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So Jackie Chan doesn't use stunt men? Big deal. In the 1950s, Sid Caesar and a peerless ensemble of character actors, including Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris, and later, Nanette Fabray, dared something even more risky and dangerous: making an audience of millions laugh each week, 39 weeks a year, for 90 minutes without benefit of cue cards, teleprompters, or laugh track. It was the golden age of live television, and Your Show of Shows was the gold standard of sketch-variety series. This is the show to which all comedy writers aspired, and Caesar assembled an unprecedented dream team that included (though not at the same time) Neil Simon and his brother Danny, Mel Brooks, Larry Gelbart, Woody Allen, and Selma Diamond. The Sid Caesar Collection is a treasure trove of 18 vintage sketches from Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour. The exquisite pantomime The Clock, The German General, the movie parody From Here to Obscurity, and the uproarious This Is Your Story (with Howard Morris in his shining quarter-hour as Uncle Goofy) were previously featured in the 1973 compilation film Ten from Your Show of Shows. The rest have been virtually unseen since their original broadcasts. Husband-wife relations have come a long way since The Fur Coat, and The Haircuts, a goof on rock & roll, was perhaps square even then, but they are all still wonderfully and humanly crazy after all these years. Linking these sketches are newly filmed interviews with Caesar, Reiner, Morris, Simon, Gelbart, Allen, and Fabray, who recall the chaos of mounting a weekly live broadcast and the inspiration for these classic sketches. --Donald Liebenson
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