did anyone happen to catch "Smothered" last night on Bravo? It's about the Smothers Bros being cancelled and battling with the censors...and more. It was a great show
'Smothered' revisits battle
December 3, 2002
BY MIKE DUFFY
FREE PRESS TV WRITER
Tom and Dick Smothers sure didn't seem like radical merry pranksters.
'Smothered'
FOUR STARS
out of four stars
8 p.m. Wednesday
Bravo
And until "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" premiered on CBS in February 1967, they were primarily viewed as a couple of genial, middle-of-the-road entertainers who generated laughs with the dizzy sibling spats of their folk singing comedy act.
"Mom always liked you best," was the grumpy refrain of screwloose Tommy.
But the times -- and the Smothers Brothers -- were changing, as told in "Smothered," a special at 8 tonight on Bravo.
While "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" immediately took off as a surprise ratings success for CBS at 9 p.m. Sundays, connecting instantly with a younger audience, it also broke new ground with a brash, wickedly irreverent brand of political satire.
Until then, NBC's family Western series "Bonanza" had ruled Sunday nights since the late 1950s.
But a rambunctious young writing staff that included Rob Reiner and Steve Martin fired up the freewheeling, subversive wit of "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" and struck a countercultural chord with tart topical humor about the Vietnam War, religion, government, gun control, drugs and rock 'n' roll.
Suddenly, Ben Cartwright and his sons on the Ponderosa seemed pretty passe.
Even with the Smothers Brothers' breakout success, it didn't take long for CBS executives to start getting nervous. And pretty soon the censorship battle was on as the network tried to tame the show's edgy, anti-establishment content.
Networks loathe controversy.
And the Smothers Brothers refused to compromise.
End result: After a tumultuous, highly rated 3-year run, CBS abruptly pulled the plug on the series in 1969.
"The Smothers Brothers sacrificed their show because they wouldn't sacrifice their principles," says comic Bill Maher in "Smothered," the excellent, 2-hour retrospective that chronicles a fascinating chapter in television history.
The pioneering comedy-variety series was "appointment television before the phrase was invented," says New York Daily News TV critic David Bianculli. It also helped prime pop culture for a whole new generation of comic performers and anything goes irreverence in National Lampoon magazine and on "Saturday Night Live" in the 1970s.
Maureen Muldaur, the Michigan native who wrote, directed and produced "Smothered," was a teenager growing up on Detroit's east side the first time she saw "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" in 1967.
"It was fresh and it was new and it was funny," recalls Muldaur, who now lives in Los Angeles. "It was the first TV show that I really related to . . . It spoke to me."
It spoke to millions of young Americans.
Pat Paulsen, who delivered deadpan hilarious editorial and political commentaries on the program, launched a presidential campaign on the air in 1968. Such counterculture musical icons as Joan Baez, the Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield and Pete Seeger performed on the show, with Seeger causing a ruckus by singing the antiwar song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy."
And Leigh French, who played cockeyed hippie chick Goldie O'Keefe, did a regular segment called "Tea with Goldie" that was filled with sly comical references to the giggly joys of marijuana.
None of the middle-age suits at CBS, including the censors in the network's standards and practices department, seemed to pick up on Goldie's wacky weed comments. But they kept bashing away at the sharp political and religious satire.
"Smothered" contains a treasure trove of memorable old clips from "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour," including one or two that were censored and never aired. Muldaur had the complete co-operation of Tom and Dick Smothers, who won a breach of contract suit against CBS in the early '70s.
Mike Dann and Perry Lafferty, two key CBS programming executives at the time, are extensively interviewed and offer essential network perspective on the turmoil surrounding the series.
"Smothered" is evenhanded in acknowledging that Tom Smothers also created some of the show's problems by refusing to budge even an inch. He had a habit of jousting with the network machine by failing to submit finished episodes in time for review by network executives.
"Tom has real mixed feelings about the show," says Muldaur. "He hasn't quite known how to process what he did."
Singer and political activist Harry Belafonte, who performed on the series, encouraged Tom Smothers to be wise in his censorship war with CBS.
"Harry told me, 'Don't lose your platform, don't lose your platform.' And I lost my platform," Tom Smothers ruefully told Muldaur.
"Dick was pretty much, 'Tell me what to do, where to stand, what to say,' " says Muldaur. "Tom was really the driving force on the show. He just wouldn't compromise. It's kind of like a Greek tragedy.
"Tom made his mark. He was proven right. But you lose a little something," says Muldaur. "There's really not a lot of political satire on TV today. And that's sad."
here's more..a DVD!
Smothered
Directed by Maureen Muldaur
An incredible slice of America’s media and pop-culture history, Smothered tells the story of the censorship struggles of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, broadcast on CBS from 1967 until it was prematurely struck from the airwaves in 1969. As beloved hosts of the infamously funny variety show, Tom and Dick Smothers pioneered a turning point in American television history, using friendly folk music and wholesome charm to bring a new and incendiary brand of political commentary to the American public. In the era of such escapist entertainment as Bewitched, Bonanza, and The Beverly Hillbillies, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour broke all the rules and captured our nation’s attention, paving the way for such hit television shows as Saturday Night Live and Late Night with David Letterman. Chock full of hilarious, outrageous, and rarely seen clips from The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Smothered features interviews and appearances by a who's who of celebrity writers, performers, and network honchos, including Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, Pete Seeger, Rob Reiner, and the Smothers Brothers themselves. Together, they tell the real story of how this groundbreaking television program became a hot bed of controversy, where media, politics, and two funny guys clashed together—igniting laughter and social consciousness across a nation.
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