Your Show of Shows | |
---|---|
Imogene Coca and Sid Caesar in 1952 | |
Genre | Variety show |
Created by | Sylvester L. Weaver Jr. |
Directed by | Nat Hiken Max Liebman |
Creative director | Charles Sanford (music) |
Starring | Sid Caesar Imogene Coca Howard Morris Carl Reiner James Starbuck |
Narrated by | Ed Herlihy (announcer) |
Theme music composer | Mel Tolkin Clay Warnick Max Liebman |
Opening theme | "Stars Over Broadway" |
Composers | Bernard Green Irwin Kostal Johnny Mandel Alex North |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
No. of seasons | 4 |
No. of episodes | 160 |
Production | |
Producer | Max Liebman |
Camera setup | Multi-camera |
Running time | 90 minutes |
Production company | Max Liebman Productions |
Original release | |
Network | NBC |
Release | February 25, 1950 – June 5, 1954 |
Your Show of Shows is a live 90-minute variety show that was broadcast weekly in the United States on NBC from February 25, 1950, through June 5, 1954, featuring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. Other featured performers were Carl Reiner, Howard Morris, Bill Hayes, baritone singer Jack Russell, Judy Johnson, the Hamilton Trio and the soprano Marguerite Piazza. José Ferrer made several guest appearances on the series.
The show has been featured in several lists of the greatest television series. Most of the series has been preserved to some extent, but only some sketches have been released on home video.
The 90-minute live series was produced by Sylvester "Pat" Weaver and directed by Max Liebman, who had been producing musical revues at the Tamiment resort in the Pocono Mountains for many years prior. Caesar, Coca, and Liebman had worked on Admiral Broadway Revue from January to June 1949. [1] The series originated as the second half of a two-hour umbrella show, Saturday Night Review, [2] with the first portion hosted by comedian Jack Carter in Chicago, Illinois, [3] and the remainder telecast from the since-demolished International Theatre (also known as the Park Theatre) at 5 Columbus Circle and the Center Theatre in Manhattan, New York City. [4] The Chicago portion was dropped at the end of the 1950–51 season, and the series became the 90-minute Your Show of Shows. [2]
Writers for the series included Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Danny Simon, Mel Tolkin, Lucille Kallen, Selma Diamond, Joseph Stein, Michael Stewart, Tony Webster (the only Gentile among the show's writers), and Carl Reiner who, though a cast member, also worked with the writers. The series is historically significant for the evolution of the variety genre by incorporating situation comedies (sitcoms) such as the running sketch "The Hickenloopers"; this added a narrative element to the traditional multi-act structure. [5] James Starbuck was the resident choreographer for the show, and often appeared as a featured dancer opposite Coca in parodies of classic ballets of his creation. [6]
As author Ted Sennett described, stars Caesar, Coca, Carl Reiner, and Howard Morris
appeared in a series of superbly written sketches that poked fun at human foibles and pretensions. Alone onstage, Caesar would depict a befuddled Everyman trying to cope with life, or a blustering Germanic 'professor' being interviewed at an airport and vainly trying to conceal his abysmal stupidity. Alone onstage (or with a partner), Imogene Coca would make us laugh at a passion-ridden torch singer, or a daffy ballerina, or a sweet, wistful tramp. Together, Caesar and Coca would take us through the hilarious marital tribulations of Doris and Charlie Hickenlooper, or show us two strangers exchanging cliches when they meet for the first time. [7]
Coca recalled,
There was a special chemistry to Your Show of Shows, I think, because [producer-director] Max [Liebman] wasn't afraid to throw out material at the last minute. And I think when you do live television — well, we stopped for nothing. We had no cue cards, no TelePrompTers, and no ad-libbing on the air, because Max would have died if anybody had ad-libbed. It would have been utter disgrace, and you would have been drummed right out of the corps. ... Nobody ever forgot a line, and that was the amazing part of it. [8]
A common misconception is that Larry Gelbart wrote for Your Show of Shows; in fact, he wrote for its successor program, Caesar's Hour , which was broadcast from 1954 to 1957. [9] Likewise, Woody Allen did not write for Your Show of Shows, as he worked only on several Sid Caesar TV series and specials from 1956 forward. [10]
Carl Reiner has stated that the time he spent on Your Show of Shows was the inspiration for The Dick Van Dyke Show . [11] Your Show of Shows also inspired the 1982 movie My Favorite Year , produced by Mel Brooks, and the 1993 play Laughter on the 23rd Floor written by Neil Simon.
