The head writer of Laugh-In was Paul Keyes, who was a speechwriter for Nixon.
You want 60’s topical satire with bite? Try The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
Would y’all like to see the FBI report on Rowan And Martin’s laugh-In?
Another Laugh-In writer was Saturday Night Live creator and recent Kennedy Center honoree Lorne Michaels.
Yeah, he and his partner at the time, Hart Pomerantz, were junior writers. If their jokes weren’t rejected outright (e.g. anything to do with Nixon or Vietnam) they were passed to the senior writers, who re-wrote them, then passed to Paul Keyes, who re-wrote them, and then to Rowan & Martin, who re-wrote them again. Lorne and Hart weren’t encouraged to attend tapings, so the first time they would see a particular episode was the broadcast from their motel in Toluca Lake. Sometimes they would recognize little pieces of their ideas.
Was that the first show to trash talk Burbank? I started driving about 8 years after Laugh-In was on and I was shocked when I discovered Burbank wasn’t actually a festering rat hole.
I came across an older car mag that had posed a car in front of a building that had “Beautiful Downtown Burbank” painted on it.
Wow, it’s on the internet!
The show mentioned Vietnam virtually every episode. Nixon was trashed certainly by Watergate time.
Michaels and his partner only wrote for Laugh-In for 9 episodes. This was from 1968-69. It would have been part of the second season. LBJ got a lot more attention due to Vietnam. Jack Reilly (Elliot Carlin on Bob Newhart Show) did guest shots just to play LBJ. I was a little disappointed they didn’t have someone play Nixon, I do think Laugh-In missed the boat there from where they were initially. I think John Byner might have been brought in to do RFK in the first season, before RFK was killed.
I think Nixon in '69 was seen as a throwback, an equivocator who was able to take advantage of Democratic turmoil. Pre Watergate the image was different, certainly he had his rep, Checkers and all that, but it was different at that time.
Michaels stole the tentpole sketch of SNL, Weekend Update, from Laugh-In. Just because one of the SNL books trashed Laugh-In doesn’t make it true.