''Your Show of Shows'' is a live 90-minute

variety show Variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is entertainment made up of a variety of acts including musical theatre, musical performances, sketch comedy, magic (illusion), magic, acrobatics, juggling, and ventriloquism. It is ...

that was broadcast weekly in the United States on

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

from February 25, 1950, through June 5, 1954, featuring

Sid Caesar Isaac Sidney Caesar (September 8, 1922 – February 12, 2014) was an American comic actor, comedian and writer. With a career spanning 60 years, he was best known for two pioneering 1950s live television series: ''Your Show of Shows'' (1950� ...

and

Imogene Coca Imogene Coca (born Emogeane Coca; November 18, 1908 – June 2, 2001) was an American comic actress best known for her role opposite Sid Caesar on ''Your Show of Shows''. Starting out in vaudeville as a child acrobat, she studied ballet and wishe ...

. Other featured performers were

Carl Reiner Carl Reiner (March 20, 1922 – June 29, 2020) was an American actor, stand-up comedian, director, screenwriter, and author whose career spanned seven decades. He was the recipient of many awards and honors, including 11 Primetime Emmy Awards, ...

Howard Morris Howard Jerome Morris (September 4, 1919 – May 21, 2005) was an American actor, comedian, and director. He was best known for his role in ''The Andy Griffith Show'' as Ernest T. Bass, and as "Uncle Goopy" in a celebrated comedy sketch on Sid Cae ...

, Bill Hayes, baritone singer Jack Russell,

Judy Johnson William Julius "Judy" Johnson (October 26, 1899 – June 15, 1989) was an American professional third baseman and manager whose career in Negro league baseball spanned 17 seasons, from 1921 to 1937. Slight of build, Johnson never developed as ...

, The Hamilton Trio and the soprano

Marguerite Piazza Marguerite Piazza (May 6, 1920 – August 2, 2012) was an American soprano, entertainer and philanthropist from New Orleans, Louisiana. Early life In 1920, Piazza was born as Marguerite Clair Lucille Luft. Piazza's parents were Albert William ...

José Ferrer José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón (January 8, 1912 – January 26, 1992) was a Puerto Rican actor and director of stage, film and television. He was one of the most celebrated and esteemed Hispanic American actors during his lifetime, w ...

made several guest appearances on the series. In 2002, ''Your Show of Shows'' was ranked #30 on ''TV Guide''s 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. In 2013, it was ranked #37 on ''

TV Guide TV Guide is an American digital media company that provides television program Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or t ...

''s 60 Best Series of All Time. In 2007,

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

placed ''Your Show of Shows'' on its unranked list of "100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME.” In 2013, ''Your Show of Shows'' was ranked #10 on ''

Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cul ...

''’s Top 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. In 2013, the

Writers Guild of America The Writers Guild of America is the joint efforts of two different US labor unions representing TV and film writers: * The Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), headquartered in New York City and affiliated with the AFL–CIO * The Writers Guil ...

ranked ''Your'' ''Show of Shows'' #41 on its list of the "101 Best Written TV Series of All Time.”

Production

The 90-minute live series was produced by Sylvester "Pat" Weaver and directed by

Max Liebman Max Liebman (August 2, 1902 – July 21, 1981) was a Broadway theater and TV producer-director sometimes called the "Ziegfeld of TV", who helped establish early television's comedy vocabulary with ''Your Show of Shows''. He additionally helped bring ...

, who had been producing musical revues at the

Tamiment Tamiment, first known as Camp Tamiment, was an American resort located in the Pocono Mountains of Pike County, Pennsylvania, which existed from 1921 through 2005. Originally established by the Rand School of Social Science in New York City as a ...

resort in the

Pocono Mountains The Pocono Mountains, commonly referred to as the Poconos , are a geographical, geological, and cultural region in Northeastern Pennsylvania. They overlook the Delaware River and Delaware Water Gap to the east, Lake Wallenpaupack to the north, W ...

for many years prior. Caesar, Coca, and Liebman had worked on '' Admiral Broadway Revue'' from January to June 1949. The series originated as the second half of a two-hour umbrella show, ''Saturday Night Review'', with the first portion hosted by comedian Jack Carter in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, Illinois, and the remainder telecast from the since-demolished International Theatre (also known as the Park Theatre) at 5 Columbus Circle and the Center Theatre in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. The Chicago portion was dropped at the end of the 1950–51 season, and the series became the 90-minute ''Your Show of Shows''. Writers for the series included

Mel Brooks Mel Brooks (born Melvin James Kaminsky; June 28, 1926) is an American actor, comedian and filmmaker. With a career spanning over seven decades, he is known as a writer and director of a variety of successful broad farces and parodies. He began h ...

