Yesterday marked sixty years since the debut of the legendary Your Show of Shows, the legendary TV program starring Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Howard Morris and Carl Reiner, among others. It was a live show on Saturday nights which, contrary to the impression most folks have of it, was not ninety minutes of comedy sketches featuring those four folks. It was a variety show with dance numbers and music — including frequent helpings of ballet, classical and even opera — and other elements, including superb comedy by Caesar and Company. It ran on Saturday nights from February 25, 1950 until June 5, 1954 and then, like Germany after the war, they decided to break it up.
Ms. Coca went off to do her own series. Its producer, Max Liebman, went off to produce a series of spectaculars. And the comedy core of the show (sans Coca) refashioned itself as a new series called Caesar's Hour. Caesar's Hour was on for three more years and then Sid and some of the same crew did a series of intermittent specials.
Much has been made of the legendary writing staff of the various Sid Caesar shows which included, at various times, Mel Brooks, Lucille Kallen, Mel Tolkin, Aaron Ruben, Mike Stewart, Larry Gelbart, Danny Simon, Neil Simon, Selma Diamond, Sheldon Keller, Gary Belkin and many others. Carl Reiner was also a writer, though he does not appear to have ever received that credit. It's a little sore spot with some of those folks, and with TV historians, that so many confuse who worked on what.
At the moment (I'm sure it will be changed shortly) the Wikipedia page for Your Show of Shows has the following paragraph up…
Writers for the show included Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Danny Simon, Larry Gelbart, Mel Tolkin, and Carl Reiner who, though a cast member, always sat in with the writers. A common misconception is that Woody Allen wrote for Your Show of Shows; he in fact wrote for its successor program, Caesar's Hour, which ran from 1954 to 1957. Caesar, Coca, and Liebman had worked on The Admiral Broadway Revue from January to June 1949.
Almost right. As he told people over and over and over again, Larry Gelbart never worked on Your Show of Shows. Larry was hired on Caesar's Hour and he later wrote some of Sid's subsequent specials. He said this explicitly many times and sometimes got kinda steamed about having to say it. If you want to do a Google search on the subject, you'll find a dozen places where Larry insisted he never worked on Your Show of Shows. You'll also find ten dozen articles which say Larry Gelbart was one of the writers on Your Show of Shows and even won a couple of Emmys for it.
Over on this page for the wonderful Archive of American Television, you can view lengthy, fascinating oral histories of several key folks who worked on the Caesar shows (including Mr. Caesar, himself) and I recommend spending some time there. The interviews are fascinating and if you do watch them, you'll hear several of the interviewees, including Larry Gelbart, make the point that Larry Gelbart never worked on Your Show of Shows. The interviews are right next to a history of Your Show of Shows that someone took from Wikipedia. It includes the paragraph above that says that Larry Gelbart wrote for Your Show of Shows.
I believe, by the way, that the paragraph is also wrong about Woody Allen working on Caesar's Hour. Allen has said on several occasions that he only worked for Caesar on a couple of the later specials, collaborating usually with Gelbart. In his online interview, Gelbart says the same thing.
Could somebody who knows Wikipedia better than I do please go fix this? I know how to change a few words over there but I'm lost as to how to insert footnotes and supporting evidence. Change the bit about Gelbart and footnote it with his online interview for the Archive of American Television. Change the line about Allen and footnote it with page 111 of Eric Lax's biography, Woody Allen. It may be necessary to change some of the linked pages for Gelbart, Allen, Caesar's Hour and a few others, as well. And don't do it for me. Do it for Larry. This kind of thing really pissed him off.