The link below is the main link/source that someone has made to list ALL of Sid Caesar’s work available on youtube!!!!!!!!!!
There is one category of 16 of his pantomime solos!!!!!!
I suppose I told you I saw him LIVE. NYC. Lower East Side venue called The Village Gate a 300 seater cramped in.
Certainly the most talented clown I have ever seen live.
He would have been in his late 60s perhaps even early 70ish
Perhaps that was around 1989?
I left a note at Stage Door that I was seeing the show and would come by after if there was a chance to meet?
When he walked on stage, the audience stood as one and gave a thunderous standing ovation…. when he walked on stage!!!!!
Thunderous.
They ‘knew him’ they ‘knew what he had done and been’.
That went on THUNDERING for a few minutes. He tried to accept their love but not to incite it. Finally as he bowed and bowed and finally gently with his hands he got the audience to calm and be seated and he got on with doing a GREAT performance. There was a small band, and about 3 other actors who joined him in some sketches.
HE WAS ASTOUNDING.
Then i didn’t know how I could face him he was so extraordinary.
But …. I know even bigshots are people and even though it was just me who left the note, even Sid would wonder why didn’t that person who said they would come, not come.
So I went.
The Stage Door fellow had been told by Sid that someone might come by so the Stage Door man told me he’s expecting you.
The doorman called and said Sid told him that he would be right out.
I was then to come inside and to walk down the hall.
Sid came out of his dressing room at the far end of the hall.
We walked towards each other like the shootout at OK Coral.
But I was so shocked at his talent he had just displayed on stage that ….
I could not speak
I tried
We shook hands when we met
I tried to speak
I could not
I could only put my hands on my heart and shake my head and could get out a tiny whisper
Hardly audible even though Sid was standing right in front of me I barely squeezed a very quiet whisper ‘thank you, it was great, thank you’
With my hands on my heart and shaking my head
We smiled. He with a big grin and me just smiling out of one side of my mouth
Then we both just nodded and then shook hands and we parted
My friend was waiting outside and so it was.
Sid Caesar.
He had one of the greatest teams: Carl Reiner, Imogen Coca, Howard Morris were his main tv stage partners.
His writing team that he worked with every day included himself, Reiner, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Neil Simon, Selma Diamond, and another three equally talented comedy writers.
Here is one skit. The Russian Arthur Godfrey. Arthur Godfrey was another American tv comedian in the 1950s. Carl Reiner who recently Passed Away at age 98, introduces the skit and later plays the auditioning comedian. He is imitating well known actors and the comedian Jimmy Durante whose nickname was “The Schnoze” ‘the nose’ for his big nose and Reiner/Godfrey puts on a nose for Durante. Caesar is the main actor and Howard Morris is the smaller Russian. Neither Imogen Coca nor Nanette Fabrey are in this skit.
The link links to over 100 Caesar skits.
Here is a review of the show I saw in 1989.
Review/Comedy; Sid Caesar and Friends, In a Show From Shows – Mel Gussow, June 23, 1989
Before improvisational theater, Second City and New Vaudeville, there was Sid Caesar, a grandmaster of innovative comedy. Mr. Caesar, his fellow television performers and his writers (who included Woody Allen, Mel Brooks and Neil Simon) have defined American humor. For these reasons and others, it is heartening to see him on stage at the Village Gate in ”Sid Caesar and Company.”Forty years after his television heights, he has lost his manic edge and his youthful unpredictability, but his comic imagination remains sharp and his facial features – all of them – are as expressive as ever. In performance, he freely mixes zany physical comedy and verbal virtuosity.His new show, which opened last night, is subtitled ”The Legendary Genius of Comedy,” which, in his case, is not an overstatement. The legend and the genius are in attendance, but more work is needed on the comedy. The show, which is uncredited as to authorship and direction, is formless, far more of a nightclub turn than the theatrical showcase Mr. Caesar deserves.In fact, it is only in the final 20 minutes that he really seems to relax and to take off. As his famous polymathic professor, he is interviewed by Lee Delano (in the role traditionally played by Carl Reiner). This exercise in baggypants wit leads Mr. Caesar into double talk, double takes and nimble adventures in foreign tongues such as have never been heard in Germany, Italy or Japan.
In its multinational mockery, the interview reminds one of his ad-lib brilliance improvising movie parodies on ”Your Show of Shows.” Perhaps this sketch should open rather than close the show. Instead he begins with three monologues about growing up that culminate with Mr. Caesar imitating infancy. Though each sketch has its laughs, there is admittedly something disconcerting about seeing a man of advancing years playing a newlywed young husband, an adolescent at his first dance and a 6-month-old baby.
Mr. Caesar’s stage time is shared with supporting players, who, for the most part, are operating in a different performing galaxy, especially so in the case of the Elliot Finkel orchestra, which precedes the show with an unwarranted overture, as if warming up the audience for a musical revue. Theatergoers who go to see Sid Caesar also do not need to hear Marilyn Sokol and Gerianne Raphael sing a selection of songs from his Broadway musical, ”Little Me,” or to listen a xylophone-piano duo playing a medley of Gershwin.
When the focus is on the star, there are moments to enjoy, including that classic monologue in which Mr. Caesar impersonates a gum machine with a mind of its own and a mime in which he plays a Grieg piano concerto and succeeds in smashing his pinky and the imaginary piano keys.
Funniest of all – until the finale -is the old Caesar favorite, ”At the Movies,” with new permutations. In this routine, Mr. Caesar is a moviegoer who is rattled by an exceedingly restless woman (Ms. Sokol), and then is besieged by her lover (Mr. Delano). In true Caesar fashion, he becomes the hapless target of their excessive wrath, and wistfully endures even an attack on his suit. The original ”At the Movies,” as performed on television by Mr. Caesar, Imogene Coca and Mr. Reiner, is unmatchable, but the new version is a reasonable approximation.
For those with affectionate memories of the comic in his prime time, the show will be a nostalgic journey and a reminder that Mr. Caesar’s talent is intact. For those unfamiliar with the comedian, ”Sid Caesar and Company” will offer more than an inkling of his genius. FROM THEN AND NOW – SID CAESAR AND COMPANY, THE LEGENDARY GENIUS OF COMEDY, production supervisor, Duane Mazey; stage manager, Neil Haynes. Presented by Art D’Lugoff and Larry Spellman. At the Village Gate, Downstairs, 160 Bleecker Street, corner of Thompson Street. WITH: Sid Caesar, Marilyn Sokol, Lee Delano and Gerrianne Raphael.
Astounding. ACTOR/CLOWN/WRITER SID CAESAR.