Vital Viewing (Siblings Soapbox Edition)

 

Dickie and Tommy Smothers

A couple of weeks ago I did a post on writer/producer Norman Lear, lauding him for making TV comedy safe for sociopolitical content. However, a death in the news now has reminded me that there was a predecessor, The Smother Brothers Comedy Hour, a show that, if it couldn't for itself make TV comedy safe for sociopolitical content, may have at least secured a beachhead for Lear's later, more successful assault on network Standards and Practices.

Inspired by The Kingson Trio and the folk music revival it helped launch starting in the late 1950s, brothers Tom and Dick Smothers decided to take part in the revival themselves. With Tommy on guitar and Dickie on base, the duo at first just performed straight-ahead folk. At some point in time, Tommy introduced a song by cracking a joke, and Dickie good-naturedly rebuked him for cracking the joke. Though both were decent musicians, they soon found audiences seemed to prefer that comedic rapport to the actual songs being played. The brothers weren't about to disappoint them, Dickie assuming the role of a straight man who couldn't get a folk ditty in edgewise thanks to his lamebrained brother's obstinance. In a few short years as the '50s gave way to the '60s, not only were there increased night club and concert bookings for the duo, but several Top-40 comedy albums as well, along with television guest shots on shows hosted by Steve Allen, Jack Paar, and Judy Garland:

In 1964 the brothers got their own situation comedy, called simply The Smothers Brothers Show. The concept was less than simple as Tom played an angel apprentice trying to earn his wings with the reluctant help of his mortal brother, Dick. It lasted just a single season. CBS wasn't about to give up on them. In 1967 the brothers were offered their own comedy-variety hour. This time around Tommy demanded something that he didn't have with the earlier series: creative control. Scheduled opposite the highly rated western Bonanza, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour didn't start out as anything radical. Like most variety shows of that era it was a mixture of comedy sketches and music, with the type of guest stars such as Jimmy Durante and Jack Benny who seemed to go from variety show to variety show. Kate Smith was once a musical guest. Tommy, though, wanted the show to have more of a countercultural bent. Rock acts like The Who and the Jefferson Airplane were booked. The sketches became edgier, much more topical. Pat Paulson, a writer-performer for the show ran for President. There were references to the Vietnam War and race relations. Drug humor made its debut on American television. Viewers, particularly college-aged viewers, began to abandon the seemingly safe environs of Bonanza (though that series also dealt with social ills such as racism, albeit through an 19th century lens) for the wilder-than-Wild West Smothers:  

 

By the end of their first season, the Smothers Brothers were winning the hour. It wasn't a permanent victory, as Bonanza eventually regained its former footing. Nevertheless, by some math that's beyond my comprehension, both shows remained in the Top Ten for nearly the rest of the decade. No doubt some people were put off by the rabble-rousing Smothers and that necessitated a return to the Ponderosa. Allegedly both the Johnson and Nixon Administrations were displeased with the young upstarts. Affiliates sometimes preempted the Smothers or deleted certain sketches when things got too heated. Soon, CBS itself started chopping away, cutting a lyric from Pete Seeger's performance of "Waist Deep in Big Muddy", an allegorical song about the Vietnam War; and delating a segment which had Harry Belafonte singing against a backdrop of footage of the riots that surrounded the 1969 Democratic Convention in Chicago (footage that had come from its own news division, though with Walter Conkrite rather than Belafonte in the foreground.) An entire show that featured Joan Baez paying tribute to her then-husband David Harris who had been jailed for refusing to submit to the draft was replaced with a rerun. The Smothers, particularly Tommy Smothers, was outraged by all this censorship. He refused to submit the finished shows to the network before being aired. Of course, at the end of the day--the day being April 4, 1969--it was the network that had, and that made, the final refusal:

The Smothers were down but not particularly out. All this took place before I entered the third grade, yet they were still a familiar presence on TV while I was growing up, guesting on other people's shows and on commercials and whatnot. In 1988, even CBS, however temporarily, welcomed them back into the fold:

One thing that's always puzzled me. A little under two years separate the cancellation of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and the debut of All in the Family in 1971. Both shows were on CBS, with no major changes in network brass in that time. If anything, AITF broke even more taboos, was even more controversial, than the Smothers. According to his autobiography, Norman Lear had the same run-ins with the bigwigs from CBS as did the Smothers. Yet Lear's show ran three times longer (four times if you add Archie Bunker's Place into the mix) than the Smothers. How did he succeed where the brothers failed? I can't locate it on YouTube, but I once saw an interview where Tommy Smothers was asked that very question. His theory was that a nonfictional Carrol O'Connor portrayed a fictional Archie Bunker. O'Connor wasn't speaking for himself, so everyone accepted it as make-believe. Whereas the nonfictional Tommy and Dickie Smothers portrayed a nonfictional Tommy and Dickie Smothers. Even that involved a good deal of make-believe--the real Tommy wasn't anything approaching lamebrained--but not when it came to politics. Speaking for oneself always involves a certain amount of risk. 

1937-2023