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 Caesar, in failing health for at least a year, died at his
home in Beverly Hills, where he had continued to receive
visitors, reminisce and tell jokes, according to friends and
collaborators, including Reiner.
Although most of today's television audience is too young to
remember him from the height of his popularity, Caesar's work
and imprint live on in pop culture touchstones as diverse as
"The Dick Van Dyke Show," the box-office hit "Grease" and
"Saturday Night Live."
With a career on TV, film and stage that spanned six decades but
was marred by years of substance abuse, he is best-known for his
work with comedienne Imogene Coca on the landmark "Your Show of
Shows." NBC aired the show from February 1950 to June 1954.
One of the most ambitious and demanding of all TV enterprises,
"Your Show of Shows" was 90 minutes of live original sketch
comedy broadcast every Saturday night, 39 weeks a year. It is
widely considered the prototype for every U.S. TV sketch comedy
series that followed, including "Saturday Night Live."
"SNL" alumnus Billy Crystal remembered Caesar as "the greatest
sketch comedian of all time" and "my first comedy hero and
"inspiration." Crystal recalled a visit with Caesar in which "he
got to run lines with him from 'Your Show of Shows.' One of the
great moments of my life."
"All those who want to be funny should study his work," Crystal
added.
Eddy Friedfeld, who helped Caesar write his 2003 autobiography
"Caesar's Hours: My Life in Comedy, with Love and Laughter,"
said, "He was a unique talent, and he was a pioneer of
television and entertainment when television was in its
infancy."
"Your Show of Shows" and its successor series, "Caesar's Hour,"
became an incubator for some of the greatest comic minds in
American show business, with a roster of writers that included
Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Reiner (who also co-starred
on the show) and "M*A*S*H" creator Larry Gelbart.
TV GOLDEN AGE INNOVATOR
Nominally hosted each week by a different star (much like
"Saturday Night Live"), "Your Show of Shows" also featured a
cadre of regular singers and dancers, as well as ballet and
opera performances to lend an air of cultural refinement.
But the series became a hit because of the comic chemistry
between Caesar and Coca, a former vaudeville performer nearly 14
years his senior, who died in 2001 at age 92.
Together they satirized historical events in a recurring bit
titled "History as She Ain't," played marital strife for laughs
in the husband-and-wife skit "The Hickenloopers" and poked fun
at Hollywood with parodies such as "From Here to Obscurity" (a
lampoon of the film "From Here to Eternity").
By all accounts, the writers' room could be a raucous place.
Caesar, a tall, strapping presence, acknowledged he once was so
angry at Brooks that he grabbed the diminutive writer and
dangled him from a hotel window by his ankles.
Reiner later drew on his experiences with Caesar as material for
the TV sitcom classic "The Dick Van Dyke Show."
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 Some of Caesar's most popular bits were built around
pompous or outlandish characters — such as Professor von Votsisnehm — in which he spoke in a thick accent or mimicked foreign languages
in comic but convincing gibberish.
COMIC SALUTES
"He was the ultimate, he was the very best sketch artist and
comedian that ever existed," Reiner said of his friend. "His ability
to double talk every language known to man was impeccable."
Mel Brooks said in a statement: "Sid Caesar was a giant, maybe the
best comedian who ever practiced the trade. And I was privileged to
be one of his writers and one of his friends."
Woody Allen saluted him as "one of the truly great comedians of my
time."
In a 2001 interview with Reuters, Caesar said his ear for language
grew from frequent boyhood visits to his father's restaurant in a
blue-collar neighborhood of Yonkers, New York.
"Men used to come in — there was a French table, a
German table, a Russian table and an Italian table," he recalled.
"By taking up dishes during lunch hour, I'd pick (languages) up. You
know, the first thing they teach you is the dirty words."
The son of Jewish immigrants, Caesar got his start playing saxophone
in a dance band and performing comedy on the "Borscht Belt" circuit
of the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York.
After serving in the Coast Guard during World War Two, Caesar
appeared in a Broadway musical revue called "Tars and Spars" and a
movie musical of the same name, landing a guest spot on Milton
Berle's weekly TV show.
"Your Show of Shows" evolved from an earlier series, "The Admiral
Broadway Revue," which ran briefly in 1949 on NBC and the old DuMont
Television Network and first paired Caesar with Coca.
The two parted ways at the end of the "Your Show of
Shows" run and never managed to replicate their success, even when
reunited four years later on the 1958 show "Sid Caesar Invites You,"
which lasted just four months.
The waning of Caesar's TV career coincided with a two-decade
addiction to alcohol and pills, although he earned a Tony nomination
starring in Neil Simon's 1962 Broadway musical "Little Me" and had a
role in the madcap 1963 ensemble comedy film "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad,
Mad World."
After he conquered his struggle with substance abuse by the late
1970s, Caesar turned up as Coach Calhoun in the box-office hit
"Grease," a role he reprised for a 1982 sequel. He made occasional
TV appearances through the 1990s, including a guest turn as Uncle
Harold on a 1997 episode of NBC sitcom "Mad About You," with Paul
Reiser and Helen Hunt.
(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; writing
and additional reporting by Steve Gorman; Piya Sinha-Roy also
contributed to this report; editing by G Crosse, Matthew Lewis and
Jan Paschal)
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