The Smothers Brothers: A 'Dangerously Funny' Pair

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20091130
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Fresh Air
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The Smothers Brothers: A 'Dangerously Funny' Pair

TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Our TV critic, David Bianculli, is going to tell us about a show that was
topical at a time when TV wasn't - so topical there were frequent battles with
network censors; a show that premiered on CBS in 1967 and was suddenly
cancelled by the network in 1969.

It was hosted and produced by the first members of their generation with a
primetime pulpit. They used it to give a platform to young writers, like Steve
Martin and Rob Reiner, new bands like The Who and Jefferson Airplane, and
performers who opposed the war in Vietnam, like Joan Baez and Pete Seeger.

The show was "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour." David has written a new book
about Tom and Dick Smothers, and their show, called "Dangerously Funny." David
was a big fan of the show when he was in his early teens. As a critic, he makes
a powerful case for the show's importance in TV and pop-culture history.

David, welcome to FRESH AIR, and congratulations on the book.

Mr. DAVID BIANCULLI (Author, "Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the
Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour"): Oh, thanks a lot.

GROSS: Now, you've brought some really good clips with you from episodes of the
Smothers Brothers' TV series, and I'd like to start with one because I think it
gives a good sense of the Smothers Brothers' comedy and also how they managed
to bring politics into their show. So would you introduce it for us?

Mr. BIANCULLI: Yes, sure. I like this because it's a fairly early clip, when
the Smothers Brothers are still sort of considered to be, you know, just
genial, nice folk satirists, and yet they're starting to hit on public issues
and even attack the president in a very obvious way.

GROSS: And this was President Johnson.

Mr. BIANCULLI: This was President Johnson at the time, yes.

GROSS: Okay, so let's hear it.

(Soundbite of TV show, "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour")

(Soundbite of applause)

Mr. DICK SMOTHERS (Comedian): Hey Tom, you know, I just read in the newspaper
this week where President has asked Congress to ask a series of taxes, you
know, to discourage people from traveling abroad. What do you think about that?

Mr. TOM SMOTHERS (Comedian): I read that, too, but I don't think he has to go
that far. I don't think that's necessary to go that far with it.

Mr. DICK SMOTHERS: Well, look, it's a very, very, very, very difficult
situation. You know, people keep spending money abroad, and it's hurting our
economy. People keep wanting to travel to other countries instead of staying
here in the United States.

Mr. TOM SMOTHERS: Yeah, well, I think President Johnson should come up with
something positive as an inducement to keep the people, something very positive
as an inducement.

Mr. DICK SMOTHERS: Yeah, that's right. That’s good thinking.

Mr. TOM SMOTHERS: But lookit, what can the president do to make people want to
stay in this country?

Mr. DICK SMOTHERS: Well, he could quit.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: David, was that considered pretty radical at the time?

Mr. BIANCULLI: Yeah, for an entertainment variety show, almost unprecedented -
where you had these figures that were actually talking about public policy.

TV in the '60s, the Smothers Brothers began in February of '67. At that point,
almost all of prime time was trying, intentionally, to be as innocuous as
possible, and so these guys were going against the grain.

GROSS: And that's one of the things that makes the story so interesting. You
know, it's the second half of the '60s. The youth culture has become the
counter-culture. Youth culture has also become, a lot of it, the anti-war
movement. The country is, like, divided, people are going wild, and television
is reflecting somewhere between very little and none of that.

Mr. BIANCULLI: Yeah, it's almost – there are so many parallels to today that it
amazes me, in that now you think of red state, blue state, and we have this
giant divide, and the parties are divided, and the whole country seems, you
know, ideologically divided.

Back then, it was a generation gap. It was - you were either a hawk or a dove.
You either supported the president, or you didn't. Later, with Nixon, you had a
silent majority.

And the Smothers Brothers came on, and at a time when there was one television
in the house, and everybody watched it; for the first couple of seasons, they
pulled this amazing magic act and straddled the chasm of the generation gap.

They had Kate Smith and Simon and Garfunkel on the same show. They had Mickey
Rooney and The Who on the same show and appealed to both, you know,
generations.

GROSS: Now, you know so much about so many different TV shows. You're just like
a walking encyclopedia of television. Of all the shows you could have written a
history of, why did you choose the Smothers Brothers?

Mr. BIANCULLI: This one – I wondered about that.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. BIANCULLI: I did - once I was into it, and I was into, like, my fifth year
of writing and my 10th year of writing. And I realized, I think this show first
of all was at a pivotal point in TV history, that Tom Smothers fought for
freedom of expression and fought for a whole generation and lost.

And so TV changed and changed really significantly. And I argue that we've
never gotten it back. I mean, the things that we think of as TV freedom, it's
on cable, or it's on late night - but in primetime, we've rarely had it since.

And then the personal thing is that this show premiered when I was 13, and all
of the stuff that was on there meant so much to me just because I was at that
impressionable age, and I was watching with my dad, and it was just a really
nice weekly experience.

