I'm sure I've linked to this before but there are some things you just can't see too many times. It's the parody that Your Show of Shows did of the TV program, This is Your Life. It features Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Howie Morris, Louis Nye and a couple of other folks no one seems to be able to identify. (The gentleman sitting next to Caesar in the audience is NBC executive David Tebet, who Johnny Carson used to occasionally mention on the air.) This sketch originally aired on April 3, 1953.
Howie Morris, of course, steals the very funny sketch in his role as Uncle Goopy. They showed this at Howie's funeral and I was sitting two rows behind Carl Reiner, who was laughing as hard as anyone, mostly at the physical interplay between Sid and Howie. According to all, what happened on the broadcast (live, remember) went way beyond what had been planned at rehearsal.
By the way: Last evening at the opening of How to Succeed (see previous post), I was sitting three rows behind Carl Reiner, who seemed to be enjoying the heck outta the show. Even more important, he seemed to be in darn good shape. It just makes me happy to see him and to be able to report that. Here he is in one of the funniest sketches ever done on television…