SID CAESAR – AT 10:46 A.M. ET:  We've lost two show-business greats this week.  First, Shirley Temple, Hollywood's greatest child star, and now Sid Caesar.  The sad fact is that most people under, say, 50, have probably never heard of Sid Caesar.  But he was one of the creative founders of American television and modern American comedy.

Think of a world where Harry Truman is president, where television is not yet a mass medium, where most people who own sets watch black-and-white images on 12-inch screens, where all TV's are American-made, where RCA dominates the market, where all programs are received over the air, where most cities have three or four channels (at best), and where no American car has seat belts.  Think of a world where a performer on television cannot not say the word "pregnant" and where the biggest television scandal is the slightly plunging neckline of a personality, Faye Emerson, who's been married to one of FDR's sons.  Think of a world where virtually all network television originated in New York.

That was the world of Sid Caesar, one of the earliest TV comedian, the world of the early 50s.  Caesar and Imogene Coca starred in a new variety show called "Your Show of Shows."  It was on every week on NBC, 90 minutes, and done live.  No tape.  No editing.  If you made a mistake, it was there for the audience to see.  It was done in a theater, before a live audience.  You only got the laughs you earned. 

Caesar surrounded himself with the best writers, most of whom went on to fame – Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Carl Reiner, and later, on a successor show called "Caesar's Hour," Larry Gelbart and Michael Stewart (who in following years wrote "Bye Bye Birdie" and "Hello Dolly").

"Your Show of Shows" specialized in sketch comedy, and provided the creative foundation for the TV comedy to follow – especially the sitcoms.  Much of the sitcom comedy you see today has its basis in Sid Caesar's work more than 60 years ago.

Sadly, Caesar's career faded badly after the fifties.  Styles changed and he did not.  I recall him saying on "The Tonight Show" in the early 70s that he was ready for a new series.  The call never came.  He had jobs here and there, but Sid Caesar became a man of the past, and yet a man remembered as one of the greatest comedians of the post-World War II era.  It is impossible to think of television without him.

And he never uttered a four-letter word.

February 13, 2014