In the theatre, when you go to see a performance featuring a star they traditionally get a huge round of applause when they make their first entrance. And usually that first entrance is with a flourish to allow for that adoration.
On Norman Lear shows in the ‘70s that became standard. Same with Garry Marshall shows. Watch an episode of GOOD TIMES or LAVERNE & SHIRLEY. J.J. or Lenny & Squiggy enter and you’d think we just landed on the moon.
Other shows like those done by MTM during the same period took out the applause.
The Lear/Marshall camp contends that the viewer knows there’s a studio audience and the show is being shot like a play. They’re not fooling anybody so why not include the audience’s appreciation of first seeing those stars they came to see?
The MTM camp contends that the applause is intrusive and takes you out of the story. They went so far as to tell audiences not to applaud during entrances. I was at a filming of RHODA where Vivian Vance was the guest star. You know her entrance would get a standing ovation. So the producers introduced her to the audience before they started filming. It gave Ms. Vance her entrance applause without affecting the show itself.
So where do I stand on this most controversial subject? I side with no applause. But for a different reason. I feel it’s self-congratulatory and I try to avoid that. If the audience spontaneously claps later in the show at a big laugh or a story turn, well that ovation was earned. But just to have the audience go nuts the minute the show starts when someone enters the house with the mail – that feels like we’re all patting ourselves on the back for no reason.
Also now, entrance applause sounds dated, retro, very ‘70s. At least to me.
I bet it’s something you haven’t thought much about, despite its incendiary nature. But we all have a lot of time on our hands these days, and many of us are binging – either current or vintage shows. Notice whether there’s entrance applause, and whether you like it.
56 comments :
1) If I recall correctly, the audience started applauding Kramer's entrances on SEINFELD and the producers asked them to knock it off. The other actors may have been concerned he would "pull a Fonzie" and take over the show.
2) When I watch SANFORD AND SON, I can tell if it is a good one by the absence of audience applause. By the time the audience was going wild because Bubba walked in, the show was in decline.
I liked the way the RHODA crew handled Vivian Vance's entrance -- as a beloved Golden Age of TV talent, she earned the ovation, which the audience delivered and she received. Then, it was onto the business of the moment, which was staging and taping a TV episode.
Also, Viv was a guest star, making the occasion special.
By comparison, it did get a little tired for Henry Winkler to be congratulated week after week just for showing up and doing his regular job.
I remember when "Seinfeld" was at its peak popularity, Kramer often got huge applause when he first entered a scene. The producers must have been tired of that being given to him and no one else so that stopped that. In most eps of "2 Broke Girls" I saw (I think I stopped before that show's last two seasons), Jennifer Cooledge continued to get sustained applause, for some reason, to the expense of the other cast members. Oh, and the same happened to The Fonz every time as well though I think the other cast members also got some though not as much or as loudly as Henry Winkler...
By and large, I agree. There was a show called, "Another Day", starring Bert Convy that featured an annoying amount of applause and even though it wasn't a BAD show, per se. It lasted four episodes, so why all the applause?
One famous argument FOR entrance applause would be the final episode of "Newhart". Had Suzanne Pleshette been introduced beforehand, ala Vivian Vance, it would have dulled the effect. In this case, her appearance is integral to the plot and, I must admit, the almost-mic-breaking applause in that case is exhilarating. It was a great surprise and a great joke.
I quit watching Happy Days because of it, especially how the actors would acknowledge it. It always threw me out of the story and made it seem more artificial.
Ken...
I agree with you about not allowing entrance applause, but with one exception. That would be Gilda Radner's appearance on "It's Garry Shandling's Show" in 1988.
Because she was suffering from cancer, it was her first TV gig in years, and with the help of her close friend Alan Zweibel -- co-showrunner with Shandling -- it was handled with just the right mix of pathos and humor. The studio audience's loving response to seeing her was so heartwarming, and the fact that she was able to joke about cancer allowed everyone to exhale and enjoy the moment.
But that's a rare moment -- unlike, say, Michael Richards' Kramer spinning through the door on "Seinfeld."
P.S. Zweibel provides detail and background on that episode in his new book, "Laugh Lines," which I strongly recommend.
...Paul Harris
They told Seinfeld audiences to stop applauding with Kramer entered, it was eating up precious airtime. I don't mind so much if it's just a quick whoop or something, like when Tom Selleck made his first entrance on Friends. Or maybe when Danny Devito made his entrance as Phoebe's bachelorette party stripper (at least it was an act break). Where it gets annoying is when it drags and the audience starts hooting and hollering like 12 year olds (pretty much every entrance on Married with Children).
