Dirty jokes on old TV shows

[Mr. Blue Sky]

I was watching What's My Line on GSN. The show was from mid-1960 and the contestant was a candlestick maker. The celebrity panel had determined that the man manufactured a product and that is was solid.

Then Dorothy Kilgallen's turn came up. She said, "We've determined that your product is solid and stiff."

To which Bennett Cerf gave a chuckle and said, "Come, come now, Dorothy."

Funny stuff.

[saoirse]

Back in the 70s, a female guest brought her cat on the Johnny Carson show. She sat the cat in her lap and asked Johnny, "Would you like to pet my pussy?"

Johnny replied "Okay, but move the damn cat."


Also don't forget the running joke on the old 50s sitcom. The kid's name was Beaver Cleaver.

[Mr. Blue Sky]

Back in the 70s, a female guest brought her cat on the Johnny Carson show. She sat the cat in her lap and asked Johnny, "Would you like to pet my pussy?"

Johnny replied "Okay, but move the damn cat."

Can we limit the responses to real jokes, please?

[Otto]

Can we limit the responses to real jokes, please?
Seriously. Zsa Zsa never moved her pussy (http://snopes.com/radiotv/tv/zsazsa.htm).

[Biffy the Elephant Shrew]

The Master speaks: Groucho's cigar joke (http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_024.html). Unfortunately, it didn't actually get on the air.

[alphaboi867]

Are You Being Served was filled with double entendres. There was a whole episode where the staff filmed an ad for a supper club they started, but when it was shown without sound the audience mistook it for an ad for a sexclub.

[KRC]

There's the classic "Ward, weren't you a little hard on the Beaver last night?"

I can't vouch for it though, as that show had finished its run by the time I was old enough to remember things I saw on TV.

[astorian]

This was radio, not TV.

When I was a kid in New York, Dorothy Hayden hosted a radio show for older Irish Americans (as a result, she eventually became the first female grand marshall in New York's St. Patrick's Day Parade).

Every week, she and her co-host husband would announce various Irish functions. One week, he was reading off the calendar, and one of the events was the annual Corkmen's (as in Ireland's County Cork) Ball. And the poor guy casually remarked (decades before Bon Scott & AC/DC) , "As you know, the Corkmen have the biggest balls of them all." A long pause followed. Then he only made it worse by saying, "I mean to say, they have the biggest DANCES."

Too late!

[SandyHook]

In late 1968 on "Laugh In" there was a skit with Goldie Hawn and Terry Brown (I think that was her name, she was the black woman on the show). It took place in a dressing room where they were getting ready to go on. Goldie turned to Terry.

Goldie: "Do you have any soap?"

Terry hands her a small black box.

Goldie: "Oh, you have a black box."

She opens it and looks inside.

"But look, it's pink on the inside."

[Rodgers01]

I was watching What's My Line on GSN. The show was from mid-1960 and the contestant was a candlestick maker. The celebrity panel had determined that the man manufactured a product and that is was solid.

Then Dorothy Kilgallen's turn came up. She said, "We've determined that your product is solid and stiff."

To which Bennett Cerf gave a chuckle and said, "Come, come now, Dorothy."

Funny stuff.

Hey, "What's My Line" is a great show! I used to watch that sometimes when I could afford to stay up late. I wish Game Show Network would air it earlier. Talk about a great panel.
[/hijack]

[Mr. Blue Sky]

Hey, "What's My Line" is a great show! I used to watch that sometimes when I could afford to stay up late. I wish Game Show Network would air it earlier. Talk about a great panel.
[/hijack]

Ah, the joys of the DVR.

[Annie-Xmas]

On the Gunsmoke radio show done live, the actor playing the hangman once said "When I get finished with a man, he's well hung."

Penis ensued as the other actors struggled not to laugh while reading their lines.

[Rilchiam]

In late 1968 on "Laugh In" there was a skit with Goldie Hawn and Terry Brown (I think that was her name, she was the black woman on the show).

Chelsea Brown.

[CalMeacham]

As Pepper Mill has pointed out, in one Star Trek (TOS) episode ("Squire f Gothos"?) someone says to Uhura something like "Stop, fair maiden!"

To which she responds, "Sorry. Neither."

That's pretty subtle, but definitely risque.











Allan Sherman claimed (In his book The Rape of the A*P*E*) that on Laugh In Jo Ann Worley appeaared in a bald wig, then said "I've never been bald on television before!".

Say it out loud and think about it.

[Malacandra]

As Pepper Mill has pointed out, in one Star Trek (TOS) episode ("Squire f Gothos"?) someone says to Uhura something like "Stop, fair maiden!"

To which she responds, "Sorry. Neither."

That's pretty subtle, but definitely risque.



