Master of TV Comedy Sid Caesar Dies at 91
Sid Caesar,
one of the first stars created by television via his weekly live comedy program
“Your Show of Shows,” died Wednesday in his home. He was 91.
Caesar,
partnered with Imogene Coca, is credited with breaking ripe comedic ground with
the 90-minute live program: It didn’t rely on vaudeville or standup-inspired
material but rather on long skits and sketches written by an impressive roster
of comedy writers including Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart,
Lucille Kallen and Mel Tolkin.
“Your Show
of Shows” was “different from other programs of its time because its humour was
aimed at truth,” Simon once observed. “Other television shows would present
situations with farcical characters; we would put real-life people into
identifiable situations.”
Following
Caesar’s Camelot-days in the ’50s, however, he made a precipitous decline into
alcoholism and barbiturates, a self-described “20-year blackout” from which
Caesar finally recovered and subsequently related in his 1982 autobiography
“Where Have I Been.”
Caesar
continued to make club appearances, starred in the Broadway musical “Little Me”
and toured with Neil Simon’s “Last of the Red Hot Lovers.” His movies included
“It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World” and Brooks’ “Silent Movie.”
He also did
a considerable amount of work in supporting and guest turns on film and TV. He
was in “Grease” and “The Cheap Detective” in 1978, in Brooks’ “History of the
World: Part I” in 1981 and he made two appearances on “Love Boat,” to name just
a few of his credits from the period.
In 1995 he
drew an Emmy nomination for his appearance on Diane English sitcom “Love and
War.” He had quite a year in 1997, at age 75: He appeared on “Life With Louie”
and “Mad About You” on TV, drawing an Emmy nom for the latter, and in the film
“Vegas Vacation,” and he joined fellow TV icons Bob Hope and Milton Berle at
the 50th anniversary Primetime Emmy Awards, where the three drew a long
standing ovation.
On a 2001
episode of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?,” he reprised his famous foreign dub skit,
receiving an extended standing ovation by the crowd as well as a surprise
birthday cake from the cast and crew.
In 1985 he
was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. In 2011 he received a
lifetime achievement award from the Television Critics Assn.
Caesar’s second autobiography, “Caesar’s Hours,” was
published in 2004.
His reign
as the star of “Your Show of Shows” has been fictionally chronicled in the film
“My Favorite Year” as well as in Simon’s Broadway comedy “Laughter on the 23rd
Floor” and explored in the 2001 documentary “Hail Sid Caesar! The Golden Age of
Comedy.”
As Coca
once observed, “I’m tired of talking about ‘Your Show of Shows.’ But deep
inside, I know I’ve done nothing as good since.”
In 1943, Caesar married the former Florence Levy, by whom he
had two daughters and a son.
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