Home
In this issue
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review March 13, 2009 / 17 Adar 5769

An Hour and a Half with Sid Caesar

By Greg Crosby


Printer Friendly Version
Email this article

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | I spent an hour and a half with Sid Caesar. And you're thinking "Big deal, millions of Americans spent an hour and a half with Sid Caesar every single Saturday night watching "Your Show of Shows" on NBC." True, but I spent an hour and half with Sid Caesar last Thursday afternoon at his home. Just Sid Caesar, a friend of his, and me. We talked about his shows, his writers, his fellow performers, and comedy in general. Sid Caesar gave me an hour and a half. It was ninety minutes that I'll never forget.


I've worked at comedy writing most of my life, so a visit with a comedy giant like Sid Caesar was like going to Mecca for me (hmmm… perhaps that's an inappropriate expression since both Caesar and I are Jewish guys. Okay, it was like going to the Carnegie Deli). I have adored him all my life, in fact I wrote in last week's column how watching Sid Caesar on television taught me what funny was all about.


Life is full of surprises. Here I was schlepping along in my own little existence, doing what I do in my own little corner of the world, when out of a clear blue sky I get a message to call a man. I call him, and he turns out to be Sid Caesar's friend and fellow performer Lee Delano. "Would you be interested in an interview with Sid Caesar?" Wow. The next thing I know, a few days later I'm in Lee's car going to Sid Caesar's House.


As the car winds through the canyon I think about all those great comedy sketches that cracked me up as a kid and continue to make me laugh every time I watch them: the spoof on "This is Your Life," the Italian cobbler and his apprentice, the Bavarian clock. "Your Show of Shows" was the beginning of it all. Television comedy as we know it started with this show. Sit coms, TV sketch comedy, movie spoofs, highbrow satire, pop culture send ups - it all started with "Your Show of Shows." Following that show Sid did a one hour show called, appropriately, "Caesar's Hour."

Caesar

Writers for both shows included what has now become known as probably the greatest collection of comedy writers in history; Mel Tolken, Lucille Kallen, Mel Brooks, Neil and Danny Simon, Gary Belkin, Larry Gelbart, and Woody Allen. Sid's shows ran from 1950 until May 1957. Every week for 39 weeks a year the shows were broadcast live in front of a studio audience and 60 million Americans. A brand new 90 minute show every single week. Done without retakes. And done without cue cards - Sid didn't like using them. He said it loused up the believability of the actors because instead of making eye contact with each other, the actors wind up looking at the cue cards off to the side.


Sid Caesar has always been a dedicated comedian, using both comedy and pathos in his portrayals. An excellent saxophonist, he applied his musical sense of rhythm and timing to his comedy. Careful preparation, able to think fast on his feet, and impeccable timing were all important elements to Sid's comedy. His foreign language double-talk is legendary - and no one can do it better than Sid. But there is one ingredient that he possesses that can't be learned: his natural born humor. Sid has the gift of comedy within him. He's a funny man, that's all. His reactions are naturally funny; he walks funny, he even thinks funny. It's in his eyes, his gestures, his entire being. As they say, "you either got it, or you ain't got it." Sid Caesar most definitely got it.


Even at age 86 Sid Caesar is sharp as a tack. His memory is flawless, his sense of humor as wonderful as ever. And when he relates a gag or story, his comedy timing is letter-perfect. I mention to him how he has always been a hero of mine and he smiles and thanks me. Imagine that. Sid Caesar thanking ME. It dawns on me that I am in the presence of the last of the great comedians of the 20th Century.


I sit down in front of him and begin talking. As I ask my questions he graciously answers each one in detail (and I'm sure he's heard them all nine hundred times). He speaks highly of the people in his life that helped him get his start; Max Liebman, producer of "Your Show of Shows," Pat Weaver, the head of NBC, co-stars Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris and his wonderful writing team. Of Imogene, Howie, and Carl he says, "We worked together like a well oiled machine." That they did.


He spoke of learning comedy from his older brother Dave and how they would invent sketches as kids spoofing the then popular airplane pictures like Test Pilot and Wings. He told me how he learned to double-talk in every language from working at his father's luncheonette, going from table to table and listening to the distinctive ethnic speech patterns of the patrons. He got so he could mimic the sounds of almost any language. Of course Sid couldn't really speak any of those languages, it was all gibberish, but when he did it, it sounded right.


His eyes sparkle when I mention one of my favorite routines of his. He laughs easily and falls into the character himself, remembering the lines perfectly. All at once I find myself a one-man audience for a man who used to do this same thing in front of 60 million viewers. Now Sid Caesar is performing just for me and I'm in heaven. I laugh just as I did as a little kid sitting in front of the TV.


