Playboy Interview: Rowan and Martin

When "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" debuted on NBC in January 1968, a sizable portion of the Monday-night audience sat gaping at the video-taped sensory assault of rapid-fire nonsense. Amid the flurry of one-liners, black-outs, sight gags, slapstick, knock-knock jokes and wacky non sequiturs stood the veteran night-club team that had made this dream of an all-comedy television hour a laughable reality--Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. Having perfected their craft in 15 years of club bookings, personal appearances and TV guest shots, they stroll on stage like a pair of tuxedoed pals at a country-club dinner who just stepped out onto the terrace for a smoke. "Skiing sure is tiring," sighs Dick, hands in his pockets, rocking on his heels.

"What's so tiring about skiing down a mountain?" Dan replies with reluctant curiosity.

"Down?" Martin gasps.

In this traditional idiot--straight man relationship, Rowan is the very essence of staid, mature wisdom, doggedly offering sane counsel to his nitwit companion, who seems unable to shake his preoccupation with sex. "You could use a little more weight," Rowan observes, noticing his partner's gaunt morning-after look.

"You shoulda been with me last night," Martin chortles. "I put on about a hundred and eighteen pounds."

"I don't want to hear about it," says Dan.

Despite the illusion of casual spontaneity they manage to create in these absurd exchanges, their timing, suggests that this failure to communicate has been going on for years--and, indeed, it has. In 1952, at the suggestion of a mutual friend, Dan and Dick collaborated on some comedy material that they then decided to perform themselves; they broke in their act without pay at a small Los Angeles night club. Though both had been professional writers in the Forties, they found that they developed their best material through improvisation, Dan offering a conversational premise and Dick twisting it through the convolutions of his sex-crazed perspective. After four years of playing such scintillating night spots as the Davonian Club in Hobbs, New Mexico, they were finally discovered in Florida by Walter Winchell, who alerted the national press to their existence; the results were better pay, better bookings and, eventually, a film contract at Universal Studios.

But their first release, in 1957, "Once upon a Horse," bombed at the box office and they spent the next several years back on the road, struggling to regain lost momentum. After ABC rejected their pilot for a "Laugh-In"--style comedy show in 1962, the constant traveling and monotony of the night-club circuit began to take its toll on their energies and they decided to confine their activities to the relative security of the big cosino lounges in Reno and Las Vegas. It proved to be an excellent decision. Dean Martin liked their work and booked them as guests on his show and, soon after, NBC signed them up as hosts up as hosts for Dean's summer-replacement series.

With this network exposure, Rowan and Martin were back on top, headlining in the main rooms and being courted by NBC for a weekly television series of their own. George Schlatter, an independent producer with ideas as bizarre as their own, joined with them to develop a format based on their concept of cartoon humor; and together they managed to get NBC vice-president Ed Friendly interested enough to quit his network job and join their production company. Rejecting such titles as "Put On," "The Wacky World of Now," "On the Funny Side of Life" and "High Camp," they called the show "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In"--and within 12 weeks of its premiere, they found themselves fourth in the national ratings. By the end of the season, they carried off four Emmy awards. In addition to repeating their television success this year, they also completed their second film, "The Maltese Bippy," for producers Bob Enders and Everett Freeman, and have contracted for two more.

If Rowan, 47, takes his success calmly, it may be because he was literally born into show business, when the carnival with which his parents toured made a stop in Beggs, Oklahoma. By the age of four, he was dancing and singing in the touring show, but his career terminated abruptly when he was orphaned at 11. After repeated attempts to escape from the Colorado orphanage that took him in, he was finally adopted and spent the next few years finishing high school and working at odd jobs. At 19, he hitched a ride to Los Angeles and found a job as a junior writer at Paramount; but he quit to join the Air Corps during World War Two. When Rowan's P-40 was shot down over New Guinea, he was seriously injured, and he spent the remaining years of the War behind a desk. When he returned to Los Angeles after the War, he married a runner-up in the Miss America Contest (the marriage ended in divorce 12 years and three children later) and began selling used cars, eventually going into partnership on a foreign-car agency. When his interest in automobiles began to dwindle, he planned a return to show business and began preparing for a career as an actor. At that point, he met Dick Martin.

Martin, also 47, had come to Los Angeles from Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1943, after giving up a job on the Ford assembly line. At 22, he was hired as a writer for "Duffy's Tavern," a popular radio show, but spent his evenings tending bar at various places in and around Los Angeles. In 1946, inspired by the work of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, he formed his own comedy act with an unemployed actor named Artie Lewis; though they claimed to be the real Martin and Lewis, the partnership dissolved within three weeks, much to the relief of everyone who caught their act. After another unsuccessful team effort with a young comedienne--this one lasted less than a year--Martin resumed his post behind the bar, met Dan Rowan and tried again, this time with obvious success. Today, having himself been married and divorced in the interim, Martin divides his time among a number of young ladies, plays golf almost daily and lives comfortably in a small Beverly Hills bachelor house. Rowan and his second wife, a former model, take full advantage of the tennis court and swimming pool at their spacious Holmby Hills hacienda; and his new Florida beach house provides a convenient anchorage for their two boats. Both men seem self-assured, secure and pleased with their success and the affluence it's brought them.

Five days before the world premiere of "The Maltese Bippy," Playboy Assistant Editor Harold Ramis met Rowan and Martin at the cavernous Anaheim, California, Convention Center, the second stop on their between-seasons tour of 13 American and Canadian cities. The highlight of the evening came when the two did a very funny--and somewhat suggestive--routine on the birds and the bees; literally, on the reproductive systems of flowers. Despite the relative mildness of the double-entendres on which the dialog is based, it was clearly not the hind of material anyone would be likely to hear on television. With that in mind, Ramis began the interview after the show by questioning Rowan and Martin about the nature and extent of television censorship.

[Q] Playboy: Senator Pastore deplores what he feels is an overabundance of sex and violence on television. Do you think he's right?

[A] Rowan: There's plenty of violence on television, but not nearly enough sex. Of course, in America, we all realize that violence is acceptable but sex isn't. It would be a terribly dirty, ugly picture to show two people banging away in the bushes, but if you want to show someone blowing a guy's brains out, that's another story.

[A] Martin: I once watched an episode of Combat and in one hour, 53 men were killed. If mild allusions to sex are more offensive than watching all that slaughter, then something's drastically wrong with our society.

[A] Rowan: That's the kind of absurd morality we abhor on our show. Let's say you wanted to show the film I Am Curious (Yellow) on TV. If people objected to it because it's one of the dullest goddamn movies ever made, that would be perfectly valid. But if they objected to the fact that it shows fornication, then I would fail to understand their reasoning. If God hadn't made it such a pleasant act, if it were really so distasteful, we obviously wouldn't be here to talk about it.

[A] Martin: That reminds me of something my aunt once said.

[A] Rowan: Really? Why don't you include it in your memoirs?

[A] Martin: She had gone to do a survey for the television networks to find out what American nudists were watching.

[A] Rowan: I'll bite. What were they watching?

[A] Martin: Well, it wasn't television. Would you like to know what they were watching?

[A] Rowan: Maybe later, Dick. I just don't feel up to it right now.

[Q] Playboy: Neither do we. How do you account for Senator Pastore's attempts to stifle free expression in television while the other media are enjoying unprecedented license?

[A] Martin: I can't. Let's say that 75 percent of all Broadway and night-club humor is based on sex. If it's such an objectionable topic, why are people paying $9 for a theater ticket, or $25 to sit in a night club and listen to it? You can now say anything you want on the stage or in a film, and nobody's offended if Buddy Hackett says "ass" in his act. But somebody once told us that we shouldn't even talk about marijuana on our show. Well, we talk about it, because it's happening. A line's been drawn somewhere by somebody who thinks that real issues, important problems can be handled only on discussion shows. David Susskind has a talk show and conducts open discussions on subjects such as homosexuality, Lesbianism, narcotics addiction--things we wouldn't dare approach with any real frankness on our show. We've gotten some things on the air that surprise a lot of people, but I think that's only because the show is paced so fast that by the time someone realizes he's heard something objectionable, he's forgotten what it was he objected to.

[A] Rowan: The sponsors have had a lot to do with inhibiting TV content. Do you know that you couldn't say the name Tennessee Ernie Ford on the Dinah Shore Chevy show? And when we worked on Dinah Shore's summer show, we couldn't use the word crazy in a sketch, because the sponsors were afraid we'd offend the Mental Health Institute.

[A] Martin: One of the best things that ever happened to help our show was to have it multiply sponsored. When you're sponsored by one product, you're up against an advertising agency that's afraid of losing its client; you're up against a sponsor's wife who may or may not like what you're doing; and, in general, you're up against terrifying moguls who can inflict their will on the artists, the writers and the producers.

[A] Rowan: But we've got five or six participating sponsors in an hour and none of them has any control over the content of our show. There is one guy from Breck who hangs around, but he just happens to be a friend of everybody's. In fact, he really caught hell from his company over something we did, in spite of the fact that he had no control over it. Breck is a subsidiary of American Cyanamid and we gave the Fickle Finger of Fate to the drug industry one week. In the sketch, Jo Anne Worley has a prescription filled in a drugstore and the pharmacist says, "That'll be five-fifty, please." But she doesn't have enough money; so when the guy turns around, she leaves 50 cents on the counter and walks out. The druggist picks up the 50 cents and says, "Oh, well, I still made a quarter on it." The drug folks were very upset.

[A] Martin: We also did a salute to smoking that was totally against cigarettes, though we happened to be sponsored by two cigarette companies at the time. That was considered a little daring, but, to their credit, we still have them as sponsors.

[Q] Playboy: In the absence of sponsor control, what kind of limitations does the network impose on the show?

[A] Rowan: The network has been very good about the whole thing. When they decided to go with the show as a series, they assigned a full-time censor. Sandy Cummings, a very bright guy, and he understands the problem. We like to think that we've broken the bounds of regimented thinking.

[A] Martin: In my opinion, the best censors we have are ourselves. Our head writer and coproducer, Paul Keyes, has extremely good taste; he's stopped an awful lot of stuff before it ever got into a script. Naturally, when you have 13 nutty writers, as we have, and you tell them that they're free to write anything they want, you must assume that they're going to come up with some pretty weird stuff. Television writers have never been as free in the past as they are on our show. We don't have to assign them monologs or lead-ins to write. They don't have to think in terms of beginnings, middles and endings. Our scripts contain as many as 250 non sequiturs, totally unrelated bits, so it's really to our advantage not to put restrictions on our writers.

