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A LITTLE OLDER, A
LITTLE WISE GUYS
BY Nick A. Zaino III
Boston Globe, Boston, MA
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When “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” was canceled
in 1969, it took nearly a decade for the Smothers to get back on track. They
were in a awkward position, a clean-cut comedy/folk duo whose show became a
somewhat unlikely lightning rod for the counterculture, lampooning
presidential politics with Pat Paulsen and hosting
rock acts from the Beatles to the Who and antiwar acts like Pete Seeger.
Tom and His younger brother Dick were heros to many, but, as Tom Smothers
points out, they were unemployed heros after getting dumped by CBS for the
show’s politics.
“The ‘70s for us were like the dark ages,” he says, speaking from a hotel in
Niagara Falls. “We were blackballed, we couldn’t work Vegas, no one was
hiring us.”
Smothers says that was a blessing in disguise that allowed the brothers to
work on their act and become better performers. “We started working again in
the ‘80s – totally different,” he says. “We had the skills of theater and we
had the humbleness of being slapped down and taken off the air.”
The Smothers Brothers are perhaps appreciated more now than ever….
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