Tom Smothers, Comedian, Musician and Scourge of CBS Censors, Dies at 86
Tom Smothers, the countercultural comedy icon admired for the 1960s variety program he created and hosted with his younger brother, Dick, and for the tenacity he displayed in frequent clashes with CBS censors, has died. He was 86.
Smothers died Tuesday at his home in Santa Rosa, California, after a battle with cancer, his brother announced in a statement shared with The Hollywood Reporter by the National Comedy Center.
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“Tom was not only the loving older brother that everyone would want in their life, he was a one-of-a-kind creative partner,” Dick, 84, said. “I am forever grateful to have spent a lifetime together with him, on and off stage, for over 60 years. Our relationship was like a good marriage — the longer we were together, the more we loved and respected one another. We were truly blessed.”
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour ran from February 1967 until April 1969, when the pair were fired after 72 episodes (and with their show in the top 10 and already renewed for a fourth season). Up against NBC powerhouse Bonanza at 9 p.m. on Sunday nights, their program succeeded by attracting younger, hipper, more rebellious viewers — while also launching the careers of Steve Martin, Rob Reiner, Bob Einstein, Mason Williams and many others.
Clean-cut and sporting closely cropped hair in an era of Easy Rider and acid trips, the former folk singers and makers of hit music-comedy records did not look like the kind of guys who would be lightning rods for controversy.
“Their antics turned television upside down, blending slapstick humor with political satire, making them comedic heroes who blazed the trail followed today by satirists such as Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Samantha Bee,” Marc Freeman wrote in his introduction to an oral history of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour that was published in November 2017.
“It was the first show to deal with the White House, Congress, war, counterculture, drugs, civil rights,” Dick noted in the piece. “We were the first in and first out. We made comedy for TV relevant and not just escapism. We nailed it.”
Comedian David Steinberg did religious sermons that stirred up controversy. David Frye impersonated President Nixon as a buffoon. Censors killed many skits (including one about censors written by Elaine May) and changed the language in others, though clever references about drugs sometimes got through. Pat Paulsen, one of the show’s regulars, ran for president in 1968 in a spoof of national politics.
CBS also pre-empted one episode with a rerun and yanked performances of Pete Seeger’s anti-Vietnam War song “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” (he was allowed to sing it a year later) and Harry Belafonte’s “Don’t Stop the Carnival,” which featured a video collage of the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
“When we tried something and were told ‘no,’ I wanted to know why,” Tom said. “Why is content controversial, putting in something real, something with meaning? I couldn’t understand why that would be an issue. And when it became one, I became extra stubborn.”
At the time, the Nixon administration had put the FCC on notice to watch for content it deemed inappropriate. After CBS banished the brothers, they filed a lawsuit against the network for breach of contract and copyright infringement. They won a settlement of about $900,000 but never regained their clout.
“Dickie and I always get pissed off when people say we were canceled,” Tom said. “We were fired. Death can come in two ways, natural causes and murder. We were murdered.”
The show won an Emmy for writing after its demise, with Martin, Einstein, Williams, Lorenzo Music and Allan Blye among those sharing the honor. Tom and Dick, meanwhile, were nominated for outstanding variety or musical series but lost out to Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.
At the 2008 Emmys, Martin presented Tom with a special award, and the pair entered the TV Academy Hall of Fame two years later. A 2002 documentary, Smothered, detailed their duel with CBS.
Thomas Bolyn Smothers III was born on Feb. 2, 1937, in a U.S. Army hospital on Governors Island in New York City, where his father was stationed. In 1941, the family moved to the Philippines when his dad was sent there. During World War II, his mother, Ruth, brought Tom, Dick and their younger sister, Sherry, to Southern California. His father died in a Japanese POW camp in 1945.
At Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach, Tom starred as a gymnast with the Sea Hawks and won the state championship in the parallel bars, then competed in the pole vault at San Jose State. (Dick, 21 months younger, was a distance runner.)
After playing in a group call the Casual Quintet, the brothers — Tom on acoustic guitar and Dick on upright bass — formed their own act in 1959. Two years later, they played the famed Purple Onion in San Francisco and were regulars on The New Steve Allen Show.
Their banter before, between and amid songs would become the focus of their act, and their sibling rivalry became a running gag. “Mom always liked you best,” Tom, who played the “dumb” one, often complained to Dick, the straight man. His rattled gaze into the camera was so believable, many thought he was a dope.