GROSS: You mentioned you wanted to write this book in part because Tom Smothers
fought and lost. And what he lost was the censorship battle. There was a
considerable amount of censorship of the show, and he really took a stand, and
he lost, and the show was taken off the air by the network, CBS. Let's talk a
little bit about what censorship was like on TV then, and we're talking about
the second half of the 1960s. What are some of the things that you couldn't say
then that you can say now?

Mr. BIANCULLI: Well, famously, when Lucille Ball was pregnant in real life and
wrote it into her character in the '60s, she couldn't even use the word
pregnant in the episode in which she was having a baby. They had to say it in
Spanish, enceinte, you know. I mean, it was so ridiculous. The censorship was
so pervasive that even recounting it, it seems so silly.

They cut an entire sketch with Elaine May because it was censors getting
excited about the movies that they were censoring; and rather than cut a word
or two, they cut the entire sketch.

GROSS: And there was the phrase in it – what is it? – I feel my heart beating
in my breast, and they wouldn't let them say breast. So they ended up saying I
feel my heart beating in my wrist.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. BIANCULLI: Yea, beating wildly in my wrist, and they didn't even let that
go.

GROSS: They didn't let that go on the air, either?

Mr. BIANCULLI: Yeah.

GROSS: All right. So – and drug references. You couldn't use those, either.

Mr. BIANCULLI: Well, the drug references, if they caught them, they would take
them out. But the '60s, things were so new that they didn't recognize a lot of
them when they saw them. So the Smothers were able to slip some stuff by, and
Tom actually enjoyed this battle a little bit, and so did Mason Williams, who
was one of the writers. And so they would put in things that really meant
nothing and instruct the crew and the writers and everybody around to laugh,
like, dirty, sniggering little laughs. And so the censors would say well, you
can't say rowing to Galveston. And they'd say, well, why not? Well, you just
can't say it. So they would drive them crazy just for the fun of it, too.

GROSS: As an illustration of some of the things that were – of the type of
thing that were censored, I want to play an excerpt of the show that you
brought with you, of Joan Baez dedicating a song to her then-husband, David.
What was the context of this, both in terms of Joan Baez' life and the Smothers
Brothers' show?

Mr. BIANCULLI: Joan Baez, her husband at the time, David Harris, was going to
prison for protesting against selective service and draft registration. And he
was facing this prison sentence, so Joan Baez, in support, did an album of
country songs and just recorded it. And so she went on the Smothers Brothers to
sing one of these songs and dedicate it to her husband.

She gave the dedication, which included the whole explanation of why her
husband was going to prison, and CBS cut the explanation. So it was like here's
a song for my husband, who's going to prison, and now "Green, Green Grass of
Home." It was just such an awful cut.

GROSS: It's awful in part, too – it's not only, you know, a form of censorship,
but also people might think that, you know, he'd like stolen or raped or, you
know, done something at gunpoint.

Mr. BIANCULLI: Exactly, exactly, right.

GROSS: What we're going to hear is the whole introduction, the unedited
introduction.

Mr. BIANCULLI: Right.

GROSS: All right. This is Joan Baez.

(Soundbite of TV show, "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour")

Ms. JOAN BAEZ (Singer): The next song is a song that'll be on my next album,
which will be coming out shortly. The album is called "David's Album." David is
my husband. David's sort of a California hillbilly, and so the songs on the
record are all country and western, and it's a kind of a gift to David because
he's going to be going to prison, probably in June, and he'll be there for
three years.

The reason he's going is that he refused to have anything to do with the draft
or selective service or whatever you want to call it; militarism in general.
And the point is, if you do that, and you do it up front or over ground, then
you're going to get busted, and so – especially if you organize, which he does.
So this song is called "The Green, Green Grass of Home."

Ms. BAEZ: (Singing) The old home town looks the same…

GROSS: That's Joan Baez on the Smothers Brothers' show in March of 1969, and my
guest is our TV critic, David Bianculli, who's written a new book about the
Smothers Brothers, called "Dangerously Funny."

So the show went on the air, in a truncated form. How did Joan Baez react to
the way her introduction was edited?

Mr. BIANCULLI: She actually took it very well. What she did was she thanked Tom
for the fight because she wasn't a network TV person at that time, and Tom said
well, come on, say whatever you want to say. So she got the opportunity to say
it. They recorded it. It was the network who overruled Tom, and what she
appreciated is that he did what he did so much of the time in the '60s - he ran
right to the New York Times and to other papers and said this was edited, you
know, and this is wrong. And there wasn't a lot of that done back in the '60s.
You know, there wasn't the whole tabloid culture. And so, to have a guy from
television come out and talk about his bosses - that was news then.

GROSS: My guest is FRESH AIR's TV critic, David Bianculli. His new book about
the Smothers Brothers is called "Dangerously Funny." More after a break. This
is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Let's get back to our interview with FRESH AIR's TV critic, David
Bianculli. His new book is called "Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of
the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour."

Perhaps the most famous case of censorship on the Smothers Brothers' show was
Pete Seeger singing "The Big Muddy."

Mr. BIANCULLI: Definitely.

GROSS: So there's a prequel to that story, and that is that it's amazing he
even got on TV because he'd been blacklisted, because why?

