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Your Show of Shows –
An Early TV Classic
by Guy Belleranti
One of the first major successes on American television was Your
Show of Shows.
The program aired when television was still young, running from
1950 to 1954. A weekly black and white program, Your Show of Shows was a
variety program that aired live every Saturday night. And while it
featured dance and music sequences, it is most remembered for its
comedy.
Sid Caesar and Imogene Cocoa starred from the beginning, and
later, Carl Reiner (The Dick Van Dyke Show) and Howard Morris (Ernest T
Bass on The Andy Griffith Show) also came aboard.
Writers for the program included some who were to later blossom
into television and movie greatness: Mel Brooks (Young Frankenstein),
Neil Simon (The Odd Couple), Larry Gelbart (TV’s M.A.S.H.) and Woody
Allen (Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters).
Guest stars over the program’s run included such names as Rex
Harrison, Burgess Meredith, Basil Rathbone, Geraldine Page, Melvyn
Douglas, Charlton Heston, Lena Horne, Jackie Cooper and Pearl Bailey.
The program was full of zany skits and wild costumes. It spoofed
other television programs and big name movies, both silent and
contemporary. One TV program it parodied was the popular This Is Your
Life. A couple of the motion pictures it parodied were From Here to
Eternity and On the Waterfront.
Caesar showed he was a master of gobbledygook speech using dialect humor
and vocal inflections to perfection. He did double talk foreign movie
spoofs as Italian film expert, Giuseppe Marinara, was a jazz musician
named Progress Hornsby and was many other eccentric and funny characters
as well.
He even played a tramp-like character in homage to comedy great Charlie
Chaplin.
Some of the program’s best skits involved both Caesar and Coca. One
recurring theme had the two playing Charlie and Doris Hickenlooper, an
ill matched couple who were always at one another’s throats. In fact, I
wouldn’t be surprised if this theme had some influence on the later
Honeymooners TV program.
Indeed, Your Show of Shows influenced comedy in TV, film and theater. It
set the standard for comedy/variety shows of the future, shows like The
Carol Burnett Show and Saturday Night Live.
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