![\"\"](\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2023\/z122723rip_tom_smothers.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Tom Smothers, born Thomas Bolyn Smothers III, died yesterday from cancer.\u00a0 Mr. Smothers was 86.<\/p>\n
In high school Tom Smothers was a state champion gymnast in the parallel bars.\u00a0 While attending San Jos\u00e9 State University, Mr. Smothers competed in gymnastics and the pole vault with the track and field team.<\/p>\n
Tom and his younger brother, Dick, wanted to be folk musicians.\u00a0 Tom thought that while he wasn’t good enough to be a professional musician, he was funny enough to be a comedian.\u00a0 So the two began adding comedy bits to their performances.\u00a0 Their act caught on.\u00a0 CBS gave them their first television show, The Smothers Brothers Show<\/em>.\u00a0 It lasted one season.<\/p>\n Tom Smothers negotiated creative control for their next CBS series, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.<\/em>\u00a0 By this point Tom had become politically active.\u00a0 He and Dick began to push the limits with references to recreational drugs, sex, religion and the Viet Nam war.\u00a0 The show’s war with the CBS censors generated a lot of publicity and the show ended up being cancelled.<\/p>\n Tom Smothers continued to appear with his brother for live performances.\u00a0 Tom Smothers also continued to be a political activist.\u00a0 He attended the famous Monterey Pop Festival where he introduced several of the acts.\u00a0 He became friends with John Lennon and actually played acoustic guitar on Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance”<\/em> record.<\/p>\n For the rest of his career Tom Smothers performed live, on television, feature films and commercials.<\/p>\n Some of Tom Smothers’ television appearances include: The Danny Thomas Show; Burke’s Law; My Brother the Angel<\/em> (32 episodes); The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour<\/em> (73 episodes); Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In<\/em> (3 episodes); Love American Style; Fitz & Bones<\/em> (4 episodes); Fantasy Island; The Love Boat<\/em> (2 episodes); The Smothers Brothers Show<\/em> (13 episodes); Hotel; Tales of the Unexpected<\/em> (2 episodes); Dream On; Suddenly Susan<\/em> (3 episodes); Norm<\/em> (2 episodes) and The Simpsons<\/em>.<\/p>\n Some of Tom Smothers’ feature film appearances include: Get to Know Your Rabbit; Silver Bears<\/em> and Serial<\/em>.<\/p>\n I was a kid when The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was getting all of the heat over trouble with the censors.\u00a0 It just made me want to watch it more.\u00a0 I always enjoyed seeing Tom and Dick Smothers perform.\u00a0 They never failed to give me\u00a0 smile.<\/p>\n Our thoughts and prayers go out to Tom Smothers’ family, friends and fans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tom Smothers, born Thomas Bolyn Smothers III, died yesterday from cancer.\u00a0 Mr. Smothers was 86. In high school Tom Smothers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,63,54,64,57,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-humor","category-movies","category-music","category-rip","category-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34934"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34935,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34934\/revisions\/34935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}