Sid Caesar

LYNN ELBER, The Associated Press LOS ANGELES (AP) — To put it simply: Sid Caesar invented TV sketch comedy and gave it stature as a funhouse mirror of the everyday. Some compared him to Charlie Chaplin for his brilliance at blending humor with touches of pathos. The genius of 1950s TV comedy is illuminating television even today. Shows from sketch comedy stalwart "Saturday Night Live" to sitcoms owe a debt to Caesar's brilliant interpretation of material by America's greatest comedy writers, among others. The actor-comedian, who died at 91 on Wednesday at his Los Angeles area home after a brief illness, was remembered by actor-director Carl Reiner as a great flame who drew comedy writer "moths" including Mel Brooks and Neil Simon to his side. He was "inarguably the greatest pantomimist, monologist and single sketch comedian who ever worked in television," Reiner said. "Your Show of Shows," 1950-54, with co-star Imogene Coca, and "Caesar's Hour," 1954-57, were his major achievements. On "Your Show of Shows," Caesar staged 90 minutes of skits, revues, pantomime and satire that his audience found not only hilarious, but also vividly relatable. His comedy style, while often antic, was rooted in reality. "He was one of the truly great comedians of my time and one of the finest privileges I've had in my entire career was that I was able to work for him," Woody Allen said in a statement. While Caesar's sketch comedy lives on in shows like "SNL," his emphasis on humor born out of human nature is part of current sitcoms such as "Modern Family," said longtime friend Eddy Friedfeld. He and Caesar wrote the 2003 biography "Caesar's Hours: My Life in Comedy, With Love and Laughter." Among Caesar's TV staff writers, Friedfeld noted, several went on to create memorable sitcoms, including Reiner's "Dick Van Dyke Show," based on his "Your Show of Shows" experiences, and Larry Gelbart's "M-A-S-H." While Caesar was best known for his TV shows, which have been revived on DVD in recent years, he also had success on Broadway and occasional film appearances, notably in "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World." Caesar was born in 1922 just north of New York City in Yonkers, New York, the third son of an Austrian-born restaurant owner and his Russian-born wife. His first dream was to become a musician, and he played saxophone in bands in his teens. His talent for comedy was discovered when he was serving in the Coast Guard during World War II and got a part in a Coast Guard musical, "Tars and Spars." He also appeared in the movie version. Wrote famed columnist Hedda Hopper: "I hear the picture's good, with Sid Caesar a four-way threat. He writes, sings, dances and makes with the comedy." That led to a few other film roles, nightclub engagements, and then his breakthrough hit, a 1948 Broadway revue called "Make Mine Manhattan." Caesar was a brawny young man with a beetle brow, rubber face and distinctive mole on his left cheek whose first comedy-variety show, "The Admiral Broadway Revue," premiered in February 1949 and was off the air by June. Its fatal shortcoming: unimagined popularity. It was selling more Admiral television sets than the company could make. Admiral, its exclusive sponsor, pulled out. But the audience was primed for Caesar's subsequent efforts. "Your Show of Shows," which debuted in 1950, and "Caesar's Hour" three years later, drew as many as 60 million viewers weekly and earned its star $1 million annually at a time when $5, he recalled, "bought a steak dinner for two." Increasing ratings competition from Lawrence Welk's variety show put "Caesar's Hour" off the air in 1957. When "Caesar's Hour" ended, its star was only 34. But the unforgiving cycle of weekly television had taken a toll: He had started relying on alcohol and pills for sleep every night so he could wake up and create more comedy. He beat a severe, decades-long barbiturate and alcohol habit in 1978, when he was so low he considered suicide. "I had to come to terms with myself. 'Yes or no? Do you want to live or die?'" Deciding that he wanted to live, he recalled, was "the first step on a long journey." After his golden days of live TV, Caesar found success in films ("It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" as well as Brooks' "Silent Movie" and "History of the World: Part One," and the musical "Grease", on Broadway (Simon's "Little Me") and even scored in a nonsinging role with the Metropolitan Opera in its 1987 production of the operetta "Die Fledermaus." His humor — observational, humanistic — exposed the telling truths of everyday life. How friends fight over a restaurant check. How a schoolboy at his first dance musters the nerve to talk to a girl. How a gum ball machine behaves when fed a coin (one of Caesar's countless impersonations). Or how someone, like his double-talking German professor, manages to pose as an expert despite expertise in nothing. "Real life is the true comedy," he said in a 2001 interview with The Associated Press. "Then everybody knows what you're talking about." Caesar brought observational comedy to TV before the term, or such latter-day practitioners as Jerry Seinfeld, were even born. Florence, his wife of more than six decades, died four years ago, Friedfeld said. Caesar is survived by two daughters and a son. _________________________________________________________ 5 classic moments from Sid Caesar's TV shows The Associated Press, The Associated Press Before "Saturday Night Live" and "The Carol Burnett Show," there was Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows," the pioneer of television sketch comedy. Here are five classic moments that featured Caesar, who died Wednesday at age 91: — The Clock: A sweet, crazy fable about a Bavarian clock that sputters and speeds up, acted out with unfaltering precision by Caesar and company as a quartet of mechanical village figures waddle out from the clock at the top of the hour. — This Is Your Story: An unforgettable spoof of the hit TV and radio series "This Is Your Life," which featured unsuspecting studio audience members (famous and non-famous) being spontaneously honored and reunited with old friends and relatives. Carl Reiner plays the ever-smiling host and Caesar an ordinary man who would prefer to remain ordinary — slapping Reiner away upon hearing he's been chosen, smacking him with his coat and fleeing up the aisle, where a gaggle of ushers drag him to the stage. — Argument to Beethoven's Fifth: Live on national television — a mime sketch in which Caesar and Nanette Fabray are a couple who bicker in perfect rhythm and counter-rhythm to the famous classical composition, their hands, mouths, entire bodies jutting and slashing like the strings themselves. — Mozart is Dead: Caesar as a befuddled professor who grieves upon hearing that Beethoven is dead, and really breaks down when he's told the same about Mozart. "Moose is gone? I'm sick from that. I was so close with him. What was it an accident? They were both in the same bus or something? Beethoven and Mozart, verklumt." — Professor Houdini Von Hoffmeyer: Caesar as a supposed master of illusion who appears at an amateur magicians' convention. He is stumped when his host (Carl Reiner) performs the most elementary trick: Sweeping a handkerchief over his hand and making a finger disappear. "Where's the finger?" Von Hoffmeyer asks, helplessly, like a frightened child. "Would you make the finger come back?"