Sulu, in The Naked Time, while "drunkenly" fancying himself a Three-Musketeers type swashbuckler.

[LonesomePolecat]

Allan Sherman claimed (In his book The Rape of the A*P*E*) that on Laugh In Jo Ann Worley appeaared in a bald wig, then said "I've never been bald on television before!".

Say it out loud and think about it.
Another quickie from Laugh-in: A fast shot of JoAnn Worley holding up a pair of ceramic jugs, and singing the single word, "Jugs!!!" in a high pitched tone. They were so obviously baiting the network censors with this one by walking right up to the line and almost but not quite crossing it ...

Is my memory faulty or did Worley get most of the racy material on that show?

[Mahaloth]

I've posted this before in other threads, but here it is again.

On M*A*S*H in 1972 or 73(early in the show), Hawkeye walks into Hot Lips' tent and Frank is there with her. Hot Lips is using a vibrating massage machine to massage Frank's neck.

Hawkeye says, "Well, it's like I always say, 'Behind every great man is a woman with a great vibrator.'"

My jaw hit the floor. Did he make a vibrator joke? Yes, he did. Ah, early M*A*S*H, how good you were before you got preachy.

[Electronic Chaos]

As Pepper Mill has pointed out, in one Star Trek (TOS) episode ("Squire f Gothos"?) someone says to Uhura something like "Stop, fair maiden!"

To which she responds, "Sorry. Neither."

That's pretty subtle, but definitely risque.

Huh?

[chrisk]

Huh?

I assume the joke is that she's saying she isn't fair (light-skinned) or maidenly (ie, a virgin.)

[RealityChuck]

Neither fair (Uhura was Black) nor a maiden (i.e., a virgin).

Not TV, but some nice little double entendres got out in the early days of sound film. 42nd Street had the famous "She only said no once, and then she misunderstood the question" and the lesser known exchange:

Man in chorus: Want to sit on my lap?
Girl in chorus: I ain't no flagpole sitter.

Then, of course, there's Shakespeare (Hamlet: "Do you think I mean country matters?") and Marvel ("Your quaint honor.") (Hint: both refer to a portion of a woman's anatomy.)

[Annie-Xmas]

I read once that on an early Tonight Show, Jack Parr introduced a well-endowed actress to the accompany of the bass drum: And here's (BOOM BOOM) Jayne Manfield's.

The censors objected.

[CalMeacham]

I read once that on an early Tonight Show, Jack Parr introduced a well-endowed actress to the accompany of the bass drum: And here's (BOOM BOOM) Jayne Manfield's.

The censors objected.


Hah! It's not as if that's anything new. Jane Russel got all those jokes over a decade earlier. They renamed the Frank Sinatra/Groucho Marx movie "It's Only Money" as "Double Dynamite" when Jane Russell joined the cast. The posters for The French Line read "Jane Russell in 3-D. Need we say more?" They advertised "The Outlaw" by having skywriting planes draw two circles.

Jayne Mansfield was even more brazen than Jane Russell. And they objected to two tympanis on TV?

[MissTake]

Ah, the joys of the DVR.
Me too!
Sometimes when I watch I wonder whether Dorothy was in her cups or not. I personally enjoy it when she is teased and becomes quite snippy. But for malapropisms she is the best on the show.

[control-z]

I used to think TV was getting a lot raunchier as I got older. And it is getting raunchier, but I just didn't get a lot of the jokes when I was younger! :)

[h.sapiens]

I recently caught about 2 minutes of a Bewitched rerun in which a man asked a woman if she was a thespian, and the woman acted outraged until someone explained that he was asking if she was an actress. Considering it was on a family sitcom from the late 60s, I thought that was pretty close to the edge.

[sciurophobic]

I read once that on an early Tonight Show, Jack Parr introduced a well-endowed actress to the accompany of the bass drum: And here's (BOOM BOOM) Jayne Manfield's.

The censors objected.

The line was "Here they are, Jayne Mansfield!"

[RealityChuck]

Hah! It's not as if that's anything new. Jane Russel got all those jokes over a decade earlier. They renamed the Frank Sinatra/Groucho Marx movie "It's Only Money" as "Double Dynamite" when Jane Russell joined the cast. The posters for The French Line read "Jane Russell in 3-D. Need we say more?" They advertised "The Outlaw" by having skywriting planes draw two circles.Or the ever popular "Jane Russell in 3-D. It will knock both your eyes out."

BTW, Mansfield was first noticed in Hollywood when she deliberately dropped the top of her bathing suit during a press junket promoting a Jane Russell movie.

[danceswithcats]

Some great ones were heard on the original Hollywood Squares:

Peter Marshall: According to Cosmo, if you meet a stranger at a party and you think he's really attractive, is it okay to come out directly and ask him if he's married?
Rose Marie: No, wait until morning.