Mr. BIANCULLI: He'd been blacklisted. He was part of The Weavers, and it was
all the way back in Red Channels.

GROSS: The folk group, The Weavers.

Mr. BIANCULLI: Yes, the folk group The Weavers. And in 1950, his name was in
Red Channels, which was this pamphlet that was putting out – that was put out,
supposedly identifying people with communist leanings. So automatically, Pete
Seeger is gone, and because he's so aggressive in his beliefs, he's off
primetime for 17 years.

GROSS: Well, he had also refused to speak to the House Un-American Activities
Committee, which was investigating communists and communist sympathizers, and
he declined to even take the Fifth.

Mr. BIANCULLI: Right.

GROSS: So he was considered very hostile to the community in that…

Mr. BIANCULLI: Everything that he did, I think, in retrospect, is so incredibly
noble, but you know, it was against the mainstream then. And so Pete Seeger is
off TV, and the Smothers do this sketch that makes fun of LBJ, and President
Johnson calls William Paley, the president of CBS, at three in the morning to
complain. Paley calls in the producers of the Smothers Brothers to say knock it
off, take it easy on LBJ for a while. And the producers say, I don't know how
Tom is going to take that. And Paley says, well, is there anything I can do, if
you do that for a while, as sort of to sweeten the pot.

They said, well, we've been trying to get Pete Seeger on. So let us have Pete
Seeger. And Bill Paley says, he's on. And so that's how he got on.

GROSS: I love that because in an act of trying to suppress speech, they let
Pete Seeger in the door.

Mr. BIANCULLI: Yeah, it's very weird. And then the amazing thing is it doesn't
stop there, because Pete Seeger wants to do this new song, which was against
President Johnson - I love the way it eats its own tail – and he wants to do
"Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," which has just come out on a Columbia Records
album.

So CBS Records says this is fine, but he tapes it for the Smothers Brothers, to
open the second season, and CBS says no. They let Pete Seeger come on, and he
does three or four songs, but when he gets to his big finish, "Big Muddy," they
cut it. It's just not shown.

GROSS: Now we're going to be hearing I think it's just the final verse of this
song.

Mr. BIANCULLI: Yes.

GROSS: Set up what happens before the final verse.

Mr. BIANCULLI: Well, what happens is, before the final verse – well, before
that, this whole season goes by, where Tom again goes to the Times, goes to
other papers, and there's a change in our policy toward Vietnam, or at least
our national feeling about Vietnam.

So by the end of the season, CBS says you can have him back on, and he can sing
it. So this is actually from when he got to perform it, and it was televised.
So I think it's such a triumphant performance, but the song itself is about a
sergeant who is just taking…

GROSS: A sergeant like in World War II, probably.

Mr. BIANCULLI: Yes, in World War II - taking a troop on maneuvers and taking
them to ford a river that he had before, but it had rained since. So what was
safe, now wasn't. And he was insisted that they go ahead. And waist deep in the
Big Muddy, and then neck deep, and he was taking them higher and higher, and he
drowns, you know, and the next guy in command says turn back, this is a bad
idea.

Now, that's a pretty easy analogy to the Vietnam War. We could use it right now
to Iraq or Afghanistan - but that was the message of the song.

GROSS: And in this last verse – well, we'll play the last verse, and then we'll
talk about it. Here's Pete Seeger on the Smothers Brothers' show.

(Soundbite of TV show, "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour")

(Soundbite of song, "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy")

Mr. PETE SEEGER (Singer): (Singing) Well, I'm not going to plant any moral.
I'll leave that for yourself. Maybe you're still walking, you're still talking,
you'd like to keep your health. But every time I read the paper, them old
feelings come on. We're waist deep in the Big Muddy. The big fool says to push
on.

Waist deep in the Big Muddy, the big fool says to push on. Waist deep in the
Big Muddy, the big fool says to push on. Waist deep, neck deep, soon, even a
tall man will be over his head. We're waist deep in the Big Muddy, the big fool
says to push on.

(Soundbite of applause)

GROSS: That's Pete Seeger in 1968 on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour," and
he never says the word Vietnam, but it was so clear he's talking about Vietnam
there.

Mr. BIANCULLI: Yeah.

GROSS: So you had described how this song was edited out of Pete Seeger's first
appearance on the Smothers Brothers, but he came back and actually did the
song, and it was used, which is what we heard.

Mr. BIANCULLI: Yes.

GROSS: So how did he come back and get to sing it?

Mr. BIANCULLI: They invited him back near the end of the second season. They
were just – they kept pushing for it and pushing for it, and a lot of
television critics at the time, and commentators, sort of said hey. And so
finally, CBS relented and said you can have him back.

Around this time, Walter Cronkite had come on CBS and said basically, the
Vietnam War is unwinnable. So there was this whole change after the Tet
Offensive that changed enough public perception to make CBS think well, maybe
it's okay.

GROSS: The Seeger performance we just heard was in 1968. At the end of that
year, George Harrison came on the show to support the Smothers Brothers in
their fight for free speech on the show. And tell us a little bit about that
appearance, and then we'll hear a brief excerpt of it.

