You're not going to believe this. The FIRST Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award, in 1968

[MADem]

64. Funny in some ways...but that whole construct was sexist as hell. Ugly. Doesn't stand the test of

time at all.

Judy Carne didn't have such sanguine memories of the experience. She used to be beaten on the show every time someone said "Sock it to me."

She didn't like it very much. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/08/the-tragic-tale-of-judy-carne-sock-it-to-me-girl-of-laugh-in-dead-at-76/

The joke now seems as cruel — and as difficult to explain to millennials — as it seemed hilarious in the 1960s: A young, lithe woman, often in a miniskirt or less, stands onstage. She announces that it’s “sock-it-to-me time.” Then, she is hit with a bucket of water, or dropped through the floor, or otherwise clobbered in some form or fashion. Sure, Richard Nixon famously said the words — but he didn’t have his clothes ripped off.

“Sock it to me”: Television runs on catchphrases — consider the instant memories sparked by “De plane!” or “What you talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” — but none seem as strange four decades later as the four words routinely uttered by actress Judy Carne on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.” And now that Carne, who died at 76 last week reportedly of pneumonia, is gone, her derailed career and tragic life can have no other epitaph.

Born Joyce Audrey Botterill to a grocery-store owner in England in 1939, Carne’s training at the Bush Davies Theatrical School for Girls led to a spate of appearances on British television, as Variety reported. Her resume stateside was bolstered by appearances on such ’60s staples such as “Gidget,” “I Dream of Jeannie” and “The Patty Duke Show,” culminating in a starring role on the little-remembered “Love on a Rooftop,” (1966) which was canceled after one season.

Then, it was sock-it-to-me time: “Laugh-In” hit the airwaves in 1968. A representative exchange with the smirking Dan Rowan and Dick Martin.

Carne: All right, fellas. It’s about that time. Let me have it. I’m ready.

Martin: C’mon, Judy, open your eyes. There’s no sock it to me anymore!

Carne: There isn’t? You wouldn’t lead me on, would you?

Rowan: Why, of course not. Just once, fellas, let’s spare our blameless moppet from these unending indignities to which, Judy, I must say you have displayed amazing fortitude and endurance. You have held in there no matter what they’ve done to you. You’ve taken it all, never a whimper.

Carne: Dan, that’s really sweet of you. But the audience is getting bored.

(Carne is hit by a board.)

Carne: Well, at least it wasn’t water.

(Carne is hit with a bucket of water.)

Carne: I get it all now. It was all just a trap, wasn’t it?

(Carne is dropped through the floor.)

After a few decades, this didn’t seem funny anymore......