When Caesar Was King: How Sid Caesar Reinvented American Comedy - Couverture rigide

Margolick, David

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0805242554 ISBN 13 : 9780805242553

Editeur : Schocken Books, 2025

Synopsis

By the spring of 1954, Sid Caesar was the most influential, highly paid, and enigmatic comedian in America. Every week, twenty million people tuned their TVs to his NBC extravaganza, Your Show of Shows, and witnessed his versatility and virtuosity in sketches and film spoofs, pantomime and soliloquy. Onstage, Caesar could play any character and make it funny: a befuddled game-show contestant, a pretentious expert, a beleaguered husband (opposite his redoubtable co-star Imogene Coca), even a gumball machine and a bottle of seltzer.

To his mostly urban audience, Caesar’s comedy was an era-defining leap forward from the days of vaudeville, launching a new comedic style that was multilayered, language-drunk, full of character, and uproarious. To his rivals, Caesar was the man to beat. To his fellow American Jews, his show’s success meant something more: It was a post-Holocaust symbol of security and a source of pride. But behind all that Caesar represented was the real Sid. Introverted and volatile, ill at ease in his own skin, he could terrorize his collaborators but reserved his harshest critiques for himself. Soon enough, he would be off the air. Beset by exhaustion, addiction, a fickle viewership, and his own impossible standards, TV’s first true star was also its first fall from grace.

But in his wake he left the disciples he personally nurtured—including Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, and Neil Simon—and an indelible impact on what still makes us laugh. In When Caesar Was King, veteran journalist David Margolick conjures this complex man as never before. Deeply researched, brimming with love for Caesar and the culture from which he sprang, and reanimating a New York City that has all but vanished, this rollicking and poignant book traces the rise and fall of a legend.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

DAVID MARGOLICK is a longtime contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where he writes about culture, the media, and politics. He served as national legal affairs editor at The New York Times, where he wrote the weekly At the Bar column for seven years. He is the author of Beyond Glory and Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song. He lives in New York City.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Schocken Books
• Date d'édition: 2025
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0805242554
• ISBN 13: 9780805242553
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 352
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Schocken; https://agu.com/; ; Attn: Andrea T Sheridan 1745 BROADWAY; New York; NY; 10019; Etats-Unis
• Personne responsable: non disponible