- [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- Sibling rivalry has been around as long as parents have been having children, and it's not a laughing matter, at least not most of the time.

But a pair of talented brothers, Tom and Dick Smothers, built a comedy career on their sibling rivalry.

During their heyday in the 1960s, their show, "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour", was a top-rated program on television.

They were topical, timely, and often challenged the political and social status quo.

And they also set the stage for the next generation of comedy programs, like "Saturday Night Live".

In December 2023, Tom Smothers died at the age of 86.

As a tribute to these rule-breaking pioneers of comedy, the Suncoast Business Forum is proud to rebroadcast a profile of Dick Smothers, Tom's comedy partner for more than 50 years, which was originally broadcast in 2006, when we were all just a little bit younger.

- [Announcer] Suncoast Business Forum, brought to you by the financial services firm of Raymond James, offering personalized wealth management advice and banking and capital markets expertise, all with a commitment to putting clients' financial well-being first.

More information is available at RaymondJames.com.

(inspiring music) - If you watch TV or listen to radio these days, the airwaves are filled with all sorts of strong political opinions and social commentary.

We actually take it for granted.

But you know, it wasn't that long ago that speaking out might just cost you your job.

In the late 1960s, two brothers, Tom and Dick Smothers, launched a primetime TV show that had its fair share of social and political commentary.

The show was popular and controversial, and in the end, the Smothers brothers were fired because they insisted on speaking their minds.

With us is Dick Smothers to share some of his insights after nearly 50 years in the entertainment and media industry.

Dick, it's great to have you with us.

- Oh, man, that was a great introduction.

Who are those guys?

- Well, we're gonna find out (laughing).

- [Dick] I think you're talking about Click and Clack, The Tappet Brothers, they speak their minds.

- (laughing) You and your brother Tom began in the entertainment industry in 1959.

- Professionally.

Actually, we were in it in '58, late, but we count the first really professional job was the Purple Onion in San Francisco, 1959.

- [Geoffrey] Now, you were 20 years old.

And what you guys did was you combined comedy and you combined folk music, which was something that was rather unique.

And it obviously resonated with your audience, you developed a large fan following.

- Yeah, if your timing's off, nothing else matters.

That's an old phrase, pretty much true.

And it's also where you are.

So we were hot at the right time in history.

Tommy calls it the scene of the accident, the mid-'60s.

But we were in the right city, or the right area, geographical.

We were in San Jose, 50 minutes from San Francisco.

Had the same Smothers Brothers been in Davenport or Moline or some nice place, there was no San Francisco, no tourist business.

No place for us to do what we were doing, we'd just do it in a local place.

So we happened to be in the right place where we got seen.

And then the William Morris thing happened, and then the record contracts happened, and then a move to New York City.

And then happened to be working with Pat Harrington, Jr. at the Blue Angel in New York.

And he was a favorite of Jack Paar.

Jack Paar was the only late night show in 1961, or for a long time.

If you stayed up after 12, I think he came on at, actually came on 11:30 to 1:00, you watched "The Tonight Show".

So if you were a favorite of Jack's and were on it a number of times, you were, you know, you were made.

So Pat Harrington liked us, and without his help, we wouldn't have been on "The Tonight Show".

- Every time we played Spin The Bottle- - I was the bottle.

- He would- (audience laughs) - Let's say Dorothy Loudon or someone else was at the Blue Angel, the headliner, and they had no juice with Jack.

Well, let's say the Smothers Brothers didn't get that national.

We had 13 shows in six months at Jack's.

Well, our timing would've been off.

There's the timing again.

It comes the time that Gary Moore is the last place show, and they want to replace him against "Bonanza".

There wouldn't been any Smothers Brothers, there would've been another thing.

So would we have made it?

Would we have been there at the right moment in history to do whatever we did?

You know, so we take no credit, you know, 'cause we're just like that river of life.

You know, you could be on the shore, you could be a little ahead of the flow or behind the flow.

Some people said, "You're ahead of your time."

And Tommy and I totally disagree with that.

If you're ahead of your time, you're ineffective.

- [Geoffrey] So you're in tune with your time.

- We were on the leading edge of our time.

Or if you're too late, like, I invented the airplane last week, but I was late.

(Dick chuckles) So, you know, that's an obviously gross example.

But mine was better than the Wright brothers.

But it didn't matter.

So we were in the right place at the right time, and we had no clue.