The series was noted for its array of glamorous dancers, including Joy Langstaff, [12] Pauline Goddard, and Virginia Curtis.
By the 1953–1954 season, although the ratings had slipped a little, "Your Show of Shows" remained extremely popular with viewers. However, in the spring of 1954, it was decided to break up the comedy team of Caesar and Coca and, beginning in the fall of 1954, sign them to star in their own individual variety series on NBC. As a result, "Your Show Of Shows' ended its network run on June 5, 1954. At the end of that episode, NBC president "Pat" Weaver came out at the curtain call to congratulate the cast on their four-year-four-month run and personally to wish Caesar and Coca great success in their future endeavors.
The summer replacement for Your Show of Shows in 1953 and 1954 was Saturday Night Review . [13]
The show featured several regular musical sketches, such as the mock rock group The Haircuts which achieved a surprise novelty hit with "Going Crazy" in 1955. [14] [15] [16] [17] [18]
The kinescopes of the series were retained by Max Liebman; from those shows, a 1973 theatrical film titled Ten from Your Show of Shows was compiled which featured ten sketches. In 1976, this was followed by a half-hour syndicated series.
The Paley Center for Media in Manhattan and Beverly Hills, California, holds an almost complete set of the series, and a set of master tapes of the 1976 syndicated series.
In 2000, a cache of original scripts from the show were found in a closet of producer Max Liebman, in the City Center building in New York City. The find made the front page of The New York Times . A former employee of Liebman, Barry Jacobsen, told The New York Times he had left the scripts in the closet and was holding onto the key until he could come back to decide how to dispose of them. [19]
After the program ended the Caesar-Coca team was effectively split into two successor programs the following season: Imogene Coca starred in The Imogene Coca Show (which lasted one season), and Sid Caesar starred in Caesar's Hour , which retained much of the cast and staff of Your Show of Shows.
Reruns of the 1976 syndicated "best of" series were aired on Comedy Central during the early 1990s. Skits from the series which are from Sid Caesar's personal collection are available on The Sid Caesar Collection DVD set.
In 2002, Your Show of Shows was ranked #30 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. [20] In 2013, it was ranked #37 on TV Guide 's 60 Best Series of All Time. [21] In 2007, Time placed Your Show of Shows on its unranked list of "100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME." In 2013, Your Show of Shows was ranked #10 on Entertainment Weekly ’s Top 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked YourShow of Shows #41 on its list of the "101 Best Written TV Series of All Time."[ citation needed ]
Melvin James Brooks is a Jewish American actor, comedian, filmmaker, songwriter, and playwright. With a career spanning over seven decades, he is known as a writer and director of a variety of successful broad farces and parodies. A recipient of numerous accolades, he is one of 19 entertainers to win the EGOT, which includes an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, an Academy Award, and a Tony Award. He received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2009, a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 2010, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2013, a British Film Institute Fellowship in 2015, a National Medal of Arts in 2016, a BAFTA Fellowship in 2017, and the Honorary Academy Award in 2024.
Carl Reiner was an American actor, stand-up comedian, director, screenwriter, and author whose career spanned seven decades. He was the recipient of many awards and honors, including 11 Primetime Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1999.
The Dick Van Dyke Show is an American sitcom created by Carl Reiner that initially aired on CBS from October 3, 1961, to June 1, 1966, with a total of 158 half-hour episodes spanning five seasons. It was produced by Calvada Productions in association with the CBS Television Network, and was shot at Desilu Studios. Other producers included Bill Persky and Sam Denoff. The music for the show's theme song was written by Earle Hagen.
Isaac Sidney Caesar was an American actor, comedian and writer. With a career spanning 60 years, he was best known for two pioneering 1950s live television series: Your Show of Shows (1950–1954), which was a 90-minute weekly show watched by 60 million people, and its successor, Caesar's Hour (1954–1957), both of which influenced later generations of comedians. Your Show of Shows and its cast received seven Emmy nominations between the years 1953 and 1954 and tallied two wins. He also acted in films; he played Coach Calhoun in Grease (1978) and its sequel Grease 2 (1982) and appeared in the films It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), Silent Movie (1976), History of the World, Part I (1981), Cannonball Run II (1984), and Vegas Vacation (1997).