Mr. BIANCULLI: Well, I love the whole Beatles-Smothers Brothers connection,
because in 1964, the Beatles show up on Ed Sullivan, CBS, Sunday night. It
makes the Beatles. It makes the whole British invasion. It changes society.

Four years later, the Beatles have stopped touring. They're still the biggest
thing in the world, and they've made this new thing called videos - of "Hey
Jude" and "Revolution," - and so for the United States premiere, instead of
giving them to Ed Sullivan, Sunday night at eight, they give them to the
Smothers Brothers, Sunday night at nine, you know. And that's basically saying,
attitudinally, we want to side with our generation; we want to be where the
Smothers Brothers are.

So at the beginning of this one show, George Harrison just shows up unbilled, a
Beatle, just to show up on the Smothers Brothers.

GROSS: Let's hear it.

(Soundbite of TV show, "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour")

Mr. SMOTHERS: Do you have something important?

Mr. GEORGE HARRISON (Musician): Something very important to say on American
television.

Mr. SMOTHERS: You know, we don't, we – a lot of times, we don't opportunity of
saying anything important because it's American television, and every time you
say something…

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. SMOTHERS: And try to say something important, they…

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HARRISON: Well, whether you can say it or not, keep trying to say it.

Mr. SMOTHERS: That's what's important.

Mr. HARRISON: You get that?

GROSS: Keep trying to say it. That's what's important. Very interesting - from
George Harrison to the Smothers Brothers. It's amazing thinking of having a
Beatle in 1968, unbilled and unannounced.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: Like, people would be promoting that for days, weeks, months, if they
knew he was going to be on.

Mr. BIANCULLI: I know. And you know how much I love the Beatles. So I love that
clip.

GROSS: Right, right. Did that clip have any repercussions?

Mr. BIANCULLI: No, no. They were – but it's odd to me. After the show was – you
know, after they were fired, and the show was pulled off, Bob Ayenstein(ph),
one of the writers, says: How do you cancel a show or fire - you know, how do
you get rid of a show that gives you a Beatle? You know, it is unthinkable. I
mean, the talent roster that they had… One of the things I wonder about is that
if the show had been allowed to continue a few more years, with Tommy's eye for
talent, I think he would have been “Saturday Night Live” except in primetime.
He would have just had the best comics, the best musicians and really pushed
for social commentary.

GROSS: In talking about how the network limited what the Smothers Brothers were
allowed to say, you describe some of the other barriers, besides the people at
CBS headquarters, some of the barriers that were put in the way. Do you want to
talk about, like, the affiliates and the power that they were given?

Mr. BIANCULLI: The Smothers Brothers was the first show to be pre-screened for
affiliates. In other words, to be sent a couple of days in advance so each
affiliate could decide, in its local market, whether what the Smothers Brothers
were doing on their show was acceptable.

GROSS: And what did that mean for the Smothers Brothers' production?

Mr. BIANCULLI: Well, it meant – the most obvious thing is they had to have it
finished sooner, and then it was giving them a new layer of censorship with
which to contend. It wasn't just – you know, Tom had this contract that said he
had creative control, and yet the censors, you know, the standards and
practices at CBS said, but that doesn't mean you can say or do anything you
want. You still have to go through us.

And so but even if he goes through them, then a local affiliate in Boise may
say yeah, but I don't like you making fun of, you know, the president. That's
just not right. And so what does he do? You know, is he going to not do a
sketch because of an affiliate?

Well, what he ends up doing is losing 15 or 20 affiliates that are no longer,
you know, showing the program, which weakens the ratings.

GROSS: David Bianculli will be back in the second half of the show. His new
book about the Smothers Brothers is called "Dangerously Funny." The clips we're
hearing are from the Time/Life video "The Best of The Smothers Brothers Comedy
Hour" Volumes 2 and 3. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with our TV critic David
Bianculli. We're talking about his new book "Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored
Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour."

The show premiered on CBS in 1967 and was cancelled suddenly in 1969. Because
the show reflected the counter culture and the anti-war movement, there were
frequent battles with network censors.

David is FRESH AIR's TV critic. He writes the online magazine
TVworthwatching.com, and he teaches at Rowan University.

You spoke to so many people for research for the book. Did you speak to any of
the people who worked in Standards and Practices at CBS at the time and were
responsible for making the decisions about what the Smothers Brothers were
allowed to say and what their guests were allowed to say?

BIANCULLI: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I talked to, you know, among the people that I talked
to, there was Mike Dan, who was an executive then. I talked with Bill
Tankersley, who was the head censor for all of CBS for the entire period. He
was a key interview, and it took me about 14 years to get him. And also Fred
Silverman, who was just a young executive in CBS daytime then, but was allowed
to sit in on all the programming meetings. But Bill Tankersley was the guy who
sort of ruined some really good conspiracy theories.

GROSS: How?

BIANCULLI: Well, you know, most of the people that are involved think that it's
Richard Nixon that got the show pulled off, or at the very least, it was Bill
Paley and it was Robert Wood, the new - and what it really ended up being was
Bill Tankersley and his group just setting down rules that they thought that
Tom Smothers had to listen to. And when he didn’t, they just didn’t want to
have an upstart that could - you know, because they were looking bad for the
affiliates.

