SMOTHERED: THE CENSORSHIP STRUGGLES OF THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS COMEDY HOUR. Tomorrow night at 8, Bravo 3 1-2 stars
If you don’t have any idea who the Smothers Brothers are, or why their CBS variety show from the 1960s and their battles for creative freedom deserve to be remembered, tune in to Bravo tomorrow night at 8.
In very clear and entertaining fashion, writer-producer-director Maureen Muldaur explains it all for you.
“Smothered: The Censorship Struggles of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” is the story of folk/comedy duo Tom and Dick Smothers, who were approached by CBS partway through the 1966-67 TV season to concoct a quick replacement for a ratings failure. The time being offered was opposite NBC’s “Bonanza,” such a juggernaut that it was like being offered a slot opposite “Seinfeld” at its zenith.
The Smothers Brothers, before saying yes, asked for creative control. CBS, in dire need of a midseason replacement on Sunday nights, agreed.
Almost immediately upon its launch in 1967, “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” attracted a large, generally untapped audience of young viewers. It became an instant hit, appealing to mainstream audiences as well as a new, increasingly political set of young people. By season’s end, the Smothers had a smash hit and a prime-time platform.
From then on, they used comedy to explore race relations, presidential campaigns and America’s war policies, to champion new rock acts and to hit hard such generation-gap topics as drugs, draft evasion and political dissent. Fights with CBS censors were frequent and heated.
Eventually, the Smothers Brothers were fired for breach of contract. Years later, they were vindicated in court.
But their show was gone, canceled in its prime.
“Smothered” details and bemoans that loss, with help from clips from the show and an array of fresh interviews with people who performed on or wrote for the series over its three-year run. Mason Williams, Rob Reiner, David Steinberg, Leigh French, Pete Seeger, Harry Belafonte and the brothers themselves take part, as do several former CBS executives and others, including historian David Halberstam, who offers invaluable perspective on the ’60s.
(Full disclosure is in order here. If I sound more than a little passionate about this particular program and topic, it’s because I’ve spent the last few years working on a book about it. In that capacity, I’m among those interviewed on-camera for “Smothered.
” I’m impressed by the documentary not because of that, but in spite of it.)
“The Smothers Brothers,” Bill Maher says, “sacrificed their show because they wouldn’t sacrifice their principles.
”
They became increasingly vocal and defiant, to the point where one of the musical numbers at the start of their third and final season included these lyrics:
“CBS would like to give us notice / And some of you don’t like the things we say / But we’re still here.
”
They weren’t there much longer. “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” made it possible for “Saturday Night Live” to take the battle to late-night TV – but in prime time, even decades later, there’s nothing like it.
And that’s a shame.
E-mail: davidbianculli@comcast.
net
