Mom Always Liked You Best!

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For those who can recall, exactly fifty years ago today (Sunday, February 5, 1967), The Smothers Comedy Brothers Hour (no, that's not a transposition error) premiered on CBS, right after The Ed Sullivan Show, and directly opposite Bonanza on NBC (which people predicted would doom Tom and Dick in the Nielsen ratings).

I'll always remember their folk-singing comedy routines, Pat Paulsen's editorials, and his 1968 run for president as the candidate of the Straight Talk About Government (STAG) Party.

[Tom]

Arguably the best TV show ever. :ThmbUp:

[Jess Hawsen Arown]

Check out the video clips on the page.

https://www.discogs.com/Smothers-Brothers-The-Smothers-Comedy-Brothers-Hour/master/292815

[boxcar]

Arguably the best TV show ever. :ThmbUp:

And back in an era when there were actually quality shows on the air worth watching. For sure, the Brothers were one of those shows.

[ElKabong]

They had some great bands on, live. I still play on a daily basis, the Assosiation's Along Comes Mary off YouTube

[jk3521]

Wait a sec... didn't the Smothers Brothers have leftist leanings?







"In the first season, "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" was relatively conservative. The premiere featured guests Jill St John and Jim Nabors, with the Brothers being introduced by Ed Sullivan. Later guests included Bette Davis, Jack Benny, Kate Smith, George Burns, and Jimmy Durante. But over time the acts became younger and edgier, and the humor became more openly political. Youth-oriented rock bands like Steppenwolf, Jefferson Airplane, Cream, Simon and Garfunkel, and The Doors played sets. African-American artists like Diahann Carroll and civil rights activist/calypso singer Harry Belafonte were invited to appear--which upset CBS affiliate stations in the segregationist South. The band Buffalo Springfield performed their antiwar song "For What It's Worth". A series of skits titled "Share a Little Tea With Goldie" featured comedian Leigh French as hippie chick "Goldie O'Keefe" in a parody of radio call-in advice shows. Apparently the network execs never figured out that the entire skit was a celebration of recreational drug use: "tea" was counterculture slang for "marijuana", and "Goldie" answered phone calls with "Hi...and glad I am."

In December 1967, folk singer Pete Seeger, a former Communist Party member who had been blacklisted by McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee back in the 50's, was invited to sing his antiwar song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy": the segment was axed by the network. Another sketch series on the show featured comedian David Steinberg as a pastor delivering a wickedly satirical short sermon: CBS ordered that the skits be pulled, calling them "sacrilegious". In one opening sketch, Tom Smothers declared that he could tell people apart by the amount of clothing they wear. The common people, he said, were the less-ons, and the rich people were the more-ons. And when asked by Dick who was running the country, Tom grinned at the camera and answered, "The morons".