By the spring of 1954, Sid Caesar was the most influential, highly paid, and enigmatic comedian in America. Every week, 20 million people tuned their TVs to his NBC extravaganza,Your Show of Shows, and witnessed his virtuosity in sketches and film spoofs, pantomime and soliloquy.
To Caesar’s mostly urban audience, his comedy was an era-defining leap forward from the days of vaudeville, launching a new style of humor that was multilayered and full of character, yet still uproarious. To his rivals, Caesar was the man to beat. To his fellow American Jews, his show’s success meant something more: a post-Holocaust symbol of security and a source of great pride.
Yet behind all that Caesar represented was the real Sid. Introverted and volatile, ill at ease in his own skin, he could terrorize his collaborators but reserved his harshest critiques for himself. After barely a decade, he was essentially off the air, beset by exhaustion, addiction, his own impossibly high standards, and changing viewership as television spread to the American heartland. TV’s first true comic creation was also its first spectacular flameout.
But the disciples he personally nurtured—Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, Woody Allen and more—have left an indelible impact on what still makes us laugh.
