Raunchy and irreverent, Richard "Cheech" Marin and Tommy Chong captured the spirit of the
70s counterculture with an authenticity that couldn't be denied.
Keep watching to discover the untold truth of this iconic duo.
Richard Anthony "Cheech" Marin was born on July 13, 1946, in South Central Los Angeles.
His father Oscar was an officer with the LAPD, while his mother Elsa worked as a secretary.
He received the nickname "Cheech" from an uncle who joked that baby Richard looked like
a fried pork rind, "chicharrón" in Spanish.
While still a child, Marin moved with his parents to the suburb of Granada Hills, where
he attended a Catholic high school.
He had musical aspirations and performed in bands with his friends.
He was a straight-A student, but he also had a reputation as a class clown, which frequently
landed him in hot water.
After high school, Marin attended California State University at Northridge, where he tried
marijuana for the first time.
Upon taking his first puff, the formerly straightlaced Marin was transformed.
Dismissing the propaganda that adults had fed him about the drug, he mused,
"What else have they been lying to me about?"
Marin also became active in the anti-war and draft resistance movements while in college.
With draft resisters being imprisoned, he escaped to Canada with the help of his pottery teacher.
He then worked as an apprentice to a famous potter and settled down to rustic life in
a secluded log cabin in the Canadian wilderness.
Thomas Chong was born on May 24, 1938 to dad Stanley, a Chinese immigrant who worked as
a truck driver, and mom Lorna Jean, a Canadian waitress.
He grew up in Calgary, Alberta as the product of an interracial marriage, learning hard
lessons about racism from an early age.
In a 2020 interview with The Guardian, he opened up about his childhood in his conservative hometown.
While recalling his exclusion from a friend's birthday party, he noted,
"I just looked out of the window of the second story and could see my friends gathering around the fire.
I was uninvited cause the girl's father was worried she might end up with a colored guy
or Chinese guy."
At the age of 16, Chong dropped out of high school to pursue a career in music.
A talented guitarist, he landed a gig with the Shades, a multiracial soul group out of
Calgary.
Changing their name to Little Daddy and the Bachelors, the band moved to Vancouver, where
they released a single and built a small following.
They would reach their pinnacle when they became known as Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers.
Recommended to Berry Gordy by Diana Ross and the Supremes, the band signed with Motown
and recorded the top 40 hit "Does Your Mama Know About Me?"
Co-written by Chong and Bobby Taylor, the touching ballad about an interracial couple
peaked at number 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 and made it to the top five on the R&B charts.
Chong was ultimately fired from his band, so he pocketed a $5,000 severance check and
made his way back to Vancouver.
While on the road, his parents had converted one of the nightspots he owned into the Shanghai
Junk, Vancouver's first topless club.
During his time with Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers, Chong had been exposed to the comedy of Chicago's
Second City.
He found renewed purpose in improv, and the Shanghai Junk was the perfect venue to hone
his chops.
Recruiting four topless dancers, a mime, and a classical guitarist, he was going to reinvent
burlesque for the hippie generation.
Meanwhile, Cheech had migrated to Vancouver and found work as a part-time writer for a
local music magazine.
His editor suggested that he meet Chong.
The unconventional pair hit it off, and Cheech was brought on as a writer.
The duo's famous act came about by accident when Chong and his new music group were scheduled
to play their first show.
To warm up the crowd beforehand, Cheech and Chong came out to tell some jokes.
The audience was doubled over with laughter as one hilarious bit led into another.
The act ultimately went on so long that there was no time for the band to play.
"We always approached comedy as music, had a certain rhythm to it, you know, had a certain beat.
You knew when to come in, when to not come in."
An energized Cheech and Chong eventually headed for the comedy capital of the world, Los Angeles.
They landed a gig at an open mic night, but they struggled financially and were forced
to move in with Chong's estranged wife, making for a living situation that quickly became
untenable.
Circumstances became especially dire when dwindling profits forced Chong's Vancouver
nightclubs to close.
Slowly, Cheech and Chong began performing regular gigs at several Southern California
clubs.
After one disastrous show, they decided that they just weren't connecting with their audience.
They then mined the peace-love-and-dope ethos of the era for material to develop their Pedro
and Man characters.
The audience response was immediate.
The lovable stoners were comedy gold, which led to sold-out shows, better venues, and
a deal to make their first comedy record when music producer Lou Adler caught their act.
With $2,000, a tape recorder, and a rehearsal space at A&M Records, Cheech and Chong crafted
a comedy masterpiece that showcased their wit, razor-sharp timing, and brilliant characterizations.
Released in August 1971, their self-titled debut album connected with critics and audiences
alike, eventually peaking at number 28 on the Billboard charts and earning the duo what
would be the first of six Grammy nominations for Best Comedy Recording.
In 1978, Cheech and Chong set their sights on conquering Hollywood with their first feature
film, Up in Smoke.
Although they originally conceived the movie as a compilation of the best bits from their
albums and live shows, they ultimately decided to concentrate on their Pedro and Man characters.
As Cheech explained to Rolling Stone in 2018,
"It was a day in the life of [...] Pedro and Man, which was much more interesting than a plot.
It's, 'Two guys meet, they decide to form a band together, but first they need a joint.'
Therein lies your plot."
With no formal script, Up in Smoke was largely improvised.
With Lou Adler at the helm, Cheech and Chong had free reign to experiment.
