Tom Smothers, half of the Smothers Brothers and the co-host of one of the vital socially acutely aware and groundbreaking tv reveals within the historical past of the medium, has died at 86.
The Nationwide Comedy Middle, on behalf of his household, stated in an announcement Wednesday that Smothers died Tuesday at dwelling in Santa Rosa, California, following a most cancers battle.
“Tom was not solely the loving older brother that everybody would need of their life, he was a one-of-a-kind artistic associate. I’m ceaselessly grateful to have spent a lifetime along with him, on and off stage, for over 60 years,” his brother and the duo’s different half, Dick Smothers, stated within the assertion. “Our relationship was like a very good marriage – the longer we had been collectively, the extra we cherished and revered each other. We had been really blessed.”
When “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” debuted on CBS within the fall of 1967 it was an instantaneous hit, to the shock of many who had assumed the community’s expectations had been so low it positioned their present reverse the top-rated “Bonanza.”
However the Smothers Brothers would show a turning level in tv historical past, with its sharp eye for popular culture developments and younger rock stars such because the Who and Buffalo Springfield, and its daring sketches – ridiculing the Institution, railing towards the Vietnam Battle and portraying members of the period’s hippie counterculture as light, fun-loving spirits – discovered an instantaneous viewers with younger child boomers. The present reached No. 16 within the scores in its first season.
It additionally drew the ire of community censors, and after years of battling with the brothers over the present’s artistic content material, the community abruptly canceled this system in 1970, accusing the siblings of failing to submit an episode in time for the censors to evaluation.
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Almost 40 years later, when Smothers was awarded an honorary Emmy for his work on the present, he jokingly thanked the writers he stated had gotten him fired. He additionally confirmed that the years had not dulled his outspokenness.
“It’s onerous for me to remain silent once I preserve listening to that peace is simply attainable by way of battle,” Smothers stated on the 2008 Emmy Awards as his brother sat within the viewers, beaming. He devoted his award to these “who really feel compelled to talk out and aren’t afraid to talk to energy and received’t shut up and refuse to be silenced.”
Through the three years the present was on tv, the brothers continually battled with CBS’s censors and sometimes outraged viewers as nicely, notably when Smothers joked that Easter “is when Jesus comes out of his tomb and if he sees his shadow, he goes again in and we get six extra weeks of winter.” At Christmas, when different present hosts had been sending greatest needs to troopers preventing abroad, Smothers provided his to draft dodgers who had moved to Canada.
In nonetheless one other episode, the brothers returned blacklisted people singer Pete Seeger to tv for the primary time in years. He carried out his tune “Waist Deep within the Massive Muddy,” extensively considered as ridiculing President Lyndon Johnson for the Vietnam Battle. When CBS refused to air the phase, the brothers introduced Seeger again for one more episode and he sang it once more. This time, it made the air.
After the present was canceled, the brothers sued CBS for $31 million and had been awarded $775,000. Their battles with the community had been chronicled within the 2002 documentary “Smothered: The Censorship Struggles of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.”
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Former Related Press journalists John Rogers, Frazier Moore and the late Bob Thomas contributed to this report.
