It's Good to Be the King

by James Robert Parish

  With a solid response from home viewers, it was assumed that Admiral Broadway Revue would continue on beyond its first season. However, by May 1949, word came down from on high. The Admiral Corporation was not renewing its sponsorship of the hit program for another season. It made no sense to the staff, but they knew that in the world of show business, logic was often not the order of the business day. On June 3, 1949, Admiral Broadway Revue aired its 19th and final production. Only weeks later did Sid Caesar learn the actual cause of the puzzling cancellation. The head of the Admiral Corporation informed Caesar that because the Admiral Broadway Revue had been so surprisingly successful, there had been a huge, unexpected consumer demand for Admiral TV sets. It had required the company to suddenly expand its manufacturing facilities. As a result, they could not afford to do that and continue to sponsor the TV series. It was the first and one of the very few occurrences of a TV program being terminated because it was too popular and had done its job of selling the sponsor’s products too well.

  Once again, Brooks wondered where his next job would come from and how he could engineer a new industry assignment. He understood that recurring unemployment was part and parcel of the up-and-down life of show business. However, this hardly mollified his prideful belief that he was far too talented to be subjected to such typical nerve-wracking periods of professional idleness. When, he wondered, would everyone awaken to the fact that Mel Brooks would never abandon his goal of becoming famous in the world of entertainment? Why did they not realize that these obstacles in the way of his gaining success never could overwhelm his drive to prove to everyone (including himself) that he really was somebody and a talent to be reckoned with?

  10

  Your Show of Shows

  I should have been impressed [being part of Your Show of Shows] but I was a cocky kid. I was filled with hubris and marvelous ego. I thought I was God’s gift to writing … and I was.

  –Mel Brooks, 1996

  Within a short time after it was announced that Admiral Broadway Revue would be going off the air, Sylvester “Pat” Weaver met anew with Max Liebman. The trendsetting television industry VIP had a fresh offer to make the Broadway (and now TV) showman. Weaver confided to Liebman that he envisioned an ambitious, fresh project for his network’s lineup. It was NBC Saturday Night Revue, a three-hour weekly offering that would provide high-caliber entertainment so enticing that the public would gladly stay home on Saturday evenings to watch the exciting new show. Since Pat was such a fast-rising top executive at NBC, he was in a solid position to carry out his elaborate vision.

  After Weaver’s discussions with Liebman (sometimes with Sid Caesar present to provide feedback), it was decided that NBC Saturday Night Revue would be the umbrella title for two offerings to be aired consecutively: a 60-minute show broadcast live from Chicago from 8 P.M. to 9 P.M., starring the snappy stand-up comedian Jack Carter, followed by a 90-minute entry presented live from New York City from 9 P.M. to 10:30 P.M. The Jack Carter Show—the first hour of NBC Saturday Night Revue—would utilize a vaudeville-style format of assorted acts, much like Milton Berle did so successfully on his Tuesday night TV showcase on the Texaco Star Theater. The next segment, Your Show of Shows, would be a revue-style presentation. Liebman would be in charge of the latter. The deal was soon put in place.

  Max brought over to the new series much of the talent he had utilized on Admiral Broadway Revue. This included key performers Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, as well as writers Lucille Kallen and Mel Tolkin, set designer Frederick Fox, choreographer/dance performer James Starbuck, conductor Charles Sanford, and several others. What really excited Max about the venture was that he would no longer be confined by a meager $15,000 weekly budget, but now would be allowed to expend up to $65,000 on each production during the 39-week season. To further demonstrate their faith in Liebman’s capabilities, the network provided Liebman and his team with four floors of headquarters at the enormous City Center facility at 130 West 56th Street.

  With the expanded time slot allotted him, Max, a culture maven, grandly envisioned presenting both the expected comedy skits as well as such added attractions as full-blown dance numbers (including ballet) and sophisticated segments that would feature classical music and opera. Besides the core group of performers, Your Show of Shows would contract name guest stars to host each week’s presentation and to appear in sketches and/or musical numbers within the envisioned classy vehicle.

