Sketch Pads: From Beautiful Downtown Burbank to Live from New York

Two show business milestones recently occurred within a breath of the other. Gary Owens (above), the longtime on-camera announcer for the late 1960s comedy sketch show “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” known for his old-time radio pose with a hand cupped to one ear as his sonorous baritone voice intoned nonsensical segues like, “The preceding was recorded earlier because we were ashamed to do it now,” died February 12. Three days later, on February 15, “Saturday Night Live” celebrated its 40^th anniversary with a star-studded, three-and-a-half hour broadcast. There’s a connection. Just bear with us.

Born Gary Altman in Mitchell, South Dakota, Gary Owens’ first job in radio was as a 16-years-old news reporter at KORN in Mitchell (yes, the home of the world famous Corn Palace). Two years later, he was promoted to news director. At 22, he moved to KOIL AM in Omaha, Nebraska, where the station owner gave him the name Owens. When a disc jockey suddenly quit in the middle of a live show, Owens had to take over. Gary’s son, Chris Owens, recalled, “He was horrible. But then his humor came out, his silliness, and people loved it.”

Owens worked at radio stations throughout the Midwest, and in Dallas, New Orleans, Sacramento, and Oakland. In 1961, he was hired as a disc jockey at KFWB AM in Los Angeles, later moving to KMPC AM, where he remained for two decades. Besides inventing his own vocabulary – “We’ll be back in just a krennelmuffin,” “I’d like to thank my engineer for creebling all the turntables” – he created wacky characters like Endocrine J. Sternwallow and Merganthaler Waisleywillow.

In his “Critic’s Notebook” for the Los Angeles Times, Robert Lloyd wrote, “He was in local radio…back when radio helped define a city, before the rise of corporate programmers and syndicated packages. It was a medium that was friendly to eccentrics, to running gags and recurring casts of oddballs; it gave you the sense that there was a party going on just on the other side of the speakers, not that far away.”

"The sound of Gary Owens...was a sound of Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s:
classic and customized, finely tuned and casually flamboyant, like a pinstriped
suit on the one hand and pinstriped car on the other." Robert Lloyd, LA Times

Gary Owens fell into television as a writer for animated shows produced by Jay Ward, the co-creator of “Rocky & Bullwinkle” Hearing his voice (“Owens was a baritone,” Robert Lloyd noted, “something between adventure-serial narration and the crushed-velvet tones of a late-night jazz jockey…”), producers quickly cast him as a voice performer.

 

Gary Owens said, "Because of my voice, they usually had me playing someone
in an authortitative way..." He was the voice of Roger Ramjet and Space Ghost.

In 1967, a chance meeting in a Burbank restaurant led to Owens’ tenure at “Laugh-In.” “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” which aired on NBC from 1968 to 1973, could be described as Mod vaudeville for the Peace Generation (Mod-ville?), featuring rapid-fire gags, jokey cameos by movie and television stars, and comedy sketches marked by sexual innuendos and political satire; the title itself was derived from the “love-ins,” “sit-ins,” and “be-ins” of the ‘60s counterculture.

George Schlatter, the co-creator and producer of “Laugh-In,” was in that men’s room of the Burbank restaurant when Gary Owens entered. In a recent interview, Schlatter remembered, "He said 'Hello, George!' in that voice of his. 'The acoustics are great in here!' And I said to him, 'That's what I want you to do!' " Schlatter explained to the puzzled Ownes that for his new, fast-paced show, he needed someone to say lines that would serve as a break between sketches. "It was the shortest audition in show business," Schlatter said.

When “Laugh-In” went off the air in 1973, only Dan Rowan, Dick Martin, Ruth Buzzi, and Gary Owens had been in it for the full span of 140 episodes. In a 1995 interview with the St. Petersburg Times, Owens said, “Those were some of the greatest times of my life.”

"...and Morgul as the fiendly drelb!"

