September 8 would have been Sid Caesar’s 104th birthday. If you do not know who Sid Caesar is, you have some catching up to do. Born September 8, 1922, in Yonkers, he became, for my money, the most important sketch comedian in television history.
Consider the format of Your Show of Shows (1950 to 1954): ninety minutes, live, Saturday night, broadcast from New York, performed by a repertory cast, written by a room full of hungry young writers. Sound familiar? Saturday Night Live did not invent that formula in 1975. Sid Caesar and Max Liebman built it a quarter century earlier. SNL is the direct descendant; Sid is the ancestor.
And that writers’ room. On Your Show of Shows alone, the people getting their first real break included Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Mel Tolkin, Lucille Kallen, and Michael Stewart. Caesar’s Hour and his later shows added Larry Gelbart and Woody Allen to the alumni list. Allen later called writing for Caesar “the highest thing you could aspire to.” That one room gave us Blazing Saddles, The Odd Couple, M*A*S*H (second best TV sitcom of all time), My Favorite Year, and The Dick Van Dyke Show (best TV sitcom of all time), which Carl Reiner built directly from his years as Sid’s second banana.
If you have never seen Caesar work, fix that today. Watch “This Is Your Story,” the 1954 parody of This Is Your Life, with Reiner as the ambushing host and Howard Morris as Uncle Goopy, attached to Sid’s leg like a barnacle. It was reportedly Caesar’s own favorite sketch.
Comedy is a business built on shoulders. Few shoulders were broader than Sid’s.