Gary Owens Explains How Radio Led to Laugh-In

store.danoday.... In this audio clip recorded at one of our International Radio Creative & Production Summits, the incomparable Gary Owens explains how his radio show led to his fame-making addition to the cast of a new television program called Laugh-In.
And he reveals where the phrase "beautiful downtown Burbank" originated.
George Slaughter was a radio fan. He used to listen to my show every afternoon. I worked for Gene Autry for 20 years at KMPC in Hollywood, and it was a great station for the media - producers listened, directors listened, writers listened because we played the kind of music we were playing: Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Henry Mancini, Streisand...all of these so they would when they were driving home at the end of the day they'd usually listen to me and I had goofy things on.
George gave me a call - George Slaughter, the producer of Laugh-in - and he says, "You know, I want to hire you for a show that we're doing that's like your radio show: people run in, sound effects of people running through a window, a twang, a boing or whatever it is and then a bad joke and they leave. So we've got a show and I want to hire you for it."
They weren't exactly sure what I was going to do. But I started as a newscaster and I've always sounded like a newscaster, so I'd either play a psychiatrist or a banker:
"Miss Dindleman would you get me the file? Would you take a letter the letter 'w.' Thank you." I would sound like an authoritative person, but it would be goofy in one way or another.
So George Slaughter, Artie Johnson, Digby Wolf - our first head writer on Laugh-in - and I go across the street to the Smokehouse restaurant and we go into the men's restroom to wash our hands.
I did this "hand over my ear" thing because all of the announcers when I was a kid in the 40s and 50s, that's the way they announced:
"Yes, the music of Duke Ellington and his orchestra from the beautiful Krelman Ballroom. Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Banana and his bunch will be here in a moment - music with appeal."
George says, "That's what I want you to do."
I was just doing it as as a joke because the tiled bathroom had this acoustic tile and that's the way it would resound so you would almost echo yourself. So that's how I was hired and I played that one role, although I did play other roles on Laugh-in for all six years of the show.
I also created the phrase "beautiful downtown Burbank." I'd been doing that on the radio show for a number of years: "Here's the weather forecast for magnificent Monrovia, Romantic Reseda...and beautiful downtown Burbank" which in those days was not very beautiful.
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