seems pretty daring for 1964. Kay Gardella of the Daily News said Maude-Roxby “was at his best portraying a confused cabinet minister called upon to explain why he was seen dressed in nothing but a Masonic apron waving a speckled trout over the heads of two kneeling persons. His description of an art film, ‘Adam and Eve,’ was for [far] more suited to the bistro environment than TV.” The New York Times reported an hour and 45 minutes was taped, and four-letter words were the first thing taken out to bring the revue to time.

Maude-Roxby had one more crack at a regular TV series in the U.S. Jay Sandrich directed him in a pilot for a proposed show based on the 1967 movie To Sir With Love (Hari Rhodes played the Sidney Poitier part from the movie, Maude-Roxby had the role of a French teacher). It was not picked up, but CBS aired the half-hour on April 19, 1974.

Laugh-In liked to have a Brit component every once in a while. Monte Landis appeared in the pilot but when it became a series, Maude-Roxby was brought in. Writer Jeremy Lloyd was part of the cast for a year, and Richard Dawson also appeared on the show. Then there was Judy Carne, the former co-star of Love on a Rooftop, who tired of the show and left after periodic appearances in the third season. Maude-Roxby moved on to other endeavours before that.

Crazy George

There are times when you see a name you don’t expect while going through old clippings.

Take, for example, Variety of August 30, 1950. The trade paper reviewed a musical comedy at the Las Palmas in Hollywood named High and Dry. I don’t recognise the principal actors. In the cast were character actresses Cheerio Meredith and Jesselyn Fax, who played older women on TV sitcoms. And down the list is “Policeman, George Schlatter,” who also sang and/or danced.

Wait a minute. George Schlatter. The Laugh-In George Schlatter??

As they say in the cartoons “Mmmmm....could be!”

Schlatter was definitely in Los Angeles at the time; writer/historian Hal Erickson’s book on the TV series mentions that Schlatter was producing student shows at Pepperdine University and joined talent agency MCA at age 19. A November 10, 1952 item in the Hollywood Reporter is most definitely referring to Laugh-In’s overseeing eye, as it says Schlatter had left MCA and moved into Ciro’s where he headed Herman Hover’s radio and TV department.

Laugh-In was likely my favourite TV show of 1968 and 1969. I knew Schlatter’s name from the credits and was quite delighted to see him appear one night in a cross-promotional episode of I Dream of Jeannie (both were on NBC, “The Full Color Network”). “So that’s what he looks like,” I thought.

I’ve always liked George Schlatter, despite knowing next-to-nothing about him for the longest time. I figured if he put Laugh-In on the air (and its genesis has been a bone of contention almost since the outset), he must have a good sense of humour.

He has an overwhelmingly long list of pre-Laugh-In credits you can look up elsewhere. He produced a show for Dinah Shore (including a South Pacific/Australia episode in 1960 which involved four weeks of shooting where the crew nearly froze to death in Australia, and engaged in negotiations with the British Royal Navy in Samoa to use power from a submarine). He produced five episodes of Judy Garland’s show, after which CBS told him they didn’t like his approach (by all accounts, Judy was quite happy with his producing; Schlatter told columnist Hal Humphrey at the time “I’m not sure what happened—maybe I forgot to play politics.”) There were specials. One was a Christmas show at the Radio City Music Hall, which featured composer Meredith Willson and 1,100 Marines. Another with Louis Armstrong starred Grammy winners (he did five Grammy telecasts).

Let’s jump to Laugh-In.

It began as a Schlatter-produced special in 1967. NBC liked it, and figured it would be the perfect replacement for The Man From U.N.C.L.E. On January 22, 1968, Laugh-In debuted immediately after Mel Brandt spoke underneath a familiar animated peacock. U.N.C.L.E. had inspired all kinds of parodies of spies in acronymic organisations, but Laugh-In quickly became a monster fad.

The King Features Syndicate decided to talk to the man behind the show to get his take on its instant popularity. This appeared in newspapers starting May 13, 1968.

‘Laugh-In’ Really Socked to Ol’ George
By MEL HEIMER
FOR THE last few months George Schlatter was busy, many nights until 1 a.m., producing, directing, cutting, editing and worrying over the Rowan-Martin "Laugh In" TV show—and, he says, nobody was more astonished than he, when he finally emerged into the open air, started going around the country . . . and found the program's catch phrases were the rage of the young.
"Sock it to me, George!" the high school and college kids told him, or "Very interesting, very interesting," not to mention "Here come' de judge!" Out of context, these may not seem much, but sprinkled all through "Laugh In," like the running gags in the old Pete Smith movie shorts, they bring on the belly laughs.
"I was floored," says the easy-going, hard-working Schlatter, who teethed on TV by producing the Dinah Shore and Judy Garland shows a few seasons back, "even though I spent two or three years trying to put this program together because I believed in it so much. I thought it'd be successful—but nothing like this. You know, we only had been on the air five or six weeks in ("Laugh-In” started in January), when we got eight Emmy nominations!"
George's partner, Ed Friendly, involved in the late, witty program, "TW 3," and there are overtones of that show in the Rowan-Martin one. "Except," Schlatter says, "we're less bitter. We make a little social comment here and there, but we're not a protest show; we don't shoot out venom."
From the beginning, Schlatter had the idea of a genuine crazy program—its early working titles were "Cockamamy" and then "Put On"—but he had to overcome network opposition to such an out and out nonsensical idea. "You can't carry it on comedy alone," they said. "You have to have guest stars. Remember, the viewer's mentality is twelve." And so on.
Doggedly, George stuck to his guns and today he has a great hit. "Or, sub-titled, a playpen for monkeys," he says wryly. "All our performers are nuts. It was fun working with them for the 14 shows this late in the season, but next year I may break down under a full program of tapings.
"It's a wild thing," he says, "when you come to work each day and wonder what'll happen. Everyone involved, especially the writers, is a renegade or cuckoo. Take Digby Wolfe, one of our writers." George shakes his head. "He'll be put away one day."
Rowan and Martin, who are bonkers enough to begin with, act as the liaison officers between the younger and older generations, George says. "They bridge the gap," he explains, "although sometimes I think they're just as daffy as the rest."
The performers involved in the "Laugh In" screwiness are the lively, exuberant, cockeyed kind of brash young people who used to found in bright Broadway revues. The revue is almost a dead art form now, however, and aside from this show, you only can catch up with this irreverent species by dropping into some of the sophisticated supper clubs, such as Downstairs at the Upstairs.
Mr. Schlatter looks forward a little hesitantly to next fall's new season. "Arte Johnson, our resident genius, wants to do bird calls—his specialty is cawing like, a crow—and we also have plans to pay red carpeted, brass band homage to Barbara Eden's navel, which NBC kept off the air for so long on ‘I Dream of Jeannie,’" he says. He shrugs. "If it all doesn't kill me, it should be an absorbing season."

