Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Sid Caesar, 1922-2014


Sid Caesar (obscured by the biplane support) and Edie Adams in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

Sid Caesar, who worked mostly in television in the early years of the medium, but appeared in a few important movies such as It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, has died at the age of 91. Caesar is probably best remembered for the pioneering TV sketch comedy show Your Show of Shows which ran in the 1950s. In the early 1970s, ten of the classic sketches from the show were put together in an anthology and released in movie theaters as Ten from Your Show of Shows. In It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World he plays the husband of Edie Adams; together, the two of them get stuck in the basement of a hardware store trying to find a shovel to dig up the $350,000 buried under the "Big W".

Unlike Shirley Temple, who's already gotten a standalone "TCM Remembers" piece (although I haven't seen it yet) and will be receiving a several-film salute in March after 31 Days of Oscar, Caesar didn't make enough movies to get a programming tribute; I presume a scene from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World will show up in the "TCM Remembers" piece at the end of the year.

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