[A] Rowan: With so many separate bits in the show, it's impossible for the network to make any general restrictions, like, "You can say this; you can't say that." You can't lay clown guidelines for a no-format format. As far as the mechanics of the thing go, the routine they follow at NBC is different from at CBS or at the off-Broadway network, ABC. The NBC people look at the first script the writers submit and then they make notes, sometimes rather voluminous notes, about different segments of it. For instance, they may write, "Item number 12--'Kiss my ass.'--Unacceptable." Well, we don't fight them on that, because we knew it was unacceptable when we put it there. Or else we may claim it's a typographical error. If it were a Cleopatra sketch, then we could say, "Look, it's supposed to read, 'Kiss my asp.' " Then they say, "That's still unacceptable. We don't like Egyptian humor."

[Q] Playboy: Can you remember any other lines that have offended the censor?

[A] Rowan: Well, Jo Anne Worley is a rather buxom, well-endowed lady, and we once gave her a one-word cameo to do--"Jugs." Sandy Cummings said, "Wait a minute. Everybody knows that jugs is a euphemism for breasts. You can't say that, any more than you could say 'tits' or 'knockers.' " So our producer fought him on that and we finally did the bit with her holding a pair of earthenware jugs; we still got the point across, but this made it acceptable to the censors. I'd much prefer, of course, to let the public act as its own censor. If you object to something, you don't have to watch it, you don't have to read it, you don't have to listen to it. Censorship is an infringement on freedom. People are smart enough to pick and choose what they want to see. Other countries have adopted much more liberal attitudes toward the whole problem, and I don't think it's hurt the Danes or the Swedes.

[Q] Playboy: Some of the one-liners you use on the air are punch lines to some rather explicit and well-known sex jokes. Do you refrain from telling them in their entirety because of the number of young people who watch your show?

[A] Martin: Well, I wouldn't want to say on the air a lot of the things that are said in a night club or a legitimate theater, but I do think we have to realize that our whole concept of youth has changed since the Andy Hardy days. I'd bet $1000 that most of the 14-year-olds watching could tell us those jokes. A young person today may be as alert, intelligent and sophisticated at 14 or 15 as we were at 19 or 20. But society still wants to judge their ability to vote or their capacity to drink alcohol by their age, not by their intelligence or maturity.

[A] Rowan: If kids were being tied to their chairs and forced to look at the television screen, I think there might be a legitimate case for censorship. But no one holds a gun to your head and insists you watch Laugh-In or any other show.

[A] Martin: What's really happening today is that kids have finally found out that fucking is more fun than baseball. We used to run around with the ball-and-bat thing. We were really dummies. The kids today don't have our hang-ups. They think it's bullshit to feel guilty about sex. Balling to them is just like shaking hands, and all we can think of to say is, "Oh, that's terrible. What's happening to the world?" Well, what's happening is that they're creating a guilt-free society. I'm not saying that everybody should jump on everybody else--although I can't find a whole lot wrong with that, either--but it's wrong for people to grow up thinking that sex is only for married people and, even then, only to have babies. How the churches ever got people to believe that, I'll never understand. But kids today know intuitively that nobody has to be hurt by sex. They just swing with it, groove with it and I, for one, say, "Good for them."

[A] Rowan: I don't think we can overlook the fact that these things happen in cycles. What we consider rather daring has been done openly and casually in other societies and cultures throughout the centuries. Sexual morality is really relative. There are places in the world where, if you discover a woman in the nude, the first thing she covers is her eyes. She doesn't want to witness your embarrassment at having seen her in the nude. Other places, the women may cover their kneecaps; they're kneecap freaks, I guess. Sexual morality should be left to the individual. If you don't hurt someone else by your sexual behavior, then that's where it's at. I don't think the case for heterosexuality has ever been made strongly enough to believe that some of history's great figures were bad guys because they happened to be homosexuals.

[Q] Playboy: Considering the trend toward increasing sexual candor in the other media, do you think television audiences would welcome more realistic programing?

[A] Rowan: I don't know. The networks have historically followed rather than led the public, which is usually leagues ahead of corporate thinking. But trying to guess what the public wants is a fool's game. I'm inclined to view the public as an attractive woman who's sitting in the corner booth with a bottle of wine, waiting for someone to make advances to her. She isn't going to make the first move, so you do. In the end, you may stimulate her or you may lose her completely. I think it was right for us to assume that the public was tired of standard situation comedies and variety shows.

[A] Martin: Which is not to say that they were completely ready for what we have to offer. There were people who objected to our use of Negroes on the show. We had one dance number that ended with the guys kissing the girls--a little peck. Well, Flip Wilson was paired with Judy Carne and, naturally, at the end of the number he kissed her. That may have been the first time this happened on television and we got some mail on it. We've also gotten some mail on what people consider "disrespect." We did a salute to funerals that drew some comment; but, surprisingly enough, funeral directors themselves had some very nice things to say--things like, "Hey, it's about time somebody put a little levity into this business."

[A] Rowan: The National Rifle Association wasn't quite so pleased. We gave them the Fickle Finger of Fate one week for opposing the passage of gun-control legislation that the majority of Americans overwhelmingly favored. They're so well organized that whenever anybody takes a shot at them, they run a notice in their magazine, saying, "Write these guys and tell them to shut up about gun control." So we got a really well-organized response from them.

[A] Martin: But, all in all, I think we've generated more favorable response than unfavorable. We felt compelled to give a Fickle Finger award, for example, to the California state legislature, which was actually considering a bill that would allow used-car dealers to turn the speedometers back to zero.

[A] Rowan: Yeah, can you imagine that? If a customer came in and asked how many miles a car had on it, the salesman could say, "Well, it's somewhere between 20,000 and 100,000 miles." After we gave the award, the guy who sponsored the bill stood up on the floor and really tore into us. He said, "These guys are interfering with due process." But the people who opposed it gave us credit for having defeated it on the floor. A similar situation occurred when the people of Youngstown, Ohio, decided not to increase their school appropriations at a time when they barely had enough money to keep the schools open at all. So we shot them the Devastating Digit, which made them feel like the whole country was laughing at them; and as a result, they relented and Youngstown now has increased school funds. Now, we didn't sit down and say, "Look, we're going to change their minds in the California legislature" or "We're going to change their minds in Youngstown." We don't approach issues that way. The Fickle Finger may be the most serious part of the show, but we do it in as light a way as possible. Nobody gave us the right or the time on nationwide network television to go out and pitch some political cause or to give the public our views on issues. They hired us to do an entertaining comedy hour; and in that hour. we've got to get a certain number of laughs or admit that we're not doing the job we've been paid to do. Now, if there's something we feel needs to be said, we'll say it--but only if it can be said humorously. We'd much prefer to put people on than to put them down.

[Q] Playboy: The Smothers brothers were acting ostensibly on the same premise, yet their show was canceled by CBS. Does this reflect a difference in network policy?

[A] Rowan: I think it reflects a major fact of American life; if you've got enough clout, you can get away with a hell of a lot. Bob Hope has been doing political satire for years, taking shots at everybody. But he also brings in gigantic ratings. If the Smothers brothers had been number one, they wouldn't have been muzzled--or canceled. Practically speaking, if some guy comes to you from the network and claims that your show is wrong and doesn't belong on the air, you don't have to worry if you can tell him that half of the viewers in the country are watching it. But if the network can tell you that you're 58th in the ratings, well, then, they've got a pretty solid argument.

[A] Martin: On the other hand, the Smothers brothers might have gotten away with it if they hadn't had such extensive press coverage. Anyone who owns a television network is a man of tremendous power and influence, and to challenge that power in the national press is a dangerous thing to do. Personally, however, I loved the Smothers brothers and I never saw anything offensive in their show.

[A] Rowan: Challenging power anywhere is a dangerous thing, and I think Tommy went about it all wrong. I've already told him this, so it's no secret. If he had ten things he wanted to do on the show and the network took one out, he fought, hollered and screamed about the one. On our show, if we have 20 things we want to do and the network takes 12 out, we're still happy to get the 8. It's their ball game and you've got to play it according to their rules. Of course, if you can steal a base while you're playing in their ball park, then you've accomplished something. But it's a cinch you can't steal a base if you're not even in the game. I think Tommy should have realized, and would have, if he were older and had been around longer, that it's their store. I personally am not prepared to be canceled in order to say something. I make no bones about that. I'll equivocate: I'll duck and dodge. I'd much rather be a working coward than a canceled hero. That may be a chicken-shit approach by Tommy's standards, but that's the way I am.

[A] Martin: Duck and Dodge--that was a great act. Didn't we work with them in Pittsburgh?

[A] Rowan: Dick, we are talking about the Smothers brothers.

[A] Martin: Did they know Duck and Dodge?

[A] Rowan: I'm simply saying that, although I agree with Tom's philosophy, I disagree with his intransigence.

[A] Martin: I didn't know that!

[A] Rowan: Don't you ever equivocate?

[A] Martin: I was told I'd go blind!

[Q] Playboy: If you're both quite finished, may we go on? Despite your concessions to the network's demands, you still manage to convey a politically liberal viewpoint on your show. Is this confined to your public image or is it part of your personal philosophy as well?

[A] Martin: I tend to hate politics, but I do think that part of living in America is involving yourself in the running of America. I should be more involved than I am, but I lost interest after Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. I respected both Jack and Bobby Kennedy, because they represented a youthful, liberal, vital approach to politics; but I couldn't bring myself to get involved in a Presidential campaign between the lesser of two evils this past year.

[A] Rowan: I felt the same way about the candidates. I campaigned actively for McCarthy and Rockefeller, but neither of them had a chance in hell, with both conventions locked up as they were. Although I considered Humphrey and Nixon unpalatable choices, I ended up voting for Nixon, not only because I grew so violently ill watching the Democratic Convention but because Nixon seemed cool, shrewd and calculating. I mistrusted Humphrey's emotionalism. He may be more fun at a dinner, but I'd rather have the cold bird at the helm. I'm really politically naïve, though, and I wouldn't want anyone anywhere to be influenced by my opinions just because show business gives me a platform to speak from. Gene Barry and Chuck Connors, for instance, want to run for the Senate; Ronald Reagan sits in the governor's mansion; it's enough to make a buzzard puke. These guys know as much about politics as I do; and if I were elected to the Senate, I'd probably have to jump off a building to save the world.