And sometimes the most, the best things in life are happy accidents.

We had no clue it was gonna be a career.

We had no clue that we would be folk satirists.

All I knew is that my brother was a unique individual.

My older brother, he was unique.

He could, he's one of those not savants, he was like a genius without any reason to be good or funny.

He had that last, his dyslexia played a part.

He totally believes if you are afflicted in any way, emotionally, physically, whatever, comics feature that.

Feature your defect, whatever it is, and people will laugh with you.

'Cause think about it, very few comics we laugh at that are more intelligent and superior to us.

We're not comfortable with that.

So, you know, it's sort of neat to disarm people and then come back with a underlying context of what you're doing.

- Mom liked you best!

- No she... All right.

- Mom- - All right, just be quiet one minute.

- Mom liked you best!

- You lower your voice.

- Mom liked you best.

(audience laughs and applauds) - Well, let's talk about your relationship.

Obviously your brother Tom has been your business partner- - Yes, he was.

- For your entire career.

- [Dick] Well, he's been my father.

Our father was killed in World War II.

And mom married a few times, but those were not my fathers.

You know, we were very close, Tommy and I, 22 months apart.

And so, we developed a bond.

You know, when dad goes, or goes for some reason, you know, someone steps in.

It's generally the birth order.

And so we were very tight together.

And, I think, without him, I obviously wouldn't have been here today.

But I think symbiotic, without me and the way we fit...

He always wanted, we started with singing groups and 'cause we're in the musical, very much music and in public schools.

And when we take the arts out of the public schools, we're taking the guts out of humanity.

Let's face it, that's not new news.

But Tommy and I grew in that relationship and we didn't know it was like a rudder, rudderless boat that was making good time.

(laughs) And somehow we didn't crash or sink.

That first year, I'd never spoke in the act.

It was a trio.

And Tommy just would make up stories about folk music.

Thank God for folk music!

What would we've made fun of?

You know, we could make fun of the pretentious young kids with fuzzy cheeks singing, ♪ Hidy ho, we dust the Bings ♪ ♪ Around the world and down the thing ♪ You know, the thing about all these young kids that are in their 20s singing about these earth-shattering historic events.

And so we got our teeth and our style of making fun of style.

Convoluting.

Tom never was a stutterer, he just was dyslexic, so his word process was different.

And somehow he, first of all, he's very, very smart.

Let's get away, I'm the smart one, he's the dumb one.

That's not true, I'm giving away a trade secret here.

He's really bright.

And somehow we just grew together like you do in life.

And we'd had no idea that the records would be there.

We'd had no idea whether there'd be television.

We had no idea that when we got on television, that it would be such a smash.

But it was interesting thing, we did the sitcom in 1965, and what CBS in their infinite wisdom, Aaron Spelling was the exec producer, and we lost Aaron just recently.

He was one of the genius producers.

So they have these folk singers that got their start in nightclubs.

So they said, "We want you, you're really hot and you're selling a lot of records.

We'll give you a sitcom and we'll take away your audience.

Take away your music, take away your instruments, take away your timing, because we'll do it with one camera."

And we had no skills to make a... it's like half-hour movies.

So it wasn't successful, but that was the good news.

It taught us that we wanted, next time, if we got another chance, to have creative control.

This was the big thing with the variety show.

And right after we were canceled, and we did a full year, they needed someone really quick that tested well.

And they said, "Hey, you guys wanna do a variety show?"

We said, "Oh, that's what we do#~ We could do that!"

"And it's against 'Bonanza'."

Uh-oh.

So there was no... CBS had lost six, they failed six times in a row against "Bonanza".

It was really tough.

So there was no expectations; we couldn't lose.

If we didn't make it, nobody did.

If we did, you're heroes.

So the rest is history.

But we came in saying we wanted creative control.

And since they thought we wouldn't be successful, they gave us everything we wanted.

Then they tried to take it back.

And their idea is, this is funny.

The network's idea of being controversial is, it's okay to be controversial, they like that, but just so everybody agrees with you, - Oxymoron, eh?

- Yes (laughing).

- Now, from 1959 to '67, which you're talking about when "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" was launched, you had a rapidly rising career.

As you said, you were on "The Tonight Show", half, 13 times.

And in six months, you had a TV show in '65.

You appeared on lots of shows in-between.

You put out how many records.

- We had 11 albums, and I think our first year we were on national television 35 times.

That's pretty hard to do it today, with all those channels we don't do it yet.