Neil Simon Marvin Neil Simon (July 4, 1927 – August 26, 2018) was an American playwright, screenwriter and author. He wrote more than 30 plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, mostly film adaptations of his plays. He has received mo ...

Danny Simon Daniel Simon (December 18, 1918, The Bronx, New York – July 26, 2005, Portland, Oregon) was an American television writer and comedy teacher. Biography The older brother of playwright Neil Simon, the two siblings wrote comedy together unti ...

Mel Tolkin Mel Tolkin ( Shmuel Tolchinsky; August 3, 1913 – November 26, 2007) was a television comedy writer best known as head writer of the live sketch comedy series ''Your Show of Shows'' (NBC, 1950–1954) during the Golden Age of Television. Ther ...

Lucille Kallen Lucille Kallen (May 28, 1922, Los Angeles, California – January 18, 1999, Ardsley, New York) was an American writer, screenwriter, playwright, composer, and lyricist. She was best known for being the only woman in the most famous TV writers' ...

Selma Diamond Selma Diamond (August 5, 1920 – May 13, 1985) was a Canadian-born American comedian, actress, and radio and television writer, known for her high-range, raspy voice and her portrayal of Selma Hacker on the first two seasons of the NBC televisio ...

Joseph Stein Joseph Stein (May 30, 1912 – October 24, 2010) was an American playwright best known for writing the books for such musicals as ''Fiddler on the Roof'' and '' Zorba''. Biography Born in New York City to Jewish parents, Charles and Emma ...

, Michael Stewart, Tony Webster (the only

Gentile Gentile () is a word that usually means "someone who is not a Jew". Other groups that claim Israelite heritage, notably Mormons, sometimes use the term ''gentile'' to describe outsiders. More rarely, the term is generally used as a synonym for ...

among the show's writers), and

who, though a cast member, also worked with the writers. (

Larry Gelbart Larry Simon Gelbart (February 25, 1928 – September 11, 2009) was an American television writer, playwright, screenwriter, director and author, most famous as a creator and producer of the television series ''M*A*S*H'', and as co-writer of the B ...

and

Woody Allen Heywood "Woody" Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades and multiple Academy Award-winning films. He began his career writing ...

joined the writing staff for later Caesar ventures.) The series is historically significant for the evolution of the variety genre by incorporating situation comedies (

sitcom A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ne ...

s) such as the running sketch "The Hickenloopers"; this added a narrative element to the traditional multi-act structure. As author Ted Sennett described, stars Caesar, Coca,

, and

Coca recalled, A common misconception is that

wrote for ''Your Show of Shows''; in fact, he wrote for its successor program, '' Caesar's Hour'', which was broadcast from 1954 to 1957. Likewise,

did not write for ''Your Show of Shows'', as he worked only on several Sid Caesar TV series and specials from 1958 forward. Carl Reiner has stated that the time he spent on ''Your Show of Shows'' was the inspiration for ''

The Dick Van Dyke Show ''The Dick Van Dyke Show'' is an American television sitcom created by Carl Reiner that initially aired on CBS from October 3, 1961 to June 1, 1966, with a total of 158 half-hour episodes spanning five seasons. It was produced by Calvada Product ...

''. ''Your Show of Shows'' also inspired the 1982 movie ''

My Favorite Year ''My Favorite Year'' is a 1982 American comedy film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, directed by Richard Benjamin and written by Norman Steinberg and Dennis Palumbo from a story written by Palumbo. The film tells the story of a young comedy writ ...

