JAD ABUMRAD: This is Radiolab. I'm Jad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert.

JAD: Today on our show, laughter.

ROBERT: I want to say one more thing about this. We've talked about how laughter is evolutionarily sort of wired in. We've talked about that it's a social thing.

JAD: A safety, all clear, kind of situation.

ROBERT: Yeah, but it's another level of safety that's kind of fascinating. Let me tell you a really classic, and not well known, story. It involves the television show The Nanny. You remember in the '90s, Fran Drescher had this very big hit TV comedy series.

JAD: Uh, no.

ROBERT: Well, you will probably remember the voice of the nanny.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, The Nanny: Hello?]

ROBERT: That's Fran.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, The Nanny: Ma, you finally made up. Well, what's the emergency? Ma, Mike Douglas isn't on channel four because they canceled him 22 years ago.]

ROBERT: And the story actually is not so much about Fran Drescher as it is about—you hear those people laughing right underneath all of it.

JAD: Yeah, constantly.

ROBERT: Yes, well this is about Fran's laughter. It's the story of The Nanny laughers. And it begins with a woman named Lisette Saint-Claire.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: Just FYI my name is pronounced Lisette.

ROBERT: She's a casting director at Central Casting in Los Angeles.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: Central Casting is the oldest extras casting company. It's been around for years, and years and years. Back in the day where people used to line up outside the studios, and the productions would come out and pick you, you, you.

ROBERT: She actually got her start as an extra.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: My first gig, I think it was called The Big House. And I had to jump out of a coffin, but I was a hooker. [laughs] I was a hooker out of a coffin.

ROBERT: Anyway, after years as working as an extra, Lisette decided to jump to the other side of the business, and be the person in charge of casting the extras.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: You know, you're on the phone and the production company calls and says, "I need three strippers, two nurses and four doctors." And so that's what we do. We find them.

ROBERT: Now here's some more background that you will need. In 1985, which is years before The Nanny, Fran Drescher had been raped during a break in at her apartment. And later she wrote about this experience, and she spoke about it publicly.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Fran Dresher: That night was the night that changed everything.]

ROBERT: This is Fran reading from her book Cancer Shmancer.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Fran Dresher: Two men with guns broke into our home, and raped both me, and my girlfriend Judy who had the misfortune of having joined us for dinner. We were never the same again.]

ROBERT: The people who did this to her were caught and locked up. And then things got worse. As her fame grew, she started getting stalked. And this was right around the time that filming began on The Nanny.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, The Nanny: Dr. Warner you're wanted in Radiology please.]

ROBERT: And the thing about filming The Nanny, when it's filmed live, as they say, in front of a live studio audience, pretty much anybody can come into the theater. Fran worried that someone who might mean harm would come in, and sit there during the show. So she and the show's producers decided to do the only thing they could do: get rid of the audience. Just kick them all out. Now this was right in the middle of the season. They had a taping to do the very next day.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Fran Dresher: No matter how hard things became in our personal life, the show must go on.]

ROBERT: So they called up Lisette.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: They decided instead of having an audience come in, just have people from Central Casting that they know ...]

ROBERT: She said, "All right. I'll fill your audience with extras."

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: I was looking for about 30 or 40 people.

ROBERT: She had thousands of people to choose from, and there are all kinds of categories available to her.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: You could do a search in the database, height ...

ROBERT: There was age.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: ... ethnicity ...

ROBERT: Skin color.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: ... weight, dress size ...

ROBERT: Eye color.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: ... hair color. You could put that all in and it'll bring up what you need.

ROBERT: She needed a safe audience.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: Just normal lively people.

ROBERT: That she could screen, and while she was at it she thought "Well, why don't I get people who are good laughers? I mean, why not?"

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: Yeah.

ROBERT: With 24 hours to go she put out a rather strange request.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: I put it out on the sequencer, it's like a work line, a hotline that people listen to and if they fit, or if they think they fit, then they'll call in. I said, "Hi this is Lisette. I'm looking for some people that have good laughs to work on The Nanny tomorrow."