Peter Marshall: According to Ann Landers, is their anything wrong with getting into the habit of kissing a lot of people?
Charley Weaver: It got me out of the army!

Peter Marshall: In "Alice in Wonderland", who kept crying "I'm late, I'm late?"
Paul Lynde: Alice, and her mother is sick about it.

Fans of the original Squares will remember those and a ton more. :D

[Chanteuse]

I can't remember the name of the movie or the man who starred in it (I seem to remember it being Cary Grant, but I'm really not sure), but in one scene, he wasn't dressed and there was a knock at the door and the only thing he could grab to put on was a woman's frilly bathrobe. He made a remark to the visitor that went something along the lines of, "I'm going all gay today." That was a bit of a surprise!

[E. Thorp]

Bringing Up Baby.

[Walloon]

It was from Bringing Up Baby (1938), in a scene between Cary Grant and May Robson:Mrs. Random: Well, you look perfectly idiotic in those clothes.
David Huxley: These aren't my clothes.
Mrs. Random: Well, where are your clothes?
David Huxley: I've lost my clothes!
Mrs. Random: But why are you wearing these clothes?
David Huxley: Because I just went gay all of a sudden!And that last line wasn't in the script — Cary Grant ad-libbed it.

[Lute Skywatcher]

Some great ones were heard on the original Hollywood Squares:

Peter Marshall: According to Cosmo, if you meet a stranger at a party and you think he's really attractive, is it okay to come out directly and ask him if he's married?
Rose Marie: No, wait until morning.

Peter Marshall: According to Ann Landers, is their anything wrong with getting into the habit of kissing a lot of people?
Charley Weaver: It got me out of the army!

Peter Marshall: In "Alice in Wonderland", who kept crying "I'm late, I'm late?"
Paul Lynde: Alice, and her mother is sick about it.

Fans of the original Squares will remember those and a ton more. :DOr just use Google (http://www.classicsquares.com/lyndesquares.html). ;)

[E-Sabbath]

Rolf the Dog, The Muppet Show, in the course of a song about cruelty to fruit, claimed, "I've even balled a melon..."

Yowza.

[Xema]

It was from Bringing Up Baby (1938), in a scene between Cary Grant and May Robson:
...
David Huxley: Because I just went gay all of a sudden!

But 1938 seems early for "gay" to have acquired its current connotation. Anyone know the timing of this?

[Mr. Blue Sky]

But 1938 seems early for "gay" to have acquired its current connotation. Anyone know the timing of this?


The panel on What's My Line? was using the term to mean "lively" and "fun-loving" through the end of the 50s.

[RealityChuck]

But 1938 seems early for "gay" to have acquired its current connotation. Anyone know the timing of this?Actually, it's quite late. The word started having the meaning of "homosexual" in the 1890s (the OED has a first cite as an adjective in 1897). However, the meaning was not generally known to the straight world until the early 1970s.

Gays kept it among themselves, using it as a way to approach other men. If you met someone and weren't sure if he was gay or straight, you could say, "Are you interested in a gay time?" and the person's reaction would show his sexual orientation.

In addition to the "gay" line in Bringing Up Baby, a little later, Grant is again asked what he's doing in the woman's robe, and answers, "I'm just waiting for a bus on 42nd Street." More gay slang: 42nd Street in NYC was where gays would look to pick up men; if challenged by the police, they'd say they were just waiting for a bus.

[sneezy5660]

On an episode of M*A*S*H, the doctors were in the O.R., and as usual, Hawkeye was hitting on a nurse. Frank, miffed, asked Hawkeye, "Are you gonna knock it off?" Hawk replied, "That's what I'm trying to find out!" Went right by the censors.

[What Exit?]

I am watching Cecil & Beanie with my kids. (Cartoon from 1961).
Lots of word play and puns. They sailed to No Bikini Atoll. Cecil was quite excited by this.

BTW: I never saw these before, I am too young but they are very funny and were done by Bob Clampett of Looney Tunes Fame. The kids love them. I rented them from NetFlix.

Jim

[AskNott]

At least a couple of times, Red Skelton had a situation where a woman had fainted and he had to pick her up. He made a hilariously awkward show of picking her up from behind without putting his hands on her breasts.

Thus, he could:
look foolish,
make a breast joke, and
poke fun at censorship.

[John Corrado]

Rolf the Dog, The Muppet Show, in the course of a song about cruelty to fruit, claimed, "I've even balled a melon..."

Yowza.

No, the line was "I've even made a melon bawl."

[Evil Captor]

Don't forget Soupy Sales with "Every time I show you F, you see K."

And finding the naked woman at the door to his "funhouse."

