by John Greco
Your Show of Shows premiered on Saturday, February 25th 1950. It was a live 90 minute variety show consisting, for most seasons, of 39 episodes. It was the equivalent of putting on a new Broadway show every week. The show starred Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca with Carl Reiner and Howard Morris as regulars. James Starbuck would join the cast in 1951. Among the show’s writers, were Mel Brooks, Neil and Danny Simon, Mel Tolkin and Lucille Kallen. One of the misconceptions is that Larry Gelbart and Woody Allen wrote for Your Show of Shows. Gelbart actually wrote for Caesar’s Hour and Woody Allen worked on a few episodes of The Sid Caesar Show.
The man behind the idea was Viennese born Max Liebman who for years before the show’s premiere was in many ways priming himself for his big moment. In the 1930’s Liebman worked at the Tamiment Resort in the famed Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. He worked as a social director and on Saturday night, he along with the aid of plenty of talented performers, and backstage folks, put together original shows every week. He wrote, directed, produced, worked on scenery, costumes and more. Liebman said, “I was doing what you might call television without the cameras.” For four years Liebman did the writing for all the Tamiment shows. In 1938, Sylvia Fine[1] joined his staff. It was through Fine, Liebman would meet a young Danny Kaye who would join his group. Around this same time, a young comedic spirit by the name of Imogene Coca also joined the Tamiment gang. With the show consistently receiving excellent reviews, the best skits and music were compiled and taken to Broadway under the title The Straw Hat Revue.
Liebman would leave Tamiment and join Fine working on routines for Danny Kaye, whom Fine soon married. He would join Kaye as one of his writers in Hollywood for various MGM films. During the war years Liebman had the opportunity to work on putting on a revue called Tars and Spars for the Coast Guard. The revue was a recruiting tool, and had Victor Mature as the show’s big attraction. However, more importantly, a member of the group was a guy named Sid Caesar. It was the first time they would work together. A few years later, after the war, Liebman would work with Caesar again on his act when he opened at the Copacabana.
In the late 1940’s Max met the legendary Pat Weaver, then an advertising agent. Weaver was interested in the new medium of television. Along with Admiral, an early manufacturer of television sets, they liked what they saw of Liebman’s work and agreed to do a weekly variety show called the Admiral Broadway Revue which premiered in January 1949. The cast included Caesar, Coca and James Starbuck with writers Lucille Kallen and Mel Tolkin on board. After 19 shows and generally good reviews, Admiral decided they rather sell television sets and not produce television shows. Despite Admiral backing away, Pat Weaver was still enthused about the show and worked with Liebman on producing a new series, an hour and a half variety show to be called Your Show of Shows. They agreed in principal and Liebman began to put the show together. Back were Caesar, Coca, Starbuck, and writers Kallen and Tolkin. He brought in Carl Reiner, Howard Morris, singers like Jack Hayes, Jack Russell, Opera star Robert Merrill and others.
The show was one of early televisions’ masterpieces thanks mainly to Liebman’s loving care, the gifted comedic skills of Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, along with the genius of writers like Neil and Danny Simon, Tony Webster, the aforementioned Mel Tolkin and Lucille Kallen, and a young brash fellow by the name of Mel Brooks
Liebman surrounded the two stars with talented regulars – Carl Reiner, Howard Morris – along with guest stars ranging from opera singer Margaret Piazza and Robert Merrill to actors like Charlton Heston, Veronica Lake, Jack Carson and many others.
Fondly remembered are the movie spoofs. One of the best was the take-off on the classic film From Here to Eternity. Only in this version, it was called From Here to Obscurity. Carl Reiner is the Top Sgt., Sid Caesar is Montgomery Bugle and Imogene Coca, the girl. The beach scene is the highlight with waves smashing up against our two lovers. Caesar cracks up Coca at one point and she turns her head away from the audience. This is only topped by the barroom fight between the Top Sgt. and Bugle. A second hilarious skit had Caesar and Carl Reiner doing a spoof of the famous “I coulda’ been a contender” scene from On the Waterfront. Foreign films were also satirized with expert gibberish replacing actual foreign language. This was fairly sophisticated stuff at the time for TV considering that back in the early 1950’s, not too many Americans watched foreign films. Caesar was a master at mimicking and improvisation. In the world of live TV where “mistakes” were made and seen by audiences, Caesar was a genius at covering up the goofs, many times making the skit even funnier.
In January of 1996, the Writers Guild reunited Sid Caesar and nine of his writers from Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour for a one time two hour event. The group included Carl Reiner, Mel Tolkin, Aaron Ruben, Larry Gelbart, Mel Brooks, Neil and Danny Simon, Sheldon Keller and Gary Belkin. While most of the writers were from the latter show, Caesar’s Hour, the discussion is a fascinating and extremely funny history of both shows. An abbreviated version was broadcast on PBS, however, the entire reunion can be seen on DVD and is well worth seeking out. One of the tidbits to come out of the interviews is that Mel Brooks, only twenty two years old at the time, was hated by Max Liebman and he originally refused to hire him. Caesar who wanted Brooks on the staff, ended up paying him a $40 a week salary out of his own pocket.
Neil Simon had his own memories and put them on display the best way he knew how. In November 1993, his play Laughter on the 23rd Floor opened on Broadway which looks back with comedic fondness at those early days of television. The play, and the 2003 made for TV movie, starred Nathan Lane as Max Prince, a fictional version of Sid Caesar.
In 1954, Your Show of Shows ended it run, despite still having decent ratings. From what I read, it seemed that greed on the part of the station was at least partially to blame. The thought was if Caesar and Coca were powerhouses together, why not split them up and get two shows instead of one. Thus came Caesars’ Hour and The Imogene Coca show. Carl Reiner and Howard Morris went along with Caesar with Nanette Fabray replacing Coca. It ran for three seasons.
In 1973, a feature length compilation of ten sketches from the classic show was released in theaters. Ten From Your Show of Shows featured some of the best, and there was plenty to choose from, skits from the show including From Here to Obscurity, The Sewing Machine Girl, The Bavarian Clock and a take-off on Groucho’s You Bet Your Life. There are DVD’s out there with clips of many episodes though they are mostly now out of print. More accessible are youtube videos including From Here to Obscurity.
If there was such a thing as avant garde television in the early 1950’s Your Show of Shows, and Caesar’s Hour, along with The Ernie Kovacs Show (1952-1956) would be in that small group of hipsters. Caesar was ahead of his times. His shows broke new ground and his influence was felt for generations. Sid would come up with the ideas and look to his writing staff to fill out the storyline and the laughs that generally were smarter and more sophisticated than everything else on TV at the time. They were innovative, bright and sometimes even provocative. His influence can be seen in Carl Reiner’s character, Alan Brady, from The Dick Van Dyke Show who was modeled after Sid. Saturday Night Live’s sketch comedy, another writer’s show, at its best reflects the influence of Sid Caesar. Today, sadly Sid Caesar is forgotten. If not forgotten, definitely underappreciated as a pioneer and an artist.
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[1] Brooklyn born Sylvia Fine was a composer and lyricist who met Danny Kaye when he auditioned for a short lived Broadway musical. Fine wrote the words and music for it. They would soon marry. Fine wrote or co-wrote many of Kaye’s songs he performed in many of his films.
