Tom Smothers, One Half of Envelope-Pushing Smothers Brothers, Dies at 86

Tom Smothers, who played the comedic ditz half of the boundary-blasting Smothers Brothers, has died at 86.

TMZ reports he died Tuesday at his Santa Rosa, California, home. He had announced over the summer that he was diagnosed with stage 2 lung cancer.

“Tom was not only the loving older brother that everyone would want in their life, he was a one-of-a-kind creative partner,” Dick Smothers, 85, said in a statement.

In contrast to his duties in the team, Smothers was both smart and fearless, a provocateur who used the brothers' iconic series "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" to test the limits of what was then permissible on TV, including jokes about religion and the Vietnam War, which he opposed.

The series was so confrontational it was canceled without notice in spite of high ratings, reportedly after it angered incoming President Richard Nixon.

Born February 2, 1937, on Governors Island in New York, the military-brat brothers grew up in Manila and finally Los Angeles.

A high school gymnast, Tom and his younger brother Dick sang and performed together, segueing from singing to comedy, fueled by the concept that the battling brothers could never quite get through a song without sniping at each other.

Tom's signature line, when Dick got the better of him, was a resigned, "Mom always liked you best!"

A hit by the early '60s, they began making TV and radio appearances, and cut a comedy record.

Their first TV series, "The Smothers Brothers Show" aka "My Brother the Angel," arrived in 1965, and was a flop. A static sitcom, it failed to make use of what made the brothers so much fun to watch and listen to onstage. (Until his death, it had been TV's oldest series with an entire main cast still living.)

In 1967, the brothers were given full control of "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour," a different kind of variety show, one that included counterculture guests like Jefferson Airplane.

The tone and content of the show vexed CBS, and Tom would later describe the next few years as a period in which he was swallowed by politics to the detriment of his devotion to comedy.

He befriended John Lennon and played guitar on his classic "Give Peace a Chance" (1969), a song in which he is name-checked when Lennon sings, "Everybody's talkin' 'bout John and Yoko, Timmy Leary, Rosemary [Leary], Tommy Smothers, Bobby Dylan, Tommy Cooper
Derek Taylor, Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Hare Krishna, Hare, Hare Krishna."

The brothers reunited for a number of TV specials, appeared on Broadway in 1978's "I Love My Life," and toured as an act until retirement in 2010.

In the meantime, Tom had made TV guest appearances and acted in such films as Brian De Palma's "Get to Know Your Rabbit" (1972), "Silver Bears" (1977), "Serial" (1980), and "Pandemonium" (1980). One of his last TV jobs was voicing himself on "The Simpsons" in 2009.

In 2008, the brothers received an honorary Emmy for their work on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour."

Smothers is survived by his wife, their two children, and a grandchild. He is also survived by his brother and a sister. He was preceded in death last year by his oldest child, a son.