Sid Caesar, Innovator Of Modern Comedy And TV Pioneer, Dies At 91
Sid Caesar, one of America’s first television stars, the father of modern sketch comedy and one of the funniest men of the past century, passed away Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 91 years old and in addition to three children, he is survived by an entire generation of comedy writers and performers he inspired or in many cases, personally nurtured.
Among the comedy writing talent given a start in the business by Sid Caesar on his landmark Your Show of Shows and its follow-up, Caesar’s Hour, were Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon and M*A*S*H creator Larry Gelbart. Under Caesar’s tutelage, they helped their boss craft a new style of comedy — one based less on vaudeville-style gags and one-liners than on absurd situations, bizarre characters and ruthless satire of popular culture.
Even before MAD Magazine started skewering current movies and TV shows in its comic book pages, Sid Caesar was lampooning them on the airwaves. But he was just as likely to satirize the insanities of everyday life.
A full 25 years before the 1975 debut of Saturday Night Live, NBC devoted 90 minutes every Saturday evening to the live broadcast of Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, a comedy and variety extravaganza that featured an array of guest stars drawn from Hollywood’s biggest names of the early 1950s — as well as the regular Sid Caesar co-stars who included Carl Reiner and Imogene Coca.
Sid Caesar always believed in surrounding himself with the best talent he could find. His philosophy was embodied in one of his favorite lines, “”The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the next three, he was a genius.”
“I used to say ‘Drop your egos at the door, because we’re not looking to make anybody famous,'” Sid Caesar said of his approach to managing his writing staff. “‘We want to get to funny.'”
His notoriously high-strung personality off-screen, while it could make him difficult to deal with, enabled him to push Your Show Of Shows through four years and 139 episodes.
The 1960s sitcom The Dick Van Dyke Show, created by Carl Reiner, was based on what it was like to work for Sid Caesar. The 1982 film My Favorite Year, on which Mel Brooks was executive producer, was inspired by Brooks’ own experiences on the Sid Caesar staff.
Sadly, the pressure of being both the star and the boss of what was at the time the most complex production on television, led Caesar to self-medicate with alcohol and pills. The result was that Sid Caesar effectively disappeared from show business for about 20 years after his second series, Caesar’s Hour, ended in 1957.
He made brief comebacks in the early 1960s on Broadway and in the epic 1963 ensemble comedy film It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. But the next couple of decades were so foggy that when he emerged with an autobiography in 1983, he titled it Where Have I Been?
Born Isaac Sidney Caesar in Yonkers, New York, Sid Caesar won two Emmy Awards for Your Show Of Shows and was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1985.
