Ray Richmond: The brilliant Tommy Smothers was the kind of hero they simply don’t make anymore [WATCH]
I was 10 when I fell in love with Tommy Smothers, who succumbed to cancer on Tuesday at 86. He was my first television hero. He was funny, he was gentle, he was quietly outrageous. And for a pre-teen kid in the 1960s, he was everything I thought a grown-up should be.
Let me back up for a second to note that I was raised in a houseful of liberals bordering on radicals. My parents and siblings were all proudly antiwar when it came to Vietnam. My older sister was the kind who went to love-ins and hung with the hippies, possibly because she was a hippie herself. My mother would bake pot brownies that my sister took to the love-in. Me? I was too young to do much more than get taken along for the ride, but it was made abundantly clear that if I wanted to be a Richmond, I had to be into folk tunes and oppose the war and support the legalization of marijuana.
What does this have to do with Tom Smothers? Well, when he and his brother Dick landed a CBS variety series called “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” in 1967, they became a Trojan horse for The Movement. Mind you, I didn’t know any of this at the time I was watching them. Tom and Dick were just a couple of funny and incredibly clean-cut white dudes in suits who sang folk songs and played string instruments. Tom played guitar and Dick played stand-up bass as both delivered zingers on a range of topics. They were known for a trademark sibling rivalry bit and the accompanying one-liner, “Mom always liked you best!”
But it turns out they were far more than just a couple of zany boys. They were also courageous powerhouses. Watch the clip of the brothers performing a tune on their namesake show above.
It wasn’t until much later that I discovered they had a very young Steve Martin and Rob Reiner on their writing staff. And that they put their beliefs before their own survival. Journey Gunderson, executive director of the National Comedy Center (which on Wednesday announced Tom Smothers’ death), said in a statement, “Tom was a true pioneer who changed the face of television and transformed our culture with ‘The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,’ which satirized politics, combated racism, protested the Vietnam War, and led the way for ‘Saturday Night Live,’ ‘The Daily Show,’ today’s late-night shows, and so much more.”
Indeed, at the height of the protests of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, Tom and his brother were unflinching. They fought the meddling and censorship at CBS and fought the establishment head on. They featured antiwar and anti-religion guests, including blacklisted folk singer Pete Seeger and his antiwar anthem “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.” CBS canceled the segment before it could air, but the brothers brought Seeger back – and this time his performance of the tune aired. CBS founder William S. Paley was not pleased.
It’s difficult to convey just how cool the Smothers Brothers were at the time in the late 1960s and how courageous was their stance in network primetime. Tom and Dick represented the counterculture right smack in the middle of a profound culture war. While the majority of television was zigging, they were proudly zagging. They were also the hippest variety show ever, showcasing new musical artists like Joan Baez, Buffalo Springfield, Mama Cass Elliot, Harry Belafonte, Cream, the Who (who destroyed their instruments onstage), Donovan, the Doors, Janis Ian, Jefferson Airplane, Peter, Paul and Mary, Steppenwolf, and Simon and Garfunkel.
As it became clear to CBS that they had a couple of troublemakers working for them, the network demanded for the 1968-69 season that the shows be delivered 10 days prior to airdate so they could be properly vetted and edited before air. But this too the brothers fought. Finally, Paley had enough and abruptly canceled the show in April 1969, spurring a yearslong court battle and a $31 million breach of contract lawsuit filed by the brothers. They were ultimately awarded $775,000.
But beyond the story of their show’s demise – in hindsight, they bit the hand that fed them one too many times – the Smothers Brothers were geniuses. And Tom Smothers was the brilliant comic mind that drove the act. If you watch clips of the brothers performing on the show, you’ll see that they were gentle goofballs who liked to shake things up. They changed the medium that rejected them by pushing the envelope and refusing to back down when things got a little hot, sacrificing their own fortunes for a future that would benefit others. And both men became iconic for the simple act of standing up for what they believed in and allowing the chips to fall where they may – and fall they did.
It’s hard to imagine there would be an “SNL” if there hadn’t first been a “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” Tom Smothers foresaw a world that was more accepting of different points of view and different forms of satire, and he went all in on it. The result was that he and Dick would never be fully appreciated in their lifetime, though they certainly were by me. A special Emmy awarded to Tom in 2008 – and an induction into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2010 – would provide a measure of consolation. But only a measure.
I wish I’d gotten an opportunity to tell Tommy just how much him and his show had meant to me. It was the only show I ever sneaked out of bed to watch. One time, my dad caught me snooping in the living room when I was supposed to be asleep, and the conversation went something like this:
Dad: “Ray! What are you doing here?”
Me: “Um, watching the Smothers Brothers.”
Dad: “You’re supposed to be sleeping!”
Me: “Yeah, I know. But it’s the Smothers Brothers.”
Dad (stroking his chin, deep in thought): “Well, OK, come join us on the couch. But only this once, and only because it’s the Smothers Brothers.”
I have to believe that Tommy would have been pleased.
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