'', produced by Mel Brooks, and the 1993 play ''

Laughter on the 23rd Floor ''Laughter on the 23rd Floor'' is a 1993 play by Neil Simon. It focuses on the star and writers of a TV comedy-variety show in the 1950s, inspired by Simon's own early career experience as a junior writer (along with his brother Danny) for ''Your ...

'' written by Neil Simon. The series was noted for its array of glamorous dancers, including Joy Langstaff, Pauline Goddard, and Virginia Curtis. By the 1953–1954 season, although the ratings had slipped a little, "Your Show of Shows" remained extremely popular with viewers. However, in the spring of 1954, it was decided to break up the comedy team of Caesar and Coca and, beginning in the fall of 1954, sign them to star in their own individual variety series on NBC. As a result, "Your Show Of Shows' ended its network run on June 5, 1954. At the end of that episode, NBC president "Pat" Weaver came out at the curtain call to congratulate the cast on their four-year-four-month run and personally to wish Caesar and Coca great success in their future endeavors. The summer replacement for ''Your Show of Shows'' in 1953 and 1954 was '' Saturday Night Review''.

Ratings

*1950-1951: #4 *1951-1952: #8 *1952-1953: #19

Episode status

The

kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 1940 ...

s of the series were retained by

; from those shows, a 1973 theatrical film titled ''Ten from Your Show of Shows'' was compiled which featured ten sketches. In 1976, this was followed by a half-hour syndicated series.

The Paley Center for Media The Paley Center for Media, formerly the Museum of Television & Radio (MT&R) and the Museum of Broadcasting, founded in 1975 by William S. Paley, is an American cultural institution in New York with a branch office in Los Angeles, dedicated to ...

and

Beverly Hills, California Beverly Hills is a city located in Los Angeles County, California. A notable and historic suburb of Greater Los Angeles, it is in a wealthy area immediately southwest of the Hollywood Hills, approximately northwest of downtown Los Angeles. B ...

, holds an almost complete set of the series, and a set of master tapes of the 1976 syndicated series. In 2000, a cache of original scripts from the show were found in a closet of producer Max Liebman, in the City Center building in New York City. The find made the front page of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. A former employee of Liebman, Barry Jacobsen, told ''The New York Times'' he had left the scripts in the closet and was holding onto the key, planning to come back and retrieve them once City Center decided what to do with the papers; he was never contacted by City Center, and the scripts stayed in the closet until being found in 2000. After the program ended the Caesar-Coca team was effectively split into two successor programs the following season: Imogene Coca starred in ''The Imogene Coca Show'' (which lasted one season), and Sid Caesar starred in '' Caesar's Hour'', which retained much of the cast and staff of ''Your Show of Shows''.

Syndication and DVD release

Reruns of the 1976 syndicated "best of" series were aired on

Comedy Central Comedy Central is an American basic cable channel owned by Paramount Global through its network division's MTV Entertainment Group unit, based in Manhattan. The channel is geared towards young adults aged 18–34 and carries comedy programming ...

during the early 1990s. Skits from the series which are from Sid Caesar's personal collection are available on ''The Sid Caesar Collection'' DVD set.

Sketches

The show featured several regular musical sketches, such as the mock rock group The Haircuts which achieved a surprise novelty hit with "Going Crazy" in 1955.''On the air: pioneers of American broadcasting'' Amy Henderson, National Portrait Gallery (Smithsonian Institution), Museum of Broadcasting (New York, N.Y.) - 1988 - Page 78 "Your Show of Shows" premiered on ... sketches featuring regular characters like the Hickenloopers or the rock group "The Haircuts," and one-shot pieces such as ..."

References

External links

*
''Ten From Your Show of Shows'' (1973) at IMDB''The Sid Caesar Collection''
*
George Bonnell collection of ''Your Show of Shows'' scripts, 1950
held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division,

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, is located in Manhattan, New York City, at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on the Upper West Side, between the Metro ...

{{EmmyAward VarietyMusicComedy 1951-1975 1950 American television series debuts 1954 American television series endings 1950s American sketch comedy television series 1950s American variety television series Black-and-white American television shows English-language television shows American live television series NBC original programming Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Series winners Television shows filmed in New York City