Maude Was (Mostly) Recorded on Tape Before a Live Audience

Sometimes, I like to delight you with a complete, brilliantly-researched tale about one of my favourite comedy shows. Other times, all I can do is point to something weird and shrug. Guess what today’s post is? Take a look at this clip from Maude, “Maude’s Good Deed”, broadcast by CBS on the 6th March 1973. What the bloody hell happens 22 seconds into that clip? The studio audience disappears, and Bea Arthur and Esther Rolle are saying their lines to no reaction whatsoever. Note the incredibly awkward pause after Rolle’s line “I wish it was, I could turn it off”, as though she’s waiting for a laugh which never comes. The audience then returns 48 seconds in, with the tail end of a reaction from the previous line. Thoroughly bizarre. What’s going on? We can at least get a little insight from the following interview with director Hal Cooper. This was published in the Hawaii Tribune-Herald on the 15th April 1973, under the misleading title “Comedy producer tells how”.1 From it, we get a…