They had promised the affiliates they would get a show by certain day to
preview for them, and if they couldn’t do it, then they looked bad. The network
looked like the Smothers Brothers were running things, and then what would
happen? And so they drew that line in the sand. It was not a legal line in the
sand and the Smothers Brothers later sued and won, but that's what got the show
yanked.

GROSS: Yeah. So what got the show yanked was the network saying, oh, you failed
to deliver a show on time. You didn’t meet your deadline.

BIANCULLI: Right. And yet it was never a contractual agreement. It was just
something that they said, you know, from now on you have to do this because of
the affiliate demands. But it was never a contractual demand.

GROSS: And did the Smothers Brothers actually not meet the deadline?

BIANCULLI: Sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes Tom would take the master and hide
it.

GROSS: Oh, just to prevent the affiliates from touching it beforehand?

BIANCULLI: Prevent the affiliate - or to prevent them from editing it before he
turned it in at the last minute for the affiliate judgment. There was a lot of
gamesmanship on both sides. I think of it as in the '60s, you have parents and
kids, and they're just against each other and they're both butting heads more
than they should have.

GROSS: So when you spoke to the person who was the head of Standards and
Practices, who was…

BIANCULLI: Yeah. Bill Tankersley.

GROSS: Tankersley was responsible for deciding what could be said on the
Smothers Brothers show. What did he tell you about the standards that were set
and why they were set for what could and couldn’t be said?

BIANCULLI: Well, oddly, he was more lenient than most of the people underneath
him, like he had nothing to do with the Elaine May sketch being pulled. And he
said, well, I saw nothing wrong with that. If they would've asked me, I
would've thought it was fine. He had no problem with Pete Seeger. You know, his
things were much more finite, but he was dealing with rules.

But this was the guy who had been at CBS for so long, he had fought with you
know, George Burns, with Rod Serling, with Alfred Hitchcock all the way back in
the '50s. And so a young, just-turning-30 Tom Smothers, this young little
whipper was not going to get best of Bill Tankersley, as Bill Tankersley saw
it. And Tom would call him up at home, you know, on nights and weekends and
sort of plead his case. He drove him - he drove Tankersley nuts.

GROSS: Well, if Tankersley would've approved some of the things that you
mentioned…

BIANCULLI: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: …how come they weren't approved?

BIANCULLI: Well, he did approve some things, and they did - when they were
asked - once Tom was able to go to the head of CBS on the East Coast - he
didn’t want to deal with the West Coast middlemen anymore. So it was just - and
then Bill Tankersley was saying no, you can't. You’ve got to go through
channels. There's rules. Bill Tankersley was all about rules, and Tom Smothers
was all about no rules.

GROSS: So Tom Smothers wanted to bypass Tankersley, and Tankersley said you
can't.

BIANCULLI: No. He wanted - Tom Smothers wanted to deal only with Tankersley,
figuring you’re the head guy. Let me just talk to you on the phone. Let me send
this stuff directly to you.

GROSS: I see.

BIANCULLI: Tankersley did it once and then said, no. You know what? This is not
going to work. We have the West Coast for a reason, and Tom just avoided them.

GROSS: So is there one show you can point to that you think really did in the
Smothers Brothers?

BIANCULLI: Oh, certainly. It's the first time that David Steinberg came on as a
comic and did a religious sermonette, a comic sermonette, it got more negative
mail than anything in the history of broadcasting up to that point. And so the
CBS censors sent Tom Smothers a memo saying, OK, you can have David Steinberg
back, but no more religious sermonettes ever.

So he invites David Steinberg back, and even though it's not in the script,
says hey, how'd you like to do another one of those sermonettes? And so they
added in to the week's run through, and he does it. He tapes it. That entire
hour is never shown, and the Smothers Brothers are fired very shortly
thereafter.

GROSS: So you actually brought with you a recording of the sermonette that was
never aired.

BIANCULLI: Yes. Yeah. These are available now on - you know, Time Life has the
last two seasons out of the Smothers Brothers, the best of them. And one of the
outtakes is this, because it was never shown, this whole hour. Back then, no
one ever joked about religion other than Bill Cosby doing the Noah routine, and
that was, you know, that wasn’t about content. This was about content.

GROSS: OK. So let's hear it. This is David Steinberg.

(Soundbite of TV shows, "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour")

Mr. DAVID STEINBERG: …that way. He got into a ship that was commandeered by 23
gentiles.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. STEINBERG: A bad move on Jonah's part.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. STEINBERG: And the gentiles, as they would from time to time, threw the Jew
overboard.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. STEINBERG: Now here there are two concepts that we must deal with. There is
the New Testament concept and the Old Testament concept. The Old Testament
scholars say that Jonah was, in fact, swallowed by a whale. The gentiles, the
New Testament scholars they say, hold it, Jews. No. Jonah wasn’t - Jonah, they
literally grabbed the Jews by the Old Testament.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: That's David Steinberg and - recorded in March of 1969, never broadcast
on the Smothers Brothers show.

