3 Shows Set for Smothers Series Despite Strike

One week after postponing a new Smothers Brothers series because no scripts had been completed before the Writer’s Guild went on strike, CBS said Thursday that there was enough pre-strike material in hand to go ahead with three episodes of the variety show. The first will air March 30, one week later than originally planned.

“We just assumed that they (the producers) didn’t have any scripts,” said George Vescio, a CBS spokesman. “Apparently that was just a wrong assumption.”

Ken Kragen, executive producer of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” said Thursday that the majority of the first two shows were written before the Feb. 7 strike and that the third had been planned as primarily a concert/musical special.

Despite the fact that the strike prevents anyone from writing new material for the shows, Kragen said his writerless crew would work around the problem as best it can.

“There’s very little writing on the show,” Kragen said. “Different acts come in and do their own self-contained material and the Smothers have their old stuff that they’ve honed over the last 30 years.”

Spokesmen for the Writers Guild were not immediately available for comment.

CBS, currently in last place in this season’s ratings race, had ordered six episodes of the show following the favorable response from critics and viewers to its Feb. 3 telecast of a Smothers Brothers 20th anniversary special. Kim LeMasters, president of CBS Entertainment, said he hoped the spring tryout would lead to the development of a half-hour Smothers Brothers comedy show for the fall season.

The first program will include Harry Belafonte and his South African music troupe singing their latest single; Jack Lemmon reading a poem; Pat Paulsen doing a piece of political satire that, Kragen said, was written prior to the strike; comedian Don Novello as Father Guido Sarducci doing a stand-up routine; a vintage film of the Beatles performing “Hey Jude”; Andrea Martin, formerly of SCTV, resurrecting an old Smothers comedy dance number called “The Last Great Waltz,” and plenty of nostalgic shtick and ad-libbing from Tom and Dick Smothers.

When it comes to the lead-ins and transitional material between the acts, Kragen said the union’s position “seems to be that if that material is ad-libbed, then it’s fine. Tom and Dick have been doing this enough years that it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Kragen has asked the Writer’s Guild for a waiver to hire writers on interim contracts to complete the six shows, but so far the guild has denied all such requests.