Feature writer Heimer re-visited Schlatter’s navel pledge in his Dec. 18, 1968 column remarking "NBC “hasn’t given the go-ahead yet.”

Allan Neuwirth’s book They’ll Never Put That on the Air (2006, Allworth Press) includes a tete-a-tete with Schlatter and Dick Martin giving their views about the creation of the show—and the numerous creative differences they had before it even got on the air. James Brodhead of the Los Angeles Times went into the conflict as early as 1969. And Joyce Haber wrote an extended syndicated story in 1971 saying it wasn’t a cuckoo Laugh-In world behind the scenes.

Regardless, Schlatter carried on getting his concepts on the air. Some were hits (Real People). Some were not (Turn On, which he still champions). He’s written an autobiography and has a a web site. Still busy at almost age 95? You bet your bippy.

Mitzi McCall

Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In went into its second season with producer George Schlatter adding to the cast. Among the newcomers were a pair of nightclub comedians—Mitzi McCall and Charlie Brill, “the fun couple.” The two of them married in 1960 and stayed that way for 64 years.

Mitzi has passed away at the age of 93.

She came from Pittsburgh, where she hosted the Kiddle Castle children’s show on WDTV. She was married to director Jack Tolen, who was hired in June 1953 to be the programme director of the new NBC-TV station (KFSD-TV) in San Diego. Her husband put her on Studio Ten, the station’s weekday afternoon housewife/variety show. Her big break came soon. Leon Gutterman led off his column for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Nov. 19, 1954 with a story about her.

Jerry Lewis Predicts Stardom for Mitzi McCall
HOLLYWOOD—Comedian Jerry Lewis, who is feeling a lot better these days—he was ill for quite a while—has predicted to his Hollywood friends that the new discovery, Mitzi McCall, who’ll be playing opposite him in his new film, “You’re Never Too Young,” is destined for quick stardom. Jerry picked Mitzi from 200 girls interviewed by himself and Paramount representatives. He insisted: "I'd have selected this sensational personality in a minute from 5,000 girls if it had gone that far."
To those of us who knew pretty Mitzy McCall [sic] when her name was Mitzi Steiner, and saw her doing occasional acting and singing engagements over radio and in Los Angeles and in Pittsburgh, this comes as no surprise. Now that Paramount has signed Mitzi and is ready to begin grooming her for stardom, we predict she'll replace Betty Hutton as the studio in a very short time.
Mitzi’s story has a Cinderella plot to it. For months she went from agent to agent in Hollywood pleading for some kind of chance. Nobody saw anything in her. In fact, very few agents even gave her the courtesy of an interview. Jerry Lewis heard about her from director Norman Taurog. Norman took her to Jerry's house and right into Jerry’s bedroom where the young comedian was recuperating from his illness. Mitzi walked in and began impersonating Jerry Lewis for Jerry Lewis. Jerry says he almost fell out of his bed howling with laughter. Mitzi, still under terrific tension, went through her other bits of mimicry. Jerry shouted, "'That's enough! That's the kid we've been for! Let's sign her right away!”

Erskine Johnson’s column of Oct. 3, 1954, quotes Mitzi as telling Lewis when she first met him: “You must meet my husband. He’s not like me—he’s refined.” “Just like my family,” Jerry replied. “My wife is refined, too.”

Both jettisoned their partners (in Jerry’s case, we mean Dean Martin), and carried on with their careers. Mitzi became part of a double act. But, as the Los Angeles Times reported at the end of 1960, it was with Joan Shawlee. She and her husband didn’t go on stage together until December 1961 with an appearance at the hungry i in San Francisco, but not before a “good luck” call from Jerry Lewis.

How was it the two came to be on Laugh-In? They explained it to the syndicated TV Key column on Sept. 19, 1968.

They Said Program Needed Them
By HARVEY PACK
HOLLYWOOD—Mitzi McCall and Charlie Brill are a comedy team who specialize in improvisations and zany repartee.
When they saw "Laugh-In" last season on NBC, they began to salivate because it was obvious to McCall and Brill that the program desperately needed them.
In addition to sharing the stage, Mitzi and Charlie share a home, child and telephone because they are married. Charlie picked up the phone and called "Laugh-In" producer George Schlatter. As soon as he was connected he handed the phone to Mitzi because she takes care of all family appointments.
"Hello, is Mr. Schlatter there?" asked Mitzi. When she gave her name to the secretary, she was told Mr. Schlatter was not available. "Oh," she said, and Charlie could see the wheels turning. "Well, tell him McCall and Brill returned his call and we're tired of having him pester us."
After she hung up Charlie wanted an explanation. "I couldn't think of anything else to say," laughed the Pittsburgh-born pixie. "Let him figure out that message."
Thus began a series of unanswered phone messages from the Brills' "Laugh-In" office. Hardly a day went by when George Schlatter wasn't told to stop bothering the Brills because they were not interested in doing his show. It paid off. One day Charlie and Mitzi were asked come in and meet their adversary face to face. When “Laugh-In” reconvenes Charlie and Mitzi will be seen regularly for what they are, a funny married couple.
"It's a new version of something from the early days of TV called 'The Bickersons' which featured Don Ameche and Frances Langford,” explained Charlie. "They asked us to listen to an old album but we didn't want any preconceived ideas."
The Brills are always "on" even when they're alone. It's an infectious kind of banter best described as Burns and Allen, vintage 1968. "Charlie," blurted Mitzi right smack in the middle of the interview. "We're supposed to see a man about a commercial today."
"When?" asked Charlie.
"Two hours ago," moaned Mitzi looking at her husband's watch. "I'll go call him . . . excuse me. . .”
"She's kind of crazy all the time,” explained Charlie as his wife went scurrying off to a phone. "I'll bet she doesn't remember our home phone number." He asked her the number when she returned and she rattled it off immediately but she had a bit of trouble with their address.
Bankruptcy to Success
"You know we've had it rough," continued Brill, the Brooklyn born half of the team. "We went to New York to do a guest spot on the 'Tonight' show," [on Sept. 14, 1962] and when we found out we wouldn't get the $320 for several weeks, we had to answer one of those ads in which they give you a car to drive to California and pay for the gas. Otherwise we couldn't have made it back to the coast. I could have gone to my relatives in Brooklyn but how do you explain that kind of bankruptcy to people who think you're a big success because were on the 'Tonight' show?"
But things are looking up; the Brills hope the "Laugh-In" is the big break. "We're been married eight years," said Mitzi. "And outside of our daughter who arrived on our eighth anniversary this is the best thing that's ever happened to us."
They met when Charlie auditioned for the Jerry Lewis Comedy Workshop, of which Mitzi was already a member. She sat with Lewis, watched Charlie do his routines and decided right, then and there that this was it. When she confided her plans to Charlie, the two were married.
Charlie likes to be told he looks like Peter Sellers. Mitzi panics when told she reminds one of Jo Anne Worley. “I love Jo Anne,” she explains, “But she’s on ‘Laugh-In’ and I don’t want any confusion.” “Nobody will be confused,” interrupts her husband. “Everybody will know you’re the one who works with Peter Sellers.”

