Rocky and Bullwinkle Cartoons with Laugh Track (1/3)

I believe this is where my fascination with laugh tracks began.

I had seen the Rocky and Bullwinkle movie when it came out and liked it pretty well, and then I saw reruns of the old cartoon and loved it even more. One of my local channels played The Bullwinkle Show in the morning in succession with the movie, and I would watch every morning before school... I had seen a number of later episodes, but then one week, the network began playing the first episodes, and I noticed that unlike all the others, these had a laugh track. I was curious, why did these have a laugh track but the rest of the series didn't? Was the laugh track really even necessary? (In my own personal opinion, I don't believe Rocky and Bullwinkle really benefitted from a laugh track, but at the same time, it doesn't really hurt... what did was removing the laugh track from these episodes on DVD, it accentuates the brief silent pauses where it used to be.)

Not too long afterwards, my parents introduced me to Leave it to Beaver, and I noticed the same laughs from Rocky and Bullwinkle on Beaver... and over the years, as my parents to continued to introduce me from a number of great sitcoms and even Saturday Morning shows from the 60s and early 70s (all of which are MUCH better than the garbage that dominates the airwaves today), and I kept hearing the exact same laughs over and over and over again on all these different shows. What was going on? How were these different shows made by different companies for different networks have the exact same laughs? Where did they come from? Who was responsible for all this? Much later I learned about sound engineer Charley Douglass, who invented what's known as the "Laff Box", which was a machine he used to insert all of these recognizable laughs on all these different comedies from the late 50s and into the 70s.

I recommend taking a look at the Laugh Track article on Wikipedia to get a better understanding about it, daffylatke and I do our best to keep the article free of vandalism.