  With its much-touted debut set for late February 1950, Max quickly added to the roster of show regulars. These included opera singers Marguerite Piazza and Robert Merrill, the dance team of Mata and Hari, the Billy Williams Quartet, the Hamilton Dancers, and handsome young vocalist Bill Hayes. Liebman decided that Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, who had begun performing skits together on Admiral Broadway Revue partway through the season, would continue to be paired on Your Show of Shows, as well as handle solo spots that played to each of their particular artistic strengths.

  Since the lineup of sketches within the 90-minute format would occupy less than half of the allotted time slot, the budget-conscious Liebman felt that his reliable writing team of Kallen and Tolkin could “easily” handle the weekly load of creating the needed sketch material and occasional new song offerings. Max continued to ignore the overeager Mel Brooks, who was waiting impatiently on the sidelines to learn about his possible status—if any—on Your Show of Shows. Actually, if Liebman had had his way, the bothersome young hanger-on would have been barred from the proceedings altogether. However, Caesar refused to let that happen. As the bigger of the top two stars of this major new TV project, he had more clout than before and exerted his power to protect Brooks’s interest. Sid informed Max that for the time being, he would continue to pay his friend $50 weekly from his own checkbook. Liebman was anxious to focus on more pressing considerations and gruffly agreed to go along with Caesar’s wishes in this trivial matter. However, Max warned his leading man that he would brook no interference from this undisciplined mascot—this schlepper. It was understood that Brooks would keep far away from Max unless his immediate presence was requested to help resolve a skit problem. When Brooks learned the news, he was relieved to be again “employed” in the business, but it certainly rankled him that Liebman continued to have so little regard for his talents. (In typical Mel Brooks style, he buried such hurt and insecurities beneath a compensatory bluster.)

  When NBC Saturday Night Revue premiered on February 25, 1950, the critical response (at least for the Your Show of Shows segment) was even more favorable than that accorded previously to the Admiral Broadway Revue. Jack Gould (of the New York Times) enthused that the Manhattan-based portion of the evening was “really out of the top drawer, boasting variety in the true sense of the word and having an adult flavor throughout.” Variety concurred that NBC had a winning Saturday night entry, especially with Your Show of Shows. The trade publication rated the premiere a “solid block of big-time entertainment and sales potentials.” Sylvester Weaver was jubilant that his continued faith in the highly capable Max Liebman had paid off so richly.

  • • •

  During the first follow-up episodes of Your Show of Shows, the caliber of material and the production values continued to improve. And where was the overeager Mel Brooks during these crucial first weeks of the season as the program’s staff worked furiously to iron out the wrinkles in each new weekly offering? Largely, the outsider was relegated to pacing the halls of the City Center production headquarters or waiting nervously out on the street hoping to join Sid and others when they emerged for a lunch break or to indulge in an occasional afternoon visit to a local steam bath.

  Those times when Mel was summoned by King Caesar to provide last-minute skit shtick, he jubilantly jumped into action. This fireball of energy and bravado would spit out wild comedy premises, bits, and comedy lines to help Caesar and the other creative forces sail through an artistic impasse. Liebman aside, many of the Your Show of Shows team had come to admit that the t
enacious Brooks actually was proving to be a useful creative backup. While he was certainly an odd, abrasive mix of chutzpah and thinly veiled insecurity, he also was a man who wore a cheery smile and sang/hummed upbeat songs. However, beneath this bluster lurked a growing reservoir of cynicism that verged on fatalism. (Because Brooks was so obsessed with the ongoing state of his health, many in the group thought him an overzealous hypochondriac.) This quirky little man hung on Sid’s every word and was his taciturn boss’s biggest champion (next to Caesar’s ever-present factotum, the hulking Dave Caesar). But it was becoming obvious to some shrewd on-the-scene observers that Mel, the former Catskills tummler, had such a large ego that one day even the mighty Sid Caesar might not be able to control him.

  By the time the seventh episode of Your Show of Shows aired in April 1950, Brooks had so often stormed the fortress that a weary Max Liebman finally conceded defeat and allowed Mel actual screen credit on the series. (This situation was prompted because Mel, on his own initiative, had submitted a full skit that was used on the latest show. In the routine, Caesar was cast as a colorful Russian actor who is a devotee of Method acting and demonstrates the process for onlookers. First he becomes a pinball careening wildly about a pinball machine, then he takes on both roles in a burlesque version of Romeo and Juliet.) Thus, that night’s closing crawl of credits included a new listing, “Additional Dialogue by Mel Brooks.”

  Having won this pivotal battle with the strong-willed producer, the ambitious Brooks moved on to his next goal: becoming an actual salaried member of the team. He aggressively demanded—and soon won the concession—to be paid out of the show’s production budget rather than receive the embarrassing handouts from Sid Caesar. With one foot now solidly in the door, Mel doggedly pursued his next objective: to be given screen credits as a full member of the writing squad. (As a bemused Caesar assessed his friend’s ascension: “He was pushing his way into the writers’ room through a combination of raw talent, inertia and sheer chutzpah.”) By the 1951–1952 season, Brooks had achieved his latest goal. The show’s crawl was changed to state, “Written by Max Liebman, Sid Caesar, Lucille Kallen, Mel Tolkin and Mel Brooks.”

  • • •

  Now that the relentless Brooks was actually a legitimate part of the show’s writing team, it soon became a habit among the program’s staff to refer to Mel Tolkin as “Big Mel” and to Brooks as “Little Mel.” As Liebman increasingly devoted more of his focus to the program’s segments of classical music, opera, and song-and-dance production numbers, it fell increasingly to the erudite Tolkin to take on the mantle of the series’ head writer. Because Lucille Kallen was the sole woman in the writing group—and since this was in the era before feminism and sexual equality in the workplace—she was assigned to take notes at the writers’ work sessions. (What bound her to that secretarial task was that, unlike the other writers, she could type.) Much more so than Imogene Coca, Sid made a point of attending these writers’ meetings. Caesar not only had many viable suggestions to contribute, but he realized that it was the best way for him to have quality control over the skits in which he would perform. Sid did none of the actual script writing. Instead, after he introduced a possible premise to the others, his main input was to channel the flow of ensuing discussion.

  The writing staff generally worked well together under the constant pressure, excited by the repeated challenge to outdo their past creative efforts. Each of these diverse talents had his or her particular strengths and weaknesses (especially Caesar, who was becoming intensely moody), but this writing squad was a well-oiled machine. Its members were in sharp contrast to the freewheeling Brooks.

  “Little Mel” had great difficulty even showing up on time at the scheduled writers’ meetings. By nature he worked best on the spur of the moment and found it very hard to adapt to the rigors of a structured work environment. He was further inhibited from being a compliant team player by being plagued with insomnia. No matter what he did (including changing his diet to adjust his blood sugar levels) he couldn’t fall asleep until very late at night. By the time he had managed a few hours’ rest, it was well past the time he should have been at the office. It forced him to race to get dressed for the workday and then scurry uptown to West 56th Street.

  Mel’s situation also was complicated by his suffering from extreme professional insecurity. There were many contributing factors to his plight. He was extremely sensitive to the fact that—unlike his confreres—he did not have a college education or formal experience as a comedy writer, and that he had had to blatantly push his way onto the writing staff (through the sponsorship of Caesar). Therefore, he felt at a great disadvantage to his peers. Others in a similar position might have compensated for such “failings” by bending over backward to follow the work schedule at the TV show and by being overly solicitous of their coworkers. But not the iconoclastic Brooks. Years of fighting the odds to stay afloat had left him pessimistic—even fatalistic—about the outcome of most every situation in his life.

  With all of Brooks’s emotional baggage he could not avoid being the odd person out among the writers of Your Show of Shows. He would arrive for the day’s work hours late, offering absurd excuses for his tardiness. He did not deign to make an unobtrusive entrance but made his arrivals a perpetually noisy affair. He might stride into the room clasping his bagel, coffee, and newspaper, and sit on the arm of a chair (or even leap upon a table) and demand to know what the others had come up with during his absence. Other times he might make a more dramatic entrance by throwing open the office door. Next, he’d sprint in and slide across the floor as if he were stealing to third base, and yell some non sequitur.

