Rowan and Martin

Dan Rowan (1922-1987) and Dick Martin (1922-2008)

Mondays on Bunthorne’s blog are usually about one person.  But some individuals are so inextricably linked to another that it is impossible to discuss one without the other.  Therefore, today’s post is about Rowan and Martin, a comedy team who revolutionized television comedy with their antic sketch show, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.

Dan Rowan was the sophisticated straight man.  His parents were travelling carnival entertainers and he was born in 1922 on a carnival train near a small town in Oklahoma.  He learned the ropes of vaudeville from his parents before he became an orphan at the age of 11.  He went to Los Angeles in 1940 and got a job a Paramount Pictures as a mail boy before becoming a writer.  During WWII, he was a pilot in the Pacific Theater and shot down two Japanese airplanes before being shot down himself, earning several medals including the Purple Heart.  Returning to Los Angeles after the war, he struggled as an actor and writer.

Dick Martin was the funny guy of the act.  Martin, also born in 1922, was brought up in a middle class family in Michigan.  He graduated from Michigan State University, moved to L.A. with his brother, and wrote for radio. In 1952, he was tending bar when Dan Rowan walked in.  Their banter quickly developed into a comedy team with Rowan playing the straight man to Martin’s one-liners.  They appeared in night clubs dressed in tuxedos and soon were headed to Las Vegas.

Their summer special “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” aired September 9, 1967.  It was quickly picked up as a weekly series, airing on Monday nights from January 22, 1968, to May 14, 1973.  It was a wild, fast sketch comedy that featured a cast of crazies including Judy Carne, Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson, Henry Gibson, Jo Anne Worley, and Goldie Hawn.  Later seasons would introduce Lily Tomlin, Alan Sues, and Richard Dawson.  Regular guest stars included Jack Benny, Johnny Carson, Tiny Tim, Flip Wilson, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Peter Lawford, and Sammy Davis Jr.  An astounding array of other guests appeared on Laugh-In over the years including John Wayne, Bob Hope, Don Adams, Tony Curtis, Sid Caesar, Peter Falk, Herb Alpert, Jack Lemmon, Rich Little, Vincent Price, and, famously, Richard Nixon.  

Each week had a similar format. Gary Owens opened the show “from Beautiful Downtown Burbank”.  Rowan and Martin’s would do an opening dialog usually about Dick's sex life after which Dan would say “Let’s go to the party.”  The set would open onto a 60’s party with the whole cast dancing, interrupted with quick jokes.  The girls danced with very little on and painted with funny slogans.  'Sock-it-to-me' time featured the cast members getting soaked with water.  The show tumbled into sketch after sketch including returning favorites such as Arte Johnson’s ‘verrry interesting…but stupid’ German, Henry Gibson’s poet, and Lily Tomlin's Ernestine the telephone operator.  Most shows had a repeating sketch with variations on the joke each time.  The news segment always started with the girls singing ‘what’s the news across the nation, we have got the information…’ in a different style each week.  The show always ended with a joke wall where each cast member would open a door in the wall and tell a joke.

Laugh-In coined a number of phases that immediately entered the popular lexicon including 'You bet your sweet bippy', 'Here come da' judge', 'Sock-it-to-me', and 'Look THAT up in your Funk and Wagnalls'. Laugh-In also included a heavy dose of political humor, the way being paved by shows like ‘That Was The Week That Was’ and ‘The Smothers Brothers’.  The fickle-finger-of-fate award often went to some bone-head political incident of the previous week.  Dan's news from the future extrapolated current events to their most ridiculous.  I remember one future news segment from 1984 that featured President Ronald Reagan. 

What was explosive in the late 60’s got a little stale by 1973 when Laugh-In was cancelled.  Rowan retired to Florida while Martin went on to become a television director for many years.  Rowan died in 1987 while Martin laughed on until 2008.   But the spirit of Laugh-In is still alive today, particularly in the ongoing success of Saturday Night Live.

Question of the Day: What was the name of Rowan and Martin's 1969 movie?