BIANCULLI: Yeah. There's a great story about that. When the Smothers Brothers
sued CBS and went to trial, David Steinberg was called as one of the witnesses.
And the CBS lawyers, you know, made him redo his - that very thing, and they
crossed examined him. They said now, when you were saying New Testament, did
you - weren't you actually referring to testicles? Weren't you…

(Soundbite of laughter)

BIANCULLI: And David Steinberg said well, yeah. Why were you doing that?
Because otherwise, it wouldn’t be funny.

(Soundbite of laughter)

BIANCULLI: And, you know, it's no wonder the Smothers won that case.

GROSS: Well, the case was, again, that the network accused them of not
delivering programs on time.

BIANCULLI: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And clearly, what they were really worried about was the kind of content
and language that was, you know, getting them into trouble.

BIANCULLI: Yeah. The big difference is that the Smothers Brothers were not
cancelled. They had already been renewed for a fourth season.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

BIANCULLI: They were fired. And so Tom was reacting, saying he was fired
unfairly because anything that he had signed in terms of a contractual
obligation he had lived up to, that it was all these other little, you know,
ephemeral things that they'd thrown on him, you know, through the years that he
hadn't adhered to.

GROSS: And is that grounds on which Tom Smothers sued CBS after CBS fired the
Smothers Brothers?

BIANCULLI: Well, it's the one that went all the way through to the end. He
wanted to go on First Amendment rights and really make this a huge case.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

BIANCULLI: But he was advised by his ACLU lawyers, who were the only people who
would represent him, that that would put it in a different court. It would make
it a different thing, and so just go for this more narrow focus.

GROSS: So he won.

BIANCULLI: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: Tommy Smothers won, but how long did this take him to win?

BIANCULLI: Well, it took - the trial took a few months, but it was two-three
years before the trial was on and they won less than a million dollars. But it
stopped their careers. I mean, I liken the Smothers Brothers to, you know, when
Muhammad Ali, you know, gets pulled but he gets - he gets to fight again and
gets his championship back after sticking up for his ideals, or Elvis goes away
to the Army but comes back and gets more number one hits. The Smothers Brothers
were essentially done. They never had the power or the pulpit again the way
they used to, and I just think that's a shame.

GROSS: What do you think of as the, like, lasting effect of the Smothers
Brothers show?

BIANCULLI: I think that it’s most visible right now in places like Jon Stewart
and Stephen Colbert and "Saturday Night Live" and Bill Maher. All of them are
outside of prime time, but they're all sort of doing elements of what the
Smothers Brothers did.

Stephen Colbert tried very briefly to throw himself into the presidential race,
just as Pat Paulsen had. A lot of Jon Stewart's humor is very much what the
Smothers was, and he admits that they were a very strong influence. Bill Maher
says the Smothers were a very strong influence. And "Saturday Night Live" I
sort of see as what the Smothers Brothers almost had the chance to become.

GROSS: Did the Smothers Brothers ask you to write the book? You allude to that
in the acknowledgements.

BIANCULLI: One time after I interviewed Tom, he said well, are you going to
write the book? And I said what book? And he said, well, the book on us.
Because I'd written in a previous book an entry on the "Smothers Brothers
Comedy Hour," and I guess it was - he agreed with it. And so he said I’ll give
you total access, but total freedom. And as a journalist, that's just something
you don’t get. And so I said, well, I’ll have to think about it. And then I
waited three seconds, and I said okay.

(Soundbite of laughter)

BIANCULLI: And he laughed, and then I remember him going down this very long
escalator in Atlantic City and he yells up at me just before he goes out of
sight, he goes: I just want to read it before I'm dead.

(Soundbite of laughter)

BIANCULLI: And that was 15 years ago. So I thank Tom for taking such good care
of himself.

GROSS: Well, David, I want to thank you for talking about your new book
"Dangerously Funny" about the Smothers Brothers.

BIANCULLI: It was my honor, really. It's fun. It's fun.

GROSS: All mine.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: But before we let you leave, we have an interview that you recorded with
Hal Holbrook that we're about to hear. And I know the actor Hal Holbrook is
most famous for his one-man show, "Mark Twain Tonight."

BIANCULLI: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: I know that you’re a great fan of his and of Mark Twain's, which is why
we asked you to do the interview with him. But before we hear the interview,
tell us why you like Hal Holbrook so much. And also, I should mention, there's
a connection between Hal Holbrook and the Smothers Brothers. Holbrook actually
makes an appearance in your book, so let's start with that connection.

BIANCULLI: Okay. That connection is actually - goes right to the heart of the
censorship and the censors at CBS because just as the Smothers Brothers were
about to start their show in 1967, Hal Holbrook had a 90-minute version of his
stage show "Mark Twain Tonight," which was going to be shown in the middle of
network television on CBS. And it was blocking for two days and then shooting
for two days, and then it was going to be on TV the fifth day.

So this was all in one whirlwind week. And Mark Twain, he chose selections in
the mid '60s - Hal Holbrook did selections of Twain's that would talk about
racism in "Huckleberry Finn" - because of what was going on with civil rights -
and anti-war stuff because of what was going on with Vietnam.

