‘Laugh-In’ Producer George Schlatter Dishes On Television Golden Age In New Memoir
16.07.2023 - 21:31
/ deadline.com
At age 90, producer George Schlatter has a lifetime of memories to look back at. Producing the groundbreaking and iconic TV comedy show Laugh-in is just one facet. There’s also presidential inaugurations, countless TV specials with big-name talent, running the Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethons, and hanging with Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra among them.
All of that and more is captured in a memoir just-released via Unnamed Press/Rare Bird Books, Still Laughing: A Life in Comedy.
Already a well-regarded producer of television specials and variety shows by 1967, Schlatter pitched NBC on an idea that was a radical departure: a comedy special inspired by the hippie counter-culture, one which would take the idea of sit-ins, love-ins, and be-ins and manifest that politicized, sexualized, consciousness-raising energy into comedic sketches. The special that emerged, Laugh-in, was so successful it became a regular television series, running from January 1968 to March 1973 and eventually becoming the #1 show on TV.
Still Laughing recounts the coming-of-age of one of television’s great producers, from his early nightclub days in Vegas, rubbing elbows with iconic mob figures like Mickey Cohen and John Stompanato, to his influential friendships with Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra, the latter for whom he was asked to deliver a eulogy at his funeral.
The book is an inside look at the crucial role a working producer plays in bringing a show to life, and reveals the actual people (Garland, Sinatra, Cary Grant, Milton Berle, Liza Minnelli, among many others) cloistered inside their celebrity.
A three-time Emmy winner who has also been honored with Television Critics Association Awards, NAACP Image Awards, Golden Globes, the Directors