The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour

That's right, mom had great taste. She liked this show the best, even better than Dicky Smothers. This show is the most brilliant example of political satire in the 1960's. What is amazing is that the network censors at CBS thought the Ameican public was either too stupid to understand it, or would get too upset by the extreme political views in the satire.

Because of this, some episodes of the show were cut to ribbons by network censors. It is a shame, but this show & the way it was censored shows you why bringing back the fairness doctrine would not work. It is that doctrine which the censors used to hit the brothers over the head.

Tom & Dick had honed their act for many years prior to this show starting. What they did with this is assemble a great group of writers & produce a very entertaining show. Saturday Night Live, when it started in the mid 1970's borrowed it's edge from this show.

The show was so popular, that when they spun off Glenn Campbell from it, he became a sensation from the brothers build up. Hee Haw got barnstorming ratings as a summer replacement for this too. Anyone who became associated with this show went on using it's coat tales to help themselves.

The critics, & the censors have been proved wrong a lot. This show was a one of a kind, & while it was ahead of its censors intelligence, the fans & audience of the Smothers Brothers sure appreciated the show & the fact that they were smarter than the censors, because they watched it & enjoyed every show.

Sonny & Cher actually borrowed some of their shows format from the Smothers Brothers. Naturally Sony & Cher were no where near as intelligent as Tommy & Dick Smothers, but they were bright enough to copy some of the edgy political satire on their CBS variety show. I believe Sonny & Cher were a "summer replacement" series for this show one year. Glen Campbell and Hee Haw were 2 others that replaced the Smothers during the summers this show ran.

I remember this show well. I was a fan at first. This show was a humorous and entertaining variety show the first season. Then it became less and less entertaining and humorous as they began wasting a lot of time fighting the network's "standards and practices" about risqué material. The show became basically unwatchable by the last season. Reading other comments, it seems people don't remember that they were always allowed to poke fun at politicians. They skewered LBJ the first two years, and Nixon the last year, and also individual members of Congress. For example, they attacked Senator Pastore personally because he was an outspoken critic of television programming at the time.

It's an example of a good show that lost its vision and became mediocre.

Lemmee say right up front that, yeah, this was a funny show. I rarely if ever missed it. And it was cutting edge too. Really pushed the envelope. But, that said, you young'uns out there that never got to see it, don't buy into the manufactured swill that it was "censored." It wasn't. Tom and Dick made all the political and social commentary points they wanted to make. They just wanted to take it a step further and posture and pose as "victims" being stepped on.

Just remember, we are talking about 1967 and the few years following, and in those days it was easy to be cutting edge. The times they were a changing. And the Smothers Brothers were right there in the middle of it. But they weren't victims and they weren't censored. CBS (yeah, *that* "see b.s.," of the forged phony lying documents to try to steal an election fame. Yep, *those* guys) tried to hold them to the standards then extant of the Tiffany Network, as CBS was once and then known. Their sponsors, the ones paying for it all, demanded it. That was all.

----UPDATE 02/02/2008----

Okay all you voters, you hate my comment. But I stand by it.

I said it was a good show. I said it was a show I rarely missed. My comment is that the allegations of "censorship" are way overblown. This show suffered from failing ratings. They tried to jack up the ratings by claiming that they were being persecuted, but it didn't work. It couldn't be saved. End of story. Use your common sense.

Hard to believe this show isn't spoken about more. It was the defining show of middle American during the late sixties and early seventies. Let no one fool you. It was that popular. This comes from someone who wasn't a hippie or ardent fan, but purely an observer.

They were the "cool". Everything else was cast aside by middle American during this era. Unless you lived by yourself, you were going to watch this show when it came on. The ratings mean nothing. For middle America, with their black and white TVs and makeshift antenna that sometimes got 3 stations, this was revered by the heads of household.

Part music, part comedy, part social statement, it was the culture of the times. Naturally, it wouldn't be the straight man, Dick, but the lovable Tommy who would dictate the order.

They would usually start serious, with a song being played in traditional style, and Dick would continue, but Tommy, you could see it in his eyes, he had an itch to scratch, and he would scratch it.

It would last about 30 seconds before Tommy would start doing something silly with the song, and about 50 seconds before he was doing slapstick. Dick would be the annoyed straight man.

In the era of Richard Nixon, no one, and I mean no one, didn't know about "Pat Paulsen For President". Paulsen was a comic who pretended to run for office, but people were seriously considering him.

The social commentary was just the right level. There was talk of censorship, but the brothers weren't really that outspoken. They stood at about 75% on the left.

There were some "magical" moments on the show. Paul Simon was a guest one time, and Tommy tried to do a duet with him in an Art Garfunkel wig. What followed was priceless.

Then there was "Mr Bojangles", sang by Dick,while a silhouette of Bojangles tap danced. Another priceless moment.

Then there was the famous episode where musical guest Guthrie was lauded with being a great rhymester, and he made the word that would rhyme with "orange" for Tommy.

This was the special show of the lower middle class of America during that era. It was mandatory viewing for many such families. And we weren't disappointed.

The Smothers Brothers were haunted by the censors -- revisionist history is a dangerous thing, children. Do your research with primary sources. It's convenient for many to forget how dire those times were (unless, of course, they LIKED it that way), people blacklisted for opposing the war in Viet Nam on even the mildest basis (ask Eartha Kitt), FBI monitoring of everyone from John Lennon to Groucho Marx...Bill Paley and CBS were masters of censorship and dead thinking...the only reasons the Smothers Brothers lasted as long as they did was because they brought in money, they gave an edge to a prehistoric network that subsisted on Hee Haw and the Beverly Hillbillies. But Washington made its ugly voice heard, and that was that. If the times have changed, I'll be dipped if I can see it. The only reason All In The Family and Maude took off on that network is because of the almighty dollar -- the viewers made their voices heard, and viewer voices translate into dollars. The public has the responsibility and the power to change even the mightiest morons...don't forget that.

Also, never forget, the Nazis only lost ONE war!