Laughter is a shared experience. If someone laughs in your vicinity, you are likely to follow suit. Psychologists consider laughing a social signal that strengthens bonds between people and relieves tension. And what’s more, a 1974 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology established that people were more likely to laugh at jokes that were followed by laughter – even if that laughter wasn’t authentic.
A laugh track is an audio recording consisting of laughter (and other audience reactions) usually used as a separate soundtrack for comedy productions. The laugh track may contain live audience reactions or artificial laughter (canned or fake) made to be inserted into the show, or a combination of the two. The use of canned laughter to "sweeten" the laugh track was pioneered in the early 1950s by CBS sound engineer Charles "Charley" Douglass.
Early television comedies like The Jack Benny Program or I Love Lucy relied on studio audiences, but editing those shows was tricky: if a line was reshot, the laughter wouldn’t match. To fix this, Douglass built a secretive device he called the “laff box”. About the size of a typewriter, it contained dozens of magnetic tape loops of audience laughter, organised by intensity, gender and age group. Using a keyboard-like control panel, Douglass could “play” laughs to suit a scene – a soft chuckle here, a booming guffaw there, 320 laughs on 32 tape loops – blending them seamlessly with live reactions.
Douglass stoked Hollywood's demand for artificial laughter by cloaking every facet of his operation. Nobody but his immediate family members were allowed to look inside the laff box and see how it worked, and he kept the box tightly padlocked, rarely leaving it alone. It was his goose, and the laugh tracks were its golden eggs.
By the late 1950s and 60s, the Douglass laugh track became a defining feature of American sitcoms and sketch comedies – a dominance that would last up until the late 1970s.
Shows like Gilligan’s Island, Bewitched, The Beverly Hillbillies and The Brady Bunch all relied on Douglass’s laugh track services. The practice shaped the rhythm of TV comedy: setups, punchlines, and pauses were written to accommodate that burst of laughter. It created a sense of community – the illusion that you were part of a crowd, laughing together in the living room. Friends and Seinfeld were two notable shows that also more recently relied on a laugh track.
Critics, however, have long been divided. Some argue that laugh tracks are manipulative and condescending, telling viewers when to laugh rather than allowing humour to land organically. Others note that they originally helped guide audiences through a new, unfamiliar medium – television – where cues from a live theatre audience were absent.
By the 1980s and 90s, technology advanced and tastes had shifted. The rise of single-camera comedies – like M*A*S*H, The Wonder Years, and later The Office and Arrested Development – signalled a move toward more naturalistic storytelling. Many modern viewers have come to see laugh tracks as artificial or old-fashioned – embracing laugh-track-free shows like 30 Rock, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Modern Family or The Simpsons.
Still, the device remains culturally relevant – a sonic time capsule of mid-20th-century entertainment.
Postscript
Douglass's original laff box was purchased, unseen, at auction in 2010 when its owner failed to pay rent on the storage locker where it was housed. It was later discussed, and demonstrated in a June 2010 episode of Antiques Roadshow from San Diego, California, where its value was appraised at US$10,000. [Ed: Seems cheap for what it is.] Watch that appraisal HERE.
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References
wikipedia.org/wiki/Laugh_track
medium.com/@CameronDG./the-surprising-psychology-of-laugh-tracks
thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/laugh-tracks-sitcoms-history-laff-box
Images
1. Douglass's original "Laff Box". Credit: Antiques Roadshow, 2010
2. Charles "Charley" Douglass in he 1950s
3. Laughing audience
4. The test to see if a sitcom could survive without a laugh track was performed on the pilot episode of Hogan's Heroes in 1965. Credit: CBS Television
5. The Brady Bunch was a classic laugh tracked sitcom
6. No laugh tracks were permitted during the M*A*S*H operating theatre scenes
7. Video: Appraisal: 1953 Charlie Douglass "Laff Box”, Antiques Roadshow, 2010
8. Video: Charley Douglass "Laff Box”, 2011 donpresleyauction