I've attended a few sitcom recordings, and one of these was Becker. I attended that show in Sept. 2000 for an episode called "One Wong Move", and Richard Hatch, who'd just won the first version of Survivor was making a cameo appearance. He was brought out before the show so that we wouldn't applaud too much on his entrance, though not being a big fan of his I don't think I gave him much applause anyway.
Fonzie didn't "jump the shark" when he jumped the shark. That moment came earlier in the same episode--the season premiere for 1977-78--when Fonzie entered Arnold's. The applause seemed slightly less than it had been the previous year.
That's when I knew the show's popularity had peaked (although it remained on the air until 1984).
I agree with Cory on Happy Days- the entrance applause for Henry Winkler didn't bother me as much as him stopping to acknowledge it.
Full disclosure: I'm not much of a theatergoer.
I've seen very few plays in person, and if there are rules, I don't know them.
Back in the late '70s (I think), I saw a national tour of Arsenic And Old Lace, with some fair-sized name actors in the cast.
This was the Shubert Theatre in the Loop (as it was then known), a venerable house; as I recall, there was no entrance applause for any of the visiting stars - the Play was the Thing.
In the '70s (maybe the '80s, not sure), I went to see a British touring company of a farce called Big Bad Mouse, which was a star vehicle for two top British comics, Jimmy Edwards and Eric Sykes.
Edwards, a Colonel Blimp type with a sideburn-mustache combo that was a wonder of the stage, and Sykes, tall, thin, and lugubrious, didn't observe the fourth wall.
When Jimmy Edwards made his first entrance, he expressed displeasure with the hand he got, exited, and demanded a larger hand for his re-entry.
Eric Sykes entered carrying a tape player with effusive applause playing away; he wasn't taking any chances.
Early on, Edwards addressed the audience directly: "This is not cinema or the television - we are actually here!"
Big Bad Mouse was a hit at the Studebaker Theatre; it was about to be extended for a longer run, but there was an election coming up in Chicago, and the local government suddenly noticed some code violations that nobody had thought about in 20-30 years or so …
Finally, at the Millennium, I saved my pennies and saw the pre-Broadway engagement of The Producers at the Bismarck Palace, with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick getting entrance hands and staying on book throughout.
So there you have three very different experiences in the theater; I've never attended a TV taping, so I don't know the rules there.
Ken: make a Friday Question out of the foregoing and answer it, if you please …
Completely agree, Ken. It’s just classier to keep “entrance applause” to a minimum. I would put it in the same category as overused catch phrases, and so on. You know that those things are cheap cliches when they are shown in parodies of sitcoms. (And on the subject of plays, I long for the days when standing ovations were the exception not the rule. But nowadays “everything is amazing”).
"Also now, entrance applause sounds dated, retro, very ‘70s. At least to me."
Agreed. As others have mentioned, HAPPY DAYS was a particularly egregious offender.
The other kind of applause I hate is, for lack of a better word, contrived applause. That is, when a character says a catch phrase or engages in a familiar mannerism. Why should the audience go completely nuts, for example, every time J.J. says "Dynomite!" or Richie starts to sing, "I found my thrill..."? This should cause us ecstasy for what reason, exactly?
I agree with both you and MTM. Between the over-the-top applause at every turn and the videotape hotness/hiss, the Norman Lear series always seemed like recorded stage plays. Distracting.
Just looked at the Vivian Vance ep of Rhoda and they do include a little applause on her entrance in the final content. It's there but not terribly intrusive.
Adding laugh tracks to shows not filmed before an audience, e.g., MASH, is supposed to make it easier for solitary viewers at home to enjoy the jokes, yes? So what is applause supposed to make us do, clap along? I never minded it in THE HONEYMOONERS because it was never realistic, but on shows that tried hard to look like real apartments, coffee shops, etc., entrance applause just encouraged actors to "make an entrance" every week. One more vote for "annoying."
i guess its better than exit applause
I agree, I dislike the entrance applause and think it takes you out of the show. But even worse for me is when audiences react vocally to every story turn. Like when someone does something nice or they show something cute like a baby or a puppy, and you hear 200 people go, "Awwwwww..." Or when two characters kiss, and the entire audience erupts in "Woo-Hooooo's." It's like trying to watch TV in a room filled with 10-year-olds. Around my house, we groan whenever that happens and say something like, "Oh, god, it's a woo-hooing crowd."