[A] Martin: Why wait to be elected?

[A] Rowan: Slashed again by the keen edge of your coruscating wit.

[A] Martin: So is mine.

[Q] Playboy: So is ours, but let's press on. The violence surrounding the Democratic Convention seemed to shock most Americans into a new awareness of the youth revolution. What were your personal reactions to the demonstrations?

[A] Martin: Speaking of the Democratic Convention reminds me of what my aunt said after being held as a hostage in Lincoln Park for three days by 22 naked field secretaries of the Peace and Freedom Party.

[A] Rowan: That's nice, Dick. Why don't you go tell Mayor Daley about it? Getting back to the question, the police in Chicago----

[A] Martin: She went to Lincoln Park because she heard that gangs of sex-crazed freaks were getting stoned and having wild orgies and she wanted to try her luck.

[A] Rowan: Kind of runs in your family, doesn't it?

[A] Martin: Well, she came crawling out of the park, chanting, "Make love, not war!" and a policeman stopped her and asked if she was all right, and do you know what she said?

[A] Rowan: No, but I have a feeling you're going to tell us.

[A] Martin: She took the joint out of her mouth, looked him straight in the eye and said, "You bet your sweet Yippie."

[A] Rowan: May I answer the question now, doo-doo?

[A] Martin: What question?

[Q] Playboy: What are your personal react ions to the youth revolution?

[A] Martin: Do you have to keep repeating yourself?

[A] Rowan: I'll answer it. There's no way in the world that I can really understand someone who's 20 years younger than I am, no matter how hard I try, how hip I feel or how liberal I would like to be. I don't think anyone can. As you grow older, you become more cautious, more restrained, more conservative. You can't know what's happening to young people and you can't really relate to how they feel. You can agree with them intellectually, but when it comes to the way they dress, the way they move, the way they talk, it's a foreign world. But I think we have to try to understand them. If I can't relate to them artistically, they won't watch our television show. If I can't relate as a parent, I'll lose my children. We damn well better learn to understand them; they outnumber us. And their point is well taken. Lord knows, there are plenty of changes that have to be made. There are terrible injustices, terrible things happening to the underprivileged and uneducated. But I don't think anarchy is the answer, and I'd bet that there are plenty of young revolutionaries who'd agree with me. There has to be some kind of established order, some law. If you're trying to land a plane in a heavy fog, you want some guy on the radar screen who knows his job and can talk you into an airport. That's part of the establishment.

[A] Martin: What these kids object to is that our institutions are rapidly becoming archaic because they're run by reactionaries--people whose heads are always in the sand, refusing to admit that change is not only necessary but inevitable. I can't blame the kids for wanting to change our educational system, but I can't say I agree with some of their methods. Burning buildings has never really solved anything. But at least they're interested in what's happening to our country. I know, when I was that age, all the kids wanted to do was play around and the only questions we asked were, "Which college should I go to? What fraternity should I join? Who are you taking to the prom?" That's all bullshit. If a 17-year-old kid has got something sensible to say, you can't tell him to keep quiet until he's 21. He must be accommodated; he must be heard. By the way, Dan, who are you taking to the prom?

[A] Rowan: Is your aunt busy?

[A] Martin: She's going with my uncle, but I don't know who she's going home with. He usually manages to slip away from her.

[A] Rowan: How does he do that?

[A] Martin: He's invisible, so she always forgets he's there.

[A] Rowan: How could anybody forget an invisible man?

[A] Martin: Well, you know--out of sight, out of mind.

[Q] Playboy: Sorry to interrupt, but we've got to move along. The youth revolution has centered on two major demands--an end to racial discrimination and the abolition of war as an instrument of foreign policy. Do you think these are reasonable expectations for the future?

[A] Rowan: Well, when you talk about racial tensions, I'm a little handicapped, because it's only since the civil rights movement that I've become aware of the problem. I was fortunate enough to have black roommates before anyone tried to tell me there was something wrong with it. But I understand the psychology of discrimination. During World War Two, for instance, my generation was taught to hate Orientals. We were at war with the Japanese; and if you're going to kill some guy and still expect to sleep at night, it's best to hate him before you shoot him. So I was trained to fear the "yellow menace." The same thing has been happening to the black people for as long as they've lived in this country; and now, even supposedly intelligent people, geneticists, are trying to tell us that people of African descent are mentally inferior to whites. Of course, that's a lot of nonsense, but there are an awful lot of people who'd like to believe it. I really don't know how the minorities have put up with this crap for so long. I guess the answers will take time. Things are better now than they were ten years ago and they should continue to improve. The solution seems pretty obvious to me. Black people need more money, more power and more influence. It's no longer a question of getting from the back to the front of the bus; they've got to own the bus line. It's no longer a question of having blacks and whites in the same classrooms; we need more black teachers and black principals. And it doesn't matter if you let black men work on an assembly line; we need a black president of General Motors, a black president of U.S. Steel and a black President of the United States. If we can get to that point before we blow each other up, then maybe we won't have to blow each other up at all.

[A] Martin: I'm afraid that whatever the black people achieve, there will still never be the kind of brotherhood everybody expects. Even if there were totally integrated marriages for the next 200 years and we wound up with a completely mulatto nation, there would still be people to say, "He's blacker than I am." They'd find something to hate, because that's the nature of man. Look at the racial violence that's already occurred. It starts with someone who has a true ideal in mind and it then turns into a militant demonstration. The minute the shit hits the fan, windows are broken and stores are looted. Greed and avarice are part of human nature. It's not just the black man. For most people in similar situations, the cause becomes secondary to personal gain. I'd like to see progress made, but not at the cost of anyone's life. Sniping, looting and arson have accomplished nothing and I really don't see what those kinds of terrorist acts have to do with race. They're just another expression of man's basic hostility. Fortunately, most of us, black and white, aren't driven to those extremes.

[Q] Playboy: Most people say they would like to see progress made, but few people seem willing to do much about it. Do you think the majority of the public really favors liberal reforms?

[A] Rowan: In principle, yes; the only question now is how to make it happen fast enough. There are people who have been constitutionally deprived of their rights who now demand compensation. You can't let them starve to death in ghettos. If you're strong and healthy and capable of achievement, I think you've got to help those who aren't. Look, if you're playing golf with some guy who swings like he's killing snakes in a phone booth, you can't play him even; you've got to give him a few shots. It's a handicap system. Some people are better at things than others. But I think competition is good. I like to get into a contest and win. I get a kick out of that. Maybe that's dying out; perhaps competitive society is a bad thing. I was taught that hard work was the only way to get those things that are worth getting, but people today don't seem to care as much about achieving. It isn't as important to them as it was to me, and I'd be the last one to say they're wrong. Then, too, there are people who look at the welfare system and say, "These people get more money if they don't work than if they do. They could be working if they wanted to, so why should I give some of what I've earned?" Well, it's gotten to the point now where, if we don't take care of the underprivileged, tragic things are going to happen.

[A] Martin: People are much too self-involved to expect that kind of social benevolence. Wherever there are two men and one woman, there will be a fight to see who gets the woman. If there are two men and one dollar, they'll fight over the dollar; it's never been any different. I don't believe the Arabs and the Jews will ever be friends, and I don't know how or why we even expect them to be. Under certain kinds of provocations, any man or woman is capable of flying into a rage and possibly killing someone. So is it any wonder that there's never been a period in history that didn't have a war?

[A] Rowan: People are still settling arguments with fistfights and shootings; and as long as that continues to happen in the family unit, I think it will probably continue to happen on a national and an international level. Men have just got to find different ways to settle problems, without resorting to violence. But I happen to be a pessimist, and I don't think they ever will. If the money being spent in Southeast Asia was used to prevent hunger and disease and not for killing, then I would say that maybe there's a chance. But we continue to do all the wrong things. We throw people in jail for no reason. We bust the heads of young people who just want to share our parks. These aren't very optimistic signs to me.

[Q] Playboy: Is that why you stopped wearing a peace button on the show?

[A] Rowan: No, I stopped wearing it because, all of a sudden, little old ladies in Pasadena were wearing them and I thought they kind of lost their effect. I'm now wearing a shark's tooth that happens to be 50,000,000 years old. I find it very reassuring to rub my fingers over something that's been around that long. Maybe the fact that this tooth still exists says something about the future.

[A] Martin: Why don't you rub your fingers over my teeth and see if they say something about the future?

[A] Rowan: They probably say more about the past.

[A] Martin: Like what?

[A] Rowan: Like what you had for breakfast.

[Q] Playboy: Dan, your peace button seemed to characterize the anti-war theme that runs through some of your topical material. Have you both supported the peace movement offstage as well?

[A] Martin: Yes, but not to the point of making a crusade out of it. I personally have never been much for crusading, but it's always been part of our humor to take swipes at the establishment. In fact, most comedians are anti-establishment, to some extent. It seems to be part of every humorist's psychological make-up to take on the powers that be.

[Q] Playboy: In addition to being anti-establishment, according to Shecky Greene, most comedians are also manic depressives. Do you think that's true?

[A] Martin: Comedians seem to have the same problem most people have--only more so. They're relatively insecure people and they're working in a relatively insecure business. If I thought that all I was capable of doing was working in a night club, I think I'd be pretty insecure, too. But we didn't start in night clubs until we were adults, whereas most of these guys started when they were still kids. Alan King was 15 years old when he started working the Borscht Belt; Buddy Hackett was 15; and it was a highly competitive business in those days. But I don't think it's really possible to generalize about comedians without putting them in certain categories first. Shecky is a night-club comic. He is exactly what you see on stage. Dan and I are not. We are essentially actors playing the parts of night-club comics. I am not what you see on stage. I am not inept, I am not bumbling and I am not dumb.

[A] Rowan: I didn't know that.

[A] Martin: You had to find out sooner or later. Dan, and I'd rather it be from me. It's worked for me to play that character and it's made me a lot of money.

[A] Rowan: I can't imagine any similarity between my make-up and a comic's make-up. I'm an actor, and that's all I am. I have the ability to think and write comedy and I can act comedy, too, but I have done and intend to do straight things that have no humor at all attached to them.

