When Caesar Was King: How Sid Caesar Reinvented American Comedy by David Margolick

FINALIST FOR THE PEN/JACQUELINE BOGRAD WELD AWARD FOR BIOGRAPHY • From longtime New York Times and Vanity Fair writer David Margolick comes the first definitive biography of Sid Caesar: founding father of television comedy and icon to generations of Americans.“Whip smart. . . . A nuanced appreciation of Caesar’s comedy and the overall atmosphere of TV’s early days.” —EsquireBy the spring of 1954, Sid Caesar was the most influential, highly paid, and enigmatic comedian in America. Every week, twenty million people tuned their TVs to his NBC extravaganza, Your Show of Shows, and witnessed his virtuosity in sketches and film spoofs, pantomime and soliloquy. Onstage, Caesar could play any character and make it funny: a befuddled game-show contestant, a pretentious German professor, a beleaguered husband (opposite his redoubtable co-star Imogene Coca)—even a gumball machine and a bottle of seltzer.To Caesar’s mostly urban audience, his comedy was an era-defining leap forward from the days o