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:
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 |
I loved that show and waited for it every week. The humor, the wit, the enlightenment. Tom Smothers was especially admirable... and talented.
ReplyDeleteThe enlightenment is probably what got it canceled, Mitchell.
DeleteI was a Smothers Brothers fan when I was a kid. They were certainly groundbreaking. Interesting point about fictional vs non-fictional truth telling. Wearing a mask (fiction) has always allowed greater truth to be spoken. RIP Tommy Smothers.
ReplyDeleteThat's why we'll always need fiction, Debra.
DeleteHello Kirk, I don't think I can add much to your interesting analysis of the career and significance of the Smothers Brothers, but once I found a bargain copy of There Goes The Bride, starring Tom Smothers. The rest of the cast looked promising (Twiggy, Phil Silvers, Jim Backus, etc.), but when I watched it I found it agonizingly boring--sometimes film ideas just don't work out, or perhaps I was just not in the mood for that movie on that day. Incidentally, the Draft Dodger Rag is just the kind of thing that Tom Lehrer would have written.
ReplyDelete--Jim
I haven't seen this film, Jim, but I do know that a promising cast doesn't always make up for an unpromising screenplay or direction.
Delete"Draft Dodger Rag" was written and originally performed by folk singer Phil Ochs (1940-1976), but it received much greater attention when the Smothers Brothers (along with George Segal) did their version.
Here's what Ochs says influenced the song:
"In Vietnam, a 19-year-old Vietcong soldier screams that Americans should leave his country as he is shot by a government firing squad. His American counterpart meanwhile is staying up nights thinking up ways to deceptively destroy his health, mind, or virility to escape two years in a relatively comfortable army. Free enterprise strikes again."
Ochs wrote it in 1965, when escalation of the war in Vietnam still in its early stage. The Smothers sang it on their show in 1967, by which time two years in the army may not have been as relatively comfortable as it once was (though of course no American soldier faced a firing squad--at least not that I'm aware of.)