Imogene Coca was an American comic actress best known for her role opposite Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows. Starting out in vaudeville as a child acrobat, she studied ballet and pursued a serious career in music and dance, graduating to decades of stage musical revues, cabaret, and summer stock. In her 40s, she began a celebrated career as a comedian on television, starring in six series and guest-starring on successful television programs from the 1940s to the 1990s.
Jack Carter was an American comedian, actor, and television presenter. Brooklyn-born, Carter had a long-running comedy act similar to fellow rapid-paced contemporaries Milton Berle and Morey Amsterdam.
Howard Jerome Morris was an American actor, comedian, and director. He was best known for his role in The Andy Griffith Show as Ernest T. Bass, and as "Uncle Goopy" in a celebrated comedy sketch on Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows (1954). He did voices for television shows such as The Flintstones (1962–1965), The Jetsons (1962–1987), The Atom Ant Show (1965–1966), and Garfield and Friends (1988–1994).
Selma Diamond was a Canadian-born American comedian, actress, and radio and television writer, known for her high-range, raspy voice and her portrayal of Selma Hacker on the first two seasons of the NBC television comedy series Night Court. Diamond was also the main inspiration for the character of Sally Rogers on the series The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Lee Delano was an American character actor.
The Colgate Comedy Hour is an American comedy-musical variety series that aired live on the NBC network from 1950 to 1955. The show featured many notable comedians and entertainers of the era as guest stars. Many of the scripts of the series are archived at the UCLA Library in their Special Collections.
The Tim Conway Comedy Hour is a variety/sketch comedy television show broadcast in the United States by CBS as part of its 1970 fall lineup on Sundays at 10:00 pm.
Admiral Broadway Revue is an American live television variety show that ran from January 28 to June 3, 1949. The show was notable for being "television's first full scale Broadway type musical revue."
Laughter on the 23rd Floor is a 1993 play by Neil Simon. It focuses on the star and writers of a TV comedy-variety show in the 1950s, inspired by Simon's own early career experience as a junior writer for Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour.
Caesar's Hour is a live, hour-long American sketch-comedy television program that aired on NBC from 1954 until 1957. The program starred, among others, Sid Caesar, Nanette Fabray, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris, Janet Blair, and Milt Kamen, and featured a number of cameo roles by famous entertainers such as Joan Crawford and Peggy Lee.
Mel Tolkin was a television comedy writer best known as head writer of the live sketch comedy series Your Show of Shows during the Golden Age of Television. There he presided over a staff that at times included Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, and Danny Simon. The writers' room inspired the film My Favorite Year (1982), produced by Brooks, and the Broadway play Laughter on the 23rd Floor (1993), written by Neil Simon.
Max Liebman was a Broadway theater and TV producer-director sometimes called the "Ziegfeld of TV", who helped establish early television's comedy vocabulary with Your Show of Shows. He additionally helped bring improvisational comedy into the mainstream with his 1961 Broadway revue From the Second City.
David William Tebet was an American theater publicist, network executive and, early in his career, a press agent for Your Show of Shows starring Sid Caesar.
The Straw Hat Revue is a musical comedy revue with sketches mostly by Max Liebman and Samuel Locke, and music and lyrics by Sylvia Fine and James Shelton. It was produced on Broadway in 1939.
The 1951 Sylvania Television Awards were presented on November 8, 1951, at the Hotel Pierre in New York City. The awards were established earlier in 1951 by Sylvania Electric Products. Deems Taylor was the chairman of the judges committee.
The Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris Special was a sketch comedy variety special that aired April 5, 1967 on CBS. The show consisted of the cast of Your Show of Shows reunited to re-enact various sketches. That cast consisted of Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, and Howard Morris. Comedian Maggie Peterson appears as does the Billy Williams Quartet.
So popular was 'The Admiral Broadway Revue' that consumers were lining up to buy 10,000 Admiral sets a week instead of the 500 per week of months earlier. Since Admiral needed its cash to retool its factories, the corporation's Catch-22 logic went, it made sense to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.