Historical Comment

As I've mentioned previously, when I was at UCLA last week looking at videotape of old TV shows, I was mostly focusing on the work of Mort Sahl. But I also took the opportunity to watch some old Smothers Brothers footage. This was material that preceded their notorious late sixties variety show, mainly appearances they made on the Jack Paar and Steve Allen Shows (they were semi-regulars on the latter around 1961). What I'd really like to see are some episodes of their mid-sixties sitcom, which I have vague memories of watching as a kid (Tommy played an angel who "haunted" his brother Dickie). Anyway, it was evident even in those early clips that theirs was a truly subversive act, turning not just folk music but also prudish notions of prime-time propriety on their head (and without doing anything more than slyly calling attention to the hypocrisy of the phony standards that applied in both cases). Tommy, especially, was brilliant at poking holes in the stupid cliches of show business (and by extension, the society that celebrated them), though I'm sure many who watched failed to catch on to his act and only saw him playing the slow-witted moron (which was great cover for speaking the truth). Anyway, last year Tommy won a belated Emmy for his writing for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and Steve Martin (who also wrote for the show) was the presenter. Here's a clip of that event-- and it appears Tommy's still got it:



If you want to see Steve Martin's introduction, which I can't embed, you can find it here.