So it was really cooking.

- That, no, that's a rapid ascent.

- Yeah.

- That's rapid fame.

How did you all cope with that?

- It just felt like a great job.

It didn't feel any different.

We were just doing, having fun.

And it seemed like everything we did was the right thing.

But it never, Tommy and I never felt that we were learning so much material at the time.

Every year we put out another album, we were surprised.

We were the new girl in town.

And it just felt like we were having fun doing a career, it didn't feel like we were special.

And I don't think it went to our heads.

'cause we were, until we had the television show, we were never the boss.

You know, at first, your first goal as an entertainer is to wow the audience.

And this was the era of nightclubs.

There's not that era anymore then.

And we thought, "That's all you need to do."

No, the next thing is, once you're the headliner, you have to fill the seats and wow the audience.

And then the television, you get the television period, then you gotta wow the audience, and then you have to wow the audience and the ratings have to be good.

You know, it starts building and getting more and more pressure on you.

And the '60s was happening at the time when we did the variety show.

And because of the innocuous nature of our sitcom, Tommy was lost at sea and came back as a fledgling angel who had to earn his wings.

It was sort of a cute show.

- [Geoffrey] That was your first TV show?

- Yeah, yeah.

So he wanted to be socially relevant, but we didn't know what social relevance was going to be.

The first year of "The Smothers Brothers", we were like shaved heads, almost real butch haircuts, big ears, and real clean cut.

CBS thought we had two clean cut, safe boys.

And then the next year I came back with a mustache and the hair was a little longer and things started happening.

The civil rights and the Vietnam War started building up.

And the third year we got some really radical writers like Rob Reiner.

He made my brother look like a conservative.

And Mason Williams was very liberal.

Steve Martin was on the staff then.

And of course, when you get say 12 writers that are all under 30, you don't have a lot of retention, it's all creation.

There's not a lot of repetitiveness.

Mason Williams says one of his things, first you do it, then you seriously do it, then you do it for fun.

No, first you do it, then you do it for fun, then you seriously do it, then you're done.

And he also said, "Too much retention spoils invention."

And that's a lot of the reason why the youth, they don't know how to take prisoners.

They don't know how to compromise.

They just do it.

And that's what we had in the show with Tommy as a leader.

And the heart and soul of "The Smothers Brothers Show" wasn't to be controversial.

It was the feedback we got from other people saying, "You can't do that."

We said, well, we just ask a question, "Why can't you?

Where does it say and it be code, 'You can't say this'?"

"Well, you can't say 'Get outta the war.'"

I said, "Well, that we thought that's government policy, to end the war and bring the troops home."

So that's all we're saying, 'Hey, let's get out of there.'"

And we'd get pressures and things like that.

Pete Seeger was a famous thing.

He was a guest, and we always let the guest pick their material.

And he wanted to do a song called "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy But the Big Fool Said to Push-On."

And it was a true event of a leader of a patrol and training in the Marine.

And they said, we're gonna afford this river and training.

And it was the wrong place.

But he said, keep pushing on and they drowned, a lot of 'em drowned.

And of course the relevance is the world situation at any given time.

The song is appropriate in any era.

And so they said, "You can't do it."

And we said, "Why not?"

"Because we just, we don't think you should."

So he did it anyway and they cut it out and later on he came back and he got to do it.

They would, they cut a bit on censorship.

Why, what's wrong with censorship?

It's a bit, Elaine May wrote on censorship.

And they said, "Oh, it's not appropriate."

Then one time Belafonte did a medley of Calypso tunes, 10-minutes worth.

And all we did was take footage from the news media of the '68 National Convention of Democrats in Chicago.

A lot of violence, so they had him in and out and Mama look a boo boo, they shut your mouth, go eclipse of things.

And they show violence and Mayor Daley and all these people making fools of themselves.

And they said, "Nah, you can't do that," so they cut that totally out.

So it started after a while just to be a give and take.

We wanted this and they just said no.

It's like, just because.

And so tho then, then every time they did that, Tommy ran to the press.

- Right and it got a lot of coverage.

The war between the Smothers brothers and the CBS censors became news that was widely circulated around the country.

- Yeah, so thinking back, yes it was, but thinking back from the perspective of this time, it wasn't, it wasn't all about us, but what it was is that that little thing happened to let another little thing happen.

And that's what happens in broadcasting all the way up from, say Edward R. Murrow you know, the first really true correspondent guy, really important person fought for his rights.

