Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (Touchstone)

We always knew that Tommy Smothers was the more political of the famous Smothers Brothers comedy duo, but perhaps we never knew just how stridently he fought to maintain it. In 1967, (pre-cable) television was not the place for making snide, clever or obtuse political references on an entertainment variety show. At least so thought the well ensconced executives who ran the Tiffany network, CBS.

WIth guests like Joan Baez, David Steinberg, Pete Seeger and The Who (not to mention in-house talent like Steve Martin, Pat Paulsen, Mason Williams (“Classical Gas”) and Glen Campbell), Tom and Dick Smothers produced a Sunday night, prime-time variety show that was made for the counter-culture times (drugs, anti-war, anti-cop, etc…) The trouble was, CBS didn’t feel like inviting push-back from it’s myriad of constituencies, ranging from big-name sponsors to the eventual Nixon White House. Thus the brothers found themselves in endless battles over content with the network censors such that each show, each skit had to be reviewed by various people in the food-chain to determine it’s appropriateness in the days leading up to each broadcast.

Such machinations ultimately created a war between Tom and the network that, by 1969, ended in the termination of the show altogether.

Television writer, David Bianculli (Teleliteracy: Taking Television Seriously) has painstakingly gone back through every episode, internal memos, court transcripts (they sued CBS for breach of contract) as well as conducting interviews with everyone from the brothers to Lorne Michaels (then a writer for Smothers’ competitor “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In”) to CBS executives, former managers and others, in assembling the ultimate Smothers Brothers story. (Unfortunately, it took nearly fifteen years for Bianculli to finish the book between other projects and a heavy case of self-admitted procrastination.)

While much of the material that was considered ‘too hot for television’ back in 1967-69 would seem undramatically harmless today, it is clear that the brothers were pushing the limits of network television content by 60’s standards. To witness what they went through in combining comedy and politics and the effect it had on the times (the Vietnam War, LBJ, the Beatles, etc.) one cannot help but draw a straight line between their show and the work of modern day cable satirists like Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert and John Stewart, who would not be where they are today without the work of Dick and particularly, Tom Smothers.

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