|
Caesar's Hour
''Caesar's Hour'' is a live, hour-long American sketch-comedy television program that aired on NBC from 1954 until 1957. The program starred, among others, Sid Caesar, Nanette Fabray, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris, Janet Blair, and Milt Kamen, and featured a number of cameo roles by famous entertainers such as Joan Crawford and Peggy Lee. Widely considered a continuation of Caesar's earlier programs, the '' Admiral Broadway Revue'' and ''Your Show of Shows'', ''Caesar's Hour'' included most of the same writers and actors, with the notable addition of Larry Gelbart (who went on to co-create the ''M*A*S*H'' TV series with Gene Reynolds) in the latter show. Nanette Fabray replaced Imogene Coca, who opted to star in her own TV series in 1954, '' The Imogene Coca Show''. ''Caesar's Hour'' expanded on the format of ''Your Show of Shows'' with many sketches running a half-hour or more, including musical parodies such as "There's No Business" and "Towers Trot", and genre parodies such as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sketch Comedy
Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. The form developed and became popular in vaudeville, and is used widely in variety shows, comedy talk shows, and some sitcoms and children's television series. The sketches may be improvised live by the performers, developed through improvisation before public performance, or scripted and rehearsed in advance like a play. Sketch comedians routinely differentiate their work from a "skit", maintaining that a skit is a (single) dramatized joke (or "bit") while a sketch is a comedic exploration of a concept, character, or situation. definition 3b, Merriam-Webster online. Retrieved 5/4/2019 History Sketch comedy has its origins in[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
M*A*S*H (TV Series)
''M*A*S*H'' (an acronym for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) is an American war film, war comedy-drama television series that aired on CBS from September 17, 1972 to February 28, 1983. It was developed by Larry Gelbart as the first original spin-off series adapted from the 1970 feature film ''M*A*S*H (film), M*A*S*H'', which, in turn, was based on Richard Hooker (author), Richard Hooker's 1968 novel ''MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors''. The series, which was produced with 20th Century Fox Television for CBS, follows a team of doctors and support staff stationed at the "4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital" in Uijeongbu, South Korea, during the Korean War (1950–53). The ensemble cast originally featured Alan Alda and Wayne Rogers as surgeons Benjamin "Hawkeye" Pierce and "Trapper" John McIntyre, the protagonists of the show, joined by Larry Linville as surgeon Frank Burns, Loretta Swit as head nurse Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan, McLean Stevenson as company commander Henry Bl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aaron Ruben
Aaron Ruben (March 1, 1914 – January 30, 2010) was an American television director and producer known for ''The Andy Griffith Show'' (1960), '' Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.'' (1964), and ''Sanford and Son'' (1972). Early life Ruben was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Polish Jewish immigrants. He grew up on the West Side of Chicago and attended Lewis Institute but did not graduate. He was involved in theater in Chicago after leaving college. After service in the military he worked for studios and wrote for radio programs including those of Dinah Shore, George Burns and Gracie Allen, and Fred Allen. He co-wrote Milton Berle's 1947-48 radio series with Nat Hiken. Television career Ruben started his TV producing and directing career in 1954 when he directed the TV series ''Caesar's Hour'' (1954). He then directed eleven episodes of ''The Phil Silvers Show'' between 1957 and 1959 along with Silvers' CBS TV special, '' Keep in Step'' (1959). He later produced ''The Andy Griffith S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sheldon Keller
Sheldon Bernard "Shelly" Keller (August 20, 1923 – September 1, 2008) was an American screenwriter and composer. Life and career Keller was born in Chicago and attended University of Illinois, where he began writing comedy with his fraternity brother Allan Sherman. He served in the Pacific Theater with the United States Army Signal Corps during World War II. After the war, Keller came home and married Bernice "Bitsy" Berkowitz. They had two children, Casey and Jamie. In 1951, he borrowed $500 from his father-in-law and moved the family to New York hoping to become an entertainer and comedian. He soon began writing for television. On ''Caesar's Hour'', starring Sid Caesar, Keller worked with notable writers Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Selma Diamond, Larry Gelbart, Mel Tolkin, Michael Stewart and Gary Belkin. In 1956, 1957 and 1958 the show was nominated for Emmy Award for Best Comedy Writing – Variety or Situation Comedy. Keller also wrote several episodes of ''The Dick Van Dyk ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 material for television in the 1950s, mainly '' Your Show of Shows'' (1950–1954) working alongside Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, and Neil Simon. He also published several books featuring short stories and wrote humor pieces for ''The New Yorker''. In the early 1960s, he performed as a stand-up comedian in Greenwich Village alongside Lenny Bruce, Elaine May, Mike Nichols, and Joan Rivers. There he developed a monologue style (rather than traditional jokes) and the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish. He released three comedy albums during the mid to late 1960s, earning a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album nomination for his 1964 comedy album entitled simply '' Woody Allen''. In 2004, Comedy Central ran ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 his career as a comic and a writer for Sid Caesar's variety show '' Your Show of Shows'' (1950–1954) alongside Woody Allen, Neil Simon and Larry Gelbart. With Carl