Tom Smothers

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) and Major Thomas B. Smothers, a United States Army officer who died as a prisoner of war of the Japanese in April 1945. Smothers grew up in Altadena, Tujunga, and Redondo Beach, California. As a child he learned guitar and piano by ear, later diagnosed with dyslexia at age 31, which had made reading sheet music difficult. From fifth grade onward he played guitar in bands with friends, combining music with humor. He also competed in gymnastics during his youth. After attending Verdugo Hills High School, he transferred to Redondo Union High School for his senior year, graduating in 1955. He and his brother Dick sang in the school's madrigal choir, Tom as a bass. Smothers enrolled at San Jose State College in 1956 as an advertising major, competed in pole vault as a freshman, and then joined the gymnastics team, tying for first place on the parallel bars at the 1958 State College Gymnastics Championships.

Smothers is best known as one half of the Smothers Brothers, a musical comedy duo he formed with his younger brother Dick. Inspired by the success of The Kingston Trio's "Tom Dooley," the brothers initially pursued folk music. After Dick transferred to San Jose State in 1957, the two began performing at San Jose nightclubs for largely college audiences. In January 1959 they were discovered by a detective who became their first manager and arranged an audition at the Purple Onion, a San Francisco nightclub. The following month they left San Jose State to work in entertainment full time after the Purple Onion asked them to substitute for ailing acts. Their engagement was extended from two weeks to sixteen, and they returned for a second sixteen-week contract after playing a Lake Tahoe club in the summer of 1959. Their professional debut outside California came in February 1960 in Aspen, Colorado.

Tom's television career began in 1961 as a regular on The Steve Allen Show, followed by a single episode of Burke's Law. The brothers appeared on the CBS sitcom The Smothers Brothers Show from 1965 to 1966, a format Tom felt did not suit their strengths. He subsequently negotiated creative control over their next CBS project, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which launched in 1967. The show generated ongoing conflicts with CBS standards and practices over material touching on religion, recreational drugs, sex, and the Vietnam War, and was ultimately canceled due to political pressure. During the same period Tom recorded mainstream songs, including "Can't Help Falling in Love with You," and introduced musical acts at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.

As Smothers became more politically active, he developed a friendship with John Lennon. On June 1, 1969, Smothers and Lennon played acoustic guitars together during the live recording of Lennon's single "Give Peace a Chance," recorded during Lennon and Yoko Ono's Bed-in at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Smothers' name was also mentioned in the song. He can be seen in the hotel room in the 1988 documentary Imagine: John Lennon. Following the cancellation of Comedy Hour, Smothers became outspoken on political issues, describing himself during that period as having lost perspective and his sense of humor. His political views stood in contrast to those of his brother Dick, whom Tom described as more conservative. Tom publicly criticized President Lyndon B. Johnson over the Vietnam War. A separate political dispute with Bill Cosby, stemming from the 1970s when Smothers criticized Cosby for not taking public stands on civil rights, culminated in October 1976 when Cosby punched Smothers in the head at a Playboy Mansion party.

On screen, Smothers played corporate-executive-turned-tap-dancing-magician Donald Beeman in Brian De Palma's 1972 film Get to Know Your Rabbit and a banker in Silver Bears. In 1973 he voiced Ted E. Bear in the DePatie-Freleng NBC animated Christmas special The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas, reprising the role a decade later in the Halloween sequel The Great Bear Scare. He portrayed Reverend Spike in Serial (1980) and starred in There Goes the Bride the same year. In 1982 he appeared in Pandemonium as a Canadian Mountie pursuing a serial killer at a cheerleader camp, and in 1983 he appeared in an episode of the UK television series Tales of the Unexpected. He also voiced a character in the animated Christmas film Precious Moments: Timmy's Special Delivery in 1993.

The Smothers Brothers hosted Saturday Night Live in 1982, with Tom playing Johnny Carson in a parody of The Tonight Show. During the 1980s and 1990s the brothers filmed television commercials for Kentucky Fried Chicken and Planters peanuts, with Tom delivering his signature line "Mom always did like you best," while Tom also made a solo endorsement for Cheetos.

Smothers brought his talents to the Broadway stage in 1977, appearing in the musical I Love My Wife. A native New Yorker by birth, he died on December 26, 2023.