Even though comedy retrospectives never manage to rate (even on Comedy Central), the comedy gods still see fit to keep them coming, and I for one an thrilled. I caught a great doc this weekend called Hail Sid Caesar: The Golden Age of Comedy that told the story of Your Show of Shows and the comedy writing dream team that made up its staff: Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart, and other brilliant dudes who dominated the scripted comedy business for the next 50 years. It was great to see - and still find laughs in - clips of Caesar and Imogene Coca (who you might remember as the grandmother from National Lampoon's Vacation films) doing all sorts of proto-sitcom scenes and the first-ever television parodies. Amazingly prescient stuff, considering the show ran in the very early days of TV (1950 - 1954), and TV was only invented in 1945.This January, PBS will be airing a six-hour series hosted by Billy Crystal called Make 'Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America. The series is co-produced by Thirteen/WNET and Ghost Light Films, each episode spotlights a different American comedy genre and will include interviews from more than 90 comedians, writers, producers and historians including Rosanne Barr, Carol Burnett, Sid Caesar, George Carlin and Chris Rock and many more. Sounds right up my alley.
Here's Carl Reiner and Sid Caesar doing his spaced out Jazz guy, Progress Hornsby. It's over 50 years old and it still feels fresh:
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