Posted
on April 4, 2015
The
Smothers Brothers pushed the boundaries of TV, and they got canceled.
Today,
we now can enjoy edgy political satire on television – and of
course on the internet – but back in the 1960s, it was hard to find
such content anywhere. The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was
pretty much the only place I heard anti-war stuff in my own living
room. Criticism of the government and the President of the U.S. was
rarely heard on TV, in those days, except on The Smothers
Brothers.
The
CBS network decided that the Smothers Brothers would have to deliver
their shows finished and ready to air TEN DAYS before air time so the
censors could edit controversial stuff out of the shows. The censors
cut out a song sung by Harry Belafonte against the backdrop of
protests and rioting during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
They took out lines of satire. They cut a satirical David Steinberg
sermon about Moses. They ran a re-run, rather than a show – I
guess, in that case, the censors had problems with the entire hour!
Some
local station cut and edited and pruned, too.
In
March of 1969, the show was picked up for another season. But then,
suddenly, just a few weeks later (on this date in 1969) the network
CEO canceled the show! The Smothers Brothers successfully sued for
breach of contract – but that didn't bring their show back on the
air. The Smothers Brothers won an Emmy Award for best writing – but
that didn't bring their show back on the air, either.
I was so
disappointed. It was my favorite show, at the time.
In
recent years, of course, we have enjoyed almost-daily fake-news shows
bringing us very funny and biting political commentary and satire –
I'm speaking, of course, of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
and The Colbert Report. I think that Stewart and Colbert have
been national treasures, and I am (or will be) sad to see their
particular shows end...but something new, something good, will surely
rise again!
In
addition to politics...
The
Smothers Brothers did their act, including much of their political
commentary, while making music and singing. But they also brought to
television audiences some of the music that other shows never
featured – music young people like me (at the time!) loved. Music
by everyone from Cream and The Doors to Joan Baez and Janis Ian,
Simon Garfunkel to Jefferson Airplane.
One
time, The Who was performing. As usual with The Who, at the end of
the song, the guitarist Pete Townshend destroyed his guitar and an
amp. And there were mild explosives for pyrotechnics. Unfortunately,
the small charge of explosives kept in the bass drum didn't go off
during rehearsals. Not knowing that, a stage hand added another
before the taping of the actual show. And not knowing that the first
charge hadn't gone off OR that the stage hand had already restocked
the drum, drummer Keith Moon added another charge.So...now there were THREE charges in the drum, instead of just one. The resulting explosion was so intense that a piece of shrapnel flew off into Moon's arm, and Townshend's hair was singed and his hearing was possibly partially impaired.
The moral of the story is, always check your pyrotechnics several times, rather than restocking explosives several times!
If
you want to see this...uh...explosive performance, the magic of
YouTube can grant that wish.
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