[A] Martin: Like Laugh-In?

[A] Rowan: Very funny.

[Q] Playboy: What kinds of comedians do you yourselves like to watch?

[A] Martin: Well, it's difficult to say, because there're so many varieties. I consider Buddy Hackett and Bill Cosby two of the funniest men in the world, and yet neither of them tells jokes. They sell attitudes. Lenny Bruce did the same thing. They talk about their own experiences and, through their attitudes, manage to make them extremely funny. Then there's the tradition of the "nut" comic, which was popular in vaudeville. Olsen and Johnson were nut comics. "Insult" comedians, like Don Rickles and Jack E. Leonard, have developed their styles to the point of total irreverence. Henny Youngman and Jack Durant do one-liners, a rapid-fire series of jokes; you just sit there, pick out what you like and laugh at it. Sort of like my aunt.

[A] Rowan: What's that supposed to mean?

[A] Martin: She sits there, you pick out what you like and then laugh at it.

[A] Rowan: I should have known. The point is that all these men are funny. At any given time, any one of them can put me on the floor. For instance, I can watch Irwin Corey come schlepping out in his frock coat and tennis shoes and stand there staring at the audience, and I begin to feel the tears rolling down my cheeks. I laugh at all of them.

[Q] Playboy: Have you learned anything from other comedians?

[A] Martin: There have been many people who helped us. Not many people know this, but Lenny Bruce was our first writer and I think his influence is being felt everywhere on the stage today. Milton Berle has always gone out of his way to help us, writing material and helping to stage our routines. Buddy Hackett, Joey Bishop and Jack Carter have also been very helpful in offering advice.

[A] Rowan: A fine old sailor, Cornelius Shields, once said that he's never been on a cruise that didn't teach him something about sailing, and I don't think it's any different with me. Every time we've worked, every date we've played, every television show we've done has taught me something about this business I didn't know before.

[Q] Playboy: Have you collected a substantial joke file over the years?

[A] Martin: I really don't know any jokes. I swear to God, if I had to get up and tell jokes, I'd die. All I can do is get on the stage and react to whatever Dan does. On the other hand, if you threw together a panel composed of Bob Hope, Morey Amsterdam, Buddy Hackett and a few others, they could give you a derivative or a variation on any joke you could tell them. But we're not selling jokes; we're selling a gay, freewheeling attitude. We may do 250 or 300 jokes a show for 26 weeks, but the people are laughing because they enjoy watching a bunch of very warns people having a ball. They love to see the dirty old man trying to make Gladys on the park bench every week. Even though his line may be different each time, it's really the same joke on every show. Speaking of the same joke, I guess you'd like to know what my aunt said when she went to do that survey for the networks to find out what American nudists were watching. I was about to tell you that while she was at the nudist camp, she jumped into a sauna bath to watch The Flying Nun with 16 Weight-Watching tugboat captains and----

[A] Rowan: Go to your room, Dick.

[Q] Playboy: Do you agree with those who claim that there aren't really any new jokes?

[A] Rowan: No new jokes? Of course there are new jokes. It may be true that every new joke is a switch or a twist on an old joke, but as the old burlesque comic once said, "A joke is old only if you've heard it." Now, on our show we have a lot of old jokes, as well as a lot of new ones, but they happen so fast that even if you've heard a joke before, we're telling a new one before you have time to realize that you've already heard the last one.

[A] Martin: It's really not a question of old or new material; it's the whole idea of Laugh-In that's important. In essence, what we're doing is cartoon humor. We set up a premise, present it visually, deliver the punch line and then go on to something else.

[Q] Playboy: How did you arrive at this format?

[A] Martin: Well, we really did a variation of this show as a pilot for ABC in San Francisco over six years ago. They thought we were crazy. For our opening, we got out of a car with a block of ice, walked into the studio and handed it to someone in the audience. Now, you know that when somebody hands you a block of ice, you immediately pass it on, and we held the camera on the audience as the ice made its way around. We had cameos, then, too: Lucille Ball, Joey Bishop, David Janssen and Milton Berle. We offered ABC the concept of an all-comedy show, but they said, "No, we don't think that's ever going to go." So they bought Les Crane instead. We suggested that Les Crane go on two nights a week and that we'd do the other three nights, but ABC, in their infinite wisdom, said, "No, Les Crane will make it. He's going five nights a week." Well, as far as I'm concerned, ABC is really A. & P. with an antenna. I'm glad we didn't start with them. Milton Berle once said that the way to stop the war in Vietnam is to put it on ABC; it'll be canceled in 13 weeks. They wanted a variety show, and we always thought that variety and comedy were two different things. We didn't want to use singers and dancers. We just don't believe in that mold. When we played the Riviera in Las Vegas, we booked another comedian with us. Everybody said we were crazy because it was against Las Vegas tradition--open with a chorus line, follow it with a dance team, then a singer and, finally, the comic. We wanted to use nothing but comedians, and it worked; but for the television show, ABC just wouldn't buy it. Fortunately, we ran into George Schlatter, who had wonderfully similar ideas.

[A] Rowan: He had not only the television know-how we lacked but tremendous energy and a wildly funny imagination as well. Once we'd decided on the total-comedy approach, we figured that cartoon humor would be very well suited to television as a medium. But television for a long time seemed to be more a product of radio titan of film and, consequently, you would see commercials with a printed message and some guy with a pointer reading it aloud. There's nothing visual about that. The people who controlled television were, oddly enough, reluctant to take McLuhan's message to heart and make it a truly visual medium. But we were so bored with what had been going on that, in our crankish minds, we felt it was time to put all of that down and get some of our own stuff done. We didn't invent satire; we didn't discover the black-out and we didn't originate non sequitur humor, but the way we put it all together was our own creation. Schlatter was primarily responsible for the photographic ideas, the quick cuts and editing that made the format work visually.

[Q] Playboy: Other television shows have been borrowing heavily from your format. Why hasn't it worked for them?

[A] Martin: Our own producers have already copied it twice but weren't very successful. They tried a show called Soul, which was supposed to be a black Laugh-In; and they tried Turn-On, which lasted exactly one week on network television. What they're doing is stealing from themselves or from us, when they should be trying to move on from there. Even though every variety show tries to copy some aspect of Laugh-In, they'll never get near it, because they refuse to commit themselves totally to it. They may try it for 20 minutes, but then it's back to the singers and the dancers. If we broke up our continuity for one minute, I think it would show. We could very easily have had Harry Belafonte sing a song, but we didn't. Sammy Davis has been on twice. Here's a guy who can demand anything he wants to sing or dance on a variety show; but if he tries to dance on our show, we drop him through a trap door.

[Q] Playboy: Though none of your contemporaries has succeeded with it, didn't Ernie Kovacs explore this kind of purely visual comedy years ago on television?

[A] Rowan: That's part of our derivation. Ernie was definitely way ahead of his time, but he'd do 20- and 30-minute sketches--which, in our opinion, are much too long. What Ernie would do in seven or eight minutes, we can do in a minute and ten seconds. We don't think a good joke can be sustained for very long. But Ernie did recognize the visual possibilities of television and I would say that, if he were alive, he probably would have done our kind of show long before we ever did.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think television is the best medium for comedy?

[A] Martin: No, I think every medium has its possibilities. Mike Nichols and Elaine May might not have made it, if not for their Broadway show. Bob Newhart, Shelley Berman and maybe even Bill Cosby owe a great deal of their success to record-album sales. Some people are best in cafés, some on television and some in motion pictures; Laugh-In happens to be a television show and couldn't work any other way. When we put it on stage during our summer tours, it's necessarily slower and much different. As a matter of fact, someone even offered to produce a movie version of Laugh-In. Their big selling point was that we could get some really big stars to do the cameos. But I wonder who they were planning to get who would be bigger than John Wayne or Richard Nixon. The beauty of cameos is that we don't have to pay big money to get these people; we arrange for them through personal contacts. Paul Keyes got Nixon and Billy Graham, and I don't think any movie producer could have done that for us. So we really couldn't see any reason to make a movie Laugh-In. It's just a small-screen, fun-loving, Monday-night party.

[Q] Playboy: You obviously enjoy the success of Laugh-In, but do you enjoy the work as well?

[A] Rowan: Well, it's difficult in many respects, but it's so much fun for us that we really never go to work saying, "Boy, what a drag!" It's harder than most shows because of the work load; we do so many different things each week and have a tremendous amount of material to put on tape. But we work with so many talented people that it's actually more like a party on the set. Some days it's a terribly long party--12, 13 or 14 hours--and by the 14th hour on a television set, you can get pretty tired. But when things start dragging, we can usually count on George Schlatter to break everybody up. George is known as C. F. G., which many people think stands for Cute, Funny George; but it's actually Crazy Fucking George. So he'll do some ridiculously funny thing and then we start all over again. That's the way it goes.

[A] Martin: I've been to worse parties than our taping sessions.

[A] Rowan: You've given worse parties.

[A] Martin: And I've filmed them, too.

[A] Rowan: And you're going to get busted one of these days.

[A] Martin: My home movies can be seen at any P. T. A. meeting.

[A] Rowan: You must know some pretty swinging P. T. A. members.

[A] Martin: Yeah, baby!

[A] Playboy: Don't the mechanics of producing the show ever interfere with the party atmosphere?

[A] Martin: No. The way the show is set up makes it really a ball to do. We don't have to memorize anything, because the bits are all so short. We just read through the script once, put it on its feet in a kind of dress rehearsal and then shoot it. There's no homework to do and no reason to shoot everything two or three times. If we have a bunch of elevator jokes to do, we shoot them all in sequence and then place them where we want them in the editing process.

[Q] Playboy: Then the studio audience doesn't really see the show as it appears on screen?

[A] Martin: We don't have a studio audience in the traditional sense. We did for the first three shows, but since then, we stopped giving out tickets. Now, people can come and go as they please and stay as long as they want to. The house is still almost full for each show, but they're not just sitting there, waiting for their hour's entertainment, and we aren't obligated to provide it for them. As it turns out, the people who do come see ten times the entertainment they'd normally see, because they witness all the insanity that surrounds our production staff and cast. If we were doing it for a formal audience, we'd have to rigidly time the show for their benefit, whereas now, we can do the show for ourselves.

