The trouble started almost instantly, and, according to a Hollywood Reporter piece timed to the show’s 50th anniversary, it originated with CBS News. “They felt we were invading their territory,” said writer-producer Saul Ilson. “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” was despised by conservative, churchgoing Americans, and earned them a spot on Richard Nixon’s enemies list.
The Smothers and their young writing staff (which included Steve Martin, Albert Brooks, Bob Einstein, Don Novello, and the recently-interviewed-by-/Film Rob Reiner) were unbowed. They irreverently lampooned an establishment that wasn’t used to more than collegial ribbing, and made a mockery of the country’s democratic system by running comedian Pat Paulsen for president. If you watch the series today, it all comes off as incredibly tame, but it was uncouth stuff at the time.
And then there were the musical guests. If you look through the list, you’d expect the trouble to come from upstarts like The Who and The Doors, but aside from the former’s infamous pyrotechnic accident, the major dust-ups were caused by folk singer Pete Seeger (whose “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” got deep-sixed from the broadcast for too closely allegorizing the Vietnam War) and Harry Belafonte (who performed “Lord, Don’t Stop the Carnival” as a criticism of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago).
It was all way more than CBS bargained for, and, finally, the Smothers pushed the network too far.
