Tom Smothers, half of the Smothers Brothers and the co-host of one of the socially aware and groundbreaking tv exhibits within the historical past of the medium, has died at 86.

The Nationwide Comedy Heart, on behalf of his household, stated in a press release Wednesday that Smothers died Tuesday at residence in Santa Rosa, California, following a most cancers battle.

“Tom was not solely the loving older brother that everybody would need of their life, he was a one-of-a-kind inventive associate. I’m endlessly grateful to have spent a lifetime along with him, on and off stage, for over 60 years,” his brother and the duo’s different half, Dick Smothers, stated within the assertion. “Our relationship was like a superb marriage – the longer we had been collectively, the extra we liked and revered each other. We had been actually blessed.”

When “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” debuted on CBS within the fall of 1967 it was a direct hit, to the shock of many who had assumed the community’s expectations had been so low it positioned their present reverse the top-rated “Bonanza.”

However the Smothers Brothers would show a turning level in tv historical past, with its sharp eye for popular culture tendencies and younger rock stars such because the Who and Buffalo Springfield, and its daring sketches – ridiculing the Institution, railing in opposition to the Vietnam Warfare and portraying members of the period’s hippie counterculture as mild, fun-loving spirits – discovered a direct viewers with younger child boomers. The present reached No. 16 within the scores in its first season.

It additionally drew the ire of community censors, and after years of battling with the brothers over the present’s inventive content material, the community abruptly canceled this system in 1970, accusing the siblings of failing to submit an episode in time for the censors to overview.

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Practically 40 years later, when Smothers was awarded an honorary Emmy for his work on the present, he jokingly thanked the writers he stated had gotten him fired. He additionally confirmed that the years had not dulled his outspokenness.

“It’s onerous for me to remain silent once I maintain listening to that peace is simply attainable by battle,” Smothers stated on the 2008 Emmy Awards as his brother sat within the viewers, beaming. He devoted his award to these “who really feel compelled to talk out and usually are not afraid to talk to energy and gained’t shut up and refuse to be silenced.”

Through the three years the present was on tv, the brothers consistently battled with CBS’s censors and sometimes outraged viewers as properly, notably when Smothers joked that Easter “is when Jesus comes out of his tomb and if he sees his shadow, he goes again in and we get six extra weeks of winter.” At Christmas, when different present hosts had been sending greatest needs to troopers preventing abroad, Smothers provided his to draft dodgers who had moved to Canada.

In nonetheless one other episode, the brothers returned blacklisted folks singer Pete Seeger to tv for the primary time in years. He carried out his track “Waist Deep within the Massive Muddy,” extensively considered as ridiculing President Lyndon Johnson for the Vietnam Warfare. When CBS refused to air the phase, the brothers introduced Seeger again for one more episode and he sang it once more. This time, it made the air.

After the present was canceled, the brothers sued CBS for $31 million and had been awarded $775,000. Their battles with the community had been chronicled within the 2002 documentary “Smothered: The Censorship Struggles of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.”

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