''Caesar's Hour'' is a live, hour-long American sketch-comedy television program that aired on

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...

from 1954 until 1957. The program starred, among others, Sid Caesar, Nanette Fabray,

Carl Reiner Carl Reiner (March 20, 1922 – June 29, 2020) was an American actor, author, comedian, director and screenwriter whose career spanned seven decades. He was the List of awards and nominations received by Carl Reiner, recipient of many awards and ...

, Howard Morris, Janet Blair, and Milt Kamen, and featured a number of cameo roles by famous entertainers such as

Joan Crawford Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur; March 23, 190? was an American actress. She started her career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway theatre, Broadway. Crawford was signed to a motion-picture cont ...

and

Peggy Lee Norma Deloris Egstrom (May 26, 1920 – January 21, 2002), known professionally as Peggy Lee, was an American jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, and actress whose career spanned seven decades. From her beginning as a vocalist on local r ...

. 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 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 ...

(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 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 pursu ...

, 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 "Bullets over Broadway" (a gangster film takeoff) and "Aggravation Boulevard" (with Caesar as a

Rudolph Valentino Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguella (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926), known professionally as Rudolph Valentino and nicknamed The Latin Lover, was an Italian actor who starred in several well-known sile ...

/ John Gilbert character who fails to make the transition from silents to talkies). Many of the sketches are centered on a domineering star who flames out, prefiguring Caesar's post-series personal and career troubles. From July to September 1956, NBC ran '' The Ernie Kovacs Show'' as a summer replacement series for ''Caesar's Hour''. The writing staff of the show was reunited in 1996 for an event at the Writers Guild Theater in Los Angeles called ''Caesar's Hour Revisited'', excerpts of which were broadcast on PBS under the title ''Caesar's Writers''. The full two-hour event was available on VHS as a pledge premium from PBS. It was released on DVD for the first time on December 12, 2011."Caesar's Writers , About"
/ref> The reunion featured Caesar with Mel Tolkin (head writer),

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 received three ...

, Danny Simon,

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

, Sheldon Keller, Aaron Ruben, and Gary Belkin. The moderator and researcher was Bob Claster.

Episode status

As with ''Your Show of Shows'', most of the original kinescopes of ''Caesar's Hour'' do survive. Complete episodes and segments (of episodes that only exist in partial form) from the series survive at the UCLA Film and Television Archive in Los Angeles and The Paley Center for Media in

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

and

Beverly Hills, California Beverly Hills is a city located in Los Angeles County, California, United States. A notable and historic suburb of Los Angeles, it is located just southwest of the Hollywood Hills, approximately northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Beverly Hills ...

References

External links

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Caesar's Writers
{{EmmyAward VarietyMusicComedy 1951–1975 1954 American television series debuts 1957 American television series endings 1950s American sketch comedy television series 1950s American variety television series American live television series Black-and-white American television shows American English-language television shows NBC original programming Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Series winners Television shows filmed in New York (state)