At one point I asked him if there was a movie that he turned down and now looking back, wished he had made. As it turns out, there was. It was the film version of the stage hit, "Born Yesterday" starring opposite Judy Holiday. Sid was offered the role of Harry Brock, the part that eventually went to Broderick Crawford. Sid had to turn it down because doing the weekly show at the time was so strenuous that any attempt to squeeze a filming schedule in would have just been too much, even for someone with Sid Caesar's stamina. Boy, what a loss that was. Sid would have been perfect in that part. I tell him that he made Broderick Crawford a star because he turned down the part. "Yeah, sure," he says with a smile.


Although Caesar's shows were the most creative and consistently funny programs on the air, they never got into wide syndication after their initial runs and I don't now why. "I Love Lucy" is known throughout the world today because it has been appearing in reruns for more than fifty years. Jackie Gleason's "The Honeymooners" shows up everywhere, all the time. Not so for Sid Caesar. And that's really too bad. Too bad for all of us, but especially too bad for the generations who came after me who have never seen those marvelously creative shows. Most of the sketches are timeless. They absolutely hold up.


Fortunately, some of the sketches have been put together in compilation boxed sets which are available through sidcaesar.com so thankfully we can still see some of them. I only wish all of them were available and that they could be seen on television on a regular basis again.


Asked if he had any advice for young comics he said, "Do something believable." That's it. That was the essence of Sid's characters and sketches for me; they were always believable - always rooted in real life. The one motto that Sid stressed to me more than once during our time together was, "It's not what you do, it's the way that you do it." Indeed. And when Sid did it, the way that he did it was always believable and most definitely funny.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


JWR contributor Greg Crosby, former creative head for Walt Disney publications, has written thousands of comics, hundreds of children's books, dozens of essays, and a letter to his congressman. A freelance writer in Southern California, you may contact him by clicking here.

Greg Crosby Archives

© 2008, Greg Crosby

Insight (Our Columnists)

 Arnold Ahlert
 Mitch Albom
 Michael Barone
  Dave Barry
 Tony Blankley
 Andy Borowitz
 David Broder
 Stratfor Briefing
 Mona Charen
 Linda Chavez
 Ann Coulter
 Greg Crosby
 Larry Elder
 Suzanne Fields
 John Fund
 Frank J. Gaffney
 Lloyd Garver
 Jonah Goldberg
 Julia Gorin
 Jonathan Gurwitz
 Paul Greenberg
 Lewis Grossberger
 Victor Davis Hanson
 Betsy Hart
 Nat Hentoff
 David Horowitz
 Laura Ingraham
 Cheri Jacobus
Jeff Jacoby
 Paul Johnson
 Jack Kelly
 Ed Koch
 Ch. Krauthammer
 Michael Ledeen
 John Leo
 David Limbaugh
 Kathryn Lopez
 Rich Lowry
 Michelle Malkin
 Jackie Mason
 Dick Morris
 Bill O'Reilly
 Jim Mullen
 Clarence Page
 Kathleen Parker
 Dennis Prager
 Wesley Pruden
 Tom Purcell
 Jonathan Rauch
 Celia Rivenbark
 Robert Robb
 Cokie & Steve Roberts
 Pat Sajak
 Debra J. Saunders
 Culture Shlock
 Roger Simon
 Michael Smerconish
 Thomas Sowell
 Mark Steyn
 John Stossel
 Cal Thomas
 Bob Tyrrell
 Diana West
 Dave Weinbaum
 George Will
 Walter Williams
 Byron York
 Mort Zuckerman

'Toons
 Robert Arial
 Chuck Asay
 Baloo
 Chip Bok
 Dry Bones
  Lisa Benson
 John Branch
 Gary Brookins
 John Cole
 J. D. Crowe
 John Deering
 Brian Duffy
 Everything's Relative
 Mallard Fillmore
 Jake Fuller
 Bob Gorrel
 Joe Heller
 David Hitch
 Jerry Holber
 Steve Kelley
 Jeff Koterba
 Dick Locher
 Chan Lowe
 Ranan R. Lurie
 Jimmy Margulies
 Rick McKee
 Michael Ramirez
 Kevin Siers
 Jeff Stahler
 Ed Stein
 Danna Summers
 John Trever
 Gary Varvel
 Kirk Walters

Lifestyles
 How 2
 Lori Borgman
 The Savvy Consumer
 Elder matters
 Fixit
 Dr. Peter Gott
 GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
 Richard Lederer
 Tech Maven
 Every Monday Matters
 Nutrition Myths
 Bookmark These
 Bruce Williams
 How Stuff Works