Applause for guest stars varied on "The Big Bang Theory". The audience didn't make noise for Katey Sagal as Penny's mother (or for Stephen Hawking for that matter), they applauded politely for Judd Hirsch as Leonard's father, and then they whooped loudly for Bob Newhart as Professor Proton. I do remember that LeVar Burton and Wil Wheaton got whoops when they appeared as themselves on Sheldon's "Fun With Flags", which was somewhat appropriate as "Fun With Flags" was supposed to be a web series.
@Mike Doran: In Broadway plays, audiences applaud when a featured cast member (i.e. listed on the marquee) makes their entrance, but only for about five seconds. A decade ago I attended the comedy "Lend Me a Tenor", and there was applause when Tony Shaloub, Anthony LaPaglia and Brooke Adams entered. I don't think this is common in Lloyd-Webber-type musicals, where applause would mess with the timing of the music and songs.
Off-topic for a Friday Question: Have you seen any of the Korean baseball games ESPN has been showing as a substitute for everybody else's lack of live sports? The announcers have noticed that there are fewer strikeouts and the ball is put in play more, one compared it to the mid-1980s style. I haven't noticed much base stealing, however.
Yeah, what Paul Harris said! But i will add the "It's Garry Shandling's Show" played the entrance applause as a joke for more than just Gilda. Pretty much all guest stars got the "Look everybody! It's Tom Petty!" treatment.
And another huge endorsement for Zweibel's book!
As I understand it, when Carol Burnett and Carroll O'Connor played the parents on "Mad About You," they wrote the episode so that they would walk in separately because everybody felt they were such legends, they deserved the separate applause. They certainly were legends. But .... Ken is right.
It was Michael Richards who wanted the entrance applause for Kramer to end. He said he would develop elaborately timed entrances and then have to awkwardly stand there waiting for the applause to die down... and then try to pick up the scene from there.
I agree with no applause, but if I remember correctly, wasn't Sam's entrance on Frasier greeted with audience applause?
To be fair, appauding a Kramer entrance, which was always accompianied by a bit of weird physical comedy from Micheal Richards, is more like getting a big response from a running gag than like the audience going wild because the Fonz stepped on stage. It's not like he didn't earn it by doing something funny at that moment.
Judging by the responses, I'm preaching to the choir. The weekly Fonzie entrance really bothered me back then. He wasn't even a special guest, just a teen idol. Big Whoop.
But, I don't know if it's finding out that some of the members of younger audiences "get it" or maybe my age, but a legend like Bob Newhart being acknowledged by the BBT fans, something about that is gratifying.
Thanks for letting me know, Ken. If you ever pull a "Hitchcock" and do a cameo in one of your plays I'll make sure NOT to applaud.
M.B.
Let's not forget Larry, Daryl, and Daryl on Newhart. That became particularly egregious. It's usually when I stop watching shows. Generally speaking, the writing plays to these characters (as happened with LD&D) and the show suffers.
On the other hand, since the laughter/applause heard during the broadcast version is not what actually happens during the recording, I suppose it's a bit disingenuous to make this single complaint. It's all manipulated.
I wouldn't mind walking in my front door and getting thunderous applause.....but I live alone now. Even when I had pets, the dog was indifferent when I cam home and the cat tried to use my legs as a scratch post because she had to wait for her dinner.
In the early 2000s we saw "Chicago" at Mandalay Bay in Vegas. When Chita Rivera made her first entrance the crowd did not respond. She froze for about 15 seconds until someone (possibly a stage hand) started a "Laugh In" type of one-person applause. Eventually about a fourth of the audience joined in.
Afraid I don't agree. If the president of a college comes to the podium, he gets applause. If someone appears on a talk show they receive applause when they enter the stage. Attend a concert? The group gets applause as they grab their instruments. Go showing appreciation for an actor or an actor's character makes perfect sense to me.
For me, I don't really care if it is there or not. My only reaction is if actors are about to say something, and have to stop for 5 seconds to wait for it to clear. I've seen a few eps in shows where they're waiting for the audience to finish laughing, or for the applause to stop, and meanwhile the actors are staring at each other waiting to say their line. But now the rhythm is off. Can you imagine an EP of Moonlighting where people interrupted David Addison? Or an EP of West Wing with those pauses? I know, those are dramatic shows in a different realm of reality, but it is one of the things I detest with a lot of comedy. There are huge pauses for lines that were at best mildly amusing, certainly not guffaw funny.