Laugh-In added to the cast in the second season, and subtracted as well. It would appear McCall and Brill were too busy with nightclub work to stay on the show. The following February, after 13 Laugh-Ins, they were in Hawaii as part of the Jack Jones show. “People recognize us now. Isn’t that wonderful?” they said to the Honolulu Star Advertiser.

While a handful of people may remember them with Dan and Dick, animation fans will know McCall from her work on The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show and other cartoon series. Game show fans will know her from her energetic appearances with her husband on Tattletales. And entertainment history buffs will know the two of them from the night of February 9, 1964, when they followed the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. It would have been an unenviable situation to begin with, but Sullivan changed their act at the last minute. Mitzi got in an ad-lib that, backstage, she had stepped on a beatle. They’re better known for years of telling interviewers of how big a disaster their appearance had been than the appearance itself.

Yes, the two of them did other things (the 1953 photo to the left should read “Shirley Jones”), but this little reminscence should you give you a good idea about Mitzi McCall’s sense of humour that kept her employed for quite a while.

Don't Touch Her Silverware

Judy Carne had been on Love On a Rooftop. Larry Hovis was on Hogan’s Heroes. Ruth Buzzi had shown up on That Girl. But there were other people who appeared every week on Laugh-In that came from who-knows-where.

Take Lily Tomlin as an example. I didn’t know she had come from a restaurant. Well, actually, that’s not the whole story. She did that to make pay bills as she worked on her act and her career before George Schlatter hired her as a replacement for the third season.

One of her pre-Laugh In champions in the press was columnist Earl Wilson. Yeah, when you hear his name, you think of vaudeville and Broadway, of Jack Benny and Georgie Jessel. But he watched the new talent coming up, too. He wrote about Tomlin twice in 1968 (likely saving some comments for a second column), the year before she joined Rowan and Martin.

This story is from April 30, 1968.

NEW YORK — Lily Tomlin, the tall attractive daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Guy Tomlin, 215 N. Sunnyside, South Bend, has a marvelous sense of humor. She’s one of the stars in a satiric revue, “Photo Finish,” at the Upstairs at the Downstairs, where she wrote two of the funniest sketches in the show.
Lily started out two years ago as a comedienne at the Cafe au Go Go in Greenwich Village. She loves the Village and lives nearby, in the Lower East Side, also known as the East Village.
“I had two fish which died because it gets cold at night,” she said. “The landlord shuts the heat off after 11 p.m. But it’s a beautiful apartment. It’s a fourth floor walkup, has five rooms, and even has a window."
STAR DASH
SHE WAS born and raised in Detroit before her parents moved to South Bend and she to New York.
“Dad used to take me and my brother Richard to the race track all the time,” she recalled.
“He’d send Richard and me to place the bets. We’d go to the window and just stand there with the money in our hands. The horse would never come in, so Dad never missed the money, which we just kept.”
It was a sense of humor only they, as children, appreciated. . .for they were afraid of telling their father about it. Today Lily's making that humor work for her. She was recently interviewed by Johnny Carson’s staff and may soon appear on his show as a refreshingly new talent.
In one of her sketches at the night club, she sits on a high stool, dressed in a shawl and granny glasses. As she flicks the ashes of her cigar into the plastic rose on the lapel of her fur mini-coat, she sighs the end of a song she wrote about computer dates:
And we’ll both have found something
We’ve waited an awfully long time for—
A relationship
That’s tender, loving and very gentle . . .
And then I’ll hurt him.

A cigar appears in another anecdote in Wilson’s column around October 1st.

NEW YORK — Not many waitresses get interviewed, but then Lily Tomlin was not just a waitress—she was "waitress of the month” at Howard Johnson’s at Broadway and 49th.
“There was really only one other waitress there but she worked another shift,” Lily Tomlin said. "I would get at the mike and say, ‘Attention diners! Your waitress of the week, Lily Tomlin, is about to make an appearance on the floor. Let’s give her a hand!’ Then I’d walk out and nod and take a lot of bows.
"IT WAS FUN BUT THEN one day something snapped.
"I would get my silver all cleaned and put aside for the lunch rush. I was very jealous of all my cleaned silver. One day the cook was very busy and wasn't buttering and I had to butter. People were snapping their fingers for service. The waiters started raiding my silver. I ran out of silver! You run out of silver in a lunch rush! I went berserk, I flipped.
"I rapped on the counter and I shouted, 'All right this is the last time anybody takes my silver! I’m not serving another thing!’
“And the waitress of the week quit right there in the middle of the lunch rush! I’ve heard that more mental breakdowns occur in the restaurant business than anywhere else, and I believe it.”
LILY, WHO’S IN HER mid-twenties and comes from Detroit where she went to Wayne University, uses some of these experiences as a basis for her comedy act at the Playboy Club.
One character she portrays is a girl whose boy friend took her to dinner at the Automat. “When I got back with my mince pie, my date was gone and the table had been moved. I said to myself ‘That just goes to show that something was wrong somewhere’ but I didn’t let it bother me; I just went right on smoking my cigar.”