[Q] Playboy: You may be doing Laugh-In for yourselves, but 45,000,000 people watch the show. Did you think it would attract such a broad audience?

[A] Martin: Of course there are broads in our audience.

[A] Rowan: Would you rephrase the question for him?

[Q] Playboy: Did you think it would attract such a wide audience?

[A] Martin: Oh. Well, we thought adults would like it, but we were surprised that it caught on so quickly with very young children--four-to-eight-year-olds. We were an instant hit with teens and preteens, because the pace is well suited to their attention span. In fact, we got a lot of letters from parents who said that, instead of spanking for discipline, they threaten the kids with depriving them of Laugh-In. Generally speaking, we were an overnight success in New York but kind of mild in the national picture. Then it started to balance out with the college and adult audiences and we kept getting bigger in the 30 key cities, until we made it to the top in all of them. Which reminds me of----

[A] Rowan: Something your aunt once said?

[A] Martin: How did you know?

[A] Rowan: I'm clairvoyant.

[A] Martin: A massive dose of penicillin should clear that up.

[A] Rowan: No doubt, but I'd like to talk about the show now, if you don't mind. The demographics of our appeal are very pleasing to the network and to our own producers. We have audiences ranging from moppets to senior citizens, and we hear from the entire range. When Geritol bought a piece of the show, we were a bit surprised, because we really didn't think that older folks were watching. I don't think they understand everything they're seeing, but I'm glad they're watching.

[Q] Playboy: How does it make you feel to think that almost one fourth of the population of the United States is watching your show?

[A] Rowan: It's a terrible temptation to take your ratings and pin them up on your office wall, to start checking this week's ratings against last week's or to compare your ratings with other shows'. So far, I've managed to avoid doing that. We're glad the public likes it, but we really didn't set out to do it for them. We did it for ourselves, and I think that's probably how the best films are made and the best plays are done; a guy writes a play that satisfies him, and if it happens to become popular, that's great. The stuff 99 that's good, the stuff that lasts usually begins as a personal statement of someone who really has something to say.

[Q] Playboy: You once told a reporter. "Even a good thing must become redundant, and redundancy leads to mediocrity." Will this happen to Laugh-In?

[A] Rowan: As fresh as our show is, its very freshness and originality are likely to become redundant. Mediocrity is the inevitable result when you do the same sort of thing week after week, month after month. Producing 26 hours of television programing every season is a tremendous job, and they can't all be of the highest quality. Some of the hours sparkle and some are just ho-hum; and the more shows we do, the likelier it is for them to become more ho-hum. Sooner or later, you simply run out of ideas. On the other hand, I think one of our ho-hums is about ten times as funny as the average situation comedy. I'm not a good enough prophet to predict when the public will become bored with us and, I must say, I've been wrong about the potential longevity of the show right from the start. I didn't think we'd last the first season, and here we are into our third.

[A] Martin: One of the reasons we've been able to sustain its popularity is that we're constantly and subliminally changing the show. You wouldn't notice it if you watched the show week by week, but if I could show you the first show and the 26th show, you'd notice a tremendous difference. When we first went on the air, many of our severest critics said, "Well, the first show was good, but they'll never be able to keep it up." They said the same thing when we began the second season and they'll probably keep saying it this season, but I'm not too worried about keeping it up. If anything, we've quickened the pace and I really believe we can sustain it as long as we want to. We're selling fun, and that's something that's usually unavailable on television. Speaking of fun on television, though, reminds me of my aunt.

[A] Rowan: I thought it might.

[A] Martin: If you've ever watched The Flying Nun in the sauna bath at a nudist camp with 16 Weight-Watching tugboat captains, you know how disappointed my aunt was when the police arrested them all for mainlining Metrecal. You know what she told the judge at the trial?

[A] Rowan: Can't this all wait till you're alone? As I was about to say, another reason for the show's continuing freshness is that each week features a different member of the cast. Arte Johnson may be fairly heavy in the show one week and the next week it may be Judy Carne or Ruth Buzzi. Of course, Dick and I are there every week doing some solid things, but some weeks we're quite light in it.

[Q] Playboy: Your own participation in the show is somewhat limited, compared with most television hosts. Why do you take so little time for yourselves?

[A] Rowan: We generally have a couple of guests, in addition to our cameos and the regular company; and considering that there are only 50 minutes or so available in an hour show, I don't think it would be very smart for us to take the major portion of the show each week. For one thing, the audience would probably get pretty tired of us and, for another, what would be the sense of hiring a fine company of performers if we were only going to do what many other hosts do and take the full hour for ourselves? I think we're doing about as much as we should be doing, and I think we're right.

[A] Martin: Our idea is to exist mainly in the role of a catalyst--two relatively sane guys wandering through a ménage of madness. I don't think it would work if we were involved in everything, because then there would be no perspective for the madness. When Milton Berle had his own show, he appeared in every sketch, while we're on the screen no more than ten minutes every show. There aren't many comedians who could accept that. They think their shows can't survive without them on the screen constantly. But that's not where we're at. Our show is a group effort and we're selling the whole group, not just Rowan and Martin.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think Laugh-In could have been as successful with another group of performers?

[A] Martin: Judging from our experience with he original NBC special we did, I really don't think so. I won't mention any names, but we were in the process of booking a lady star and a male comedian, until the lady star started making some rather unpleasant demands. Dan and I were getting pretty uptight, because NBC was demanding that we use these people. So we talked it over with George Schlatter and decided to throw them out. We figured, if NBC isn't buying what we want to do, then the hell with them. Had we compromised and gone along with the lady's demands, we might very well have been stuck with them and never done Laugh-In as we'd envisioned it. But we didn't compromise; Schlatter, Dan and I immediately agreed to forget the lady star and the comedian, hire a bunch of unknowns and have some fun.

[A] Rowan: I wouldn't presume to say that this is the only bunch of people who could have done this show, but I do think that the quality of the cast we were lucky enough to assemble helped the format work to its fullest potential. We were also fortunate enough to find the funniest writers in the business; they understood the spirit of the thing and were able to enlarge upon it. So a number of things fell nicely into place and a lot of people contributed significantly to the format.

[A] Martin: Personally, I really love the cast we've got. No one's at all uptight, and it's really as close to a family relationship as I've ever seen in show business. Week after week, I go to the studio expecting someone to show some sign of temperament; and, instead, I find them coaching each other on lines or helping with costume changes. It's a throwback to vaudeville--everyone on the bill helping each other. My uncle tried to break into vaudeville, you know.

[A] Rowan: I thought he was invisible.

[A] Martin: He is.

[A] Rowan: Then what kind of act could he do?

[A] Martin: What do you think?

[A] Rowan: I mean on the stage.

[A] Martin: Oh. He did a disappearing act.

[A] Rowan: Ridiculous. Who'd book an invisible man for a disappearing act?

[A] Martin: No one ever did. He never showed up at the auditions.

[A] Rowan: I'm beginning to wish you were invisible--and inaudible. May I say something about our cast now?

[A] Martin: Go right ahead.

[A] Rowan: From the standpoint of creativity, no matter what you give our gang to do, they'll add to it. Of course, some of what they add is unacceptable, but very often it's funnier than the written stuff they were given to do. Generally, they all just swing in whatever direction they feel like going. Simply putting costumes on them suggests material and they start doing bits together. All in all, they're damned fine comedy actors.

[A] Martin: The fact that they're primarily actors, rather than comics, has been very important to the show. You can put them in any situation and they'll improvise the characters and the lines you need. Put a comic in an improvisation and he'll immediately start doing jokes. We found that out when we did ten-minute live improvisations on the Dean Martin Summer Show. People like Dom De Luise, Tommy Smothers and Pat McCormick. could get into a character, stay with it and find humor in the scene, while the comics we used were absolutely no good at it.

[Q] Playboy: Have you been playing the same characters since you started performing together?

[A] Rowan: No, not at all. Dick's original ambition was to be a straight man and I had no preferences either way, so we started out alternating back and forth--I would straight for Dick, then he would straight for me. Needless to say, the audience found this rather confusing, because they never knew who to identify with. Then, too, Dick's one of the worst straight men in the world. He couldn't remember any line unless it was funny; and I don't know if that was intentional or not, but I usually wound up saying, "Here, let me do that." That's the way it went.

[A] Martin: We finally settled on the roles we play now. To put it in capsule form, I'm cast as the inept, fun-loving lecher.

[A] Rowan: A brilliant example of typecasting.

[A] Martin: And Dan plays the pedantic, crashing bore.

[A] Rowan: A masterful job of acting.

[A] Martin: He's constantly trying to educate me or convince me to get married and mend my ways. Of course, I take everything he says and twist it into a kind of sexy double-entendre. I think it's an interesting relationship, and I've never seen one like it before.

[A] Rowan: And it's not likely to continue, if you don't stop hogging all the blankets.

[A] Martin: We were trying to establish an attitude rather than just do jokes, and we found it very difficult to sit down and write the kind of stuff we wanted to do. Neither of us could sing or dance or do impressions, so we just stood there on stage talking to each other until a bit developed. Finally, after a routine was set, we were able to do it on stage and still make it sound like a spontaneous conversation.

[Q] Playboy: How did the two of you get together as a team? We've read the studio-biography version, but we'd like to hear it from you.

[A] Rowan: I had been a junior writer on and off for Paramount, but after the War, one of the studio unions went on strike and I found myself out of a job. After that, I left show business and started selling used cars, then new cars, and I worked my way up to used-car manager and finally to general manager of a Buick agency. From there, I went into partnership with a friend of mine on a foreign-car lot, but I really got fed up with the world of commerce. So I sold my half of the agency, took my money, went on a diet, worked on my voice, got an agent and started making the rounds as an aspiring actor. That's when I met Dick. My best friend at the time, Tommy Noonan, was over at the house one night and we were doing some improvisations when he said there was a guy he wanted me to meet. We jumped in a car, drove down to Herbert's and he introduced me to the bartender.

[A] Martin: I was tending bar at the time, so l'd have my days free to look for work as a writer. I used to write comedy material and then try to sell it, and I'd also written for Duffy's Tavern on the radio. Abe Burrows was the head writer on the show and he gave me a job at $50 a week. I really got a kick out of going to meetings with all the big writers, and I was still able to moonlight as a bartender. When I saw Martin and Lewis working at Slapsie Maxie's, I took one look at them and figured that was a better way to earn a living than mixing drinks, so I decided to take a whack at it. When Tommy Noonan introduced us, Dan and I got together, wrote a couple of things and became an act.