Reiner, he created the comic character The 2000 Year Old Man. He wrote, with Buck Henry, the hit television comedy series ''Get Smart'' (1965–1970). In middle age, Brooks became one of the most successful film directors of the 1970s, with many of his films being among the top 10 moneymakers of their respective years of release. His best-known films include '' The Producers'' (1967), '' The Twelve Chairs'' (1970), '' Blazing Saddles'' (1974), ''Young Frankenstein'' (1974), '' Silent Movie'' (1976), '' High Anxiety'' (1977), '' History of the World, Part I'' (1981), '' Spa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 until Neil left to write plays. Danny would wrote for television shows including ''Your Show of Shows'', ''The Colgate Comedy Hour'', ''The Phil Silvers Show'', ''Make Room for Daddy'', ''My Three Sons'', ''The Carol Burnett Show'', ''Kraft Music Hall'', ''Diff'rent Strokes'', and '' The Facts of Life''. He later became a comedy teacher. Quotations Woody Allen said about Simon, "I've learned a couple of things on my own since and modified things he taught me, but everything, unequivocally, that I learned about comedy writing I learned from him". Jimmy Boyd, "Being around Danny always makes me and everyone else happy. He is always up and positive, and he sees humor in absolutely everything. It is endless funny one-liners. In rehearsal I could r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 more combined Oscar and Tony Award nominations than any other writer. Simon grew up in New York City during the Great Depression. His parents' financial difficulties affected their marriage, giving him a mostly unhappy and unstable childhood. He often took refuge in movie theaters, where he enjoyed watching early comedians like Charlie Chaplin. After graduating from high school and serving a few years in the Army Air Force Reserve, he began writing comedy scripts for radio programs and popular early television shows. Among the latter were Sid Caesar's '' Your Show of Shows'' (where in 1950 he worked alongside other young writers including Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Larry Gelbart and Selma Diamond), and '' The Phil Silvers S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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. There he presided over a staff that at times included Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, and Danny Simon. The writers' room inspired the film ''My Favorite Year'' (1982), produced by Brooks, and the Broadway play '' Laughter on the 23rd Floor'' (1993), written by Neil Simon. Tolkin, who won an Emmy Award and every other major prize for television writing, was the father of screenwriter-novelist Michael Tolkin and TV writer- director Stephen Tolkin. Biography Early life and career Mel Tolkin was born Shmuel Tolchinsky (russian: Тол(ь)чинский, cog. Тульчинский, uk, Толчинський, pl, Tolczyński, cog. Tulczyński, means "from Tuľčyn") in a Jewish shtetl near Odessa, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Ernie Kovacs Show
''The Ernie Kovacs Show'' was an American comedy show hosted by comedian Ernie Kovacs, first shown in Philadelphia during the early 1950s, then nationally. The show appeared in many versions and formats, including daytime, prime-time, late-night, talk show, comedy, and as a summer replacement series. ''The Ernie Kovacs Show'' was one of only six TV shows broadcast on all four U.S. television networks during the Golden Age of Television, the others being ''The Original Amateur Hour'', ''Pantomime Quiz'', ''Down You Go'', ''The Arthur Murray Party'', and '' Tom Corbett, Space Cadet''. CBS From April 21, 1952, to January 15, 1954, Kovacs had a daytime show under the name ''Kovacs Unlimited'' airing Monday through Friday at 8:30 am ET on CBS Television. From December 30, 1952, to April 14, 1953, CBS aired the one-hour ''The Ernie Kovacs Show'' on Tuesday evenings at 8pm ET. DuMont From April 12, 1954, to April 7, 1955, he also had a late night television talk show on the DuMont Tel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Gilbert (actor)
John Gilbert (born John Cecil Pringle; July 10, 1897 – January 9, 1936) was an American actor, screenwriter and director. He rose to fame during the silent film era and became a popular leading man known as "The Great Lover". His breakthrough came in 1925 with his starring roles in ''The Merry Widow (1925 film), The Merry Widow'' and ''The Big Parade''. At the height of his career, Gilbert rivaled Rudolph Valentino as a box office draw. Gilbert's career declined precipitously when silent pictures gave way to talkies. Though Gilbert was often cited as one of the high-profile examples of an actor who was unsuccessful in making the transition to sound films, his decline as a star had far more to do with studio politics and money than with the sound of his screen voice, which was rich and distinctive. Early life and stage work Born John Cecil Pringle in Logan, Utah, to Repertory theatre, stock-company actor parents, John George Pringle (1865–1929) and Ida Adair Apperly Gilbert ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rudolph Valentino
Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926), known professionally as Rudolph Valentino and nicknamed The Latin Lover, was an Italian actor based in the United States who starred in several well-known silent films including '' The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,'' '' The Sheik,'' ''Blood and Sand,'' '' The Eagle'', and '' The Son of the Sheik.'' Valentino was a sex symbol of the 1920s, known in Hollywood as the "Latin Lover" (a title invented for him by Hollywood moguls), the "Great Lover", or simply Valentino. His early death at the age of 31 caused mass hysteria among his fans, further cementing his place in early cinematic history as a cultural film icon. Early life Childhood and emigration Valentino was born in Castellaneta, Apulia, and named Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguella. Birth name: Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi. His father, Giovanni Antonio G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
