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.The  Broadway motif was evident in the opening theme song of theprogram, which promised the appearance of  stars over Broadway and in-vited the viewers to  join Broadway on parade. Your Show of Shows adopted itspredecessor s format monologues, skits, and parodies of movies and playswith some changes.The new show depended less on guest stars, showcasinginstead the talents of the remarkable resident ensemble of Caesar, Coca, CarlReiner, and Howard Morris.It was hosted by a different guest star every week,usually a well-known film or theater personality, who would introduce eachnumber and perform in some of the sketches.The first few shows were hosted,for example, by Burgess Meredith, Rex Harrison, and Melvyn Douglas, allfrom the worlds of theater and film, not from vaudeville or nightclubs.Theprogram also benefited from developments in the use of the television camera:No longer resembling a filmed intimate stage revue, the program made greateruse of camera movement to catch Sid Caesar s bellows or rage or suffering andImogene Coca s infectious grin or lascivious wink.Where the Admiral show hadoccasionally seemed detached and precious, the sketches on  Your Show ofShows brought the viewer in close to the action Caesar and Coca, alone or to-gether, in pantomime or sketches.20The show s success depended a great deal on its brilliant team of writers,who have been described as a virtual who s who of post World War II Ameri-can comedy, Mel Tolkin, Lucille Kallen, Larry Gelbart, Mel Brooks, NeilSimon, and many others who went on to their own successful careers in televi-sion, musical theater, and film.Caesar always attended the writing sessions tosuggest ideas and offer criticism, and Coca frequently participated as well.The weekly writing schedule for the show has become infamous, demandingninety minutes of material that would be written from Monday to Wednesday,rehearsed and rewritten from Thursday to Saturday, and presented live onSaturday night from 9:00 to 10:30 p.m.from the NBC studios in New York.The frenzy of coming up with knock- em-dead material week after week is hi-lariously recorded for posterity in the ex-writer Neil Simon s 1993 Broadwaycomedy Laughter on the 23rd Floor.Mark Williams offers a succinct description of the show s content:Both raucous and urbane, it combined revue and sketch comedy with a rathersophisticated sense of satire and parody.Caesar, notorious for his deviationsfrom the script, was skilled at mime, dialects, monologues, foreign-languagedouble-talk, and general comic acting.Not a rapid fire jokester like Berle orFred Allen, Caesar was often compared in the press to the likes of Chaplin,Tueth's v-viii-102 9/28/04 10:41 AM Page 2828 Laughter in the Living Room|Fields, or Raimu.The 90-minute show usually featured a guest host (who playeda minor role), at least two production numbers, sketches between Caesar andCoca, the showcase parody of a popular film (e.g.,  Aggravation Boulevard, From Here to Obscurity ), further sketches (as many as ten per show), Caesarin monologue or pantomime, and the entire company in a production number.21While Caesar resembled Berle in his daily involvement with the writing andproduction of the show, his on-screen presence was quite different.First, Caesarwas not the master of ceremonies of the show and seldom spoke directly to theviewers as Berle did every week at the show s conclusion.Caesar did not haveany distinct persona to match Berle s combination of wiseguy and buffoon.Cae-sar was not a stand-up comedian, preferring to appear in the mask of a character,even in his monologues.He developed several recurring characters, most fa-mously a Germanic professor, the storyteller Somerset Winterset, and the beat-nik jazz musician Progress Hornsby.Caesar and Coca developed the recurringcharacters of the battling married couple, Charlie and Doris Hickenlooper.Most of the sketches made good use of the rich comic ensemble of the show.Sid Caesar s whole approach to comic performance differed significantlyfrom the gags and slapstick of Milton Berle.Liebman once described Caesar scomic style:Caesar tells no jokes and elicits terrific crescendos of mirth.Characterization,not gags, is the main ingredient of his techniques.He is blessed with a kind ofmagic truth, the uncanny ability to project the core and humanity of the charac-ter he is playing.Beneath the surface humor there is a wry commentary on theconventions and hypocrisies of life.Sid could never be a stand-up, one-linecomedian.In fact, he didn t like one-line jokes in the sketches because he feltthat if the joke was a good one, anybody could do it.One-liners would take himaway from whatever it was that drove him into his completely personal approachto comedy.He wanted to do things only the way he could.22Another critical analysis pointed to the contrast between Caesar and Berle,observing,  Mr.Caesar needs no insult routines, stale gags, shabby sketches togarner his laughs [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]