Beautiful Downtown Burbank Remembers Debt to ‘Laugh-In’

Jo Anne Worley leaned forward and creased her mouth devilishly at the corners.

“YYYAAAAWWWWW!!!!” she bellowed irreverently, her operatic vibrato rapidly degenerating into a devious chuckle.

“Beautiful Downtown Burbank,” scoffed the former “Laugh-In” television star. “Let me put it this way. If you like Burbank, you will love Paris!

“YYYAAAAWWWWW!!!!”

And so began an evening of inanity and frivolity Saturday at the Burbank Airport Hilton as the city that has been the butt of jokes for nearly two decades had a good, hearty laugh at itself.

“What do you call a man who rides a white pig through the NBC studios?” Worley asked. “Lawrence of Burbank.

“YYAAAAWWWWWWW!!!!”

Chamber Celebration

Worley and fellow “Laugh-In” stars Ruth Buzzi and Gary Owens joined 400 members and guests of the Burbank Chamber of Commerce in celebrating “Beautiful Downtown Burbank,” this year’s theme of the chamber’s annual dinner-dance. Other stars of the series were unable to attend.

The theme, chosen by the chamber to focus attention on widespread redevelopment under way in Burbank, paid special tribute to the NBC comedy series that made “Beautiful Downtown Burbank” a household phrase.

The “Laugh-In” series, produced by NBC at its Burbank studios, ran for six seasons before being canceled in May, 1973. The variety show is credited by Burbank city officials with putting the city of 85,000 on the map, although an official of the visitors bureau said that Johnny Carson is now credited with keeping it there.

“There is nowhere you can go in the entire world and they don’t know who you are and where you are from,” Burbank Mayor E. Daniel Remy said of the notoriety Burbank officials enjoy. “A great percentage of that is because of these folks.”

Stuart J. Orbach, executive director of the chamber, presented the three cast members with special Fickle Finger of Fate awards produced for the occasion by the chamber.

Burbank’s Fate

“Imagine the foresight these stars had back in 1968,” Orbach joked. “Burbank became known throughout the world as ‘Beautiful Downtown Burbank.’ I guess that was our fate.”

“I can appreciate a beautiful town with a bad reputation. I spent four years working in Buffalo, N.Y.,” said Fritz Coleman, weatherman for Burbank-based KNBC-TV and master of ceremonies for the evening.

Architectural renditions of the city’s ambitious Towncenter Mall, a $158-million downtown shopping mall approved last fall by the City Council, sat on easels outside the main dining room as a reminder to guests of how far Burbank has come since the “Laugh-In” years.

But those memorable years of “sock it to me,” “verrrry interesting” and “you bet your sweet bippy” were on display, too.

Huge blowups of photographs of the “Laugh-In” cast flanked the entrance to the dining room, including individual shots of Buzzi as the little old lady carrying a lethal purse, Owens as an overmodulated radio announcer and Worley as a boisterous prankster.

An NBC security guard proudly demonstrated a trademark of the show, the Fickle Finger of Fate and Whoopee Award. The electronically operated golden hand normally is kept under lock and key in a display case at the NBC studio.

Security Precautions

“The security precautions are imperative, as there is but one Fickle Finger,” Orbach told the guests.

The guard was greeted with thunderous applause when he strutted up the dining room’s center aisle with the index finger of the Fickle Finger rotating for everyone to see.

“I am sure the mayor has a lot of candidates for it,” Orbach said in reference to the rotating finger. “Maybe the guy who came up with the idea of councilmanic districts.” Mayor Remy has been an outspoken critic of a move in Burbank to divide the city into five council districts.

In addition to jokes about Burbank, the evening included moments of nostalgia. Owens, who is now a vice president of Gannett Corp., reminisced about a meeting he held in the men’s room of a Burbank restaurant with producer George Schlatter and fellow cast member Arte Johnson.

“I did the baritone voice with my hand over my ear while just joking around in an old, tile bathroom,” Owens said. “We had gone in there because we had inky hands from writing jokes all morning. George said, ‘That’s it,’ and that he wanted me to use it on the show.”

From that day on, Owens said, he welcomed 35 million television viewers every Monday night with the now-famous greeting, “From Beautiful Downtown Burbank . . . “

“You have meant a lot to my life,” Owens told the Burbank crowd. “I hope I have meant something to you. On behalf of all of the ‘Laugh-In’ cast, we love you very much.”