In between the two columns, a feature story about her and her show appeared in Robert Wahls’ column in the Daily News of June 16th:

ONE OF THE brightest new faces of 1968 apparently eluded the tireless Leonard Sillman— that of an associate comedienne in "Photo Finish," the revue at Upstairs at the Downstairs. This is a pre-Hair satire in which the comic, Lily Tomlin, satirizes not the right people but the up-tight people. That is, the non-flower folks.
Between professional engagements, Miss Tomlin, a rangy brunette, was twice annointed Miss Waitress of the Week while serving at Howard Johnson's at 49th St. and Broadway. The lunch crowd was grist for her up-tight observations. Today her star up-tight is Laverne, who carries the power of positive thinking to a paranoid state.
"Laverne is like this: the whole world is wrong, and she is right. And she's convinced, because, after all, hasn't she this bright blue light flaming in her eyes?" Miss Tomlin explained. "She has, and let the buyer beware."
Confined Stork
In repose at the Grenadier the other night, Lily sat like a confined stork over whom someone has draped a hobin's-egg [sic] blue mini dress with a square neck. Her hair could be a wavy stretch wig of black. It isn't. It is her own.
Repose is probably the wrong word, for Lily, compulsively so, is always on. When she tells you she was born in Detroit after her momma and poppa drove north from western Kentucky to pick up a new Dodge, you wait for the punch line.
"Poppa's family was a tenant farmer family on the Ford place. Momma was Lillie Mae Ford. She spells it with an 'ie' and not a 'y' like me."
Miss Tomlin waited for me to write that down.
"They went to Detroit also because there was too much kin in Kentucky and all the way into Tennessee."
All her kin folk and the Southern heritage probably help Lily when she satirizes Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson in conversation with George Hamilton's mother. Describing the Great Society, Lily says: "It's just me an' Lyndon an' 5,000 head of nasty cattle. George didn't understand Lynda Bird.
"I know I get some of my characters from the kinfolks. There's Lud and Pad and Odie Mae and Ermadee. They seem to fit into my characters. You know, I write most of my own material. I suppose it's all based on what I heard about us, the first families of western Kentucky.
"You see, I didn't see much of the southern family, except when they were passing through or we were visiting. We lived in Detroit in the old neighborhood, 12th St. and Claremont. . .near Buddy's Barbecue, and I was daddy's girl and sang "Shoo Fly, Don't Bother Me,’ That's when I was taking ballet and tap."
Miss Tomlin came to Manhattan just over two years ago to study mime and pantomime in order to refine her natural gesticulations. She spent a week at the Cafe Au Go Go synchronizing her movements and her monologue.
"I got an agent out of the exposure. But after he signed me, he turned into a travel agent, cruising the Caribbean. Then I wrote some more skits and tried them at the Improvisation. I got another agent, Ashley-Famous, which sounds real good.
Carol Her Carol
"With them I've turned down a 20th Century contract, then I signed for a new Gary Moore variety, which died. I wasn't sorry. They kept forgetting and calling me Carol for their ex, Carol Burnett. Then William Dozier put me under contract to follow Batman with Wonderwoman. The fad passed. I never did Wonderwoman, and I'd have been so good."
Lily has a flat in the East Village, which she refers to broadly as the Lower East Side. Miss Tomlin shares her floor with her brother, Richard, who has attached a tricycle to the kitchen ceiling as a pop art decoration. This sends them both.
"And I have a tremendous collection of old gowns, antiques really, which I bought for from 85 cents to $3 around St. Mark's Place and on Third Ave. Some I even picked up in Los Angeles when I was waiting to play Wonderwoman."
As her experience broadened, Lily found that she could do 50 minutes as a stand-up comedienne. While standing up, she does a barefoot tap dance. But she positively does not ride the tricyle on the kitchen ceiling in the East Village.
"That's one trip I've never been on," Lily explained. "When I travel, I always stop at Howard Johnson's."

Laugh-In was satiric enough for some of Tomlin’s characters to fit in for a few years until she went on to, perhaps, bigger things. I suspect, for many years, she’s been able to afford her own silverware.

Laughin' Before Laugh-In With Arte

They weren’t overnight successes, most of the original cast of Laugh-In. Judy Carne had starred in Love on a Rooftop. Ruth Buzzi showed up on That Girl. Jo Anne Worley had appeared on The Merv Griffin Show.

Arte Johnson had not one, but two TV series. Likely you don’t remember either of them.

Johnson was a nightclub comic who was signed for a role in It’s Always Jan, a sitcom which debuted in 1955 that CBS decided It’s No Longer Jan on its schedule after a year. Then in 1958, Johnson was added to the cast of Joan Caulfield’s NBC comedy Sally—after the show was cancelled. He and Gale Gordon were signed for the last seven episodes. Gordon played (this won’t surprise you) a pompous, disapproving grouch. Johnson played his bumbling son. Johnson was signed after series writer Phil Shuken saw him in “No Time for Sergeants” on Broadway.

He was considered on the rise once he hired for Janis Paige’s show. Here are a couple of articles, first from April 9, 1955.

Young Man With A Future
Arte Johnson Enters T.V As A Delivery Boy
By TV KEY
New York—Twenty-three-year-old Arte Johnson seems to be a young man with a bright future. Despite his relative youth, Arte is a veteran of night clubs, radio and T. V. Currently he's causing quite a stir in New York with his appearance in the sell-out "Shoestring Revue". It was during his run in the show that opportunity knocked loudly.
Artie Stander, a writer who created a new T. V. series, remembered him from a C. B. S. audition of the preceding year and called to offer him a job. There was to be a new T. V. film series, starring Janis Paige, aNd Stander had written in a part specially for Johnson. When Artie asked Arte if he'd be interested, our boy took a leave of absence from "Shoestring Revue" and flew post-haste to Hollywood.
"I didn't want to appear anxious," he told me.

