I’ve noticed, especially in the 70’s sitcoms like MASH and The Brady Bunch, that the laugh tracks sound very similar, if not exactly the same. There are a few basic laugh sequences, depending on the level of the guffaw the network was going for. However, there are some male laughs that stand out to me, especially one where you hear a male laughing loudly by himself, as the laugh segment trails off.
Granted, this may be a product of exactly what the networks were going for… generic laughing inserted into the program to tell us idiots at home when we are supposed to laugh. But boy they all sound the same.
Did all networks buy the same laugh track from the Acme Laugh Track company, or did each network have their own version and recycle it within their own shows, or something else?
I am sure MASH was on CBS, and I believe The Brady Bunch was on ABC, so my theory is that everyone just used the same generic laugh track.
But I thought I’d ask the dopers to fill me in.
(If this belongs in Cafe Society, ok by me… But I put it here in GQ because I thought there would be a factual answer).
At one time in early TV, there was a laugh box manned by one dude, who guarded it carefully. The nature of the technology at the time didn’t allow for many different sounds, so it’s entirely likely many were reused ad-nauseum. Look at how few keys are on his sound box.
I recall something like that for the Taxi shows. Either one dude with a highly recognizable laugh was always in the audience, or his laugh was repeated with a machine. I never heard that particular laugh anywhere else.
Back in the old days, the networks did not own shows or produce shows. They had no opportunity ever to insert laugh tracks of any kind.
They could, and certainly did, talk to the actual production companies about their laugh tracks. MAS*H had to negotiate constantly with the network about laughter. They eventually compromised that there would never be laughs in the operating room scenes - and a few entire shows, but laughs everywhere else. The decisions about what those laughs were and who made the original tracks were the producers’ and not the networks’.
If you listen to the laugh tracks on shows produced by Desilu, you’ll frequently hear a male AHHHHHHH-HA-HA!!! at crucial points. That’s Desi Arnaz himself, in a track recycled from old I Love Lucy epsiodes.
Interesting note - the original canned laughter came from recordings of Red Skelton when he was doing pantomime humour. (Seems obvious in hindsight that it would have to be pantomime humour to get clean laughs without the comedy getting in the way.)
I recall seeing TV broadcasts of old Three Stooges shows in the 60s and 70s, which were essentially movie shorts cobbled together for TV. Their production pre-dated laugh tracks, and the absence of laughter looked very odd to my young eyes. Pulled me out of the experience. When a joke or gag was done and there was no laughter, it looked like Curly Larry and Moe were mugging, trying to milk a laugh that wasn’t coming. I thus discovered I had been trained to expect canned laughter as a cue to funniness.
I dislike that I was manipulated like that, but all motion picture art contains embedded cues to prompt emotional responses (close-ups with Vaseline lenses for romance in old black and white shows, heart-beat paced music for suspense, “sad trombone” for broad comedy, and so on in a long list). Without the support that such devices provide to narrative, modern motion picture would be experienced as emotionally flat as watching old DW Griffith productions. Triumphs in their day, but unwatchable as pure entertainment now.