Nonetheless, the movie faced its share of obstacles on its journey to the screen.
Upon seeing a rough cut of the film, then-Paramount president Michael Eisner pulled the plug on
the picture.
Adler bought the film back from the studio, using his own money to complete it.
After witnessing a test audience's reaction, Eisner relented and Paramount bought the film
back.
Budgeted at just under $2 million, Up in Smoke wound up making $20 million in its first month
of release.
Cheech and Chong followed Up in Smoke with Cheech and Chong's Next Movie in 1980 and
Nice Dreams in 1981.
Sticking to their patented drug humor, the new movies failed to live up to the high standard
set by the first film, but they were still filled with classic moments and turned a tidy
profit against their relatively low budgets.
The duo's next film, 1982's Things are Tough All Over, featured Cheech and Chong temporarily
putting down their giant spliffs for a more story-oriented comedy.
The following year, they returned with Still Smokin, a loose collection of sketches and
concert footage that finds the stoners in Amsterdam for a film festival.
Critics weren't kind, though fans stood by the duo and their bawdy, juvenile humor.
However, their next project, a radical departure from their tried-and-true formula, left even
the most loyal Cheech and Chong devotees wondering what the pair were smoking.
Cheech and Chong's The Corsican Brothers, released in 1984, cast the comedy legends
in a spoof of Alexandre Dumas' classic story of brothers who can feel each other's physical pain.
Reviews were generally dismissive, and audiences took a pass as well.
Failing to make back even half of its $10 million budget, The Corsican Brothers would
be Cheech and Chong's final feature.
In 1985, Cheech and Chong released the album and home video Get Out of My Room.
It would be their final release before an acrimonious split.
After nearly two decades, ego and creative differences had soured their friendship.
Although they'd soldiered on through their differences, never allowing their animosity
toward each other to affect their working relationship, tensions between the two eventually
became unbearable.
During a conversation with Talks at Google in 2017, Cheech noted,
"There was always a contentious conversation between Tommy and I because we were very strong
personalities [...] but it was the irritant that produced the pearl."
He also insisted that the cause of the breakup came down to Chong's inflated ego.
"As we went along and got more success, Tommy wanted to be everything.
He wanted to be the director and the sole writer."
Chong's refusal to participate in the recording of the song "Born in East L.A." was the final
straw for Marin.
Decades later, a humbler Tommy Chong agrees with his partner's assessment of their breakup.
During a radio appearance in 2020, he admitted,
"I was really, really hurt, although it was probably my fault why we broke up, you know.
I got to be a bit of a megalomaniac when it came to the movies because I ended up directing them.
Once you become a director, your word's God, and it's hard to lose that."
"When he first went on his own, I felt really betrayed."
The song "Born in East L.A.," a parody of Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A.,"
was credited to both Cheech and Chong, even though it was actually by Cheech on his own.
It was a huge hit, which led to Universal executive Frank Price suggesting to Cheech
that the story of a hapless Mexican-American man's misadventures after being mistakenly
deported would make for a great comedy feature.
Cheech jumped at the opportunity, as he wrote, directed, and starred in his first major project
without Tommy Chong.
Released in 1987, Born in East L.A. established Cheech as a creative force on his own.
With a knack for creating characters through accents and dialects, the newly liberated
Cheech became an in-demand voice actor, as he would go on to show up in the likes of
Oliver & Company and The Lion King.
He also got the chance to show off a subtler side of his comedic skills in the 1996 rom-com
Tin Cup.
By the late 90s, Cheech had put the drug-addled comedy of his past mostly behind him.
A new generation of fans would come to know him not as the perennially wasted Pedro but
as San Francisco special investigator Joe Dominguez on the CBS cop show Nash Bridges.
He also became a familiar face in director Robert Rodriguez's action movies and kids' comedies.
In 2012, Tommy Chong let the public in on his health struggles by announcing that he'd
been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
A longtime advocate for marijuana legalization and the medical use of cannabis, he turned
to the plant as part of his treatment.
"But now that I found out that the hemp oil will help the prostate, hey, I'm back, man."
Less than a year later, Chong announced that with a combination of hash oil and dietary
supplements, he had, quote, "kicked cancer's ass."
Unfortunately, he would face another health setback in 2015, when he announced that although
his prostate cancer was in remission, he was now under treatment for rectal cancer.
In typical Chong style, he took the news with optimism and humor.
He told Us Weekly,
"I'm using cannabis like crazy now, more so than ever before.
I'm in treatment now [...] Either I get healed or I don't.
But either way, I'm going to make sure I get a little edge off or put up."
A Cheech and Chong reunion has been in the works since 2003, with the iconic comedy duo
planning a new movie.
But when Chong served a prison sentence for drug paraphernalia charges that year, it derailed
their big screen plans.
But eventually, to the delight of their legions of fans, the duo finally re-teamed for a 2008
nationwide comedy tour.
On stage together for the first time in 25 years, Cheech and Chong found that the old
magic was as vibrant as ever.
As Cheech told NPR,
"When we came back last year to start doing this, we didn't really even rehearse.
We just kind of talked over what we were going to do and then went on stage and did it.
It was like we've been apart 25 seconds, not 25 years."
Over a decade into their reunion, the pair continue to pack theaters for their sold-out
live shows.
Even though Cheech is now in his seventies and Chong is in his eighties, they're still
smokin' in the 21st century.
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