Early Years
The brothers were both born on Governors Island in New York Harbor, where their father, Thomas B. Smothers, Jr., a West Point graduate and U.S. Army officer, was stationed. Tom was born on February 2, 1937, and Dick was born on November 20, 1939. Major Smothers served in the 45th Infantry Regiment (United States) and died during World War II, while being transported from a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Fukuoka, Japan, to a POW camp in Mukden, Manchukuo. They were raised by their mother in the Los Angeles area.
They graduated from Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach, California, and attended San Jose State University. After a brief time in a folk group called the Casual Quintet, the Smothers made their first professional appearance as a duo in February 1959 at The Purple Onion in San Francisco. They were a popular act in clubs and released several successful record albums, the most successful being The Smothers Brothers at the Purple Onion in 1961. Their first national television appearance was on The Jack Paar Show on January 28, 1961.
The brothers appeared in a segment of the television series Burke's Law, in 1964, in which they played two compulsive hoarders. Their first television series was a situation comedy, The Smothers Brothers Show (1965–1966). Tom played an angel come back to earth to oversee his brother Dick, who played a swinging bachelor. It did not do well in the ratings and had little of the music that was identified with the brothers. Tom would later say "Four Star (the production company) gave me ulcers."
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Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“The secret of heaven is kept from age to age. No imprudent, no sociable angel ever dropt an early syllable to answer the longings of saints, the fears of mortals. We should have listened on our knees to any favorite, who, by stricter obedience, had brought his thoughts into parallelism with the celestial currents, and could hint to human ears the scenery and circumstance of the newly parted soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Today so much rebellion is aimless and demoralizing precisely because children have no values to challenge. Teenage rebellion is a testing process in which young people try out various values in order to make them their own. But during those years of trial, error, embarrassment, a child needs family standards to fall back on, reliable habits of thought and feeling that provide security and protection.”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)