ROBERT: And when they'd call she'd begin with one question.

1. DONNY MITCHELL: Hi, my name is A. Donny Mitchell.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: Okay, let me hear you laugh.

1. DONNY MITCHELL: Yeah, okay. [laughs]

PAM WEST: Hi my name is Pam West.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: Let me hear you laugh.

PAM WEST: [laughs]

KIM JANUARY: Hi my name is Kim January.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: Like you just saw the funniest thing. Let me hear you laugh.

KIM JANUARY: [laughs]

DENNIS FILER: My name is Dennis Filer.

KIM JANUARY: [laughs]

PAM WEST: I was at the laundromat. She answered the phone right away, she goes, "Let's hear it." [laughs] And everybody in the laundromat looked at me. And I said, "It's an audition. It's an audition." She said laugh right now. I said ...

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: These were people that were calling that were all ethnicities, all ages, 20-something to, like, 70-something. I had married couples. And it's not a show like Baywatch where everybody has to look bikini ready and all that.

ROBERT: Which means they weren't going to win a beauty contest, but they could get to the studio and sit down and laugh.

PAM WEST: There were certain things that we were laughing at, and they would come to us and say, "Okay, we don't want you to laugh at that." We knew when to laugh, and when not to laugh, and then it got to the part where we just knew exactly what to do.

KIM JANUARY: Can you think of anything more wonderful than sitting in a comfortable chair all day long and being amused?

WOMAN: People look puzzled, what do you mean a laugher?

ROBERT: How much did you pay them?

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: Back then it was like 75 bucks.

PAM WEST: And you'd get paid? Yeah, we'd get paid for laughing. What a thing to do!

ROBERT: Lisette got a bunch of the laughers in a room together, just to show us how it works.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: Okay, so this is kind of like a murmur chuckle. It's not like a gut wrenching, just a little bit of murmur chuckle. [laughter] Okay, something funny just happened, but it's not like a whole big long laugh, it's just something really quick and funny. [laughter] And this one, something's happening and it's a little bit of chuckle, but then something came out of it just making you pee in your pants. [laughs]

KIM JANUARY: And we all have our great individual laughs but we were told not to ...

ROBERT: Yeah.

KIM JANUARY: ... stand out. We had to know each other, play off each other. And if somebody was paused in their laughter maybe we'd cover it. I mean, we were a well timed, orchestrated machine.

DENNIS FILER: Yeah, we were.

ROBERT: So well orchestrated that their services became very desirable.

KIM JANUARY: You know, a chain reaction.

ROBERT: Central Casting began getting calls from other sitcoms.

PAM WEST: The Drew Carey Show.

ROBERT: From talk shows.

PAM WEST: They sprinkled us in the audience.

ROBERT: And something odd began to happen on the sets. The actors began noticing the laughers.

KIM JANUARY: They would thank us, want to know if we're all right. Did we have enough food? Was the food good, you know?

ROBERT: And for a lot of these people who were used to working as extras and being pretty much ignored all the time, this was wonderful.

KIM JANUARY: They treated us as though we were principal family. I mean, they recognized us at Christmas parties, and it's just like we were a part of them.

PAM WEST: They would come and sit with us and talk to us. They appreciated us. That's the part I loved. Because they know we got their back. Yeah, and we did have their back.

1. DONNY MITCHELL: There was a time we stayed after, and it was a scene where the nanny was climbing a telephone pole outside. And she wanted us to come out there and do our thing so that the timing was right, and felt right. And I think we went on 14 hours that night. It was wonderful.

PAM WEST: It is, and you almost want to cry because everybody is so wonderful as a family here, us laughers.

ROBERT: And then reality stuck.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: The battle for a quarter of a million dollars.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: I'm feeling a pure disgust with Trisha.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: I'm going to have to nominate George, and Erica.]

ROBERT: Starting around 2000, reality TV, you know these shows, that merit no laughs required. They pushed sitcoms aside. And professional laughing work slowed down to a trickle.