The show, tentatively titled "The Four Of Us", concerns the adventures of a night club performer-widow and takes place in New York. Arte plays the delivery boy from the grocery downstairs. "Believe me," he said, "it's a different type of part. I'm an intelligent delivery boy.
"I had a long talk with Artie Stander about the role, and we both agreed that the best way to approach it would be to emphasize the human values and not try to dig for laughs based on slapstick or improbable situations. I'm the delivery boy and I like the people upstairs. So when the owner of the store refuses to advance them credit, I do."
He agreed that this did not sound like the epitome of intelligence.
"After all," Arte explained, "I'm basically a performer. If the part changes, all I can do is complain. But I do honestly believe the approach is right.
"I don't care what happens now. (He really does care.) Doing the film was the greatest experience of my life. I met all kinds of people I never dreamed I'd get close to—Desi Arnaz, Lucy, Ray Bolger, Danny Thomas, who's one of the producers, Sheldon Leonard, our director, Janis Paige. . ." He didn't say much after that name, he just sighed.
"We rehearsed the show for four days and then shot it before an audience. With laughter, it ran 38 minutes, and we had to cut out laughs to get it down to 27 minutes. That hurts.
"I haven't seen the pilot film yet. I understand the show is on the verge of being sold, but I'm almost afraid to look at it. I've been invited to another screening which will be held in New York, but I don't know whether I'll be brave enough to go even then."

The Indianapolis News gave readers this profile on Nov. 1, 1955. The typesetter seems to have had problems with the show’s name.

Don't Sell a Short Man Short
By JACKIE FREERS
Arte Johnson, the bespectacled young comedian in It's Alway Jan [sic], is in television because he couldn't see over the top of a counter.
The 5-2 Arte worked as a production assistant at a publishing house.
"I worked behind a desk," he said, "and didn't have the nerve to become a salesman. A friend dared me to go on the stage, and since I couldn't see over the top of the counter anyway, I joined the road show of ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blonds'."
A native Chicagoan and a graduate of the University of Illinois School of Journalism, Johnson went to New York in 1952 and joined the publishing firm. He made his first appearance in the cafe circuit, at Le Ruban Bleu and later on at the Village Vanguard.
Contrary to the experience of most people in TV, Arte finds the work relaxing. His aim is direction and production on TV.

"We work four days out of the week, we rehearse three days and shoot the fourth, before a live audience," he said in a long-distance telephone interview.
"There is not the pressure of live TV on our shows," he added. "We work on film with the advantage of a live audience." Arte said that he had a minor role in "Miracle in the Rain," new movie which features Jane Wyman and Van Johnson.
"My role will probably end up on the cutting room floor," he laughed, "but I love that money. It's so pleasant."
Arte has one brother, Coslough Johnson, just returned from Japan. "He was going to change his name to Howard but he thought people might laugh," Arte said. He says there is a great, influx of young talent to Hollywood right now and that "within five years, live TV will come only from New York, The filmed material will all be done in Hollywood."
It's Aways Jan [sic] is carried here on Saturdays by WISH-TV.

One of the advantages when you’re not known on television is you aren’t typecast. You can try out for different roles. Johnson appeared in a movie in 1965 playing something no one would associate with him today. This appeared in papers in August 1965.

Arte Johnson Scores Hit
By DICK KLEINER
Newspaper Enterprise Association.
HOLLYWOOD—When you see "The Third Day," an old-fashioned melodrama starring George Peppard and Elizabeth Ashley, you'll probably be impressed by a little man playing the psychopathic heavy. You are not alone.
Arte Johnson's performance is creating a lot of talk here. Johnson says that Helmut Dan-tine, whom he had never met, saw the picture and called him to say that "You will be the next Peter Lorre."
This is perfectly fine with Arte (pronounced Artie), but it amuses him. You see, he started out on the musical comedy stage in New York, came to Hollywood nine years ago and has been doing comedy in television and in night clubs.
He never made much of a splash here—"I was an owl actor—mention my name and people would say ‘Who? Who?’ "—but he did well enough to get by.
But then his old pal, Peppard, insisted that he play the evil one in "The Third Day."
"George called me," Arte says, "and he said, 'I've just read you in a script—a hostile little man.'"
Arte, who is 5'3" and weighs 125 pounds, says he guesses he is hostile.
"All little men are inclined toward hostility," he says, "and all comics are inclined toward hostility. So I guess I'm doubly inclined toward hostility."
He smiled as he said it. Hostile smile, it was.

This was not too many months after comic roles as an efficiency expert (Many Happy Returns, John McGiver’s starring vehicle), a playboy son (The Cara Williams Show) and Samantha’s elf cousin (Bewitched). There was some on-location comedy during filming of The Third Day. Johnson’s dialogue couldn’t be heard over the mooing of cows in a pasture.

Perhaps that’s what dissuaded him from a career as a character actor (he got some favourable reviews). By 1967 he was guesting on sitcoms, and then stories began popping up in newspapers in August that he would be in the cast of a special featuring take-offs and put-ons that NBC would air the following month. Dan Rowan, Dick Martin and producer George Schlatter promised quick sketches and a different format. UPI’s Rick Du Brow proclaimed the humour mixed but added “the one-shot show was memorable for the brilliant comedic singing, dancing and line-handling of Arte Johnson, whose pseudo-Russian song was priceless, and, as I understand it, impromptu.

NBC picked up the “one-shot” Laugh-In as a series. Arte Johnson’s career was changed forever.

The Fickle Finger That Touched Mary Hilt

This is the story of a woman who went on a TV show she didn’t watch and didn’t even like, a woman who won a prize then said it wasn’t enough to meet her needs but asked for something less, a woman whose husband chose a dolphin over the vice-president of the United States, a woman who kicks televisions and chickens.

This was published in the Albany Times-Union of March 8, 1970.

