The Comedians

by Kliph Nesteroff

  Liebman was the Lorne Michaels of his era. He put together an original comedy-variety show for Caesar every single week and made stars out of unknowns. Lucille Kallen and Mel Tolkin were his head writers. “I met Max in 1948 when he was recruiting people for Tamiment,” said Kallen. “Every week that summer, Mel and I turned out a two-hour original revue, music, lyrics and sketches.” Pat Carroll performed in the next round of shows, which were written by Danny and Neil Simon. “Tamiment was wonderful. You were doing an all-original revue every weekend! I worked at Tamiment with Neil Simon, who was then known as Doc, and they wrote the best sketches I had ever seen.”

  During the war Liebman directed a military revue called Tars and Spars. It starred comedian Marc Bolero. In the same show Sid Caesar did a supporting part and completely upstaged Bolero. Liebman was hip to the reaction and guided Caesar through a new sea of opportunity.

  Columbia Pictures offered Caesar the starring part in The Jolson Story and he opened for Joe E. Lewis at the Copa, but the attention made him uncomfortable. He feared being exposed as a straw man. Caesar was in demand as a comic—but he was an actor without an act. Liebman reassured him, having built stars out of nothing before, as in the case of Tamiment graduate Danny Kaye. Liebman worked with Caesar, mapping movements and emphasizing key lines, readying him for his Copa debut on January 1, 1947. Mountain friend Don Appell came backstage to congratulate Caesar on his success and brought a fellow Mountain employee—Melvin Kaminsky. It was the first time Caesar met the man who would become his voice—Mel Brooks.

  Caesar was booked at the Roxy presentation house when Leo Lindemann, owner of Lindy’s, caught his act. When producer Joseph Hyman dined at Lindy’s shortly thereafter, Lindemann convinced Hyman to cast Caesar in his Broadway show Make Mine Manhattan. It ran from January 1948 to January 1949, with Caesar playing twelve different roles. “He was imitating pinball machines,” says Mel Brooks. “He could imitate people or slot machines or a gumball machine. He really could do anything and he talked fast. He was doing the Danny Kaye stuff only quicker and better and sharper.” Caesar’s reputation as Broadway’s hot new comic was solidified.

  Kirb met with the head of the Admiral appliance company. In less than twenty minutes he sold the executives the idea of a televised Tamiment series. Liebman went backstage to give Caesar the good news. In the dressing room Caesar introduced Liebman to Mel Brooks for the first time and told him he wanted Brooks to write on the show. Liebman considered Brooks an unfunny hanger-on. He refused to hire him, so Caesar started paying Brooks under the table.

  According to Caesar, the debut was a marathon of advertising: “The premiere episode was virtually one long commercial for the sponsor’s products—refrigerators, ranges, phonographs and television.” Roy Atwell, Admiral’s answer to Sid Stone, did the commercials in a comedic stammer and one of the sketches took place in an Admiral appliance store.

  Subsequent episodes were bogged down by a pet obsession of Liebman’s: long, elaborate dance numbers choreographed by James Starbuck. Liebman believed that ballet—not comedy—would be the key to his success. Critics complained about it from day one: “Fundamentally the weakness of this first in the Admiral series was in the songs and dancing. A dancer spends weeks working on a routine. Then a camera moves up on him, cutting his body off at the waist and turning him into a twisting torso, a pair of gesticulating arms and a perspiring face.”

  The Admiral Broadway Revue lasted four months. Caesar wanted out of his contract. The workload was too much, he said, as he was doing nightclub engagements at the Waldorf-Astoria simultaneously. In addition, he was fielding an offer from Fox to star in a film with Paul Douglas, but only if he would quit television. He was also stressed over a pair of lawsuits. Caesar was being sued by a small-time agent for a quarter of a million dollars over a contract he naively signed back in 1945. Furthermore, while preparing The Admiral Broadway Revue, Liebman instructed Tolkin and Kallen not to write original material, but to rework sketches from Make Mine Manhattan and the revue Small Wonder. When those sketches appeared on The Admiral Broadway Revue without permission, comedy writer Devery Freeman took legal action and named Caesar, Liebman and NBC in the lawsuit.

  The Admiral Broadway Revue left the air, but the primary players involved—Sid Caesar, Mel Brooks, Lucille Kallen, Mel Tolkin, diminutive actor Howard Morris and former two-reel comedienne Imogene Coca—returned the following year with a better version of the same thing.

