Tom Smothers Dies At 86, Free To Spend Eternity Taunting Souls Of Kissinger, Nixon, And CBS Execs
Thanks for all the laughs and the free speech stuff too!
Tom Smothers, the older, goofier half of the comedy-music duo the Smothers Brothers, has died of cancer at his home in Santa Rosa, California, at age 86. His comedic partner, comic foil, and two-years-younger brother Dick said in a statement,
“Tom was not only the loving older brother that everyone would want in their life, he was a one-of-a-kind creative partner. Our relationship was like a good marriage — the longer we were together, the more we loved and respected one another. We were truly blessed.”
I was only seven years myself when their show “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” was cancelled in a move of monumental corporate cowardice by CBS, so my early TV comedy show memories have more to do with “Laugh In” and “Sonny and Cher,” but I do remember my very Catholic mother saying that “Laugh In” should have been banned like those terrible Smothers Brothers. CBS replaced them with “Hee Haw,” for Crom’s sake.
Thank goodness, they much later showed up on “Late Night with David Letterman” when I was in college; I remember this clip in which they discuss getting canned by clueless network executives, a favorite theme for Letterman, too.
And for a taste of their early work at its best, here the two discuss pyoomas, cravasses, and the art of boiling that cabbage down.
One more: Pete Seeger’s performance of "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," the song that CBS censored out of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” in 1967 but eventually allowed to be broadcast in 1968. A classic rebuke to all the big fools who insist we must mindlessly push on even when it no longer makes sense.
Finally, because we love you, a gift link to the New York Times obit, which notes that Tom Smothers was always convinced that Richard Nixon himself had ordered CBS to cancel their show, and that certainly sounds like something Nixon might do, doesn’t it?
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In December 1968, when I was 12, I went to Europe with my mother for 3 weeks. We flew from NYC to Rome, via Madrid, on a PanAm 727 which had 3 seats on each side of a center aisle, and my mother and I both had aisle seats in the same row because the flight was packed and they couldn't seat us together.
And I ended up sitting next to Tom Smothers and his manager. He was flying to Paris for Christmas with his family, and apparently they overbooked First Class and so he and his manager sat in Tourist Class, as they called it then, right next to me. I recognized him immediately but I was much too well brought up to say so, and he did not introduce himself. It was a 7-hour flight, and we chatted for most of it. He was absolutely delightful and charming and not at all bored by the conversation of an intelligent 12-yr-old who was deeply into history, archeology and literature. We had a long conversation about where we both were when we heard that JFK had been assassinated. As he was getting ready to get off the plane in Madrid to transfer to a flight to Paris, he asked me if I knew who he was, and I politely said "I watch the "Smothers Brothers" TV show every week and you look exactly like Tom Smothers, so I thought you might be him." He just smiled and shook my hand and left. His manager, who had the window seat, was very nice too, and he let me switch seats with him as we were preparing to land because it was only the 2nd time I had flown in a plane and I wanted to look out the window as we landed.
Halfway through the flight my mother told me that we were NOT going to be meeting my father in Rome, as had been planned, because his job in Zambia had had a crisis and he couldn't get away. She showed me the telegram he sent. She had held off telling me until we were actually on the flight. I was devastated as I hadn't seen him in 6 months, and I struggled to hold back tears. Tom naturally overheard the conversation and he did his best to cheer me up, telling me a lot of silly jokes, some of which I later heard him use on his TV show.
What a nice man.
The Smothers Brothers, Mad Magazine, Carol Burnett, ... No wonder I ended up this way.