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Smothers Brothers' show is still funny and pointed

BY DIANE WERTS | Special to Newsday

October 5, 2008

The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, pictured right to left, Tom & Dick. (Handout)

Tom Smothers got a standing ovation at the recent Emmy Awards when he took the stage to accept a statue he'd been due 40 years for helping write CBS' controversial 1968 winner "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour."

Smothers then got a huge hand for saying, "I dedicate this Emmy to all the people who feel compelled to speak out and who are not afraid to speak truth to power and won't shut up and refuse to be silent" in the face of being told "peace is only attainable through war."

That's pretty much the sentiment that got Tom and Dick Smothers famously fired from their CBS gig in 1969. They were delivering pointed comedy about an unpopular war, about intimidation of dissent, about heated cultural conflict.

Vietnam then, Iraq now - that was Tom's thinking at the Emmys.

"I really felt I couldn't go out there and not say anything," Smothers said in a phone interview soon after, "without negating what we were fired for."

The attitude that got the ax is relived in "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour: Best of Season 3" ($50 list price, Time Life), a new collection of 11 key episodes that isn't just a DVD set but a cultural document. In addition to those final-season shows, the four discs boast a bonus trove of staff and guest interviews. There's even a paper trail of the tug-of-war between CBS and Tom over what the show could and could not say about that contentious political era - reproductions of 100-plus censorship memos, network telegrams, attorneys' letters.

From nightclubs to prime time

And all of this over a variety show hosted by a 30-something brother act who'd made their name in nightclubs as a guitar-and-bass duo whose folk songs digressed into such squabbling as "Mom always liked you best!" Dick played the sensibly smart one, with Tommy the stammery slowpoke. But behind the scenes, Tom took the lead, assembling a savvy team of comedy writers that included stars-to-be Steve Martin (presenter of Smothers' recent Emmy) and Rob Reiner.

"The first season we weren't inclined to be political," Tom recalled in a phone interview from a Pennsylvania gig, one of dozens he and Dick still perform annually. But as the '60s counterculture clashed with the Vietnam-era establishment, as the nation reeled from violent protests and political assassinations, "We just wanted to reflect what was happening in the country a little more and not just make vacuous comedy. We didn't know we were doing anything important. Then they'd say, 'You can't say that.' And we'd think, 'Guess we'd better say it then.'"

Where Carol Burnett's variety show would poke fun at "Gone With the Wind," the Smothers' skits were blowin' in the wind. Their civil-rights-era lampoon of NBC's Western hit "Bonanza" (their Sunday night competition) featured sons of various races (and genders). They satirized religion and war in a three-network universe accustomed to benign parody. They hosted stand-up on touchy subjects - David Steinberg's reinterpretations of the Bible, Jackie Mason's ethnic zingers.

And then there was series writer-performer Pat Paulsen's deadpan 1968 campaign for president - a cutting-edge piece of public performance art that took Paulsen around the country interacting with real politicos.

It was all too cutting for the network's comfort.

"Your show must be entertainment and not an exercise in personal opinions," warned one CBS memo seen on the DVD. "As a network, we cannot ignore our responsibilities to the public to maintain certain standards," said another. Tom Smothers would shoot memos back, asking to see in writing what those "standards" were, never eliciting a clear answer. CBS started excising whole segments (restored on the DVD), and refused to air one program entirely. Smothers stopped providing tapes in advance, leading to a CBS telegram declaring "the agreement between you and us is terminated."

The Smothers Brothers weren't canceled. They were fired.

That context comes courtesy of acclaimed DVD producer Paul Brownstein ("The Twilight Zone"), who also supervised the '90s cable run of vintage Smothers episodes on E!, from which the discs' bonus interviews were drawn. "This DVD is for future generations" to understand the Smothers' impact, Brownstein says, "not for a bunch of old people" to wallow in nostalgia.

A true time capsule

Although the nostalgia is pretty swell, too. The humor mostly holds up 40 years later, and the music is a true time capsule - the "hippie" musical "Hair," Ike and Tina Turner's blazing R&B revue, The Doors with ill-fated lead singer Jim Morrison apparently too stoned to keep time. The shows' one-take miscues and camera wobbles come off engaging in our era of slick video.

But Tom Smothers doesn't see it that way. The shows feel slow to him now, even after DVD trims made for pacing or rights' costs. "I still want to edit those things," he says. Yet ultimately he's more focused on the humor's cultural relevance, especially when he sees parallels in today's politics.

"Just change a few of the names from McNamara to Rumsfeld," he said, elaborating his dismay over current events, noting the Dixie Chicks were demonized for dissent much as the Smothers were. "It's even the same type of war. Here we are 40 years later, and it's kind of Rip Van Winkle. You wake up, and the same things are happening."

Which doesn't mean today's Tom Smothers seeks a commentary platform any more enduring than an Emmycast. "I'm a senior citizen now," he says, though at 71 and 68, he and Dick still perform with their youthful verve. He hopes that in seeing the vintage CBS shows, "people can get their heads back to the '60s," when "there was always the danger of something [pointed] being said. They'd wait. Like 'I know they're gonna say something. I just know it.'"

With this DVD, Smothers passes the torch, inviting today's generation to say something, too.