  A new, key player was hired. Carl Reiner was a young, journeyman sketch actor. He and Buddy Hackett toured in a road version of Call Me Mister, Harold Rome’s satire of military bravado. He played in Pretty Penny, a failure from the legendary George S. Kaufman. He did a creaky TV show called The 54th Street Revue, sharing screen time with mimic Al Bernie and comic Billy Vine. Lastly there was Alive and Kicking, a troubled revue that was neither alive nor kicking, but resulted in the biggest break of his career. Liebman was asked to doctor Alive and Kicking. Despite its ruptured state, it featured sketches written by great comedy minds like I. A. L. Diamond, Sid Kuller, Henry Morgan and Joe Stein. Liebman tried, but ultimately decided it could not be salvaged. Instead he raided its talent pool and hired Stein and Reiner for his own project.

  Mel Tolkin and writer Abe Ginnes were preparing a Sid Caesar sitcom called Great Caesar when Young and Rubicam executive Pat Weaver asked Liebman to do a revamp of The Admiral Broadway Revue. It was to be called Your Show of Shows and Weaver wanted it to fill a massive two and a half hours every Saturday night. Liebman dismissed the idea as unworkable and they compromised with a weekly ninety minutes. Your Show of Shows debuted February 25, 1950, starring Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Howard Morris and Carl Reiner.

  Weaver created the catchall title The Saturday Night Revue and placed two comedy shows under its banner. The first hour consisted of Jack Carter’s sketch program, The Jack Carter Show, followed by the ninety-minute Your Show of Shows. While the Caesar staff hypothetically had six days to write a show, the script needed to be ready by Wednesday, as the archaic mimeograph machine literally took days to produce copies. “The time pressures were so great I took the telephone out of the room,” said Caesar. “I literally ripped it out of the wall and threw it into the hallway.”

  Neil Simon replaced Lucille Kallen when she went on maternity leave. He recalls Caesar being tense, but supportive. “There was an enormous amount of anger, but it would all come out in comedy. When he was angry, he could be very funny about it. Sid loved the writers and paid them better than anyone else.”

  The pressure of carrying a ninety-minute live show every week turned Caesar into a boozer. “I once saw him drink a whole bottle of gin before the show and he was wonderful on the show, but he was an alcoholic,” said writer Joe Stein. “The very first day I was there was very peculiar. I was sitting around chatting with the guys when suddenly I heard a lot of vomiting. I said, ‘What’s going on?’ They said, ‘Oh, Sid just came in.’ He usually came in and threw up his breakfast.”

  The Jack Carter Show suffered as the lead-in. Max Liebman wielded a great deal of power at NBC, whereas Carter producer Ernie Glucksman did not. The Jack Carter Show could not book guest stars or submit scripts until Your Show of Shows had done the same. Liebman was adamant there not be any redundancy in the shows, and to this day Carter is upset about it: “It was always Sid Caesar, Sid Caesar, Sid Caesar! Sid Caesar everything—and I was treated like crap.”

  Ben Starr was a writer on The Jack Carter Show. He says Carter was his own worst enemy. “The writers were myself, Larry Klein, Marvin Marx and the producer Ernie Glucksman. We’d pitch all day, go for lunch, come back until eight o’clock at night. Jack would turn everything down. By Wednesday, Ernie Glucksman was a basket case. We would have to pitch it and write it and bring it in Thursday morning to start rehearsal for Saturday broadcast. Almost every Saturday, the morning of the show, Carter, Glucksman and Weaver would be there with the union guy for all the
guys that build the sets. Nobody would be building any sets. Why? Jack had insulted all the hammer guys and we were waiting for someone to arrive with a case of champagne. The case would arrive and they would give it to the steward. Then everybody would go in and start rehearsing.”

  Your Show of Shows had a writers room that became the subject of essays, panels, a Broadway play and a TV movie. It holds legendary status. “For nine years I presided over what was arguably the best collection of comedy writers ever assembled in the history of television,” said Caesar. They were the highest-paid comedy writers in the business, and it gave Mel Brooks a complex. “When I was listed as a regular writer and my pay went to $205 a week, I began to get scared. Writer! I’m not a writer. Terrible penmanship. And when my salary went to $1,000 a week, I really panicked . . . It was unreal . . . It was like I was stealing and I was going to get caught. Then the year after that, the money went to $2,500 and finally I was making $5,000 a show and going out of my mind. In fact, the psychological mess I was in began to cause a real physical debilitation. To wit: low blood sugar and under-active thyroid.”

  Brooks was a writer in the shadows, not yet the star he would become. The one time he appeared on air he was petrified. “We put him on the show once,” said cast member Howard Morris. “We wanted him to do this cat sound he does because he has this space between his teeth. He came over to the corner where the mic was, and I have never seen anyone paler in my life. He was petrified. I said, ‘You son of a bitch, just do the fucking cat sound.’”

  But in the writers room Brooks had no fear. “I was aggressive. I was a terrier, a pit bull terrier. I was unstoppable. I would keep going until my joke or my sketch was in the show. I didn’t care if anybody else’s was in or out. All of us writers were like a litter of pups, and we all fought for our little tit and struggled and screamed. Sid was God, and if we could get his ear and he would smile on us—that was important.”

  Although Liebman had finally deferred and put Brooks on the payroll, he always considered Brooks a distraction. “Max would fire Mel at least once a week,” said Caesar. “Sometimes once a day. When Max would yell at him, ‘You’re nothing, all you’ll ever be is nothing!’ Mel would respond, ‘And you’re the boss over nothing!’ Max tried to manage Mel’s enthusiasm by throwing lit cigars at him.”

  When they entered television, comedians like Berle, Cantor and Wynn relied on stuff they’d done a thousand times before. Caesar had the opposite approach, and as a result he stood out. “Caesar’s material is all around him and inexhaustible,” said Fred Allen. “Caesar running out of material would be like NBC running out of vice-presidents.” Caesar’s success created some backlash against Berle. A couple years earlier people thought Berle was the best television could offer—and now they felt rooked. “If Berle is the King of Television,” commented Sid White of Radio Daily, “then Sid Caesar is the Emperor.” The Chicago Tribune wrote, “Sid Caesar doesn’t steal jokes; he doesn’t borrow ideas or material. A gag is as useless to Caesar as a fresh situation is to Milton Berle.”

  Television made stars out of Berle and Caesar, but for regular nightclub comics the best forum was The Ed Sullivan Show. Comedians who couldn’t carry their own show had immediate credibility with a Sullivan shot. And while it may not have made them overnight stars, it increased their drawing power in clubs and their financial value. The Ed Sullivan Show ran from 1948 to 1971 and gave much of America its first glimpse of Lord Buckley, Rodney Dangerfield, Totie Fields, Alan King, Moms Mabley, Pigmeat Markham and Joan Rivers. Most of the comics considered Sullivan an anomaly. They kissed his ass in person, but made fun of him behind his back. Comedian Irwin Corey yells, “Ed Sullivan was a very dull person—no fucking talent at all!”

  The comedians booked most frequently reflected the taste of the host. Though few clamored to see them, Jack Carter, Myron Cohen and the comedy team of Wayne & Shuster were paraded before the cameras nearly every month. “I became a favorite of his,” says Carter. “He used me as a barometer for what he wanted. He’d yell at the other comics, ‘Why can’t you be like Jack Carter?’ He had this clean-cut American image, but was filthy off-camera. You went to his dressing room while he was being made up and he would curse. ‘You can’t do that fucking shit on my show, Jack. That’s bullshit. That’s fucking shit.’”

  The early version of the Sullivan show was called Toast of the Town. Premiering June 20, 1948, it was a creaky affair made worse by the bland style of Sullivan himself. “Ed Sullivan was one of the most boring, untalented men on the planet,” says comedian Pat Cooper. “If Ed Sullivan was around today he wouldn’t get on slides. But we didn’t know any better! Television was still in its infancy, so we didn’t know.”

  Sullivan was notorious for making comedians cut their act shortly before they walked onstage. Henny Youngman had such an experience. “He calls me upstairs. ‘Take this joke out. Take this out. Take this out. Take this out.’ I got onstage and I didn’t know what I was doing. He broke up my rhythm. He broke up my routine. I came off and I said, ‘You amateur-night son of a bitch! How dare you do this to me!’”

  The Ed Sullivan Show did a full run-through the day of the show to determine the length of the broadcast. Sullivan director John Moffitt says, “The run-through had an audience that was all stragglers that hung around Broadway. I don’t know how you could ever get a good take on how good a routine was, but Ed made judgments because of that audience.” Bobby Ramsen says Sullivan seldom had a reason for the cuts and merely wanted to exercise his power between rehearsal and air. “You’d do your routine for the rehearsal and nine times out of ten, ‘You’re not going to do that routine on my show tonight.’ So you’d give him something else. And whatever else you gave him, ‘That’s what you’ll do on my show tonight.’ No matter what you did.”

  Will Jordan became a comedy star doing the very first impression of Ed Sullivan. Jordan came on the program, exaggerated Sullivan’s mannerisms and got laughs with the phrase “really big shoe.” The caricature he created soon became a signature of every hack comedian in the business. “I first imitated him in 1953 on his show. I did what many mimics had done before—I invented. I invented the character. He never said ‘really big shoe.’ That was me.” Jordan cashed in with a novelty recording of the Everly Brothers hit “Bye Bye Love” done in the voice of Sullivan. “When the record came out Ed Sullivan said, ‘You can’t release this.’ I asked him why. He said, ‘Because of all those lewd things you made me say in the song!’ I said, ‘The song? It’s a real song. It’s “Bye Bye Love” by the Everly Brothers.’ He thought, ‘There goes my baby, she’s got someone new . . .’ He thought that was bad taste! Ed Sullivan was not the brightest person.”

  Sullivan would frequently ask notable audience members to stand up and take a bow. According to Carter this led to the occasional faux pas. “He asked this group of GIs to get up and take a bow. ‘Come on, you guys, get up! Get up here! Stand up and take a bow, you wonderful GIs!’ They were all in wheelchairs. Paraplegics.”

  A last-minute Sullivan cut could make a comedian seem worse than he was. Likewise, the development of a brand-new technology attempted to make television comedy seem funnier than it was. Canned laughter became a staple of the American viewing experience.

  Insulting the home audience and reassuring the insecure comic, the laugh track was an indelible American trademark that created an aural homogeneity. The laugh track was used on almost every television comedy and variety show from the mid-1950s through the 1970s, and it made every show sound the same. Laughter was often dropped into programs at inappropriate moments, leading viewers to wonder what the disembodied laughs were laughing at.

  Charley Douglass developed what he called the “Laff Box” in 1953. It came into general use in 1955 and looked like a Dadaist invention. “While dialogue, effects and music was being put in [during postproduction], there was a fourth person with a laugh machine,” said audio engineer and Douglass assistant
Carroll Pratt. “All four items would funnel into the final product. Ours were cued by a series of keys that we [installed in] a Royal typewriter. They were in banks of four based on the sex of the laugh, the size of the laugh and so on. In the basic machine there were thirty-two keys. You could program and play as many as you wanted.”

  Contrived laughter was a radical development. When comedy first started on radio a studio audience of any kind was forbidden. George Burns said, “They were worried their laughter would spoil the show for listeners at home.”

  Ed Wynn lobbied for the studio audience in radio and won. Twenty years later the laugh track had replaced most live bodies, and it would be decades before comedy consistently broadcast without aural assistance. Critics like Kenneth Tynan complained America lived “in an age when canned hilarity has all but usurped the viewer’s right to an autonomous sense of humor.”

  Insecure comedians like Milton Berle romanced the laugh track. “That machine was his answer to every prayer he ever had,” said comedy writer Mel Diamond. “He didn’t need the fucking audience anymore—which he didn’t like anyway because he couldn’t depend on them. To me, the machine is as fraudulent as the phony quiz shows, but the comedians saw it as the answer to their worst fears.”

  In the wake of the 1950s quiz show scandals, in which a government investigation revealed that popular game shows were rigged in advance, CBS president Frank Stanton announced that CBS programming would be “what it purports to be.” Erik Barnouw wrote in Tube of Plenty, “Canned laughter and applause would have to be identified as such. However, this radical idea was abandoned a few weeks later.”

  Any comedian who opposed the laugh track was overruled. “Television executives insisted that a comedy show had to have a laugh track so the audience watching at home would know when to laugh,” said George Burns. “I told them we didn’t need one on our show because the audience knew when something funny had happened. They still insisted we use the laugh track.”