PAM WEST: When we're laughing three times a week on different shows, there is like this momentum, and this adrenaline. And suddenly it all comes to an end and it's like—honest to God it's like going through withdrawal.

KIM JANUARY: I found that when I'm not laughing I'm a lot more depressed. I found that it was great therapy for me on a weekly basis.

DENNIS FLIER: I miss it.

KIM JANUARY: Oh God, so I need that. I miss it.

ROBERT: It's sad.

KIM JANUARY: Anybody out there needs any laughers there's a whole room full of us.

ROBERT: Look, we could use you. We could use you. Look, Jad?

JAD: Mm-hmm.

ROBERT: Just go with me here. What is brown and sticky?

JAD: What?

ROBERT: A stick.

JAD: Whoa.

[laughter]

ROBERT: Thank you! And Jad?

JAD: Yes?

ROBERT: I had Cheerios for breakfast this morning.

[laughter]

ROBERT: This is mowing in high grass. Jad?

JAD: Yes?

ROBERT: I'm wearing brown shoes.

[laughter]

ROBERT: This is fun! You're all hired!

ROBERT: This story was produced by Rob Christiansen, and reported by Mary Beth Kershner. Support provided by the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives at dana.org. The excerpts from Fran Drescher's book Cancer Schmancer was courtesy of Shift Audio. Our laughers interviewed were ...

DIVA PERRY: Diva Perry.

BONNIE CHUSE: Bonnie Chuse.

GRACIE SPIRANZA: Gracie Spiranza.

1. DONNY MITCHELL: A. Donny Mitchell.

PAM WEST: Pam West.

BRENT PURDUE: Brent Perdue.

LOUISE SAXTON: Louise Saxton.

JEAN VAN OSDAL: Jean Van Osdal.

SANDY OLMANS: Sandy Olmans.

RAMON LIVINGSTON: Ramon Livingston.

ADELE DANALOUSE: Adele Danalouse.

TOM PETRA: Tom Petra.

DENNIE FILER: Dennis Filer.

ROBERT: And ...

KIM JANUARY: Kim January.

JAD: Okay, so here's the question Robert.

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: In that story somewhere there was a guy who had an amazing laugh. Well, they all have amazing laughs, but there was one particular guy who just had like an outrageous laugh.

ROBERT: This one?

[laughter]

JAD: Yeah, that guy. What is it about that kind of laugh that just gets you? What is it about the sound?

ROBERT: The laugh itself.

JAD: Yeah. Well I took that question to somebody who studies acoustics of laughing.

JAD: Hello.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: Hi.

ROBERT: Really. There's somebody that does that?

JAD: Yeah.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: I am Dr. Joanne Bachorowski. I'm an associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University.

JAD: She's from my hometown of Nashville Tennessee.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: I study the sounds that we make.

JAD: She has collected over 30,000 thousand laughs.

JAD: Can we hear some?

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: Yes.

JAD: This is probably the biggest collection in the world. She has analyzed every one on the computer, and played me a few.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: Okay.

JAD: Just little tiny scraps.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: I'll just go ahead and play this for you.

JAD: Yeah.

JAD: Like this one.

[laughter]

JAD: Wait, sorry, sorry. Play it one more time.

[laughter]

JAD: It sounds hysterical, like an alien.

JAD: Every bit of that laugh, she thinks, has a secret evolutionary purpose. She breaks it down for me starting with that first part of the laugh, the little breathy thing. Which, in her business, she calls a glottal whistle.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: She's still got this glottal whistle thing going on here.

JAD: A glottal whistle, what's that again?

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: It's the wheeze.

JAD: Oh.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: Yeah. This is just creating turbulence in her glottis.

JAD: Hmm.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: It's like there's a storm going on down there.

JAD: A lot of people do the wheeze when they laugh.

ROBERT: Yeah, they do.

JAD: I do it.

ROBERT: They do.