Robert Lloyd remarked, “He served a role not unlike Don Pardo provided not long afterward for ‘Saturday Night Live,’ juxtaposing a smooth, schooled professionalism with the show’s we’re-all-mad-here marriage of late-Beat hipsterism and flower-powered grooviness.”

As fate would have it, among the many writers on the staff of “Laugh-In” was Lorne Michaels (from 1968 to 1969, he contributed to 13 episodes), the co-creator of “Saturday Night Live” and its producer from its premiere in 1975 to the present, except for a five-year hiatus from 1980 to 1985.

After leaving the writing staff of "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In," Lorne Michaels
(left) starred in the Canadian comedy series "The Hart and Lorne Terrific Hour,"
with Hart Pomerantz (a Canadian attorney) in the early 1970s.

Oddly enough, among the over 40 regular performers who appeared variously on “Laugh-In” over its five-year run, only one was selected by Lorne Michaels to make the transition to his new enterprise, and that was Lily Tomlin, whose three-year tenure at “Laugh-In” was noteworthy for producing such enduring characterizations as nosy telephone operator Ernestine, precocious five-and-a-half year old Edith Ann and The Tasteful Lady. Tomlin hosted “Saturday Night Live” twice, in 1975 and 1983.

Except for hiring Lily Tomlin as a guest host, the only concession Lorne Michaels
made to his "Laugh-In" past was in 2000, when "SNL" host Kate Hudson channeled
mom Goldie Hawn in an opening bit that included (left to right) Will Kattan as Artie
Johnson Jr., Will Ferrell as Alan Sues Jr., Rachel Dratch as Ruth Buzzi's daughter,
and Ana Gasteyer as JoAnne Worley's daughter.

In the February 14 Los Angeles Times column “Critic’s Corner,” the aforementioned Robert Lloyd commented that “Saturday Night Live’s” “roots are in sketch comedy – from a confluence of the National Lampoon, Second City and L.A.’s own Groundlings.” He noted, “ ‘Saturday Night Live’ itself has proved remarkably durable…It has long since become an institution, a university. And like one, the flavor changes with each new class (143 cast members in 40 years), some brighter, some less bright, while the institution itself remains sound, retains its essential character, purpose and way of doing things.”

On The Daily Beast website, entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon wrote, “ ‘SNL,’ for 40 years, has seemed to exist in a different, dark and neglected corner of show business, allowed to do as it pleased because the misfits…that engineered its weekly broadcast were the kind the ‘biz’ typically ignores. They’ve always played by a different set of rules…Never has the show lost its importance. Its edge…Its status as TV’s most demented funhouse.”

 

Lorne Michaels (right) poses with "Saturday Night Live" Not Ready for Prime Time
Players Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, and John Belushi.

Somewhere amid the 210-minute marathon of that 40^th anniversary celebration of “Saturday Night Live” (actually, “SNL” debuted October 11, 1975, but who’s quibbling?), Jane Curtin mentioned that 11 feature motion pictures have been based on “SNL” characters. That’s exactly ten more feature motion pictures than those inspired by “Laugh-In.”

In 1952, 30-year-old Dick Martin, a radio comedy writer, teamed up with Dan Rowan, a decorated World War II fighter pilot. Dan was the straight man, Dick the fall guy. Their first routine as a comedy team, with Martin as a front-row drunk heckling Rowan’s Shakespearean performance, became a staple of their nightclub act. (We had the great fortune to witness the comedy pros reenact this fabled routine at a casino in Sparks, Nevada, in the late ‘70s.) Through the mid-‘60s, Rowan and Martin appeared frequently on TV’s “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “The Hollywood Palace,” and they hosted the summer replacement series, “The Dean Martin Summer Show,” in 1966.

In 1958, perhaps in an effort to grab onto coattails of the screen success of the comedy team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, whose penultimate pairing before their acrimonious split in 1956 was ironically titled “Pardners,” Rowan and Martin starred as inept rustlers in a slapstick western called “Once Upon a Horse” (above), written and directed by Hal Kanter, a comedy screenwriter and gag writer for Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Jerry Lewis, and Elvis Presley.

Unable to unload a herd of stolen cattle because of a falling market, the two despera-don’ts end up stuck in town, getting charged more and more to feed and care for the cows. The game cast featured Martha Hyer (best known for her Supporting Actress Oscar-winning performance in “Some Came Running,” with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Shirley MacLaine), movie tough guy Leif Erickson, comedic actress Nita Talbot, and sibling boxers-turned-actors Max Baer and Buddy Baer. Mary Tyler Moore made her film debut in “Once Upon a Horse” as a dance hall girl.

In 1969, at the height of “Laugh-In’s” popularity, filmmakers thought it would be cool to cash in on its success by casting Dan Rowan and Dick Martin in a feature motion picture. The movie even had a title that played on a popular catchphrase from the show – “You bet your sweet bippy!” – but “The Maltese Bippy” had little if anything else to do with the humor the TV program or its hosts were known for.

 

A caricature of Rowan & Martin by Sam Berman

We read somewhere that what Rowan and Martin said wasn’t remarkably funny but it was the way they said it that was funny. Unfortunately, “The Maltese Bippy,” a musty murder mystery spoof with werewolves and vampires tossed into the mix that might have worked better for Bob Hope and Bing Crosby or Abbott and Costello in the 1940s, confines the comedy team in stifling characterizations: Rowan as an oily director of nudie flicks, Martin as his reluctant star performer who thinks he’s turning into a wolfman.

 

Dan Rowan and Dick Martin share a scene with "Laugh-In" regular
Pamela Rodgers in "The Maltese Bippy."

Directed by Norman Panama, better known for the 1956 Danny Kaye comedy “The Court Jester” and the 1962 Bob Hope-Bing Crosby comedy “The Road to Hong Kong,” the persistently humorless “The Maltese Bippy” costarred Carol Lynley, Julie Newmar, Fritz Weaver, and “The Brady Bunch” patriarch Robert Reed.

 

For obvious reasons, neither "The Maltese Bippy" nor "Once Upon a Horse"
is available on DVD or VHS. 

Until “SNL” started tapping into the movie market with 1980’s “The Blues Brothers” and 1992’s “Wayne’s World,” the notion of a sketch comedy show spawning a feature film was rare. “And Now for Something Completely Different” (1971) retooled skits from the first two series of  “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” British comedian Rowan Atkinson’s series “Mr. Bean” inspired two films, 1997’s “Bean” (also known as “Mr. Bean: The Movie” and “Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie”) and 2007’s “Mr. Bean’s Vacation.”

 

Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, John Cleese, Terry Jones, and
Terry Gilliam on the set of "And Now for Something Completely Different"

The only big screen movie to come out of the Canadian sketch comedy series “SCTV” (“Second City Television”) was “Strange Brew” (1983), based on the program’s most recurring segment, “The Great White North,” featuring Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as Bob and Doug McKenzie, two dimwitted, beer-guzzling brothers in toques. The sketch, which started on the third season of “SCTV” in 1980, originated as a shot at the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s request that the series feature at least two minutes of “identifiably Canadian content” in each episode.

The “Great White North” spots, poking fun at Canadian stereotypes with interjections like “hoser” and “take off, eh,” were taped at the end of a day’s shooting and were adlibbed on the set. Rick Moranis remembered, “We went on the stage with no preparation.” Dave Thomas, who later recalled that he and Moranis disliked the characters because they felt the network forced the characters on them, said, “Rick and I used to sit in the studio, by ourselves – almost like happy hour – drink real beers, cook back bacon…while we improvised…It was all very low key and stupid, and we thought, ‘Well, they get what they deserve. This is their Canadian content. I hope they like it.’ “ To the bemusement of the comedians, the sketch became a pop culture phenomenon in both Canada and the U.S.

