R.I.P. Tom Smothers

[Big Magilla]

My memory is a bit hazy, but I remember them more from their comedy/musical albums from the early 1960s than I do from their TV show which aired when I didn't have time for watching much on TV.

Time/Life issued their shows on DVD in 2009 including the highly controversial third season which included the parts that were censored for broadcast in 1969.

[OscarGuy]

Most of my experience of older shows was Nick at Night. I had to verify that's where I had seen them and this is what I found.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ck_at_Nite

It says they ran from May 4, 1986 – March 25, 1989. Those would have been times I'd watched the show, but since I don't remember a lot of them, it was probably at the tail end of that in 1988 or 1989. And since that list shows SCTV as being one of the programs running around the same time, I'm confident in saying this is where I saw them.

[Sonic Youth]

There was only one thing about the Smothers Brothers I was more than a little familiar with. It's the clip from the documentary about The Who, The Kids Are Alright when the band appeared on their show. They tease poor Tom for a few minutes, and then launch into their legendary performance of "My Generation" which concluded with them smashing their instruments and a final onstage explosion. Pete Townshend ended up with permanent hearing loss. Growing up in the 80s, sometimes the rock radio stations would play the entire audio clip, comedy and all.

But that's it for me and the Smothers. There was lots of 60s and 70s pop culture I was exposed to, but the Smothers Brothers were not among them. Counter-cultural icons? Those clean cut middle-aged men I sometimes saw on TV? Oh, they were fun, lightly satirizing the pomposity of inspirational folk music. All I knew of their legendary 60s heyday were what my parents told me. (They were big fans.) Oscar Guy said he caught reruns. I am not aware of any reruns when I was growing up. Even "Laugh-In" was rerun which is how I got to know it, but not the Smothers', at least not where I lived. So, their legend is a mystery to me. I can't even find decent clips on Youtube. I do, however, remember them on some dumb Old Navy ads several years ago, not a trace of counter-culture within them.

[Mister Tee]

Dick was pretty much the straight man, so, naturally, most fans really loved Tommy, for the way he always seemed to steer the act off in crazy directions.

I actually knew (and liked) the duo from the early/mid-60s, when they performed on various programs, prior to getting their own show. But it was in those few years on CBS that they truly made their mark. They were the first prime-time TV show to really channel what was going on in the streets in the late 60s -- Laugh-In had a touch of it, but was rigorously apolitical about its anarchy. The Smothers Brothers dove right in -- critiquing the Johnson and, later, Nixon administrations sharply, both through their comedy and musical guests (there was a notable fight over having Pete Seeger sing Waist Deep in Big Muddy, a barely-concealed metaphor for Vietnam). I was still in high school at the time, and everyone I knew watched the show.

I'd thought they'd both gone into oblivion after CBS booted them off (I recently watched Get to Know Your Rabbit, and it's no mystery why that didn't do Tommy's career much good). But the IMDB shows a whole lot of credits, even if they're things I never much watched.

A while back, when Gene Wilder died, someone I know asked, Why do I feel so much worse about this than I ought to? My answer was, anyone who's made you laugh, you're going to experience their loss more deeply. Tommy Smothers made me laugh.

[danfrank]

I grew up watching The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. I was too young to understand some of the jokes. All I knew is that I adored Tommy Smothers. He was funny in the most disarming way. As an adult I learned to appreciate how much the two of them pushed boundaries and drove the censors crazy until they finally booted them off the air. My understanding is that of the two brothers Tom was the more liberal and the one pushing extra hard on those boundaries. So much for the innocent buffoon character he played.

Rest in Peace, Tommy.

[OscarGuy]

I had thought Dick proceeded him, but it looks like he's still going. I remember some of the Smothers Brothers show, but mostly from re-runs and their still prominence in the early 1980s.

[Sabin]

Just talked to my father about it. Big loss for his generation.

[Big Magilla]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/t ... -1.7069818