Well, we fought for our rights.

And then the next season, of course TV copies, so Rowan & Martin came on and Carol Burnett, but then Norman Lear, "All in the Family".

You couldn't do a show like "All in the Family" today, it's not PC.

So there's been, things have not opened up on an upward graph.

There's a lot of control now where there didn't used to be.

But I think that if you're successful in the business, you have very talented people, the writers.

And you could go back to any successful variety show, from Milton Berle on, the writers.

Then they came up, some of them became producers and became famous and this and that.

And so you're sort of embroidering a projection of how things move along and taste and what's acceptable.

Lenny Bruce could do a show today and nobody would bat an eye.

But if Lenny Bruce was here today, he would be still ahead of everybody.

So I think the importance of our show was not us and not how talented or untalented we were.

It's where we were, where our heads were at, the people we got to work for us, and the stuff we did just let other things happen a little bit.

And then they let other things happen.

- Your careers were, at that point, really meteoric.

You had primetime Sunday night in America against Bonanza.

And, in many cases, you won the ratings war.

- Well sometimes we were at, that was such a big hour of viewing, you could have two shows at the same time in the Top 10.

So that's where it was.

- But you took a stand against, it was a David and Goliath situation.

- Yeah.

- You took on the network, you took on the White House simultaneously.

- Yeah, that was, we had no knowledge, we were ignorant.

We didn't know, we didn't know what we were doing.

And then they, when they fired us, they really, we won the battle of that.

But sort of we lost the war in certain other areas.

But it really put a, it just stopped us like that.

'Cause we had production, we owned the time slot.

Tommy and me produced the "Glen Campbell Show" and that became a hit.

And we had this production entity going.

And when they fired us, they cut it all out.

And that maybe saved our lives, who knows.

You know, who knows if we would've been, if they wouldn't have done that, where we would've gone, I don't know.

- Well, let's talk about where you went post "Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour", which was at the peak of popularity in popular media.

The two of you went on and continued your career.

It wasn't easy, obviously, because you had lost your access to network and to production and so forth, but still persisted.

- Yeah, and that's, and that was really hard on Tommy, since he was really the leader and the instigator of everything.

To lose your position, it gets you.

They'll give you, for a while we were sort of semi-blacklisted and we got some other shows, but the timing was all off.

When CBS, we came back 20 years later, we had a great reunion show and it was just loved universally.

So they gave us 20 specials, a few here, a few here, and never got anything going.

They changed the time slot and stuff.

But we thought our, actually our shows in the late '80s were terrific shows, much better shows.

We had to get going in Las Vegas.

Eventually we had to start as an opening act to someone else.

I think we opened, when we came back to Vegas, Lola Falana was the headliner at the Aladdin.

And we said, we don't care, we wanna work.

We had no ego on this.

We said, if we do a good job, we'll be headliner.

So we've been headliners ever since.

But we lost that, if you're going for being the A, the big superstar, came sort of close to becoming that, where you don't have to do anything else, you're just the superstar, and there's certain superstars out there.

It wasn't for us, but we're just, we're working people.

We do 60, 80 concerts a year and sometimes more.

We have a nice following.

Our show is current.

It probably has more substance in it now, our live show, politically, morally, ethically, the whole thing, it's a better show than it was way back then.

And so we started having to earn a living instead of having everything thrown at us.

It got a little bit tougher.

- How has your relationship with your brother evolved over the 48 years you've been business partners?

- Yeah, it's like a, like an old marriage because we are a couple.

Tommy said it's like an old marriage, a lot of fighting, no sex.

And I said, and we like it that way (laughing).

But we were bickering.

We had, early on we had fights, physical fights in front of people.

'Cause, you know, when you get that passion going in a family thing, you don't care who watches.

And generally, it was me being resentful of Tommy telling me what to do 'cause he's the older brother and him being resentful is I, because I didn't like him telling me what to do, even if it was good advice, I wouldn't listen to it.

What's new here?

So eventually, about 10, 12 years ago, I took us, I suggested couples counseling and it was called Landmark Education.

They took over Est and they did organizations and couples and whatever.

So this guy came over to Tommy's vineyard up there and my wife and Tommy's wife, we spent three days together.

And it's like a third party and we came out of that listening to each other, accepting each other's advice because we found out we meant it in a good way not to be controlling.

And so the level of our performance went up.

