Sid Caesar, TV Comedy Legend Who Starred In "Your Show Of Shows," R.I.P.

Sid Caesar, a former saxophonist (he had worked with, amongst others, Shep Fields and his New Music) who would go on to become one of Television's first big comedy stars, passed away on Wednesday at his Beverly Hills, California home at age 91.

After having starred in the Admiral Broadway Revue (NBC and Dumont, 1949), Mr. Caesar, along with fellow cast member Imogene Coca, were retained when the show was re-organized in 1950 into what would be a Saturday night classic series Your Show of Shows(NBC).

Sid and Imogene would be joined in that show's cast by Howard Morris (who would later play the role of Ernest T. Bass on the Andy Griffith Show) and Carl Reiner (who would later create and become a regular on the original Dick Van Dyke Show).

Several notables wrote for Your Show of Shows, as well as its' successor Caesar's Hour (NBC, 1954-57, with Sid, Mr. Morris, and Mr. Reiner, but sans Miss Coca).  Among them, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Woody Allen, Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart, Mel Tolkin, and the authors of the two longest-running Broadway musicals of the 1960s, Joseph Stein ("Fiddler on the Roof") and Michael Stewart ("Hello, Dolly!")

Sketches on the two shows were as likely to poke fun at domestic life as to satirize Hollywood movies.

Sid won Emmy awards for both series.

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Mr. Caesar was a master of improvisation: In a classic moment during a parody of the opera “Pagliacci,” as he was drawing tears on his face in front of a dressing-room mirror, the makeup pencil broke. Suddenly unable to draw anything but straight lines, he made the split-second decision to play tick-tack-toe on his cheek.

He was also deft at handling whatever wordplay his writers gave him. In one guise, as the extremely far-out jazz saxophonist Progress Hornsby, he explained that his new record was in a special kind of hi-fi: “This is the highest they’ve ever fied. If they fi any higher than this, they’re gonna foo!”

He could seem eloquent even when his words were total gibberish: Among his gifts was the ability to mimic the sounds and cadences offoreign languages he didn’t actually speak.

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He was equally convincing as a suburban husband slowly figuring out that his wife, played by Ms. Coca, had wrecked the car (a comic conceit that had not yet become a cliché); as an absurdly enthusiastic member of a bouffant-coiffed rock ‘n’ roll trio called the Haircuts; or as a pompous German professor in a battered top hat and moth-eaten frock coat who claimed, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, to be an expert on pretty much everything. One week, the professor was an archaeologist who claimed to have discovered “the secret of Titten-Totten’s tomb.” Asked what the secret was, he became indignant: “You think I’m gonna tell you? You got another guess coming. Youtake that trip.”

After suffering personal problems after his TV shows went off the air, Sid made a triumphant comeback in the 1962 musical comedy "Little Me," in which he played seven different characters.

The following year, he starred with Milton Berle, Mickey Rooney, and Jonathan Winters, amongst others in the motion-picture comedy hit "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World."

Thanks for the memories, Sid-----and Rest in Peace.