“The Bookshop,” a 1967 sketch featuring John Cleese and Marty Feldman from At Last the 1948 Show.The show got its title as a joke on how long it took BBC TV commissioners to nake programming decisions.
When they filmed or taped TV situation comedies, producers found that studio audiences often didn’t laugh in the right places. Sound engineer Charley Douglass developed the Laff Box, and editors used it to “sweeten” sitcom soundtracks with “canned laughter.” Over the last 10 years, the laugh track has disappeared almost entirely. Cheddar explains why.
More:
“The invention of laughter: Charley Douglass and the laff box,” Valentina Palladino, The Verge
Joe Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris may not guarantee him the presidency, but it makes Maya Rudolph a shoo-in for Saturday Night Live guest slots. A Washington Post video.
More:
“Maya Rudolph created a memorable Kamala Harris impersonation on SNL, and fans desperately want her to return,” Michael Cavna Washington Post
“Maya Rudolph: the unambiguous winner of the Kamala Harris VP pick,” Oliver Milman, The Guardian
U.S. President and reality TV personality Donald J. Trump performed his State of the Union address on Tuesday. He called it “The Great American Comeback,” and it all seemed to come back to re-runs of 1950s television Westerns. Mr. Trump outlined midcentury America’s whitest historical myths, and his reference points were all TV shows he saw as a toddler, Wyatt Earp (ABC TV, 1955 to 1961), Davy Crockett (ABC TV, 1954 to1955), and, with a nod at inclusion, Annie Oakley (syndicated from 1954 to 1957). He glorified How the West Was Won (MGM 1962 and MGM Televison, 1976 to 1979), seemingly reducing the genocide of Native Americans to some kind of divinely-ordained case of eminent domain. A reference to the Alamo (Disney 1955) overlooked the fact that Crockett and his comrades were illegal aliens in 1836, and some of them enslaved other human beings.
Image (“Trump on TV, with apologies to piñatero Dalton Avalos Ramirez“) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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