And CBS comes to him and says we can't have you use the N word. So that just
can't be done, and we don’t want you to talk about war. But other than that,
Hal, we love the show, so just make those changes and we're okay. And Hal
Holbrook says, well, no. I won't make any changes. But if you don’t want to do
the show, I totally understand. It's your network. And CBS said, well, we can't
not do the show. It's already in TV Guide. It's scheduled. It's just in three
days. He said, well that's your decision.

And so Hal Holbrook fought that fight and won, and it's this brilliant thing
which is out there on DVD. And Hal Holbrook is a Mark Twain scholar and keeps
rewriting the show that he does to make it current for the times. I just admire
- it's, you know, it’s decades of incredible scholarship and then incredible
performance.

GROSS: Well, thank you, David. And we'll hear that interview after a break. And
I’ll just say again that David's new book is called "Dangerously Funny," and
it's about the Smothers Brothers TV comedy show that aired on CBS in the second
half of the '60s.

David, it's great to talk with you. Thank you so much, and congratulations on
the book.

BIANCULLI: Oh, that's so much, Terry.

GROSS: And, of course, David Bianculli is TV critic for FRESH AIR.

This is FRESH AIR.
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Hal Holbrook, Basking In ‘That Evening Sun’

TERRY GROSS, host:

So, here is the interview we were just talking about that our TV critic David
Bianculli recorded with Hal Holbrook. The 84-year-old actor is most famous for
playing Mark Twain on stage in a one-man show that he has been performing and
constantly reshaping for more than 50 years. In 1972, Holbrook starts with
Martin Sheen in the made for TV movie, “That Certain Summer,” TV’s first
dramatic depiction of a homosexual relationship. He played Deep Throat in the
film “All the President’s Men,” and in 2007, he was nominated for an Oscar for
his supporting role as a lonely old man in “Into The Wild.” Holbrook stars as a
lonely old man in the new movie “That Evening Sun.”

He plays Abner Meechum, a crusty old farmer who slips away from his nursing
home and returns to the farm he used to run with his late wife. Abner’s son has
rented the farm to his father’s old enemy and Abner wants it back. In this
scene, Abner’s son, played by Walton Goggins from “The Shield,” is basically
telling Abner that his life is over and he should just give up the farm.

(Soundbite of movie, “That Evening Sun”)

Mr. WALTON GOGGINS (Actor): (As Paul Meecham) There’s nothing out there for
anymore dad. Things change, life goes on and you got to go on with it, there
ain’t anymore to it than that.

Mr. HAL HOLBROOK (Actor): (As Abner Meecham) Life goes on, huh?

Mr. GOGGINS: (As Paul Meecham) For those who let it.

Mr. HOLBROOK: (As Abner Meecham) I’m a 80-year-old man with a bum hip and a
weak heart. How much life do you think I got left to go on with? I’m no fool,
Paul, the road ahead ain’t long and it ain’t winding. It’s short and straight
as a Goddamned poisoned arrow. But it’s all I got and I deserve to do with it
as I please. And what makes me so angry is that I cut and scraped and did
without, so that you could go to an expensive school and learn a trade, which
you now seem intent on using to do me out of what has taken me a lifetime to
accumulate. This must be God’s finest joke.

Mr. GOGGINS: (As Paul Meecham) So, you’re angry at me for getting an education?

Mr. HOLBROOK: (As Abner Meecham) I’m angry at you for not caring about the only
thing left that matters to me.

BIANCULLI: That’s Hal Holbrook and Walton Goggins in Hal’s new movie “That
Evening Sun.” Hal Holbrook, welcome to FRESH AIR.

Mr. HOLBROOK: Thank you, thank you. Good to be with you, David.

BIANCULLI: I have to ask you about one sequence in “That Evening Sun.” It’s
flashbacks of you with your late wife in the movie, who’s played by your real
life wife, Dixie Carter. And it’s just scenes of you two, you know, embracing
each other, caressing each other, looking at each other…

Mr. HOLBROOK: Dancing…

BIANCULLI: …and dancing. And it just seems so tender and so intimate. What was
the camera actually capturing there?

Mr. HOLBROOK: They were just capturing me and Dixie.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HOLBROOK: We weren’t acting, we weren’t acting at all. We were just
enjoying, we were just loving each other’s presence and face and eyes and
everything, that’s all. You know, I told Dixie, I mean, she said, well, it’s a
tiny little role, Hal, I don’t know whether - and I said, believe me, darling,
this moment in the film is going to be important because it’s the only time
you’re going to see this, you know, grouchy old guy who was trying to stay
alive and keep his farm and fight this character and - it’s the only time
you’re gonna see him sweet, vulnerable. You see a whole ‘nother side of his
life that we never see at any other time and it gives a kind of dimension to
the character and the situation, I think.

BIANCULLI: Your most famous film role, I think, is a very small one but so
indelible and so iconic. I’m talking about your playing Deep Throat in the 1976
movie version of “All the President’s Men.” You’re only in a few scenes but,
boy, you know, what scenes. I’m going to play one. Here you are meeting
Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, played by Robert Redford, in an
underground parking garage.

