Applause Track Origins

[TimK2003]

This one might be a little hard to answer, but if you watch pretty much any TV show of the past, they usually add canned laughter or applause to many shows which need a laughtrack or applause.

My question is on many of these shows, game shows obviously included, there are distinct canned tracks for different shows.  Shows originally made at NBC more than likely got the MacKenzie treatment with those familiar whistles, laughs, and occasional yee-haws.

Over at CBS, many shows had CBS's own can of laughs, claps and whistles.

And if you have seen any of the early Jack Barry hosted episodes of Break The Bank, then you have no-doubt heard the laugh-track that was also used in many sitcoms of the 60's & 70's.

Does anybody know how old these different audience sweetening tracks are, and where/when were these guffaws and applasue-frenzied people first recorded?

[uncamark]

[quote name=\'TimK2003\' date=\'Sep 26 2004, 11:03 AM\']This one might be a little hard to answer, but if you watch pretty much any TV show of the past, they usually add canned laughter or applause to many shows which need a laughtrack or applause.

My question is on many of these shows, game shows obviously included, there are distinct canned tracks for different shows.  Shows originally made at NBC more than likely got the MacKenzie treatment with those familiar whistles, laughs, and occasional yee-haws.

Over at CBS, many shows had CBS's own can of laughs, claps and whistles.

And if you have seen any of the early Jack Barry hosted episodes of Break The Bank, then you have no-doubt heard the laugh-track that was also used in many sitcoms of the 60's & 70's.

Does anybody know how old these different audience sweetening tracks are, and where/when were these guffaws and applasue-frenzied people first recorded?[/quote]
Reelradio.com's page on the MacKenzie is the best basic primer on the machine--here it is.

The late Charles Douglass, the father of canned laughter, invented his first "Laff Box" in the mid-50s, using tapes from Red Skelton's pantomime sketches on his CBS show recorded in Studio 33 and recordings of the audience at a Marcel Marceau performance, supposedly.  Although he said the recordings were updated, he and his son Robert continued to use them until stereo TV came in in the mid-80s.

The tapes at the network MacKeznies seem to come from various eras--allegedly, the big laugh you heard after a Paul Lynde "ad lib" on "Squares" came from a Groucho outtake where a contestant described standing on an outside ledge on a tall building naked (it was supposedly the biggest laugh that show ever had).  The phased audience shouting you heard on a lot shows most likely came from an "LMAD" audience (phased so you couldn't tell that they were yelling "Take the curtain!" or "Door No. 2!").  And the kids screaming track you heard on "The Gong Show" and the "Storybook Squares" shows came from "Runaround," thanks to a bad tape splice that left in a SFX bell from the show.

I suspect a lot of Bob LaMasney and Boyd Wheeler's tracks came initially from audiences at the LA Improv, since I believe LaMasney's first sweetening gig was "An Evening at the Improv" for A&E.

[SRIV94]

Mark, I'm impressed.  That's really good stuff.  In some cases (at least for me, anyway), those audience reaction tracks *made* those shows (especially at NBC).

One clarification--the LaMasney/Wheeler stuff was off-network (most of the reaction tracks I remember [primarily from NBC] pre-dated EVENING AT THE IMPROV)?  Thanks.

Doug -- and the countdown to 700 continues

[JasonA1]

...came from "Runaround," thanks to a bad tape splice that left in a SFX bell from the show.

Wow. Thank you very much Mark. I'd hate to demand things or be like that - but could anybody produce a sound clip of this? Or direct us to one? I'd be very interested to pick out this bell. I've watched both of the shows in the past and just never heard it.

-Jason

[Mike Tennant]

Here's another good history of the laugh track, courtesy of your pal, Billy Ingram, at TVParty.com.