  Once “settled” down, Brooks was a hotbed of ideas, which he spewed forth. For every several unusable ones he tossed out, he typically came out with a gem that met with Caesar’s instant approval. His specialty on Your Show of Shows soon came to be Sid’s “Professor” skits, in which the star would appear as an eccentric expert from abroad who was being interviewed at the airport and would offer nonsensical responses to the reporter’s queries.

  To be sure, the other writers in the group were not always models of decorum. Lucille Kallen once described a typical work session: “To command attention, I’d have to stand on a desk and wave my red sweater, Sid boomed, Tolkin intoned, [Carl] Reiner [the show’s recently installed second banana comic who had become a frequent attendee at the writers’ conferences] trumpeted, and Brooks, well Mel imitated everything from a rabbinical student to the white whale of Moby Dick thrashing about on the floor with six harpoons sticking in his back. Let’s say that gentility was never a noticeable part of our working lives.”

  The very professional Max Liebman deliberately allowed this circuslike atmosphere because he believed that informality sparked creativity and originality. By this he was following the golden rule of the veteran Hollywood movie producer Samuel Goldwyn, who observed once, “From a polite conference comes a polite movie.” However, where Brooks was concerned, Liebman was less indulgent, especially since Mel so often pushed Max’s tolerance to the limit with his hyper, often crude, and always disruptive behavior. When Liebman thought the bothersome upstart had gone too far and was becoming much too much of a distraction for the general good, he would puff deeply on his cigar to get the red-hot end burning more intensely. Then he would toss it in Mel’s direction to signal his great disapproval of this unmanageable, meshuggeneh character. Brooks quickly became expert at dodging these fiery missiles and learned to make a joke of Liebman’s taunts to lessen any sting of humiliation he might feel. Mel also turned a deaf ear to those many times when the exasperated producer shouted in disgust, “You’re fired!” Brooks reasoned that Max’s outburst of anger would pass, so why worry. After all, Sid was his almighty protector, and Brooks believed he could always redeem himself by bursting forth with another useful contribution to the show.

  No matter what the career risks, the irrepressible, rebellious Brooks could not desist from sassing Liebman. On
e day, as Brooks recalls, Max and Little Mel were standing on the rehearsal stage. “I yelled, ‘Pepper Martin sliding into second! Watch your ass!’ And I ran straight at him at full speed and then threw myself into a headfirst slide. Slid right between his legs, sent him flying in the air, scared the shit out of him.”

  Such continual misbehaving by Brooks, the intractable juvenile, took its toll on the Your Show of Shows ringmaster. One day, Max Liebman’s irritation with his unruly helper reached a breaking point. He exploded in a verbal torrent directed at his rebellious staffer. The diatribe ended with Max screaming at Mel, “You are nothing!”

  To which Mel replied, “If I am nothing, then you are king of nothing!” With that, Brooks turned on his heels and left the scene of the latest confrontation. He knew better than to step on a good exit line.

  11

  Living on the Edge

  What changed me was success and having to solve the problems of success. At that time of life, no matter what you do, you’re getting your education, what [novelist] Joseph Conrad called the bump on the head. I got mine from the analyst and Mel Tolkin. Between them, they were the father I never had.

  –Mel Brooks, 1975

  In early June 1951, during the summer break from Your Show of Shows, Sid Caesar flew to the Windy City to appear live onstage. During the week’s engagement, he was scheduled to perform six to eight times daily in a capsule revue presentation with his talented TV partner, Imogene Coca. Sid’s traveling companion aboard the four-engine Constellation plane bound for Chicago was Mel Brooks. Somehow, during the several-hour flight, the usually agitated Mel managed to remain relatively calm. It was not until after the craft had landed in Chicago and Brooks had solid ground beneath his feet that it suddenly hit him that he had actually survived what was, for him, a major ordeal. Mel was not a happy traveler in the best of circumstances, and he always had great concerns about flying, a mode of travel he avoided whenever possible. Being aloft in the stratosphere triggered all sorts of fears in this hypochondriac: of not being in control ... of tempting death ... of God knows what else. It was, as Mel phrased it, his burden of “high anxiety.” In later years, he would recall that on his arrival at the Chicago airport he had literally kissed the ground in joy at having outfoxed the fates and survived the perilous trek from Manhattan.