Re: R.I.P. Sid Caesar
Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2014 11:33 pm
Oops, I placed this same thread under 'The People' as I am largely ignorant of his work outside of cinema.
Christ, it feels like one a day we're losing.
My father revered Sid Caesar; he and my mother even went to see him do Little Me on Broadway in the early 60s.
Like most here, I got to him late. In the early 70s, they linked together a bunch of his TV shows in a film called "Ten from Your Show of Shows", which I saw in the movies and really liked.
I think his style got to seem a bit passe. Mel Brooks once said that his high-powered approach was bound to wear on people after a while -- unlike, say, Jack Benny or George Burns, whose laid-back approach kept them fresh/popular till death. (And Mel ought to know about high-powered approach)
If nothing else, the writing staff of Your Show of Shows ensures Caesar's importance. Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Carl Reiner, Woody Allen, other less famous but productive names -- a good percentage of American comedy in the 60s and 70s flowed straight from that writers' room. Hell, we've SEEN that room recreated multiple times: in Simon's Laughter on the 23rd Floor, in My Favorite Year, on The Dick van Dyke Show. It's as much part of American culture as the Hemingway crowd in Paris, the Beats, or the Brill Building bunch.