Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In

Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In was a United States comedy television show broadcast for 140 episodes from January 22, 1968 through 1973 over the NBC network. The title Laugh-In was a play on a popular 1960s concept called a "love-in," where people would get together to protest war by singing songs and holding hands. Hosted by the comedy team of Dan Rowan and Dick Martin (Rowan played the exasperated straight man, Martin the horny, dumb guy), the show was characterized by a rapid-fire series of gags and sketches; many of them carried sexual innuendo, others were politically charged, and most were just silly.

Memorable castmembers/guests and their running gags

• Arte Johnson portrayed a number of recurring characters, including:
• Wolfgang, the Nazi soldier, commenting on the previous gag by saying Verrry interesting, sometimes with additional comments such as "...but schtupit!" He would close each show by talking to Lucille Ball and the cast of Gunsmoke — both airing opposite Laugh-In on CBS.
• Tyrone F. Horneigh, the dirty old man coming on to Ruth Buzzi (as Gladys Ormphby, an extremely drab old lady in a hair net who also frequented the Cocktail Party) seated on a park bench, who inevitably hit him with her purse. Both the Horneigh and Ormphby characters returned in the "Nitwits" segments of the 1977 animated television show "Baggy Pants and the Nitwits".
• Rosmenko, the Eastern European Man, who stood stiffly and nervously in an ill-fitting suit while commenting on differences between America and "The Old Country," such as "Here in America, is very good, everyone watch television. In Old Country, television watches you!" This predated a similar schtick by Yakov Smirnoff.
• Rabbi Shankar (a pun on Ravi Shankar), an Indian guru dressed in a Nehru jacket dispensing pseudo-mystical Eastern wisdom laden with bad puns.
• A man in a yellow raincoat riding a tricycle, crashing, and falling over.
• Los Angeles disc jockey Gary Owens standing with his hand cupped over his ear, giving announcements, often with little relation to the rest of the show.
• Henry Gibson holding a flower and reading offbeat poems.
• Henny Youngman telling one-liner jokes for no apparent reason. (Often, any corny one-liners would be followed by the line, "Oh, that Henny Youngman!")
• Lily Tomlin as the obnoxious telephone operator "Ernestine" ("We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company") and as a child named "Edith Ann" ("And that's the truth. Pbbbt!"). (Tomlin also famously performed Ernestine for Saturday Night Live, and Edith Ann on children's shows such as The Electric Company.)
• Alan Sues ("Big Al") as a clueless and fey sports anchor who loved ringing his bell, which he called his "tinkle."
• Goldie Hawn was the giggling dumb blonde who would say many a time: "I forgot the question."
• Jo Anne Worley would sometimes sing songs showing how loud her operatic voice was but mostly would detect "chicken jokes." Many times, during the Cocktail Parties, she talked about her boyfriend Boris (who was a married man).
• Flip Wilson, whose frequent character, the cross-dressing "Geraldine," originated the phrase "What you see is what you get."