When their 1981 comedy album “The Great White North” sold a million copies, Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas considered bringing their characters to the silver screen. Co-written and co-directed by Moranis and Thomas, and, amazingly, based in part on Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” “Strange Brew” became a cult-movie hit. Jay Scott, a reviewer for the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, commented, “What’s terrific about the McKenzie Brothers is their offhand depiction of (Canadian) working-class dimwits…and what’s terrific about the movie is its equally offhand surrealism.”

 

Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas co-direct "Strange Brew."

An anticipated sequel, “Home Brew,” which would have costarred Dan Aykroyd, was planned for 1999, but, alas, the project was abandoned when financing fell through at the last moment.

Despite being produced by Lorne Michaels, the Canadian-based sketch comedy series “The Kids in the Hall” seemingly owed more to “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” than “Saturday Night Live,” particularly in the show’s penchant for surrealistic comedy and in the willingness for the five-man troupe to dress in drag. As well, the Kids showed little interest in political and pop culture satire or celebrity impressions. The name of the troupe, incidentally, came from a line by legendary comic Sid Caesar, who, if a joke misfired, would attribute it to the young writers hanging around the studio, calling them “the kids in the hall.”

 

Dave Foley, Mark McKinney, Scott Thompson, Bruce McCulloch,
and Kevin McDonald are The Kids in the Hall.

“The Kids in the Hall” aired on CBC from 1988 to 1994 and on HBO from 1989 to 1995. In 1996, they made their only movie, “Brain Candy,” produced by Lorne Michaels. The haywire plot was best described by critic Leonard Maltin who wrote, “New wonder drug has devastating side effect on the population now addicted to the product.”

South of the 41^st parallel north in the U.S., “Hey Vern, It’s Ernest,” a short-lived Saturday morning children’s program featuring sketches involving Ernest P. Worrell, a fictional character initially created by actor-comedian Jim Varney for a series of TV commercials, launched a virtual franchise of “Ernest” films from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, nine in all, most of them straight-to-video.

 

Jim Varney (right) poses with "Ernest Goes to Camp" costar Iron Eyes Cody (born
Espera Oscar de Corti, the son of Sicilian immigrants). The 1987 comedy also
featured John Vernon, best known as Dean Vernon Wormer in "Animal House."

“Pootie Tang,” a 2001 parody of blaxploitation flicks written and directed by Louis C.K., was based on a comedy sketch that appeared on “The Chris Rock Show,” which, technically, was more of a talk show than a comedy sketch show, but what the heck.

The 2001 comedy “Run Ronnie Run,” features David Cross as mullet-haired, redneck petty crook Ronnie Dobbs, a recurring character on HBO’s iconoclastic comedy sketch series “Mr. Show,” created by and starring Cross and Bob Odenkirk (familiar to “Breaking Bad” fans as the star of the AMC series “Better Call Saul”).  An untimely studio regime shift, along with creative differences with director Troy Miller (least known for the awful prequel “Dumb and Dumberer”) that robbed Cross and Odenkirk of final-cut privileges, shelved the movie for two years until it was exiled into direct- to-video purgatory.

 

"Run Ronnie Run" star David Cross (right) upstages Bob Odenkirk.

A.V. Critic Scott Tobias noted, “Yet even in its current bastardized form, the film still flickers with moments of great inspiration and vitality, providing isolated hints at the groundbreaking comedy that might have been.” Tobias crystallized the entire dilemma of the sketch comedy show sketch-into-feature film transition when he wrote that “Run Ronnie Run” “strains to accomplish in a bumpy 90 minutes what an average episode could accomplish in a seamless 25.”

