Oh, and speaking of Neil Simon, I’d like to recommend the play Laughter On The 23rd Floor–an autobiographical comedy based on Neil’s work with Sid and the crew on Your Show Of Shows.
RIP, Sid.
And Edie Adams, Dorothy Provine, and Ethel Merman. I suppose we could throw in Terry-Thomas and Dick Shawn, too. 
Another astonishing thing about the show is that programs were printed up by Friday night, I think it was, to distribute to the audience on Saturday. That means the show was written, blocked, rehearsed, and timed down to the minute in, what, less than five days?
No cue cards, no teleprompters. The cast knew their lines by heart in time for the show.
When SNL first went on the air, someone gave Lorne Michaels a vintage YSoS program. He was amazed at what Sid, Imogene, and their crew had managed to accomplish.
Carl Reiner based Rob’s working environment on The Dick Van Dyke Show on Reiner’s experience working on Caesar’s Your Show of Shows. However, he was always annoyed that people thought he based Rob’s boss, the megalomaniacal egomaniac Alan Brady, on Caesar. He always said that Caesar was a great guy to work for and a dear friend.
(Alan Brady was actually based on Milton Berle and Jackie Gleason, among others.)
Hail Caesar!
I believe it was Mel Brooks who told that story.
It’s kind of weird: Brooks, Reiner, Howard Morris, Imogene Coca- all of them said that he was erratic, bipolar, egomaniacal, had a sometimes violent temper… and they all loved him. He must have been one helluva guy when he wasn’t having tantrums. In a podcast Brooks did with Chris Hardwick last year he said that he and Reiner still visited Caesar, who was bedridden and couldn’t communicate well, every weekend.
One reason Gleason and Berle were almost universally hated is that they were both notorious joke thieves. Caesar had a team of legendary writers, but from what I’ve read he was as good as any of them in coming up with material.
Did he drop a keno card on the floor as he passed?