P.
Totally agree. And, as others have said, "It's Garry Shandling's Show" gets a pass for several reasons... one of them being that the audience was actually a character in that show.
It's indulgent for a show to let the characters sit in applause. At least these days. I also give the Honeymooners a pass. You can tell how far along you are in the classic 39 by how much applause the first appearance of every character gets. But it's kind of charming in a way, because you literally get to watch their success grow :)
The one that always griped my cookies was on NEWHART in the 80s, when Larry, Daryl, and the other brother Daryl would enter. The audience would explode as if a hybrid of Beyonce and Shaquille O'Neal were entering. It became ridiculous and distracting, and the applause would go on for way too long.
I mean, the dudes were funny, but the directors really should have reined it in a bit.
I remember an episode of The Simpsons that mocked the studio audience of Married with Children for whooping raucously at really basic jokes.
This is the clip from The Simpsons
https://youtu.be/47qqz2zes8Q
Monty Python's "Golden Age of Ballooning" episode featured Graham Chapman as a clueless butler who stopped the show with unwarrented applause, cheering and even bouquets.
When I did theater I had my audiences trained. They never made a peep during one of my entrances.
When I think of a show with really extreme audience reactions, I think of Married with Children.
Not my favorite show but I guess good for what it was. At a certain point all the hyperactive audience became part of the show's structure and it would have seemed weird without it. In such a heightened vaudevillian style it probably fit. In a more naturalistic show like All in the Family its more of a mixed bag.
You can go back to 1950 live episodes of "Burns & Allen" and see the audience applause and Gracie acknowledging it, but those episodes were presented more as a stage play, so the intrusion isn't as disconcerting.
With the 70s sitcoms, it's interest to contrast-and-compare two of Marshall's best-known ones, with "Happy Days" and "The Odd Couple". Both did the walk-in applause, but "The Odd Couple" tended to limit it to the secondary characters or the guest stars and the volume of the audience was restrained; as noted above, the applause for the regulars on "Happy Days' (and especially Fonize) was so out-sized and above the level of entertainment value you were getting, it not only caused the show to stop dead, it made viewers at home eventually wonder what all the screaming was about.
The out-of-control applause may have been justified as hype to try and get people at home as equally excited during the first run of the show, but it really hurt the re-runs, because after the Fonz mania was over, people were left with judging the show on its comedy (and really, by Season 4, "Happy Days" was coasting on lazy writing, based on the realization they didn't have to be all that funny to make the audiences of the moment scream with delight). It's one of the reason why when "MASH" and "Happy Days" both went into syndication in the fall of 1979, the former show did great while the latter vastly under-performed what local stations had hoped for (after four years earlier, Marshall's "Odd Couple" re-runs vastly over-performed in syndication).
The short lived reboot of One Day At A Time on Netflix, I noticed it when Rita Moreno came onstage. I have no problem with it and I think it depends on the type of show.
You introduced two schools of thought from two extremely successful entities of the same period, so I think it really matters on the type of comedy you are presenting.
I was baffled recently by a comedy sketch in a 1963 Bob Hope TV show. When Verna Felton walked out on-stage as the maid, there was massive applause. When Jesse White first appeared in the same sketch there was no clapping.
I feel the same about singers whose audience burst into applause when the opening bars of one of their big hits starts. I'd really like to see them just wait for it to stop and say, "Thanks very much. Now here's another one you might recognize".
I was in the audience for the filming of the pilot of Alan Zweibel's "Good Sports" in 1990. Short-lived, but very funny series about warring sports anchors, played by Farrah Fawcett and Ryan O'Neal. The guest on the show-within-the-show was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The producers brought him out in advance of his scene so the audience could acknowledge his appearance without breaking up the flow of the show. That's the way it should be. Applause in the middle of the scene always takes the audience out of the story.
Most memorable, truly spontaneous applause I ever heard on a series was for Philip Baker Hall as Bookman, the library cop, on "Seinfeld." He dressed-down Jerry for the overdue book and exited and the audience went crazy. Seemed like even Seinfeld was surprised at the crowd's reaction. The applause was satisfying because it was real.