“Tommy was an overenthusiastic 5-year-old who thought he had a grasp on things,” Dick said. “He was like Gracie Allen; dumb/smart, smart/dumb. The louder he would protest he was right, the more I knew he was wrong. So I’d try to correct him.”
“When you have power wrapped up in innocence, it’s more palatable,” Martin said. “They were like little boys, but you also had Dickie there to reprimand Tommy when he would make an outrageous statement. It’s like the naughty ventriloquist dummy who can get away with murder as long as the ventriloquist is there to say, ‘You can’t say that.’ It’s the perfect setup for getting a message across.”
In 1962, they released the album The Two Sides of the Smothers Brothers; one side had classic folk tunes, the other comedy tunes, some penned by Paulsen. They were full steam into comedy on their next three albums. Meanwhile, they were appearing on The Danny Thomas Show and Burke’s Law and headlining a concert at the Hollywood Bowl in 1964.
For the 1965-66 season, the Smothers Brothers starred on the CBS sitcom most know as My Brother the Angel, executive produced by Aaron Spelling. Dick played a bachelor publishing executive and Tom, who had been lost at sea, was a dorky apprentice angel.
The comedy was canceled after 32 episodes, and Tom thought it did not take full advantage of the brothers’ abilities. So when they pitched The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour to CBS, they vowed to do things differently.
“I said if I ever get another show, I wanted a real audience and some creative control,” Tom said. “So when we put the show together, CBS said OK. It meant I could hire and fire and argue and discuss material.”
“It was probably the most traumatic time in our country in terms of the shift in the social and political landscape,” Reiner said in the oral history. “Tommy, with his cunning intellect and strong desire for social justice, wanted to tap into that.”
Paulsen joined The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1968 doing “editorials,” and that spawned his candidacy for president as a member of the Straight Talking American Government party … the STAG party. A fundraiser was held in which the charge was 99 cents a plate, and the deadpan comedian received 51 votes in the New Hampshire primary.
Martin’s girlfriend was a dancer on the show, which led to him being hired. Einstein, in addition to writing, played the recurring character of Officer Judy.
In one of the show’s signature musical moments, a special effects explosion after a performance by The Who in 1967 forever damaged Pete Townshend’s hearing and blew Keith Moon off his drumstand — all as Bette Davis stood in the wings. (Also that year, Tom introduced Moby Grape, Otis Redding and Janis Joplin’s Big Brother and the Holding Co. at the landmark Monterey Pop Festival.)
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour at its peak attracted 30 million viewers a week, but it wouldn’t last for long.
“I was so young and naive about what Tommy was going through,” Reiner said. “He protected us while fighting tooth and nail to put things on TV that no one had before. As time goes by and I see what he had to deal with, I was so stupid for thinking he wasn’t pushing for things. Little did I know it ultimately caused our being taken off TV.”
The brothers returned with a 1970 ABC summer show; another program for NBC that lasted 13 episodes in 1975; and, finally, one more variety effort for CBS in 1988-89.
Tom, sometimes with his brother, sometimes not, appeared on such TV shows as Benson, Suddenly Susan, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island and Love, American Style and in such films as Brian De Palma’s Get to Know Your Rabbit (1972), Pandemonium (1982) and Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! (2009).
He also played acoustic guitar on John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Give Peace a Chance” and made an instructional video, The Yo-Yo Man, in 1988.
Tom and Dick parlayed a dinner-theater show into a Broadway run of I Love My Wife in the late 1970s, and on the NBC dramedy Fitz and Bones, Tom played a cameraman and Dick an investigative reporter at a Bay Area TV station. The show lasted five episodes before being canceled in 1981.
On Wednesday, Journey Gunderson, executive director of the National Comedy Center, called Tom “an extraordinary comedic talent who, together with his brother, became the most enduring comedy duo in history, entertaining the world for over six decades — but was a true champion for freedom of speech, harnessing the power of comedy to push boundaries and our political consciousness.
“We were proud to bring Tom and Dick out of retirement and reunite them on stage in 2019 to celebrate their legendary careers, and we are honored to preserve Tom’s remarkable work and legacy here at the National Comedy Center for generations.”
In addition to his brother, survivors include his children, Bo and Riley Rose; grandson Phoenix; and sister-in-law Marie. He was predeceased by his son, Tom, and sister, Sherry (they both died in April).
A private memorial service for family and friends is set to take place in 2024. Donations honoring Tom can be made to the National Comedy Center here.
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