THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS COMEDY HOUR
getTV, 11:00 p.m. ET
This week’s ultra-rare rerun of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour is particularly well-timed. It’s one of the final installments of the controversial Sixties variety show, and originally aired on Easter Sunday 51 years ago – on April 13, 1969. It was one of the final two shows already taped, but not yet broadcast, when CBS fired the Smothers Brothers in a telegram sent 10 days earlier – and it includes an incendiary and soulful musical set by Ike and Tina Turner. My favorite moment, though, is when former Comedy Hour head writer Mason Williams, who unveiled his guitar instrumental Classical Gas on the program the previous year, returned to the show to perform a poem. Not a song, even though he had his guitar with him and strummed a single chord to launch into his free verse. A poem. And it was a poem he had composed himself, and which he recited to the camera while holding a big pair of scissors aloft in a threatening fashion. “The Censor” is worth seeing – given its context and uniqueness, it’s one of my favorite moments of television – but it’s also worth reading. With thanks to Mason Williams, here's what he recites in this rare Comedy Hour rerun: “The censor sits / somewhere between the scenes to be seen and the television sets / with his scissor purpose poised / watching the human stuff that will sizzle through the magic wires / and light up like welding shops the ho-hum rooms of America / and with a kindergarten arts-and-crafts concept of moral responsibility / snips out the rough talk, the unpopular opinion, or anything with teeth / and renders a pattern of ideas full of holes… / a doily for your mind.”