There’s the rub. What is often hilarious as a brief skit rarely parlays into a consistently funny full-length feature, a lesson seldom heeded by “SNL’s” Lorne Michaels, who, after the box office success of “Wayne’s World” (Michaels did not produce “The Blues Brothers” or its unasked-for sequel, “Blues Brothers 2000”), produced a succession of films based on “SNL” characters that proved progressively lamer: “Wayne’s World 2,” “Coneheads,” “A Night at the Roxbury,” “Stuart Saves His Family” (featuring future United States Senator from Minnesota Al Franken), “Superstar,” and “The Ladies Man.” In this mix, not produced by Michaels, was “It’s Pat,” starring Julia Sweeney as “Saturday Night Live’s” favorite androgynous misfit.

At least Lorne Michaels hasn't backed movies based on "SNL" characters like
Mango (above), the copy machine guy, Hans & Franz, or Two Wild & Crazy Guys.

“MacGruber” (2010), starring Will Forte, Kristen Wiig, and Ryan Phillippe, Maya Rudolph, was the first screen spin-off of a “Saturday Night Live” character in ten years produced by Lorne Michaels. Essentially a take-off on the 1980s action series “MacGyver,” MacGruber was featured in ten sketches on “SNL,” depicted as an easily distracted boob who inevitably fails to disarm a bomb before it explodes. On the January 31, 2009 episode of “SNL,” three Pepsi commercials teamed Forte’s character with TV’s original MacGyver, Richard Dean Anderson. A few weeks later, Anderson appeared on “SNL” as MacGruber’s father.

 

"MacGruber" star Will Forte is flanked by Ryan Phillippe and Kristen Wiig.

A.C. Club’s Nathan Rabin praised Will Forte’s presence in the “MacGruber” movie as “an oasis of silliness in a sea of action-movie tropes played straight. Yet it’s the random silliness that scores…It isn’t exactly good, but for audiences in search of nothing more than a few silly chuckles, it should prove good enough.”

Lorne Michaels had also produced 1979’s “Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video,” featuring then “SNL” head writer Michael O’Donoghue (who also co-wrote and directed the movie) in a hodgepodge of vignettes, which featured Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Bill Murray, and Gilda Radner. In 1980, Michaels produced “Gilda Live,” a film of “Saturday Night Live” original Not Ready for Prime Time Player Gilda Radner’s one-woman Broadway show, directed by Mike Nichols.

It should be noted that there are a number of films that were inspired by a single sketch, a short film, or an animated short from “Saturday Night Live,” among them 1992’s “Bob Roberts,” written and directed by star Tim Robbins, and “Office Space”  (1999), based on Mike Judge’s cartoons about a hapless office drone named Milton that aired on “SNL” in the mid-1990s. Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Michael McKean’s appearance on “SNL” in 1984 as an aging musical trio called “The Folksmen” eventually led to the 2003 mockumentary “A Mighty Wind.”

Postscript:

 

The incomparable comedy team of Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca

“Your Show of Shows,” in its time, was a breakthrough comedy sketch and variety show. Broadcast live weekly from 1950 to 1954, the 90-minute program featured Sid Caesar (at his peak, considered the funniest man in America), Imogene Coca, Howard Morris, and Carl Reiner and boasted a writing staff that included Mel Brooks, playwright Neil Simon, and Larry Gelbart, who would become a creator and producer of the hit TV series “M*A*S*H.”

 

Sid Caesar, Howard Morris, and Carl Reiner cut loose in the final sketch featured in
"Ten from Your Show of Shows," an "unbearably funny takeoff on 'This Is Your Life,'"
in the words of critic Leonard Maltin.

Nearly two decades after the show left the air, Max Liebman, one of the program’s original directors, compiled and released the motion picture “Ten from Your Show of Shows” in 1973. Roger Ebert noted, “ ‘Ten from Your Show of Shows’ recreates the moments when television was inventing itself. Today it would seem impossible to do a weekly 90-minute live comedy programs in front of an audience.” Two years after Ebert wrote this, “Saturday Night Live” premiered.

Parting Shot:

In February 1971, "Laugh-In" hosts Dan Rowan and Dick Martin
helped Gary Owens imprint his celebrated ear in cement at the NBC
studio in beautiful downtown Burbank.