Mel Brooks talking about Sid Caesar.
Concur.
I had assumed he was like Imogene Coca, who went 7 years at the end of her life without having any real roles. She was suffering from dementia.
There’s a lot of older actors in similar situations. Not dead, but not sufficiently up to making appearances, let alone acting.
He also had a cameo in Vegas Vacation a decade or do ago, for what it’s worth.
He’s not dead - praise, don’t bury.
Based on what? Back in the day performers made nothing compared to what some make now, even big name stars.
He’s old and perhaps is just enjoying retirement. But I join the OP in thinking it would be nice to see him more.
So download his old shows. Jesus, he’s 91, let him rest.
Yes, I know Sid is 91, but George Burns was performing into his late 90s, so it depends not only on what the performer wants, but also what they are capable of doing.
Carl Reiner is 91 and loves to talk on camera about the ‘Golden Age’ of TV as does Mel Brooks who is ‘only’ 87. Both appeared fairly recently on Seinfeld’s ‘Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee’, which was both entertaining (if you like that sort of thing) and showed these two guys are still sharp and physically okay. Don Rickles was also on the show and he is now 87 and also sharp as a tack.
None of these guys are young by any means, and none have their own shows, but they are lucky enough to have the physical and mental faculties to have a conversation about comedy and to even manage a sitcom walk-on. I love to watch Bob Newhart on BBT, but I can see how some people might not like it. Perhaps Bob at age 84 needs the money, but I’m guessing he still enjoys performing or he wouldn’t do it.
If Sid is bed ridden and losing his mental faculties then of course he shouldn’t be dragged out in public, but my impression was that he was trying to stay in the business and was essentially blackballed because he was ‘difficult to work with’. And while that may have been true 10 or 15 years ago, that’s apparently not the case today.
I guess since he is an idol of mine I will have to live with the fact that he may never be seen in public again, and that’s a shame, but at least now I know why.
I’ve done that, and I enjoy watching them, but I love to see ‘how the sausage was made’, especially considering these guys were inventing comedy variety shows in front of a live audience.
We sometimes forget how they, along with all of the technical folks, were true pioneers in the business, and Sid Caesar was apparently a giant among giants. So his take on what happened and why is important from an historical perspective.
The fact that he was a ‘difficult person to work with’ is not unique in show business and shouldn’t cast a shadow on what he accomplished against great odds.
Sid did a extended interview for TVLegends a few years ago. They are about 45 mins long for each part. Typically they are five or six parts. I watched the first three parts with Sid yesterday. That was enough to learn how his show got started and how they made it work.
Emmy TVLegends has interviewed a bunch of actors just before they died. They are working hard to save this oral history of early tv before the people are gone. They have a web site and sometimes the interviews are on youtube.
Sid Caesar part 1
Emmy TV Legends interviews are oral history interviews. They sometimes can get a little dull. They aren’t short, witty interviews like you see on Letterman or the Tonight Show.
I enjoy them a lot. They’ve interviewed a lot of great actors, producers and a few writers from the early tv days.
Their youtube channel has a list currently posted.
Thanks aceplace57. This is exactly what I was looking for.
George Burns was in good enough health to perform in his 90s. It’s been demonstrated in this thread that Sid Caesar is not. Don’t be heartless wankers. Give him a rest.
I’ve heard Mel tell some of those stories before. And while Sid was clearly difficult to deal with, at least SOME of his former colleagues and underlings still love him.
Mel has said that almost everything Joe Bologna did in ***My Favorite Year ***was based on real things Sid Caesar used to do. It was COMMON for Caesar to scream at a young writer, humiliate him, fire him, and threaten to blackball him in show biz… and either completely forget about it 5 minutes later or try to make up for it by sending him some kind of gift later. Caesar could be either frightening or surprisingly sweet at any given moment.
Caesar’s employees either quit or got used to it. The ones who got used to it learned to treat his tirades and explosions as charming quirks.
But Neil Simon (who was ALSO a sketch writer for Caesar) supposedly said once that he became a playwright so that he’d be working independently, and wouldn’t have to deal with temperamental stars like Caesar or Jackie Gleason (who was just as abusive as Caesar, but lacked Caesar’s charm) any more.
Someone upthread already mentioned the autobiography Where Have I Been?.
In the first edition of this (no idea if the copy was eventually revised), Caesar laments the sad state of “current” television and says that he was offered a recurring role in a new sitcom, which he instantly declined, as it would doubtless be a terrible show.
The role was that of Cliff Klavan (sp?).
In Sid’s 6-part interview from 1997 Sid talks about the state of television at that time and how taping a performance was very different than performing live in front of an audience.
I realize that sitcoms are sometimes still shot in front of an audience, but since retakes are common Sid thought that would take the edge of the performance, and he’s probably right. If you only have one shot at a scene, and it’s going out live across the country, and there is a live audience for instant feedback, that’s very different than doing a show like ‘The Office’ or even ‘Modern Family’ where they can do the same scene over and over until they get it right. They can even fix problems in post such as adding additional dialog etc.
Sid was a product of his era, and while he revolutionized the comedy variety genre, he was essentially doing skits in a theater in front of an audience (they didn’t have TV studios yet), and he enjoyed all that it entailed. Things would go wrong and they would have to seamlessly wing it, which you rarely see on TV today.
It was interesting that in the interview he mentioned that 1) they didn’t use cue cards or teleprompters (I don’t think teleprompters had been invented yet) because he expected all of the actors on his show to memorize their lines. If you watch SNL today you see what happens when few of the actors memorize their lines and are constantly reading the teleprompter (or cue cards), and 2) breaking up during a scene was thought to be very unprofessional and frowned upon. Again, look at SNL and you see performers trying to make each other laugh during a scene all the time.
So I can understand why Sid might have been uncomfortable making a ‘typical’ sitcom in 1997 since it was a completely different animal than his ‘Show of Shows’, and by that time comedy variety shows were mostly a thing of the past.
Are we really having a convo about why someone who’s 91 isn’t out there working more?
This guy, from Cheers?: Cliff Clavin - Wikipedia. Never heard Caesar was considered for or offered the role, and the Wiki article’s description of how it was developed makes me rather doubt it.
Not really… I now know why he no longer performs and are just talking about him as a real person.
I wonder even if Caesar was in good health if he would be getting tv appearances. His fame was in the 1950s and on vehicles such as “Your Show of Shows” that don’t exist and if they do, are on blurry kinescopes. There is very little of his work on Netflix or Amazon. If some 40 year network or tv producer is going to cast an eccentric 80ish man, they will choose a Bob Newhart or Don Rickles instead of Caesar. People who have more recent success. Even when Caesar appeared in commercially successful films such as Grease, Silent Movie or Airport 1975, they were not known as “Sid Caesar” films.