Review by Booklist Review
Well, it's about time. After an apparently ghostwritten autobiography in the early 1980s, and an anecdotal as-told-to book twenty years later that focused mostly on Caesar's comedy routines, we are finally treated to a nuanced, perceptive biography, written with respect and admiration by veteran journalist Margolick. We learn so much about the creator of the groundbreaking variety shows Your Show of Shows (1950--54) and Caesar's Hour (1954--57): that he was an introvert; that he was a perfectionist, frequently sending comedy sketches back to the writers because they weren't good enough; that he could be highly critical of his colleagues, but never as critical as he was of himself; and that he could be overwhelmed, not to mention baffled, by his own success. As he tells us about the life of this brilliant (but, today, troublingly unknown) man, the author also takes us through the history of American comedy, focusing especially on the changes to the television landscape that made Caesar outmoded. A wonderful tribute to a man whose contributions to comedy cannot be overstated.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"For many viewers, Caesar was television," writes The Promise and the Dream author Margolick in this lively biography of comedian Sid Caesar (1922--2014). Caesar grew up in Yonkers, N.Y., where his parents ran a struggling luncheonette and rooming house. After a boarder left behind a saxophone, he learned to play it and began performing, moving into comedy shortly after. He was "the unlikeliest of comics: introverted, ill at ease, tongue-tied," Margolick explains, but early on, people were eager to see him first at resorts and clubs across the U.S. and then on TV. He had "a sophistication born of native intelligence and curiosity" that struck a chord with audiences, Margolick writes, and shaped a comedic style marked by humorous mannerisms, animated facial expressions, and a unique ability to produce sound effects and mimic foreign languages. In the early days of television in the 1950s, he starred in the variety program Your Show of Shows alongside Imogene Coca. With 20 million viewers tuning in weekly to watch him perform sketches and film spoofs, Caesar became "TV's initial homegrown star." He went on to perform in other shows like Caesar's Hour and Sid Caesar Invites You, but ratings fell as television expanded into new markets and the audience changed. Years of doing live TV also exhausted Caesar, who dealt with alcoholism and a pill addiction. Margolick poignantly assesses the influential comic's career, noting he was TV's "first great victim and suffer its most precipitous fall." Fans will be riveted. (Nov.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Lively biography of the original king of TV comedy. "No Sid Caesar, no Mel Brooks." So said Brooks himself, who spent years with Caesar as both friend and writer. Caesar ruled the airwaves in the mid-1950s, earning a then-astonishing $25,000 a year (about $300,000 today) and revolutionizing comedy with deeply philosophical sketches mixed in with silliness and his patented double-talk in many an invented language. Even Albert Einstein took time out of his week to watchCaesar's Hour--fittingly, since in high school, by journalist-turned-author Margolick's account, Caesar excelled in science and held Einstein as a personal hero. Yet underlying his comic genius was a roiling rage, unusually pronounced even in a profession known for misfits; Neil Simon called him "extremely smart but completely inarticulate." Joining him was a battery of "very gifted, neurotic young Jews, punching our brains out," as Caesar scriptwriter Larry Gelbart put it, that included a young Woody Allen. Renowned for his strength and legendary appetite--he could polish off four steaks at a sitting before going home to eat his real dinner--Caesar felt the toll of success and the stress of keeping his show fresh, and in that he was a pioneer, bringing on guests and players such as the singer Lena Horne and the brilliant comic Imogene Coca. For all that, by the 1960s Caesar was effectively over, his arch comedy series replaced by "pleasant shows about pleasant people." One of them was the meta programThe Dick Van Dyke Show, with Caesar veteran Carl Reiner in the Caesar role. More anarchically fun wasSaturday Night Live, which an embittered Caesar hated with a passion: "During his Dark Period," Margolick writes, "Caesar had viewed all younger comics as enemies, stealing from him the laughs he no longer got himself." Both a life and a cautionary tale, of great interest to any fan of golden era television. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