• Carol Burnett and Harvey Korman used to spoof the milking of gratuitous applause when they played "Blunt and Rundown," a takeoff of Lunt and Fontanne.
• Garry Marshall believed Fonzie's walk-on was akin to the audience cheering the hero in an old movie. At the time, kids were still doing that at Disney comedies when they played in theaters. They would cheer the victories and scream at the wacky gags. He also began his career in Danny Thomas and Carl Reiner sitcoms, in which the fourth wall would occasionally be broken with songs and applause for guest stars and performances.
* When dancers and acrobats have received applause for what appeared to be outstanding stunts on stage, sometimes they have said it was for the most "showy" things rather than the most difficult ones.
• Before the "home" versions, SNL ramped up the cheers whenever possible, especially when a surprise guest star showed up. I kept expecting to hear the SNL audience on the soundtrack of the last Star Wars movie accompanying Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill. The pauses were there.
• Cute puppies doing tricks to Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance" on The Ed Sullivan Show can never get too much applause.
@Greg Ehrbar:
The Lunt and Fontanne characters Burnett and Korman played were named "Funt and Mundane," not "Blunt and Rundown." Some of the sketches are on YouTube.
Garry Marshall's argument would have carried more weight if the outsized cheering had been confined to Fonzie, but it wasn't. That's the thing. The HAPPY DAYS audience carried on like that over the entire cast. Didn't matter who it was. Tom Bosley walks out and the audience screams like idiots. The outsized reaction to everybody in the cast negated any meaning it could have had to any one character.
This may be blasphemous but I've never thought HAPPY DAYS/LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY/MORK AND MINDY represented Garry Marshall's best work. I hated the way the writing pandered to the audience. I hated the aforementioned cheering, yelling and screaming that greeted every cast member's entrance. I especially hated the sappy endings those shows liked to do, where the principals in that episode's story spelled out for the audience the big, important lesson they'd learned while sentimental music played in the background. I'm sorry, but Marshall was better than that.
Didn't matter who it was. Tom Bosley walks out and the audience screams like idiots. The outsized reaction to everybody in the cast negated any meaning it could have had to any one character.
Tom Bosley, hell, they went nuts for Jennie Piccolo in the last season.
I already made a comment that I think got lost, but apologies if this is a repost, but the worst offender had to be Welcome Back, Kotter. Again, in the last season, when Gabe Kaplan and Travolta had both left, Mrs Kotter and Horshack were getting prolonged, hysterical applause.
So was Mr Woodman, but Mr Woodman deserved it. I will die on this hill.
I completely agree about L., D. & D. Especially since that gag ceased to be funny or clever after about their third appearance.
M.B.
As I recall, THE ODD COUPLE allowed audience applause only when there was a major guest star (Howard Cosell, Bobby Riggs, Monty Hall, etc.). There was never any applause for the regulars, such as Felix, Oscar, Murray, Myrna, Miriam, etc.
Calling this a 70s gimmick is not accurate. I saw it on Friends many times.
Completely right Ken. It's bothered me to have people applauded just for making an entrance.
I stayed away from American Idol because people were going crazy just at the mention of someone's name.
@Stephen
No cheering for Tom Bosley?
Recalling one Odd Couple episode where an entrance sparked what had to have been spontaneous applause.
This was the '20s flashback show, in which Felix and Oscar's fathers ran afoul of the Chicago Mob, and had to face down a menacing gunman.
To put this in perspective, the Mob Boss was opera star Giorgio Tozzi, who was likely there as a favor to Tony Randall.
No entrance applause for Tozzi.
Later on, the Menacing Gunman entered: Elisha Cook Jr.
Major Applause for Cook (although I suspect that the audience had more older members than was the norm).
Those were the days (?).
A different way of dealing with this: The Broadway musical version of CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY starred the incomparable Christian Borle as Willie Wonka. He began singing "The Candy Man" off-stage, entered at the end of the second line--then stopped while the orchestra vamped for the length of time of the cheers, then resumed the vocal when it died down. And of course Borle acknowledged the applause, because that was totally in character. Sutton Foster did pretty much the same thing in ANYTHING GOES, literally coming downstage facing the audience as if to say, "Yes, it's really me. Worship me!" And she got away with it, because she's Sutton Foster and a true goddess.
Tonight I pray for peace and healing in this great land. And that won't happen until we rid ourselves of the hateful spaces who wish to destroy it.
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