We had to work at a relationship, to answer your question, we had to work at it.

It's like a marriage.

You could walk away too early and think you did the right thing.

But if you really, for the right reasons, maintain that relationship, down the road, you're so thankful that you did.

So we could have quit without anger back then, or I said, well, should we just do it some more and see where we could go with it?

And I'm really happy we did.

And we get along much, much better now than we used to.

But even then we cared for each other a lot.

Tommy and I do not like hanging out together.

We have different points of view, we have different friends, we're attracted to different people.

Anything I think is interesting he finds extremely boring and trivial.

And I find him a fire-breathing, super left-wing liberal that his head's in the clouds and he's so non-productive.

And he's so hard, hard.

He's like a hard-nose right-wing liberal.

Like, "Don't tell me anything else, this is what I believe."

But that's his right.

And my opinion of that is probably wrong.

It's probably filtered by, I'm like, I'm a middle child.

I believe both sides.

Oh yeah, that's what, oh yeah.

Oh yeah, you're right-wing.

You've gotta get rid of all these.

Yeah, we close the borders, yep, yep.

No, we gotta love the people.

Gotta just, yeah.

You know, I say, you know, I'm a flip-flopper.

I guess I'm like, Kerry, you know, give me some information.

But what I have learned in my life is that if you block out any new information, you block out any intelligent thought.

And I like to listen.

And you know how they judge divers and gymnasts, you know, they and skaters.

You throw out the highest and throw out the lowest.

Well, throw out the right wing, throw out the left wing, let 'em talk all they want, but then we get down to it, you're gonna be disqualified for participating.

Get get, because unfortunately life has gotta be in the middle road somewhere.

- You mentioned your winery.

You and your brother started a winery together.

- No, I started it.

- You started it?

- Yeah.

- Well, and we've got about a couple minutes left.

Let's talk about some of the other business ventures you've been involved in.

- I started it, but he's got it now.

- I see.

- And he's doing a, he lives in Sonoma and he has a great cabernet sauvignon vineyard called Remick Ridge, and that's his lifestyle.

He lives in the middle of this vineyard, it's in the hills of Sonoma, and it's just beautiful.

And he's got a tasting room with four of the wineries.

I got him into golf a long time ago.

I said, you need a hobby.

So I've given him the wine as a life just 'cause it's because I'm passionate about doing new things and I was into golf.

He took it up, he gave me a life and I gave him back some stuff.

We, you know, we love each other to do things on our own and to enjoy life and we're never jealous.

If he gets a, if he had a film career, I'd say go for it.

If I got something- - You've also been a race car driver, am I right?

- Yeah and nothing's broken.

My feet are fine.

My head's never been cracked.

Raced Sebring four times and from the two 12 hours and then a Formula 5000 race and then some other race.

I have no idea what it was (laughing).

It's too long ago, I don't wanna race anymore.

This life and the success of Smothers Brothers has enabled me to grow as a person.

And very briefly, I can't get into it, I've been in a 12-step recovery program for about 13 years.

It changed my life.

And when you start giving back and start growing...

I think if we don't have spiritual growth in our life, then we don't have anything at all.

And that's not new news.

My brother says, "I have a great grasp of the obvious, except when it's important."

- And the Smothers Brothers will go on.

- You got that right.

We're gonna go on at least to our 50th year, which is in a couple years.

And we're gonna be at the Ruth Eckerd Hall in November, I think, and the Van Wezel down in November 24th.

And we're doing a little Florida swing and we love performing.

And I think our show is relevant.

And what's really cool is when the people come to see us, they bring us the gift, not us giving them the gift.

I'm having so much fun just being alive and doing it.

- Would you encourage others to pursue entertainment as a career?

I would pursue them to follow and pursue their passion, whatever that is.

Just so it's a positive passion.

You know, don't go mugging little old ladies if you wanna collect purses, you know.

But do something good and don't be afraid to do that.

But also don't turn your back on reality.

You know, have something in your back pocket to do.

But live your life like... Steven, was it Covey?

You know, follow that north and the things that vibrate when you come alive about something in life that you really like talking about, maybe that's what you should do.

- Well, Dick, it's been great having you a guest.

I'm afraid we're out of time.

- Yeah I, geez, I'm sorry about that.

- Yeah.

(Dick laughing) - But thanks for joining us.

- Thank you.

- And thank you for joining us for the Suncoast Business Forum.

(gentle music) (announcement music)