The Emperor Of Comedy

I saw Sid Caesar at the Museum Of Television And Radio last night. A bit stooped, but still with it.

Caesar was before my time, but thanks to the magic of reruns and DVDs, I have been able to see a lot of his best material. TV demands a lot, and for most of the 50s he gave his all. Like many of the greatest TV clowns, such as Jackie Gleason and Dick Van Dyke, he did amazing things while still fairly young and never really topped himself.

Movies didn't catch his true comic quality; sketch comedy was his metier. (It might not have helped that he was an alcoholic. Come to think of it, so was Dick Van Dyke. I'm not sure about Gleason but he was certainly known to bend an elbow.)

Yet, even more amazing than Caesar himself, was the stable of writers he had. Perhaps the four greatest comic minds of the last 50 years--Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Larry Gelbart and Neil Simon--all wrote for Caesar, not to mention supporting player Carl Reiner throwing his two cents in.

While Caesar never did anything as good again, the people who wrote jokes in that room went on to create much of the best comedy since then. And that room was so memorable it inspired three separate works of art in three different media. First came Carl Reiner's 1960's sitcom The Dick Van Dyke Show. Two decades later came the Mel Brooks' film (he produced) My Favorite Year. (I've always hated that generic title.) Then in 1993 Neil Simon wrote the play Laughter On The 23rd Floor.