Half-true, as many urban legends.
From the article:
"Interestingly, a few all-time classic tracks recorded in the late 1950s and early 1960s were never retired, and can still be heard on 'Frasier'! Today, these classic laugh tracks most likely reside in the tape vaults of Todd-AO in Hollywood."

But it's even worse- laugh tracks are not even made by humans- you're laughing along with "laugh machines" that synthetically generate them.

You know, in this era of transparency and reality tv and blogging and everything, the laugh track itself seems like a relic of 50-year-old thinking. Or maybe they're using the 50-year-old laugh track because modern audiences don't actually find the content funny enough to laugh... ;-)

PS: Best wishes for good health these days!

Regarding laughing with dead people: It's very possible. It probably has a lot to do with the timeframe for when Charles R. Douglass recorded the original audio for the Laff Box.

not a myth. I used to work in television and we would regularly use laugh tracks from I love lucy... part of it is superstition, part of it is tradition

I don't know about the dead part... its possible. But yeah its definitely the same sound track used in a lot of shows. I've noticed it many times before, and when I do I become fixated on the track and it ruins the show for me. I start thinking how its the same laugh from Laverne & Shirley, or ScoobyDoo :)

I've heard multiple times that the Red Skelton mime act was used for the laugh tracks because, obviously, the performer wasn't making any noise, leaving just an audience of easily tickled laughers.

I for one, have pretty much written off any show with a laugh track. The best comedies don't have them anymore: 30 Rock, Arrested Development, the Office, etc.

Are laughs global, or local? An interesting social experiment might be to switch laugh tracks from a Japanese TV show for US American shows and see if people notice.

I remember reading the same thing, almost certainly in a Chuck Palahniuk novel... maybe Choke or Survivor? (Amazon "search inside" is failing me)

Why re-invent the wheel? Do we laugh differently now? Actually, I thing we do. But he who laughs loudest, laughs last. Ooooh, maybe that is really true!

Wasn't there a fairly famous poem written about this?

(It couldn't be too famous, or I'd remember who actually wrote it. But I don't think I just imagined it...)

Jeremy, it was in a Chuck Palahniuk novel called Lullaby... I'm reading it right now!

harlan ellison wrote about it first - i think it was in "angry candy".

The same is true of the screams and shocked gasp sound effects... I remember downloading some of those uncopyrighted sound effects when I was a productions person at my college radio station, and I often hear the same screams and/or gasps in many different commercials, TV shows, and movies... So unoriginal and sad!

In a 1962 essay written by Ogus Monk - The simian and the smile. It was envisioned that at the turn of the century, modern Man would be laughing with dead people while watching television and that monkeys kept at different zoos would 'fling' feces at people watching them, thus the beginnings of a true simian smile.

Hi Caterina:

The people are dead: no doubt!
Unless they are making new lolling tapes,
smiles;-)
This is a tradition of American Television�
Not that many countries use those on their
local recorded show. I think they feel that people
don�t have to �lol in choir.�
They can lol
whenever they feel like.. LOL!!

I hope you are doing well health wise!
XOXOXOXOXO

Let's be happy that they're at least not using video that is 50 years old.

I'm writing a sitcom pilot that deals closely with death and this is probably the funniest thing that I could have read this evening--cue dead people. Hahahaha. Thanks for that.:)

Okay. This is a strange blog. How did I come to be here?

Haha,, I don't think that people are using that old source which will cost more money, however that's a very hilarious projection and more importantly maybe that's not the point so i like it.

had you bookmarked on my web.

from a photographer in new york.

Cf., "The Wilhelm Scream"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdbYsoEasio

Please update your Y360 profile

It's an interesting thought, that there is not much variance in laughter from the 1950's and today. It does make sense though, I have elderly neighbors. Sometimes I go over there and talk with them and when we laugh, we all sound the same!

Congratulations!

Everybody seems to be talking about the same laugh track from the 50's that is used on frasier and so on, but no one has mentioned the laugh tracks that are used on seinfeld, home improvements, everybody loves raymond, friends and so on, the older shows have one collection (1993-97) and the newer shows have an updated version that is still being used today. Does anyone know anything about these laughs. They seem to be used an awful lot.

does anybody know if laugh tracks are used during reality Televsion shows??!?!?!?!

is this possible?

I have worked on sit-coms and this is a true fact. It is also the premise behind the title of my indie horror feature film LAUGHING DEAD.

http://www.mania.com/18790.html -- there is an article -- and a review on this site. Other info is easily available by simple internet search.

It is currently available on DVD through ODEAN ENTERTAINMENT (UK) SCREAMHOUSE releasing.

Patrick Gleason
writer/director LAUGHING DEAD