sid caesar

1922-2014
By coincidence, i'd just begun reading the autobiography "Caesar's Hours" when he died. I'd never seen any of his classic TV shows, because i always suspected i mightn't love them. For a youth whose sense of funny was shaped by M*A*S*H, marx, burnett, brooks, ZAZ, and above all Python, i thought caesar's shows might hit me like THE HONEYMOONERS - quality, but too dated and socially regressive to be really enjoyable. His autobiography is a fine read. Once in a while he comes off as a bit of a tightass...but let's not crucify him for that, as the average man of his generation was an ENORMOUS tightass. And yet...there were direct links from sid to two of those childhood favorites (M*A*S*H, brooks), and others (burnett, ZAZ) who were simply following where he had pointed. And his writers? Neil simon, larry gelbart, woody allen, mel brooks, carl reiner?? So i jumped into something long overdue - THE SID CAESAR COLLECTION, a 3-dvd set showing the best of his work on YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS and CAESAR'S HOUR. The between-sketch commentary is worth the price of admission alone. Otherwise, my instincts had been pretty much right, but the exceptions are as funny as funny gets. Grab disc 1 and watch "The 3 Haircuts (You Are So Rare & Flippin' Over You)" and "This Is Your Story" - the first almost a spoof of the Beatles a decade before they arrived, and the second a spoof of THIS IS YOUR LIFE. Both will have you laughing out loud for days, if not weeks (Uncle Goopy!). Thank you, sid. And happily, we'll now ever have a more resonant response each time we hear Commissioner gordon exclaim "Great caesar's ghost!"