Web Resources
History of Laugh Track
Creator of Laugh Boxx
Seinfeld
Chris Rock
Factoids:
Links for Laughing: http://www.answers.com/topic/laughter
The television laugh track was introduced to viewing audiences in 1950 on NBC's 'The Hank McCune Show'.
The laugh track was used during radio shows to give the listener the same feeling he would have had watching a theater production.
Some producers are known to have planted professional laughers in a live studio audience to "ensure the crowd" knows when to laugh. It is a badge of honor for a pro laugher to get into a popular sitcom's audience.
The man who made canned laughter what it is today was Charley Douglass, a sound engineer who devised the Laff Box. Douglass, who died in 2003, won a special Emmy for engineering in 1992.
Often times the live studio audience is removed from the sound track because it sounded too fake. They place in pro laughsters to make it sound real.
While most associate the laugh track with television, this innovation actually was used in radio during the later 1940s.
Glen Glenn Sound had refined the process, and their tracks and engineers dominated the industry - which is why the very same laugh tracks can be heard on nearly every sitcom of the era, regardless of production studio or network.
Every few years, the tracks were slightly changed and updated - new laughs added, others banished forever, still others put "on hiatus" for a few years and revived later. Thus, many sitcoms can be dated by listening to the laugh track - just listen to the tracks on Mister Ed (early 1960s) vs. those on Bewitched (mid-60s) vs. those on The Partridge Family (early 1970s).
A few all-time classic tracks recorded in the late 1950s and early 1960s were never retired, and can still be heard on 'Frasier'!
By the late 1970s, more and more shows were returning to having a studio audience (thus the familiar announcement over the credits: "'All in the Family' was taped before a studio audience!"), which made the laugh track sound more artificial than ever. So, engineers devised an entirely new track comprised of "looser", more relaxed group laughs; these tracks can best be heard on The Love Boat and "Eight is Enough. This trend in laugh tracks still prevails today.
The device he called the Laff Box has been controversial during its half-century of existence. Many a producer has blessed its ability to pace the humour of a show where a studio audience would not laugh at the right moment - or not laugh at all - while others have condemned its falsity and removed it entirely. But most accept that it changed comedy.
It is eerie to realize that when we encounter a laugh track (or "sweetening") in a recent show, some of the people we hear laughing may have been dead for decades. Yet their guffaws go on forever.
History of For Hire Reactions
Claque, French for "clapping" is, in its origin, a term which refers to an organized body of professional applauders in French theatres and opera houses. Members of a claque are called claqueurs.
Hiring people to applaud dramatic performances was common in classical times. For example, when the emperor Nero acted, he had his performance greeted by an encomium chanted by five thousand of his soldiers.
This inspired the 16th-century French poet Jean Daurat to develop the modern claque. Buying a number of tickets for a performance of one of his plays, he gave them away in return for a promise of applause. In 1820 claques underwent serious systematization when an agency in Paris opened to manage and supply claqueurs.
By 1830 the claque had become an institution. The manager of a theatre or opera house was able to send an order for any number of claqueurs. These were usually under a chef de claque (leader of applause), who judged where the efforts of the claqueurs were needed and to initiate the demonstration of approval. This could take several forms. There would be commissaires ("police officers") who learned the piece by heart and called the attention of their neighbors to its good points between the acts. Rieurs (laughers) laughed loudly at the jokes. Pleureurs (criers), generally women, feigned tears, by holding their handkerchiefs to their eyes. Chatouilleurs (ticklers) kept the audience in a good humor, while bisseurs (encore-ers) simply clapped and cried "Bis! Bis!" to request encores.
The practice spread all over the world. Claques were also used as a form of singers were commonly contacted by the chef de claque before their debut and forced to pay a fee, in order not to get booed.