Area Mother's Gag Is a Laugh-In Matter
By BILL KENNEDY
How did Mary Hilt of Averill Park wind up as an anonymous gagster on the Rowan and Martin "Laugh-In" that's due for local showing Monday night?
Here's how Mary tells it:
"I was out delivering eggs one night and Butch said, a detective is coming out to see you. You won a contest. Then this man from the Burns Detective Agency showed up with a four-page affidavit and the first thing I said to the kids was get out or you'll queer it, whatever it is, and I put them out in the chicken coop."
Butch, who brought the good news, is one of the seven Hilt children ranging from 15 to six (Pam, Wendy, Butch, Marjorie, Nicky, Nancy and Alison) who wound up in the coop where the Hilts keep their chickens. The chicken business started three years ago when Mary ran the Park Perkies, an Averill Park 441 Club which had 25 chickens. By the end of this year the Hilts will have 9,000 chickens.
"If I knew in the beginning what I know now, Mary said, "I'd have gassed them all."
So the detective sat in the Hilt kitchen and told Mary she'd won a contest sponsored by Breck, the shampoo firm, but he didn't know the details. He just wanted to know if she had any connection with Breck or the Laugh-In or the advertising agency which represented Breck. She didn't. She was a legitimate winner of The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Contest.
"It was a moron contest," Mary said. "I didn't write anything. It was just a sweepstakes and you sent in your name and address. There were 212,000 entries and out of 30 drums they picked 300 names and took the names to Miami for Miss Breck to pick the winner.
WHEN MARY HEARD that she'd won she checked back to see what the prize was and found it was $20,000. So the Hilt family sat down together and figured out the things they all needed and made a discovery. "The $20,000 wasn't enough," Mary said.
The next day they made an other discovery. Mary had won second prize, not first. That was $1,000 plus a week in California, all expenses paid, and an appearance on Laugh-In. A man from Breck called and told her the prize. She said she couldn't take it.
"I've got seven kids and a lot of chickens," she told the caller. "I could cut off the chickens' heads and put them in the freezer but I couldn't do that with the kids."
So come out for four days for $1,500, the man suggested. We'll pay baby sitters. Fly out, fly back. But I don't fly, said Mary. You don't fly? No said Mary. And I don't even watch Laugh-In and I don't let the kids watch it because of the dirty jokes. Then why, asked the man, did you enter the contest?
"I WANTED A FLYING Fickle Finger of Fate," Mary said, referring to the replica of the Laugh-In gag award — winged finger on a bronze hand.
The Breck man cajoled but Mary resisted. Send us a color TV set and we'll call it square, she suggested. She explained: "My husband won't buy a color set till our black and white one gives out. I been kicking it, we all kick it when we go by it, but it won't give out."
The powers of persuasion prevailed, at last, and the Hilts decided to accept the prize and spend the four days in beautiful Burbank. The decision, said Mary, was chiefly her husband's. Leonard Hilt, a foreman with St. Regis Paper Co. in Scotia, had been a paratrooper in World War II. "He was up 18 or 20 times," Mary said, "but he always got pushed out the door and he said it'd be nice just once to come down with the plane."
It was also Leonard Hilt's decision to immerse the family in chickens, business "Best of the Nest" that grew to such proportions that the Hilts have built (themselves) a $15,000 poultry house, 40 by 100 feet.
"MY HUSBAND thinks this is the way to raise kids," Mary said, "shoveling manure and plucking chickens. Anything to keep them out of jail. The kids've made up a song they call The Poultry Plucker's Plea. One chicken attacked me the other day and I kicked it in the head and killed it, poor thing. I made believe it had got leukosis, but my husband came in and saw it and said to me, 'You been kicking chickens again?' I'm laughing, but I'm not happy. You ever been that close to chickens?"
The Hilts went west on separate planes and Mary went into the rehearsal hall and started looking around for celebrities. The place was full of them, all the Laugh-In regulars and Milton Berle and Carol Channing, but Mary didn't recognize anybody.
"I thought Buddy Hackett was a plumber," she said.
Finally she saw one, obviously a movie star. It turned out to be Ed Friendly, one of the originators of the Laugh-In. "He wasn't a movie star," Mary said, "but he was stunning."
Mary drew applause from the Laugh-In cast when she entered the set. The public relations people asked Mary if they could do anything for her. "Yes," she said "would you mind clearing the set while I say my lines? I heard Bette Davis did that once."
MARY'S LINES — two — come first during the party sequence of the show when all participants are dancing and gyrating. She sits quietly on a stool, looking, she says, like a visitor from the Legion of Decency. She at last says: "That's a no-no." But she doesn't know what it's in reference to. That was to be put in later. The second line comes when Dick Martin takes her by the hand and leads her off-camera. She comments as they go: 'Why me? Why always me?" She's not quite sure what that means either.
Her appearance is never explained on the show, nor is she introduced. "It's all a put-on," explained Mary.
When it was all over and they were leaving they found out that Spiro Agnew was next door at a studio being taped for the Bob Hope show and was scheduled to speak downtown the following day.
"I WANTED TO see him," Mary said, "but my husband wanted to go to Marineland and see Flipper so we missed Sprio." [sic]
The whole event has been an odd experience for Mary Hilt and her family, but then odd experiences are not totally new to her. Some years ago Topps department store in Menands burned down and Mary wrote the owners and expressed regret and explained how much she'd liked the store and wondered whether they'd build another one. Topps liked her letter so much that they paid her $500 to come to the opening of the new store with her family to cut the ribbon. Her husband resisted and Mary retorted: How can I go down there with seven kids and no husband? Finally, Leonard Hilt agreed to go.
His attitude, Mary recalled, I was like that of a man touched by the flying fickle finger of fate: "Who else but my wife would write to a burned-down store?"

You may be thinking we’re dealing with an oblivious, humourless couple of people in this story. Remarkably, that’s not the case. Mary Hilt later became a newspaper columnist, kind of a local Erma Bombeck looking at the odd, ordinary things in life. She was a very community-minded individual, and it’s sad to learn her last years were plagued by Alzheimer’s. She died in 2012. You can read about her interesting life here.

Not-Laugh-In Looks at the News

Producer George Schlatter and comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin combined to put Laugh-In on the air. After a rather unpleasant split, both sides tried to recreate it. And not very successfully.

Schlatter revived the show for the 1977-78 season with an all-new cast, including Robin Williams. Meanwhile, Rowan and Martin signed a deal with ABC to develop a weekly comedy series starting January 12, 1976—but a week before, asked out of their contract.

Why? George Maksian of the New York News wrote at the time it was because the network changed its mind about another Rowan and Martin venture.

One of the regular segments on their old show was “Laugh-In Looks at the News,” with an opening musical number, followed by (at least in the early years) phoney headlines and sketches based on news of the past, present and future. Rowan and Martin decided to rework the concept and took it to ABC.

Here’s the Associated Press talking about it in a wire story dated October 22, 1975.