[Q] Playboy: Were you satisfied with your progress in those early days?

[A] Rowan: We worked some terrible toilets; but at the time, we thought any job we could get was damned good. We were happy just to be working. I'll never forget one place we played. We were desperate for an engagement and we finally got one just before the Christmas holidays at a joint called Hymie's Lounge in Albuquerque, for $300 a week. The bill there always consisted of what they called a comic emcee and a stripper.

[A] Martin: The show we were following was typical of places like this; but never having played a strip joint, we were a little surprised when we saw it. The comic emcee would make a series of phony song introductions, such as, "I'll now sing Sweet Sue or I'll Meet You at the Pawnshop and Kiss You Under the Balls."

[A] Rowan: And that was some of his milder material.

[A] Martin: Then he introduced a stripper and said she was going to come out and play with her monkey. Well, sir, I was ready to leave.

[A] Rowan: Wild horses couldn't have dragged you away at that point.

[A] Martin: And the girl actually did come out with a live monkey, who proceeded to disrobe her.

[A] Rowan: Dick immediately wanted to audition for the monkey's part. The day before our opening, we saw our picture up on the coming attractions, along with another stripper, a beautiful chick named Dreamy Darnell. Naturally, Dick was slavering at the mouth, waiting to meet this girl and, sure enough, the next day, during our rehearsal, a motorcycle pulled up and off stepped this leather chick. She had a deep bass voice and said, "All right, where's the band?" We said, "Where's Dreamy Darnell?" It turned out that this broad had sent her girlfriend's picture to Hymie's, so she and Dick spent the whole engagement fighting each other for the female trade that came to see the show. But opening night was the real highlight. There was only one dressing room and Dick and I got in there first to change into our tuxedos. Then in walked Dreamy, who proceeded to take off her clothes--every stitch. She sat down at the dressing table, scratched herself a few times and said, "All right, fellas, what time do we go on?" I still have a picture of Dick and Dreamy sitting there together. We've worked with a lot of people in our time, hut none quite as colorful as that one.

[A] Martin: You're forgetting the Spitback Queen. We were in Louisville, playing the Iroquois Gardens or something like that, and there was an act at a burlesque joint clown the road that featured the most insane husband-and-wife team in the business; he was a comic and she was a tap-dancing stripper. Like all strippers, (continued on page 199) Playboy Interview (continued from page 100) she got extra money from the management for encouraging the patrons to sample the booze. Of course, the more booze they sold, the more she got paid. Well, the Spitback Queen would sit down at a table and the male patron, thinking he was going to get to jump on her later, would buy her a bottle of champagne, or two or three. And she would drink it, but the trick was that she never swallowed it; she just let it dribble back onto a napkin wrapped around the glass, turned the bottle upside down and said, "I think we need more champagne, deary." On one fabulous night, she set the world's spitback record--32 bottles of champagne dribbled out of her mouth. She was really beautiful. She and her husband invited us over for Thanksgiving dinner. I'll never forget that scene: all of us sitting at the table, while their two-year-old kid was on the floor fighting with the dog for a turkey bone. I said, "Aren't you going to do anything about it?" She said, "Hell, no. The kid usually wins, anyway."

[Q] Playboy: It's a long way from Dreamy Darnell and the Spitback Queen to network television. How did you make that leap?

[A] Rowan: Well, it was more of a crawl than a leap. We were young, innocent saloon actors in those days; but as we learned our business, we became more popular and began to earn more money; but then we reached a plateau. It seemed like we were wasting our time playing the same round of small clubs once or twice a year, and I thought we had gone as far as we were going to go--which wasn't quite far enough for me. I was seriously thinking of going back into the automobile business. A man called me while I was on the road and offered me the general manager's job in his agency, with a good salary, lots of fringe benefits and eventual part ownership of the operation. I was very close to taking it, because there I was, with a wife and three children whom I rarely got to see, and very little money coming in.

[A] Martin: I don't remember how much we were making, but we had really leveled off in salary. After we deducted road expenses, hotel bills, food and clothes, we still had to split what was left two ways, and that didn't leave much for either of its. Naturally, it was a lot rougher for Dan, with a family to support, but I was pretty unsatisfied with the progress we were making, too. We couldn't even afford to fly to our bookings; we used to load everything in a car and drive there. But then we got our first big break, when Walter Winchell saw us at the Lucerne Hotel in Miami Beach.

[A] Rowan: We moved into places like the Sands Hotel, the Coconut Grove and the Copacabana when he started publicizing us in his column, and the national attention pushed us into a higher income bracket. But that turned out to be just another plateau that began to pall, just like the first one had.

[A] Martin: We were put under contract to Universal and NBC in 1956 and we did some pretty big guest shots on television, but then we began to level off again. It's pretty discouraging when you reach a point and find you can't break through the next barrier. Some people spend 20 years in show business without moving an inch, but I couldn't live without progress. I started looking for additional work on my own and ended up playing Lucille Ball's boyfriend on The Lucy Show for 11 weeks. Then I did a film with Doris Day and Rod Taylor called The Glass Bottom Boat, but these things never interfered with our act and we were as much a team as ever. I was just trying to find some fulfillment as an actor.

[Q] Playboy: Why couldn't you find that fulfillment as a night-club comedian?

[A] Martin: Let me tell you, working night clubs is the hardiest business in the world. Every night at eight o'clock, you've got to go out onto a stage and spend an hour trying to convince an audience that you're funny. Let's assume you do--you go out there and knock them on their asses; you've still got to go out there again and do the same thing for a midnight show. People also assume that being on the road is all booze and broads, but it's not that way at all. It's a very, very lonely life.

[Q] Playboy: Why didn't you stop touring, if you felt that way?

[A] Martin: We did. We were in Montreal playing the Queen Elizabeth hotel for the fourth time, and it was a frightening prospect to think that we'd be back there the next year and the year after that. We were just waiting around for something to happen, indulging ourselves in mental masturbation.

[A] Rowan: That's "mental," not mutual.

[A] Martin: Anyway, we weren't getting anywhere. I remember the Monday night we were supposed to open there; it was cold, about nine above zero; there were no ladies, no other acts in town and no show business to speak of. I said to myself, "This is the last week you're going to spend looking out a hotel window." We couldn't increase our status in the business by playing Milwaukee or Cleveland or Montreal, so we talked it over, realigned our thinking and decided to do a Las Vegas act. Had we been there in the first place--closer to the big production centers--we could have played a club date for just as much money and done three television guest shots in Los Angeles as well. After we started working the Riviera lounge for three or four months a year, we were booked for the Dean Martin Summer Show, which took us out of the lounges and into the main rooms as headliners. And believe me, headlining in Las Vegas was a great improvement over most of our earlier engagements.

[A] But things were still rough now and then. We were once booked as headliners at the Muehlebach Hotel, in Kansas City, making good money and pretty well established in the business. During our second show one night, there was a table of very drunk people who were yelling so loud that we couldn't continue our act. We asked them to shut up, but they kept right on yelling. We told the maitre de to get them out, but he wouldn't do anything about it. So we figured, "What the hell? If they don't care, we don't care." Dan asked the band for a drum roll and we told the audience, "We'd now like to do our impression of the hundred-yard dash at the Olympic games." We got down on one knee, the drums rolled and we dashed through the audience, out the door, up to our room, and never went back. You don't have that kind of trouble in Las Vegas. If someone gets that boisterous, they're told to shut up or get out. They don't let one table louse up a show for 400 people.

[Q] Playboy: The fact that you managed to stay together through difficult times seems to indicate something more than a good professional rapport. Have you ever had any personality conflicts?

[A] Rowan: Dick and I are very different and very independent, but I think we'd be a pretty bland combination if we hadn't. Spending 17 years with another person can be awfully rough when you don't have sex going for you. But we've never really come close to breaking up the act over an argument. We've had some strong differences of opinion, but I think that when two people are very close, they're more likely to have a real gut-churning argument than if the relationship were more casual. I don't think you can have a very deep relationship and not experience highs and lows together. Someone once heard us shouting at each other in the hall at NBC and started the word around, "That's it. The partnership is over." In fact, people from all over the world are constantly calling to ask if there's any truth to the rumor that we're splitting up. It used to bother me, until I learned that the same thing happened to Abbott and Costello and Laurel and Hardy. I'm sure Martin Landau and Barbara Bain go through the same thing. People just like to assume that we don't get along. Why, I don't know, but it's not true.

[A] Martin: Well, it's not entirely true.

[A] Rowan: It isn't even half true.

[A] Martin: As far as I'm concerned, it's exactly half true.

[A] Rowan: That's because you've only got half a brain.

[A] Martin: That's an anatomic impossibility.

[A] Rowan: You're an anatomic impossibility.

[A] Martin: Well, I've bought my last used car from you.

[A] Rowan: As you can see, we're both rational people, with a deep mutual respect for each other, and I don't think we could have stayed together for 17 years without some real affinity. Of course, now it would be silly to stop what we're doing, because we've got some pretty sound economic reasons to stay together, but I really can't imagine the kind of argument it would take to split us up. If he does something to upset me, I just put up with it, because I remember all the shit he's taken from me.

[A] Martin: Another reason there's been so little friction between us is that we don't have very much contact outside of our working relationship. We let businessmen take care of our business and we've never chased the same ladies, so there are no problems there. I think the real friction in a team occurs when you pal around together 24 hours a day. Then you can really get on someone's nerves. For example, Martin and Lewis were very close when they started--a kind of big brother--little brother relationship; but I suppose that after nine or ten years, it got to be a real pain in the ass for them. Dan and I never allowed that to happen. When we're finished working, he goes off with his wife and I go out chasing ladies; we may go for two or three months without seeing each other socially. So we have avoided friction by avoiding that false, clinging closeness. We have no need for it. We're well aware of the advantages and disadvantages of being a team. The advantage is having someone to talk to in a strange town, and the disadvantage is having to split the money two ways.

[Q] Playboy: One major difference in your personalities--the one most often cited--is the way you approach your work. Dan, you're reputed to be a cautious, carefully rehearsed performer and, Dick, you've been described as a cavalier ad-lib artist who'd prefer to improvise everything you do. Are these accurate descriptions?