[CalMeacham]

Don't forget Soupy Sales with "Every time I show you F, you see K."

And finding the naked woman at the door to his "funhouse."



The former has been, IIRC, debunked -- although the story is widespread, it didn't happen.

The latter did (I have a tape of it), but not on the aired version. An actual nude woman was out of sight of the show's cameras, although another private camera recorded her.


Aside from the infamous joke about having kids send in the "pictures of presidents" that IIRC, really did happen, none of the awful things reported of Sales (or most other Kiddy Show hosts) actually did occur. Check Snopes for details.


I have to point out that, since at least the days of Bob Clampett's puppet version of "Time for Beany" in the early 1950s, "kid's shows" had a sizeable adult following, too. And the hosts knew it. A lot of the jokes were put in for watching adults, and might have shirted the line, even back then.

[Larry Mudd]

Are You Being Served was filled with double entendres. There was a whole episode where the staff filmed an ad for a supper club they started, but when it was shown without sound the audience mistook it for an ad for a sexclub.I don't think British television really counts, though -- since British TV has never been as sanitized as American TV.

Compare, for example, Steptoe & Son with its American cousin. In the sixties, British TV showed an episode where Harold brought home an old coin-op porn movie viewer -- and is stunned when he realizes that the young man having it off in the loop is his father. This scenario serves as a starting point for punny jokes like:HAROLD: How could you do something like that?
ALFRED: You don't understand -- we were very poor! Everything was in pawn!
HAROLD: So were you.It's hard to imagine Sanford & Son, even late in the '70s, basing an episode around the premise of Lamont discovering that Fred had made a porn film in his youth, innit?

What a great episode, though. "Ergh-- why'd you leave your shoes on, you dirty man?" "It was cold!" Heh heh heh.

[An Arky]

OK, somebody needs to translate that one for me...I think I know what in pawn means, but what's the dirty bit there?

Thanks!

[Don Draper]

In an interview from several years ago, an actress from the show Petticoat Junction remarked that she never got a rather subtle in-joke on the show until years afterward: The show centered around three or four comely young ladies and was set in a town called "Hooterville"!

[What Exit?]

OK, somebody needs to translate that one for me...I think I know what in pawn means, but what's the dirty bit there?

Thanks!

Pawn as in belongings in Pawn shop.
Pawn sounds like Porn if you say it right.

Jim

[John Corrado]

OK, somebody needs to translate that one for me...I think I know what in pawn means, but what's the dirty bit there?

Thanks!

Try saying "in porn" with an English accent.

[Rilchiam]

It's hard to imagine Sanford & Son, even late in the '70s, basing an episode around the premise of Lamont discovering that Fred had made a porn film in his youth, innit?

Well, there was an episode in which Lamont and a buddy of his almost got cast in what they called an "adult film".

[Don Draper]

I just thought of another one. On Bewitched: dunno the episode, but the Stephenses (Darren's parents) & Endora drop in for a visit at the same time. Mrs. Stephens offers Endora a brownie which she baked herself. I'm a bit fuzzy on the precise dialogue, but Endora asks whether or not she followed the "Alice B. Toklas" recipe, coyly implying that that was her favorite recipe. Pretty daring for that era of television.

[betenoir]

Well, there was an episode in which Lamont and a buddy of his almost got cast in what they called an "adult film".

Well yeah but that's very American...they "almost" got cast. They get to talk about porn...or drugs or homosexuality or whathaveyou. But the real characters never get really involved. Because of course real people never really do any of those things.

I have to say I'm pretty impressed with Steptoe and Soe :D.

[An Arky]

:smack: Ahhhhh! "In Porn!"

OK!

Which, coincidently, is a good lead-in for reading fortune cookies.... :D

[Annie-Xmas]

Not really intention, but once on The Big Valley, the madam of a "gentlemen's house" had the unforgetable name of "Amy Carter." Seeing the rerun during the Carter presidency had us laughing our asses off.

[F. U. Shakespeare]

Vague Dick Van Dyke Show recollection: Rob once found himself in an upscale restaurant where a fashion show was going on (I think he may have accompanied a buddy who was in the business). The thoroughly-whipped Rob was being his usual nervous self around all these attractive women without his wife present. He observed that the male customers would commonly ask the models, "How much?", and be told the price of the dress they were modeling. Trying to fit in, Rob subsequently asked "How much?" of an attractive woman who turned out not to be a model, and was met with the expected outrage. Pretty risque for that era and show. (At least, I am pretty sure this was the first DVDS. The early-70s one was much racier, so I may be confusing them).

The Hollywood Squares was great:

Peter: Charley, you've decided to grow strawberries. Will you get any the first year?
Charley: Why, of course not Peter, I'll be too busy growing strawberries.