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.
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.
Can we limit the responses to real jokes, please?
Seriously. Zsa Zsa never moved her pussy.
The Master speaks: Groucho’s cigar joke. Unfortunately, it didn’t actually get on the air.
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.
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.
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!
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."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.
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.
Chelsea Brown.
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 APE*) 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.
Sulu, in The Naked Time, while “drunkenly” fancying himself a Three-Musketeers type swashbuckler.
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?
I’ve posted this before in other threads, but here it is again.
On MAS*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 MAS*H, how good you were before you got preachy.
Huh?
I assume the joke is that she’s saying she isn’t fair (light-skinned) or maidenly (ie, a virgin.)
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.)