Dragaera

Smothers Brothers

valerie at drizzle.com valerie at drizzle.com
Wed Feb 12 15:08:37 PST 2003

hey mia,

this bit of info was indeed very helpful.  i'm 33 so i have some vague
memories of them on tv....mostly from other comedy shows making refernce to
them.

i had no idea about their troubles with the censors.  i think the shows i
have seen must have been the heavily censored ones cuz i don't recall much
satire.....only half naked women dancing around.....and wasn't ruth buzzy
(sp?) on there?  loved her.

thanks for the history lesson...

-valerie

> OK, let's take pity on this poor guy . . .
>
> It was the 60's.  CBS hired these nice, clean-cut musical guys to host
> a  comedy/variety hour.  Before this, they'd released a couple of folk
> albums, probably toured . . .
>
> Well, the nice, clean-cut guys got on the air at the critical point
> when  a lot of the youth of the country was getting upset about
> Vietnam.  They  found that they were getting upset, too . . . their
> comedy took on a  political edge.  They had guests on that the censors
> (oh, yeah, you  won't know from censors either.  CBS had censors that
> were supposed to  make sure all the shows were nicey-nice.  The
> Smothers Brothers had a  *lot* of trouble with the censors) didn't like
> and they wrote skits that  the censors cut up or just cancelled . . .
> then the brothers would get  up there and show the camera the *script*
> of the skits and talk about  how they couldn't *do* the skit . . .
> there was an excellent special  about them on one of the cable networks
> just this winter.
>
> I don't know if this helps or not.  The world was very different back
> then.
>
> Mia