(NBC Primetime, 1950) [Deriving from a local Los Angeles TV show in 1949, this series went on the full NBC network for the next season; Perhaps ahead of its time, the premise was in some ways similar to "The Larry Sanders Show" in that it contained a show within a show -- McCune played the lead role of a television variety show host named, conveniently, Hank McCune; The sitcom cast included Larry Keating, Charles Maxwell, and veteran radio/TV character actor Frank Nelson -- who was to become so well known as the overly finicky and unctous "Yessssss" man on Jack Benny radio and TV shows; Filmed in Hollywood, this short-lived series has the dubious distinction of sereptitiously introducing a technique which has haunted sitcoms to this day -- that of canned laughter -- also known as "the laugh track" -- edited audience reaction taken from other series -- spliced into the sound track at moments the producers thought the script SHOULD be funny...; (The idea caught on and a CBS-TV audio engineer Charlie Douglas heard about the use of this technique on the NBC-TV series, and built a machine with multiple tape loops triggered by a bank of key switches to produce "laugh tracks" more easily; some news reports dubbed it a "laugh organ"; Charlie's company went on to provide this service for many more shows; It was thought his source material came from "I Love Lucy" and "Red Skelton" studio audiences) Despite this artificial innovation, "Hank McCune Hall" still didn't make enough of the real viewer audience laugh and so it was cancelled after only one season... But the artificial "laugh track" idea endured...unfortunately]
[Although ASCAP records and other business records of Alexander Laszlo indicate he wrote the THEME for this series listed above in the ASCAP ACE database, no connection to which cue it was in his "Structural Music" Library has been established as yet...This Library was an extension of his collected repertoire which derived in some cases from older film cues and in some cases were written on commission...] Composer: Alexander Laszlo (ASCAP) [professional name of Sandor Totis] 1978 Publisher: Guild Publications (ASCAP) 2001 Publisher: Alexander Publications (ASCAP) c/o Regents of The Univ. Of California Music Department of Oakland, CA Copyright Date: Renewal Date: Recordings: