When they first gained nation­al recog­ni­tion with their vari­ety show The Smoth­ers Broth­ers Com­e­dy Hour, they must have come off to many young view­ers as the kind of act of which their moth­er — or even grand­moth­er — would approve. The Smoth­ers Broth­ers Com­e­dy Hour pre­miered in Feb­ru­ary of 1967, and its first sea­son “fea­tured min­i­mal con­tro­ver­sial con­tent,” writes Sarah King at U.S. His­to­ry Scene. The broth­ers invit­ed activist celebri­ties onto their show, includ­ing folk singers Pete Seeger and Joan Baez and singer-actor Har­ry Bela­fonte. The show also pro­duced its own polit­i­cal mate­r­i­al crit­i­ciz­ing the Viet­nam War and the politi­cians who sup­port­ed it,” not least Pres­i­dent Lyn­don John­son. Before the third sea­son, CBS’ high­er-ups demand­ed that each show be turned in ten days in advance, osten­si­bly in order to under­go review for sen­si­tive mate­r­i­al.