(Soundbite of movie, “All the President’s Men”)

Mr. HOLBROOK: (As Deep Throat) Forget the myths the media’s created about the
White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys and things got out of
hand.

Mr. ROBERT REDFORD (Actor): (As Bob Woodward) Hunt’s come in from the cold.
Supposedly he’s got a lawyer with $25,000 in a brown paper bag.

Mr. HOLBROOK: (As Deep Throat) Follow the money.

Mr. REDFORD: (As Bob Woodward) What do you mean? Where?

Mr. HOLBROOK: (As Deep Throat) Oh, I can’t tell you that.

Mr. REDFORD: (As Bob Woodward) But you could tell me that.

Mr. HOLBROOK: (As Deep Throat) No, I have to do this my way. You tell me what
you know, and I’ll confirm. I’ll keep you in the right direction if I can but
that’s all. Just follow the money.

BIANCULLI: That’s Hal Holbrook and Robert Redford in “All the President’s Men.”
Now, what are your memories, first of all, of filming that?

Mr. HOLBROOK: Well, I’ll tell you a story that, before the film he started, I
was offered this role and I turned it down because it was so small, I thought.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HOLBROOK: This is nothing, this is nothing and the guy’s in the dark. I
mean, what the heck? So, I turned it down and I knew Bob Redford very well, we
were good friends long in those years, we had time together at various times.
And so Bob come over at the house and he said, Hal, I’m going to promise you
that this role will be remembered more than anything in the film. And I said,
come on, you got to be - kidding.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HOLBROOK: There’s nothing to it. He said, Hal, believe me, believe me. So,
I said well, okay, Bob, if you feel that way, okay, okay, I’ll do it. So, that
was another gift from a friend of mine.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HOLBROOK: Because he was right.

BIANCULLI: Now, did either Robert Redford or Bob Woodward, who was visiting the
set from time to time, give you any clues about how to play Deep Throat?

Mr. HOLBROOK: What was important about this character to me, I visualized
somebody different from Mr. Felt, who turned out to be the man later.

BIANCULLI: Yeah, Mark Felt, the former FBI…

Mr. HOLBROOK: Yeah, I visualized – yeah, Mark Felt. I visualized someone more
like of a sophisticated type of, you know, like Clark Clifford, someone who had
- an elder statesman who had served several presidents of either party, both
parties. In another words, he was not tied down to serving a president of the
Republican Party but both parties. That he had an experience in government and
then now he was faced with an extraordinary choice between his allegiance to
his president and his allegiance to his country. That is the point about Deep
Throat, not who he was but what he had to do.

BIANCULLI: We’re talking with Hal Holbrook. More after a break. This is FRESH
AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

BIANCULLI: We’re talking with Hal Holbrook, who was nominated for an Academy
Award for his supporting role in “Into The Wild,” stars in the new movie “That
Evening Sun,” played Deep Throat in “All the President’s Men.” And now, my
favorite thing that I think you have done in your career is playing Mark Twain
for more than 50 years on stage and once quite memorably on television. Next
year, 2010, is the 100th anniversary of Twain’s death. What does that say to
you that you can still find so much about Mark Twain to say about today’s
times? I mean, that you can have Mark Twain’s saying about today’s times.

Mr. HOLBROOK: Oh, he never has ceased to astound me. And astound is the only
word I can come up with. He had a bead on the corruption that went on late in
his lifetime, in his country. I mean, the corruption is so similar to what’s
going on today. You know, I give – see if I can remember, it’s been – I’m just
trying to learn it. But, it’s from “What Is Man? And Other Essays.” He says,
it’s a strange panic we’re in. It’s like a blight is falling upon us, as if a
mighty machine had slipped its belt and was still running and accomplishing
nothing. An atmosphere of fear has spread around the land. The phrase, laying
off has become common. Laying off of a thousand, two or three thousand men has
become familiar. But there’s a more disastrous laying off going on all over
America. The discharging of one out of every three employee in every humble
small shop and industry from one end of the United States to the other.

BIANCULLI: Hal, there’s two things that stunned me about that. One is that,
just it’s so fresh after so many years that it’s so vital to today. The other
one, I imagine how much work it takes for you as the shaper and the actor in
“Mark Twain Tonight,” to constantly go back to his material, constantly revise
what you’re presenting on stage, and to memorize it. How do you do all that?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HOLBROOK: I stay up late. I’m driven to do it. I enjoy it. It’s hard work.
I have to lose a lot of sleep. I cannot give up, I cannot stop worrying about
what’s going on with our country and the world because I think that this
country we live in is now at a far more crucial and critical moment in its
history than it has ever been in.

BIANCULLI: Hal Holbrook, I just want to thank you so much on being on FRESH AIR
today. Thank you.

Mr. HOLBROOK: Thank you, David, I really enjoyed talking with you.

GROSS: Hal Holbrook spoke with FRESH AIR’s TV critic, David Bianculli. Holbrook
stars in the new film “That Evening Sun,” it’s now playing in L.A. You can
download Podcasts of our show on our Web site, freshair.npr.org and you can
follow us on Twitter @nprfreshair.

I’m Terry Gross.
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