TV News Funny Stuff Set by Rowan-Martin
By BOB THOMAS
Associated Press Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Is the nation ready for a weekly Rowan and Martin review of the news? Rowan and Martin think so, ABC heartily agrees, and the network will present the pilot show Nov. 5.
"Two years ago we couldn't have done a show like this," says Dick Martin, the basset-faced zany of the comedy team. "Watergate was still going on, and people were too uptight to laugh at the news."
"Now the timing is just right," agrees Dan Rowan, the smooth straight man. "We're coming into an election year, the Fords are doing things you can make jokes about, and the Democrats are funnier than ever."
"The Rowan and Martin Report" next month will set the pattern for a series expected to reach the ABC network in January. Both comics and producer Paul Keyes declare it will be unlike anything television has ever seen before.
Does that sound like show biz hyperbole? Perhaps. But eight years ago all three were saying the same thing about their new show "Laugh-In," and their prediction turned out, to be true.
"When we went on the air with 'Laugh-In,' critics tried to compare it to early Ernie Kovacs, 'Hellzapoppin' or whatever, but it bore no relationship to anything that went before," says Martin. "Nor will the new show."
Rowan, Martin and Keyes bristled at the suggestion their show might resemble "That Was The Week That Was."
"TW3 used sketches to satirize the news," explained Keyes. "It was a failure because it had an Englishman (David Frost) telling us what is wrong with America, and the principal target of the sketches was President Eisenhower, whose popularity was 65 per cent in the polls. Besides, the show wasn't funny.
"Our show will have no sketches, no music, no laugh track, no guest stars, nothing but funny stuff about the news done the way television normally handles the news."
After their enormous success with "Laugh-In," Dan and Dick kept a low profile in television.
"It would have been ridiculous for us to do stand-up comedy routines on variety shows," said Rowan, 53. "Except for the Emmy show which we did for Paul (who was producing) we've tried to stay off the tube as a team. But both Dick and I like to do the game shows as singles."
Two months ago, the pair and Keyes took their idea for "Report" to Fred Silvermann newly moved from CBS to ABC as chief programmer.
"Fred said he could only give us 20 minutes because his schedule was tight," Rowan recalled.
"Silverman bought the show seven minutes after we entered his office," Keyes added.
Now they're in the process of assembling a team for their show. They were over in Burbank, Calif., of all places, the other day to audition performers at a tape studio.
Unknown actors and actresses from local improvisation theaters and nightclubs trooped before the camera and read gagged-up news items. Out of the candidates may come the future Henry Gibsons, Lily Tomlins, Arte Johnsons and Goldie Hawns.
“We’re looking for people can seem to be newscasters but have a way with comedy,” said Martin, 53. “They will also have to think fast on their feet, because the show will be live, and we may throw in last-minute news items.”

A test episode aired as scheduled. If anyone wondered where Cousin Oliver of The Brady Bunch went, he was hired by Dan and Dick. Robbie Rist, age 12, was the show’s TV critic and wrote his own material. 11 writers were hired and the show was taped only 24 hours in advance to be current. Keyes told the Gannett News Service prior to the broadcast there would be five reporters, but didn’t name them. He described the segments at “Rumor Corner,” “Man in Washington,” “Statistics,” and “Names in the News.”

As for the reviews, Percy Shain of the Boston Globe proclaimed “It’s all pretty static and not very funny. Sometimes, in its ethnic shots, it’s rather tasteless. Nothing emerged to stick to the memory, except for those flushing numbers at the bottom of the screen, which revealed that while the show was on the national debt increased $3 million. There’s certainly nothing humorous in that.”

But Win Fanning of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called it “a sure winner,” adding “The fast-paced, up-to-air-time combination of actual news stories and inspired, witty commentary recaptured the best of the ‘Laugh-In’ excitement—without being in any way derivative.”

John J. O’Connor of the New York Times also approved. “[T]he two comedians and a small but choice cast of funny people commented on a wide range of current events, from President Ford’s latest press conference to Jacqueline Onassis’s new $200-a-week job in book publishing. ‘The Rowan and Martin Report’ brought some badly needed topicality and nice lunacy to the battered concept of ‘family hour’.”

Jay Sharbutt of the Associated Press was concerned about the stupidity of viewers: “What with its realistic-looking anchorman’s set, its joshing and its reporter who is seen across the street from the White House, ‘The Rowan and Martin Report’ is a frightening prospect for TV. People might mistake it for a local nightly news program.”

And what did George Schlatter think? He told the New York Daily News “It will make things better for me if I want to do ‘Laugh-In’ again.” He stayed away from a direct comment about the content.

But maybe Freddie Silverman’s golden gut couldn’t stomach what he saw. He passed on finding it a January time-slot, so Rowan and Martin went from potentially two shows to none at the start of 1976. Ironically, Schlatter's effort at ABC a few years earlier, Turn On, lasted one show as well.

Jump ahead 40 or so years to an era of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Maybe Dan Rowan and Dick Martin were way ahead of their time.

Parading Jo Anne Worley

Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In fans will know Jo Anne Worley but they may not know Herminio Traviesas. Yet he had an ever greater effect on the show than Worley or any of the other cast members.

He was the NBC censor assigned to the show.

In 1970, Traviesas set his sights on one of Worley’s lines in the cocktail party segment: “Boris wanted a memento of our love, so he bronzed the back seat of the car.” Traviesas demanded it be taken out. “My job is to take out as many dirty jokes as I can,” he said. Executive producer George Schlatter sputtered: “You’re ruining the show! I've seen Dean Martin get away with worse than that.”

Whether it stayed in or out, I don’t remember, but Worley was always doing something loud and “zany,” a term that was probably passé when Laugh-In debuted in 1968. We dug out some old newspaper clippings about her last year. Here are some more. First, from King Features Syndicate papers of February 9, 1969.

