They called it the "Golden Age of Television" and looking at this clip you can understand why. It was live - including the commercials, it was without teleprompter and it was in front of a studio audience. There were not second takes, no laugh track - just talents that had been honed on stage in vaudeville, musical comedy and drama. And with a repertory company that included Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris, and Nanette Fabray, Sid Caesar delivered a wild mixture of slapstick, pantomime, sophisticated take-offs, satire and laugh from 1949 until 1958 on The Admiral Broadway Revue, Your Show of Shows and the Sid Caesar Hour. It didn't hurt that over the years his stable of writers included Lucille Kallen, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Michael Stewart, Mel Tolkin, Sheldon Keller and Larry Gelbart. All that talent suggests that it was indeed a "golden age".
The one thing none of these talented people ever did - oh current producers take note - was under-estimate the intelligence of their audience. Here's Caesar and Fabray in a brilliant piece of mime set to a familiar piece of classical music.
And then you ask why I don't currently own a TV?????
01 October - 1908: Ford puts the Model T car on the market at a price of US$825. (Thanks Mr Ford!)
1 comment:
I like the way that, just when they might be running out of inventive steam, they do a fabulous take on those heavy pairs of chords in the development. You're right, no-one would be allowed to do the WHOLE MOVEMENT these days - or to take for granted that their viewers had necessarily even heard of Beethoven...
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