Thomas Bolyn Smothers III (February 2, 1937 – December 26, 2023) was an American comedian, actor, composer, and musician, widely known as half of the musical comedy duo the Smothers Brothers, alongside his younger brother Dick. In the 1960s they were known for their network comedy and variety shows, The Smothers Brothers Show and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
Smothers and John Lennon played acoustic guitar during the live recording of Lennon's 1969 song "Give Peace a Chance".
Thomas Bolyn Smothers III was born on February 2, 1937, at the Fort Jay army post hospital on Governors Island in New York City, the son of Ruth (née Remick), a homemaker, and Major Thomas B. Smothers, a United States Army officer who died a POW of the Japanese in April 1945. The younger Smothers later grew up in Altadena, Tujunga, and Redondo Beach, California.
As a child, Smothers played guitar and piano by ear due to difficulty reading sheet music; Smothers would be diagnosed with dyslexia at age 31. Beginning in fifth grade, he played guitar in bands formed with friends and began incorporating humor with his music and in-school interactions. Athletically, he grew up competing in gymnastics.
Smothers first attended Verdugo Hills High School before transferring to Redondo Union High School as a senior. At Redondo Beach, he and his brother sang in the school's madrigal choir, Tom as a bass and Dick as a tenor; Tom graduated from Redondo Union in 1955. Smothers then enrolled at San Jose State College (now San Jose State University) in 1956 as an advertising major and competed at pole vault on the track team as a freshman in 1956–57. Then in 1957–58, Smothers competed on the gymnastics team, where he tied for first place on the parallel bars at the 1958 State College Gymnastics Championships.
Inspired by the popularity of The Kingston Trio's "Tom Dooley", the Smothers Brothers initially wanted to be folk musicians.
After Dick transferred to San Jose State in 1957, Tom and Dick began performing music at San Jose nightclubs, with audiences mostly of other college students. In January 1959, the Smothers brothers were discovered by a detective who became their first manager and invited them to an audition at the Purple Onion, a nightclub in San Francisco. The following month, the brothers left San Jose State to focus full-time on working in entertainment, after the Purple Onion asked them to substitute for other acts who were ill. Their show was so successful that the Purple Onion extended their original two-week contract to 16 weeks; the brothers returned to the Purple Onion for another 16-week contract after playing a Lake Tahoe club in the summer of 1959.
In February 1960, the Smothers Brothers made their professional debut at Aspen, Colorado. Tom recalled in 2006 interview:
I did all the introductions. I'd just make up stuff for every song. And Dickie said, "Why don't you try repeating some of that stuff?" I said, "I don't know." I didn't know that you could repeat the stuff. And I started repeating it and Dickie would say, "That's wrong." And pretty soon he'd say, "That's wrong, you're stupid." It sort of became an argument.
Tom's first foray into the medium of television was as a regular on The Steve Allen Show in 1961. He followed that role with a single episode of Burke's Law.
The Smothers Brothers next appeared on the CBS sitcom The Smothers Brothers Show from 1965 to 1966. Tom felt that the show did not play to the brothers' strengths and wanted creative control over their next venture.
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and aftermath
Tom Smothers negotiated creative control over their next CBS show, a variety show titled The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967. The brothers had conflicts with the CBS standards and practices department with jokes about religion, recreational drugs, sex, and the Vietnam War, topics considered taboo on primetime television of the era. The brothers' political action on the air led to their show's demise, with David Steinberg later claiming "The most innovative variety show on television shut down because of political pressure." In 2006, Tom revealed that he and his brother actually disagreed on politics. During the same years, Tom recorded mainstream songs, such as "Can't Help Falling in Love with You". Tom later stated, "When the Smothers Brothers came on the air we had no political point of view or social consciousness, it just evolved as the show was on the air."
Rock and Roll, "Give Peace a Chance"
Smothers introduced some musical acts at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. As he became more politically active, he befriended similarly inclined celebrities like John Lennon.
In 1969, Smothers and Lennon played acoustic guitars on Lennon's recording of his single "Give Peace a Chance" (Smothers' name was also mentioned in the song). The song was written and performed during Lennon's and Yoko Ono's "Bed-in" honeymoon on June 1, 1969, in Room 1742 at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Smothers can be seen in the hotel room in the 1988 documentary film Imagine: John Lennon.
After Comedy Hour was canceled, Smothers became outspoken in politics.
I lost perspective, my sense of humor. I became a poster boy for the First Amendment, freedom of speech, and I started buying into it. It was about three years when I was deadly serious about everything.... I'm still politically active, I'm still angry, but I've got it in the right position now.