A Real Show Starter

By Jeff Little

If you're old enough to remember what happened every Saturday night from 1950-1954 you're old enough to remember Your Show of Shows. If you're not that old you have still been exposed (on an almost daily basis) to the shows it spawned.

Say, "Saturday nights, NBC, a 90-minute sketch comedy/variety program," and most people would guess you were talking about Saturday Night Live. They would be right but would probably never guess that Your Show of Shows preceded SNL by more than 25 years and was nearly identical in its format.

Your Show of Shows featured different celebrity hosts that mainly served to showcase the program's brilliant cast of regulars which featured Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner and Howard Morris amongst others. It also had a variety of musical guests and a roster of incredibly gifted comedy writers. Sound familiar?

In the early days of television Your Show of Shows not only paved the way for shows like Saturday Night Live, it also opened doors for some of the brightest writers that television has ever seen. In fact, the writing staff was so brilliant that their working environment inspired such hits as the 1982 film My Favorite Year and television's The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966).

If anyone doubts the impact of Your Show of Shows on entertainment (then and now), all they need do is take a look at just some of the accomplishments attributed to and including its writers and cast. Even a partial list shows its importance.

 Carl Reiner - The Dick Van Dyke Show, The 2000 Year Old Man,    The Jerk

 Mel Brooks - Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, The Producers (stage and screen)

 Woody Allen - Sleeper, Bananas, Annie Hall

 Neil Simon - The Odd Couple, The Goodbye Girl, California Suite

 Selma Diamond - It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, My Favorite Year, Night Court

 Larry Gelbart - M*A*S*H (TV), Oh, God!, Tootsie

 Howard Morris - The Andy Griffith Show, The Nutty Professor (1963), Get Smart

 Sid Caesar - The Busy Body, Silent Movie, Grease

 Imogene Coca - Bewitched (TV), The Brady Bunch (TV), National Lampoon's Vacation

And that is only a partial list of people and productions that sprung from Your Show of Shows. An in depth catalog would be just that…a catalog; and a lengthy one at that.

Entertainment as we know it today is still feeling the ripple effect of the talent which sprung from the groundbreaking program. It last aired live on June 5, 1954 and many of the artists that brought it to television are no longer with us. But thanks to the credits attached to every film and television program, it's easy enough to connect the names to the many projects (past and present) that still entertain us today.

There have been many great television productions, but probably none that has given birth (in one way or another) to so many others. It makes its title fitting. It is called, after all, Your Show of Shows.

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