travsd

RIP Tommy Smothers

Very sad to be the bearer of the news that Tommy Smothers has left us at the age of 86. He embodied so much that I love. Springing out of the culture of the folk music revival of the ’50s and ’60s, he and his brother Dick revitalized television variety by making it topical, bravely sacrificing their success on the altar of free speech and political principle. Above all, he was funny of course, and I often think of The Smothers Brothers as being one of the last of the old style comedy teams. I used to wear out the grooves of their old albums, hand-me-downs from my brothers.

I love this photo that shows the brothers working with Jack Benny and George Burns, vaudeville greats who the brothers admirably succeeded. In turn, the Brothers’ TV show fostered future stars like Steve Martin and Rob Reiner.

Here’s another great pic (shared by FB friend Michael Romero) of the brothers as the Marx Brothers, Dick as Chico, Tom as Harpo, and Bobby Darin (whose own death was 50 years ago this month) as Groucho:

I’ve had the good fortune to interview some folks who performed on some of the Smothers Brothers’ TV variety shows for my upcoming book Electric Vaudeville. The word on the ground is that, in a manner similar to Laurel and Hardy, IRL the “dumb” one (Tommy) was the secret brains of the outfit, orchestrating everything down to the last detail.

For further tribute, my 2012 post on The Smothers Brothers is here.

And my post on the Tommy Smothers solo movie Get to Know Your Rabbit is here.

As luck would have it, Tommy’s passing comes less than a week after the bicentennial anniversary of the poem he mangles here. Seemed like the right thing to post today.

What a crummy Christmas present. We’ll miss you, Tommy Smothers!

Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.