A TV Keynote Feature
Laugh-In Has Bold Brassy Female To Keep Show's Tempo at Fast Pace
By CHARLES WITBECK
HOLLYWOOD.—There's always one in a crowd—the big, noisy, extrovert who helps set the room temperature. On "Laugh-In" Monday nights, the big laugher is a lady—dark-haired, boisterous Jo Anne Worley, endowed with a bray that bounces off walls, a kind of picker-upper inserted when the tempo threatens to cool off. Miss Worley's laugh is sorely needed in these troubled times, a commercial item keeping Jo Anne steadily employed except for one month during the last eight years. That's a pretty good track record for young comediennes.
Jo Anne comes by her loudness naturally, being raised on a Lowell, Ind., farm. "We did not have to worry about disturbing the neighbors," she says. "We yelled at the pigs and let go in general. Both my sister and I can never be accused of being quiet."
In Las Vegas
Laughing just comes naturally to Jo Anne. Over the Christmas holidays Ruth Buzzi, Allan Suess [sic], Dave Madden and Miss Worley played Las Vegas with bosses Rowan and Martin, performing "Laugh-In" type blackouts. Between shows the kids caught a hypnotist act and soon were on stage as guinea pigs. Ruth Buzzi went under at the count of two, even allowing the practitioner to stand on her 108- pound frame, while Jo Anne fell into a giggling spell.
"I couldn't open my eyes," she recalls. "It was a ticklish sensation which made me roar with laughter."
Jo Anne should have brought the hypnotist along on New Year's Day when she rode the Silver Slipper float in Pasadena's Tournament of Roses, because it was no fun. After finishing the Las Vegas midnight show with the "Laugh- In" gang on New Year's Eve, the comedienne took a 3 a.m. plane for Los Angeles in order to be in Pasadena at 5 a.m. She arrived at the parade formation area at 6 a.m. Both Jo Anne and her driver were unable to find the float, and officials were just as vague. The actress finally spotted the beauty, then stood by until 10:30 a.m. without coffee or any other relief, joking with the crowd.
"That was physical work," she reports. "Reacting to all those people. They wanted 'Laugh-In' gags and I did my best until I learned to pantomime, indicating a sore throat." Jo Anne was stunned by the number of youngsters who knew her name and her routines. "They know you so well," she said in awe. "Last spring Goldie Hawn and I felt we were doing absolutely nothing on the show. Then, this summer we went out on the road and discovered the 'little nothing bits' counted. The Rose Parade proved it once more."
It also taught Miss Worley a lesson about parades. Her float had mechanical troubles which almost crushed her at one point. At the end the actress dismounted with relief, thinking the worst was over, only to spend 4 hours getting out of Pasadena traffic.
“The only way they can get me back is to make me Queen,” she says.
Like many of the young comedy talents considers herself a writer, putting together her own nightclub act, using her wacky songs on "Laugh-In." Now she's reached the point in the club business where agents suggest hiring writers whose material isn't up to her standards. "They're submitting things I rejected when I was writing," she says, "and that rubs me the wrong way."
Jo Anne can't sit down and turn out material because she's trained another way—trying out gags before audiences in New York clubs like Upstairs at The Duplex where she once worked with Joan Rivers and Dick Cavett. She would chatter about her days as a door-to-door sales lady for Dabit, or her job as truck stop waitress. When the dialogue fell flat, Jo Anne mode faces, giggled and moved out among the audience, marking time while she was feverishly thinking of something. She can sweat out a crowd, but sitting down at a desk to write is simply too hard.
“I was born under the sign of Virgo,” she adds, “so I tend to be over-critical of myself.” For assurance and advice Jo Anne often consults a voice teacher who dispenses astrology lore, telling her former pupil "she can make things happen," offering general clues to future plans.
So far the voice teacher has high marks. "When I'm going out with a guy I bring him around to my friend to check him out," say Jo Anne. "It's handled very diplomatically and I can tell by her attitude if there's no future to the guy. The thing is not I get married if you can cool it.
There's another routine that should become a Worley act. Now if she can only talk it out or break the habit—sit down and let it just come out!

And now from another of the syndication services, dated May 3, 1970.

Jo Anne Worley Says: "I Want to Be Loved!"
By PEER J. OPPENHEIMER
ATTACHED to Jo Anne Worley's telephone is a sign which boldly proclaims "I AM LOVED!"—almost as if she were trying to convince herself. And therein lies the struggle of tv's "Laugh-In" star, famous for her loud, raucous laughter, feathers and fringes, and exaggerated style of comedy.
From the very beginning of "Laugh-In," which made its debut in January of 1968, Jo Anne Worley has capitalized on her special brand of camp. Her now familiar offstage whoop heralds an on-camera performance in which Jo Anne mugs, hugs, sings, dances, makes google eyes, and casually tosses off throaty comic lines.
In private life, however, Jo Anne is shy and introverted, particularly where men are concerned. She has a down-to-earth Midwestern attitude, a religious background that causes her much consternation over today's changing mores, and a yearning to be loved.
This wanting to be loved dates back to her early school days in Lowell, Ind., when she towered head and shoulders over her classmates. "It was impossible to find a boy who could get enthused about that!" she exclaimed. (Today she stands 5' 8½" and weighs 135—"I'd like 10 pounds less!") Yet when she did start to date, Jo Anne's strict upbringing ("I was brought up under the commandment 'Thou shalt not touch'") caused her to be painfully insecure.
Jo Anne's childhood prepared her for hard work all right, but not necessarily theatrical work. She was one of five children who lived on a farm. She learned the meaning of taking one's responsibility, seriously. As soon as Jo Anne was old enough, she had to help with the farm chores—milking cows and feeding livestock.

It was not until Jo Anne began to feel something of a misfit in school because of her height that she struggled for acceptance through other means. She soon discovered that a gay, loud, and outwardly assured manner could cover up a lot of inner insecurities. Before long, Jo Anne became the "star" entertainer of her high school. The fact that she was not cast as a romantic type bothered her, but she kept that fact secret. Openly, she was a-laugh-a-minute. And very popular.
After graduating, Jo Anne headed for Los Angeles and moved in with her sister, who was living there. Jo Anne planned to attend City College there and get a secretarial job on the side. But soon she got wind of some auditions, turned up for them, and was signed for a spot with the "Billy Barnes People" revue which went on tour and ended up in New York.
Finding herself out of work, Jo Anne began making the New York audition scene and found that her old Hoosier luck had not left her completely. She found work in a number of small night-club revues, which opened the door to some tv-talk shows, particularly Merv Griffin's. A major break came when she understudied Carol Channing on Broadway in "Hello, Dolly." She then went to Las Vegas to appear on the "Bill Dana Show" and landed a regular spot with Joey Bishop's, "Son of a Gun Valley Players."
During this period, Jo Anne was in a good position to hear of anything that was happening on tv. And by now she had developed her comic personality more than ever. So it wasn't surprising when a friend told her about auditions for "Laugh-In" and thought she would be perfect for it. Executive producer George Schlatter thought she was perfect, too, and hired her for the show.
Jo Anne is the only one of her family never to have married. Some day she would like to—very much. And have a couple of children. She stems from a belief in marriage, a home, a life shared.
Currently there is a man in her life, actor Roger Perry, an old friend whom she met when she first went to Los Angeles and worked at the Music Box Theatre. Time will tell whether Jo Anne has finally overcome her shyness and insecurity enough to really share her whole life and allow herself to be loved and love in return. Sighed Jo Anne, "It would be lovely to get married—if it worked out. I am really a very normal human being! Otherwise I'd be in a nuthouse."