JAD: Why? It always happens at the beginning of a laugh. Always at the beginning, which makes her think.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: That sub glottal whistle seems to really say hey pay attention to me, and then you get this wonderful sound that follows.

JAD: The wheeze, she thinks, is like a laugher's gunshot to get you to listen up. Now the sounds that follow they jump around a lot in pitch. Which, again, she thinks has a purpose considering when we talk we keep it right here in the middle. "I'm Linda Worthheimer na, na, na." When we laugh we go up and down. We leap crazy octaves, and land on really, really high notes like this.

[laughter]

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: This sound here, it's like a mouse squeak.

JAD: This note in pitch is actually higher than the highest note in that famously unsingable aria Queen of the Night.

ROBERT: Really?

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: This laugh has got so much going on in it.

JAD: Acoustically extreme, that's what she calls it.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: Acoustical extreme laughter.

JAD: Which means that it's hard for our brains to process. She's seen this on brain scans. We get a little jolt, a little bzz, when we hear a laugh that jumps pitches like that.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: 55 hertz up to 276 hertz in a heartbeat.

JAD: Maybe the pitch jumps, maybe the wheeze, these sounds they're not random she would argue. They have specifically evolved to tweak us.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: Tweak us emotionally. Humans have the ability to produce a sound that makes other people feel good, and so if we can do that then they're more likely to feel positively towards us, and behave positively towards us. Ultimately we want to shape their behavior towards us.

ROBERT: Well what you're saying then is a laugh is a way of the laugher getting into the head of, or under the skin of, the other person.

JAD: Maybe, just maybe. Studies in fact have found that people laugh louder and more extremely around their boss. Over and over Joanne has found that women tend to exaggerate their laughs when they're around men. Men that they don't know.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: With a stranger male she is laughing a lot, and she is producing acoustical extreme laughter.

JAD: You can interpret that in a lot of different ways. She interprets it as a safety thing.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: The idea being that male is inherently threatening so you want to manipulate his emotional state so that he's positively disposed toward her.

JAD: There's another way to sort of interpret that, which is that you're essentially confirming the stereotype of the giggling girl.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: Yeah, the giggling girls have power.

JAD: Don't I know it.

JAD: On that note, let's end the segment with author Barry Sanders, who in his book Sudden Glory writes a lot about this relationship between laughter and power, and laughter as a way to stay safe.

BARRY SANDERS: Yeah.

JAD: Were there moments, early moments that you can remember where you felt that acutely?

BARRY SANDERS: Oh absolutely. You can't see them with me but I can see them in my minds eye.

JAD: Well paint the picture for me.

BARRY SANDERS: Well, you know, there's my father absolutely utterly drunk, and he's turning off the lights and turning on the lights in the house with such power that he's breaking the switches and sparks are flying in the house. Sparks are going around in the house, and my mother is crying. I said, "Wait, it's Fantasia. Everything's going to turn into color."

JAD: Fantasia, I don't get it though, because of the sparks?

BARRY SANDERS: Yeah, because don't you remember in the middle of the movie it just turns into technicolor. There are sparks flying, and there's magic wand going, and Mickey's starting to touch things and they become vibrant and alive.

JAD: Oh.

BARRY SANDERS: That's what the house looked like to me. The house looked like magic mountain. It was the fourth of July. I tried to convert it that way with him. It actually worked. He took a few steps back, looked at the situation, and he cracked up. I mean I've always thought that anger ... In Latin the route for things like anger and anxiety and angina is a word called anxeri which means to be without air. You know, you start to choke up and you tell someone "Hey take a deep breath." Laughter is about breath after all. This is what Aristotle tells us. That's what would happen. He stopped for a second. His shoulders would go down. He would relax. He would move from out of his throat into his belly, and laugh at the situation.

JAD: Radiolab will return in a moment.

[LISTENER: This is Candice currently calling from her bicycle. Radiolab is supported in part by the National Science Foundation, and by Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. Thank you.]

 

-30-

 

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

 

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of programming is the audio record.