[A] Rowan: It's a curious thing about people in show business. You would assume that anyone who's successful at what he's doing would at least have some confidence in his ability. But Red Skelton, who rarely fails to get a standing ovation when he makes a personal appearance, is so nervous before he goes on that he gets violently ill and vomits in the wings. Here's a guy who's never failed to make people laugh and yet he's terribly insecure about it. I don't get that nervous, but I've never really been confident about performing. While I'm working. I'm always concerned about what I'm doing or what I'm not doing and then, when I look at the video tape, I see something that could have been done better and wish I could do it over. Dick is much more confident. Last season, when we'd finish a read-through or a run-through, Dick would flip on his golf hat and take off for the course. I'd go sit in my office and worry about the production aspects of the show.

[A] Martin: I have no insecurities about acting at all. I enjoy it and I usually manage to have a whole lot of fun doing it. That doesn't make me a good actor, but it saves a lot of perspiration. When I hear that a big actor vomits in the wings before a performance, I just wonder why he'd want to subject himself to that. If I felt that way, I'd get into some other business.

[A] Rowan: What else could you do?

[A] Martin: I could always go back to selling reconditioned ping-pong balls. Actually, as far as my work habits are concerned, I'd prefer to work the way Dean Martin does. He proved that you don't have to spend most of your time in the studio and the rest of your time in an office. He probably can't even find his office. He has a lot of trouble finding his house. So who's to say he's wrong? His ratings are very big and I doubt that he could do a better show, even if he spent hours meeting with writers, directors and producers. In the earlier days of television, people like Dinah Shore and Perry Como did very slick, well-rehearsed variety shows. They'd do whole sections over for one minor flaw. But I think that today, audiences like to see mistakes made, to know that a performer is human. Johnny Carson and Joey Bishop are so popular because they're natural. Dean Martin never tries to hide the fact that he's reading cue cards. A casual approach may change the tenor of the business, but it doesn't necessarily affect the quality.

[Q] Playboy: Since you choose to rehearse as little as possible, what do you do with your time?

[A] Martin: Actually, all I do is play golf and chase ladies.

[Q] Playboy: Is that very time-consuming?

[A] Martin: Well, the golf isn't, but chasing ladies is a bitch. When we were on the road, it was somewhat easier. I had trained Dan's poodle to walk into the girls' dressing room when we worked places that had a chorus line, and the dog would generally come out followed by two or three briefly costumed ladies. They'd say, "Oooh, is that your dog?" and I'd immediately go for the throat--or perhaps a little lower. I did the same thing with Dan's son, Tommy, who was about six or seven at the time. I figured the girls wouldn't scream if a little boy walked into their dressing room. In fact, most of these girls wouldn't scream if the Los Angeles Rams walked in. Well, the ones who didn't try to nail Tommy themselves would generally say, "How cute. Whose little boy are you?" and I could depend on him to come up with a tall blonde for me. If you can't make it with the help of dogs and kids, you're really in trouble.

[A] Rowan: Of course, he didn't care what effect this would have on my dog and my son. The dog came down with chorus-girl colic and had to be inoculated with saltpeter, but he still went around humping radiators. My son finally turned out all right, though, and I have to admit that he never had a pimple during puberty.

[Q] Playboy: Dick, do you think your television success has made you more attractive to girls?

[A] Martin: Well, I've never really had very much trouble finding them, so it's hard to say. Actually, regardless of who you are, if you're stuck in Louisville, Kentucky, on a Thursday night, you're not very likely to score. But in familiar surroundings, if you have a certain joie de vivre, you're bound to do all right. Then, too, there's been a delightful kind of sexual freedom going around the past few years. I don't know where you'd go to vote for it. but I'd cast my ballot.

[Q] Playboy: Where do you generally go with a date?

[A] Martin: As far as humanly possible. Actually, I just like to laugh and have fun--and then get on with it. I have a very nice house, which I use to the best of my ability; and when I make a date, I usually just tell the girl to jump in her car and get over there. I figure, if women want to be equal, and I think they should be, then there's no reason for me to pick her up and drop her off.

[Q] Playboy: Would you describe your house?

[A] Martin: It's in the hills above Sunset Strip and every room has a view. There are two dens, a pool table in the living room, a kitchen, a maid's room and, of course, the master bedroom suite with a steam bath, and a small swimming pool. My next project is to build a beach house at Malibu, because I can think of nothing nicer than to sit holding hands with a nice lady and listen to the pounding of the surf.

[A] Rowan: You're more likely to hear the pounding of the police at the door.

[A] Martin: So far, so good. I've lived in my present house for a year or a year and a half, and it's been delightful. The atmosphere is very pleasant; we can shoot pool, take a little dip or have a steam bath.

[Q] Playboy: Is that your usual routine when you've a female guest in your home?

[A] Martin: Yes, but not necessarily in that order. I always say that a nice girl is a clean girl, so I usually run them through the steam bath first.

[Q] Playboy: Once they've been steamed, is there anything you do to heighten the excitement?

[A] Martin: Well, sometimes I open the window. Seriously, though, it's always been my opinion that the excitement involved in sex is 90 percent psychological, so you've either got someone who turns you on mentally or physically or else you've got a dud. If you have a dud, you just kick yourself and wish you could push a button and make her disappear. But if you've got the right girl, you don't have to get drunk or smoke pot to get turned on sexually. In fact, there's nothing worse than a drunken lady. I found that out when I was a bartender. A martini in the hands of some women should be classified along with switchblades and guns as a lethal weapon. One lady threw a beer bottle at my head because I wouldn't meet her after work. I'd rather let a girl smoke the drapes than ply her with drinks.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever smoked the drapes?

[A] Martin: I have a saying: "I don't want to die wondering," so there's very little I haven't done. If we're talking about pot, I think it's time we admitted that it's only a relaxing agent and not a narcotic. I'd rather have a guy driving down the freeway who just smoked a joint than a guy who just drank ten martinis. Furthermore, I think it's stupid to throw a guy in jail for possessing marijuana and expose him to the worst kinds of criminality and perversions.

[Q] Playboy: When you say that there's very link you haven't done, can we assume that you've attended some of the legendary Hollywood wife-swapping parties and orgies?

[A] Martin: There seems to be an outcropping of wife swapping in the Valley, but I'll be damned if I'm going to get married just to have a wife to swap: I'd rather just watch. What this thing really is is a bunch of guys with ugly wives or couples who are really tired of each other. They all get together and jump on each other. I get the feeling that if I really went to one of those things, I'd have the only good-looking girl there and everyone would pile up on her. As far as the orgies go, l've been to a lot of Hollywood parties and everyone just sits around and watches movies. We had a comic orgy at Buddy Hackett's one night, everyone screaming and laughing, but I can't imagine all those people taking their clothes off and rolling around on the floor. There must be orgies someplace, but it seems to be a well-kept secret. But speaking of taking off your clothes and rolling around on the floor, do you remember when my aunt was in court after the police busted those 16 Weight-Watching tugboat captains at the nudist colony she was visiting for the networks?

[A] Rowan: How could I forget?

[A] Martin: Well, do you know what she said when she tried to explain to the judge why her pet chicken attacked the arresting officer?

[A] Rowan: I can hardly wait to hear.

[A] Martin: That's not what she said.

[A] Rowan: Where were we?

[A] Martin: Rolling around on the floor.

[A] Rowan: Oh, yes. I went to some Hollywood parties in my younger days. but they were pretty far from being orgies. I found them quite interesting, but not very exciting. I don't go very often anymore, because, having achieved success in television, I tend to be a little suspicious of new friends. I don't want to surround myself with people who aren't interested in me as a person, people who just want to bask in the glory of a celebrity. Then, too, there are people who just come along for the free food and booze. I prefer having a few close friends and staying out of the party thing.

[Q] Playboy: What do you do for relaxation?

[A] Rowan: Well, I like to sail, play tennis and water-ski. I'm not a fanatic about skindiving, but I like to swim around in the water with a mask, snorkel and fins to visit our underwater friends.

[A] Martin: Lloyd Bridges?

[A] Rowan: No, but I've been seeing an awful lot of Flipper lately. I also enjoy lying in the sun; I like to read; and I like to be alone with my wife for long periods of time.

[Q] Playboy: How long have you been sailing?

[A] Rowan: Oh, on and off for 16 or 17 years. I first got interested in it when Dick and I were playing the San Diego area. My son or Dick and I used to take out a little cat-rigged 'boat from the Coronado Hotel down there; that's how it started. I sailed any boat I could get my hands on after that; but the opportunities were rather infrequent, so I bought my own boat three years ago and haven't stopped sailing since. It really blows my mind. I like everything about it--even the hard work. It's a lot of trouble to sail a boat, but I'm not too fascinated by the thought of simply turning a key, pressing a starter and riding around on the water in a noisy, vibrating noxious-smelling power yacht. I'd much rather choose a boat with care, get the sails up and depend entirely on my knowledge, my ability and the elements. It calms me; it soothes me; it's a mystical thing. I even find myself able to think better. When I drop the mooring line, I immediately begin to feel the pressures and strains easing and I start to become someone else. I'm much easier to get along with on water than I am on land.

[Q] Playboy: Does your wife share your interests?

[A] Rowan: Adrianna and I are well suited to each other. We have practically everything in common and she goes with me wherever I go. Of course, we have no children of our own, which makes it a little easier for both of us. My first wife and I didn't have very much in common at all. She wasn't show-business oriented and she liked our life much better when I was a man of commerce in the automobile business than when I was a gypsy on the road. She didn't like traveling that way and she didn't want to take the kids out of school, so she much preferred to stay home. The few times she did come with me, she got sick of it and left before the engagement was over. It wasn't a very good marriage in the first place, but even a good marriage would have had trouble surviving those long absences.

[Q] Playboy: Dick, do you ever consider getting married?

[A] Martin: I belong to Bridegrooms Anonymous. Whenever I feel like getting married, they send over a lady in a housecoat and hair curlers to burn my toast for me. I really have nothing against marriage, except the fact that it doesn't seem to work. I already have a family--an 11-year-old son and a very nice ex-wife--and I have no immediate plans to start another. Just look at the number of California marriages that end in divorce. I wouldn't bet those odds in Las Vegas. There are a lot of nice ladies around, so I prefer to just keep looking for someone with whom I can share things. I'm not about to settle down with a girl just because I may be lonely sometime in the future.

[Q] Playboy: Can either of you see any advantages to family life?

[A] Rowan: Of course, there are advantages to family life. But I think it's time for modern society to realize that we've created some romantic family fantasies that young people can't accept anymore. Parents can no longer expect youth to obey simply because it's the parental prerogative to command. Youth demands answers, and they damn well better start getting them. The drunken parent advising his kids against the use of pot; the adulterous parent euphemistically explaining sex with the aid of the birds and the bees; the scofflaw parent grounding his kids for disobedience at school; the violent parent objecting to campus militancy; these are the hypocrisies of the modern family. If love, sympathy and understanding aren't going to begin in the home, they will never succeed in the larger units of society.

[Q] Playboy: Would you like to see your own children adopt any particular life style?

[A] Rowan: I don't know what I'd want them to be other than gentle people who don't bruise anybody. I'd also like to think that if they had the ability or the means to help somebody, they'd do it, not because it's a socially acceptable thing to do but because it's the right thing to do. Actually, I wish the same things for them that I wish for all kids: that they try to be a bit more patient and understanding of us old folks.

[Q] Playboy: Having struggled so long yourselves, are you trying to provide your children with some of the advantages you missed?

[A] Martin: I definitely want to provide my son with a college education, but I have no desire to make him a wealthy young snot. No one gave me anything in my life, and I had to work for everything I got. He can do the same. Some people seem to think that Dan and I were an overnight success, but we put in 17 years working week after week and often for relatively little money. I think everybody's got to pay his dues; we did.

[Q] Playboy: Those years are now paying oil well for both of you. Has television success changed your lives much?

[A] Rowan: Has it ever! It seems like 20 minutes ago, I would have been lucky to get a hamburger and a beer, but now I've got a tremendous Spanish hacienda with a swimming pool and a tennis court. The house also has a five-car garage and I use every space. I own two Mercedes, a Corvette, a Thunderbird and a Ford station wagon. Now I'm building a Tahitian-style island house on the Florida Gulf coast with a great view of one of the world's prettiest beaches. I've also got a wife with a fine talent for spending money, but it's always a pleasure spending it on her.

[A] Martin: We were making pretty good money before, but Laugh-In pushed us into an income bracket that's far beyond anything I'd ever dreamed of. Ironically, I've got very simple tastes. My house is small, one of our sponsors lends me a car and I have no desire to live in Bel Air or drive a Rolls. When I was a bartender, I was making only $130 a week, but I had a nice car, a comfortable apartment and a lot of nice ladies. Those are still the only things I really require. Now, I invest a lot of money in real estate, so if things start going badly for us, I can just move into one of my own apartments.

[A] Rowan: If I had to step out of television today, I'd be broke tomorrow. It's a financed, pottery empire built on the fragile underpinnings of a comedy team called Rowan and Martin. I'd have to sell everything; and in six months, I'd be scrambling for a job somewhere. But I've been poor and busted before. Being an orphan, I became proud and fiercely independent as a child. It taught me self-reliance and gave me a lot of confidence in my own ability to provide for myself. Consequently, whenever I became dissatisfied with a job, I'd just walk away from it and never had any doubts about my ability to find something else. I feel the same way now. There are many other things I'd like to do.

[Q] Playboy: Having completed The Maltese Bippy in April, are you looking forward to making other films?

[A] Rowan: The ideal situation for anyone coming off a successful television series is to make a couple of pictures a year. It shouldn't take more than three months to make a film, so it would be a pretty nice program to work six months and rest six months.

[Q] Playboy: Most films take considerably longer than three months, but The Maltese Bippy was shot in ten weeks. How did you manage it?

[A] Martin: It was actually shot in 35 days on a $2,500,000 budget. We had five cutters working day and night on the rushes, so by the time we were finished shooting, they were finished cutting. That saved another four months of production time. Not only that but Nelson Riddle scored it from a script, so I think there were only about three weeks between the time we finished the film and the night we premiered it. If we had shot the film normally, it wouldn't have been released until Christmas. As it is, you'll probably see it on The Late Show by Christmas.

[Q] Playboy: Incidentally, how would you define bippy?

[A] Martin: It's a small hip.

[Q] Playboy: Thanks for enlightening us. Getting back to the film, do you think The Maltese Bippy could have been better if you had spent more time on it?

[A] Martin: I don't think so. We had roaringly competent people working on it and we found we could shoot up to seven or eight pages a day; whereas 20 years ago, if they finished one page in a day, they'd throw a party. The beauty of this film is that Dan and I aren't just playing ourselves. We've kind of reversed our traditional roles, so that he's the con man who falls through the trap door and I'm the guy who gets the girl in the end.

[Q] Playboy: Why wasn't your first film, Once upon a Horse, more successful?

[A] Rowan: It was a success in many respects, but a lot of mistakes were made. Then, too, if we were to make the same film today, it would be more successful than it was then. Don't forget, that was 12 years ago. We were the stars of the picture, but most of the public didn't know who we were. Universal had originally allotted a large budget for promotion; but just before its scheduled release, they had some management problems at the studio and it was released without fanfare. There was one full-page ad in Variety, but no radio promotion or newspaper publicity to speak of. Some pictures are good enough to make it in spite of that, but ours wasn't strong enough. On the other hand, pictures that have been a damn sight worse than ours made it solely on the basis of their promotion and publicity.

[Q] Playboy: What films will you be making in the future?

[A] Rowan: We've already contracted with MGM to do The Money Game next year; it'll be a comedy based on the world of stocks and bonds. We've talked about a couple of properties for a fourth film, but our deal with MGM isn't exclusive, so we can make pictures elsewhere. We're newcomers to this business and we're just hoping that other producers who see The Maltese Bippy will be attracted to either or both of us as screen actors. Hopefully, they'll be bright, funny people with funny ideas, in which case, we'd be happy to set up some kind of participation deal. Since we're making a lot of money, we don't have to worry about financing, so we're really just interested in finding the right properties. After The Maltese Bippy, I know I will never again sign to do a film without having read and approved the script. I think if I'm going to do the material, I should be allowed to judge it beforehand. The publicist may say, "I think this is a good idea." Our managers and lawyers may all agree; but if, in the back of our minds, we think there's something wrong with the idea, we've got to be able to say, "No, we won't do it." After all, these are our careers and it's upon these kinds of decisions that they may rise or fall. Any artist is making a big mistake if he puts himself completely in the hands of someone else. So whatever we do in films in the future will be based on our own decisions.

[Q] Playboy: Aside from your interest in flints, do you have any other career plans you'd like to develop when you're through with Laugh-In?

[A] Rowan: Well, when you're looking ahead to doing another 26 television shows, you really don't have much time left to speculate about what's going to happen when they're finished. We've got a film to do when this season's over, but beyond that, I really couldn't say. There's a real paradox in this business. You spend your whole career working toward a goal and you never really wonder about what you're going to do if you ever reach it. Do you stop running and end the race? No, you can't, because you find out that the speed accelerates after you reach the goal. No matter how hard you ran to get there, you have to run ten times as fast to stay there. Fred Allen wrote a book called Treadmill to Oblivion, and that's just the way it feels. But it's facing that challenge every day that makes creative life so exciting. I meet people I went to school with and some of these guys look 15 or 20 years older than I do, because the challenge just isn't there in their lives. People are inclined to fall into tight little grooves; you do the same thing every day, take your vacation every year at the same time, in the same place. That may be a tranquil sort of life, and it seems to be all right for some folks, but not for me.

[A] Martin: I myself have no urge to be an actor for the rest of my life, and I think Dan and I are lucky to have a foot in so many doors. We've been successful in night clubs, on television and now, hopefully, in films, so we're not stuck in one medium. One thing I'd really like to do is direct--to be able to say something through film.

[Q] Playboy: When will you consider your careers finished?

[A] Martin: The way I feel now, I've already accomplished more than I ever expected to in this business and I have no burning desire to advance my career any further. I mean, how far are we going to go?

[A] Rowan: I feel just about the same way. We've been given great reviews by the critics, awards from our industry and high ratings from the public. I have a very good marriage, good health and I'm not committed to the idea of dying in harness. Unlike some people in show business, I don't plan to kick off on the stage. I'm still a relatively young man and I'd like to have maybe 15 years when I'm through with show business just to look and listen and feel and taste everything. I don't know yet when I'll quit, but I suppose it will come when I start worrying about how gray my hair is getting or. as Jackie Cooper once said. when I get tired of holding my belly in. When that time comes, I'd like to know that I'm financially secure. I'd also like to feel that I've made my mark on American show business--that I entertained people. But more than that. I'd like to know that I've done some good for someone else. It's a nice thing to do a sketch about the situation in Biafra and then find out that something's been done to help the starving children there because of it. Those are the achievements that I think are worth while.

[A] Martin: I don't think I've ever heard a thought more eloquently expressed--with one possible exception.

[A] Rowan: And what might that be?

[A] Martin: The time my aunt was hauled into court after being busted. You remember, she was in the paddy wagon with the survey and the television networks and the nudists and the sauna bath and the Flying Nun and the Metrecal and the chicken and the arresting officer.

[A] Rowan: All that wouldn't fit into a paddy wagon.

[A] Martin: Well, I should hope not. Actually. the nude tugboat captains were running alongside, flailing themselves with shredded wheat, while the cop was using the sauna bath to send smoke signals to Finland. In the meantime, the Flying Nun was caught in a holding pattern over Lourdes and my aunt just sat there making daisy chains out of handcuffs.

[A] Rowan: I hate to ask, but who was driving?

[A] Martin: The chicken. Who else? You should have heard my aunt explain that to the judge. Anyway, the clerk read the indictment against her--unlawful perspiration, malicious dieting, illegal use of hands and arms, transporting 16 tugboat captains across state lines for immoral purposes, keeping a disorderly sauna bath and contributing to the delinquency of a barnyard fowl. Well, when my aunt heard that, she just threw off her Welcome to Atlantic City comforter, muttered a few obscene sampler mottoes, burned her D. A. R. card, tossed her cookies--chocolate macaroons--at the bailiff and, you're not going to believe this, climbed up onto the judge's bench and shouted at the top of her lungs----

[A] Rowan: It looks like we've run out of tape. You'd better just say good night, Dick.

[A] Martin: Good night, Dick.