BOOTLEG FILES 933: “Ten From Your Show of Shows” (1973 compilation of sketches from the landmark TV series).
LAST SEEN: On the Internet Archive.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: On VHS video and LaserDisc.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It has fallen out of circulation.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: It is possible, though no one is agitating for it.
In 1973, movie audiences were treated to a genuine oddity: a feature film consisting of sketches from a television comedy show that were broadcast in the early 1950s but not seen in the ensuing years. The show in question was “Your Show of Shows,” a 90-minute revue program that dominated Saturday prime time viewing from 1950 to 1954 and lifted its stars Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, and Howard Morris into A-list stardom.
Unlike other television programs of the era such as “I Love Lucy,” “The Abbott and Costello Show” and the much-maligned “Amos ‘n’ Andy” that were shot on film and later sold into syndication, “Your Show of Shows” was broadcast live and never intended to be rerun. The show would have been lost had it not been for kinescope copies of the live broadcasts. Kinescopes involved shooting either 35mm or 16mm film of a broadcast from a television monitor. As a picture of a picture, the visual quality of the kinescope tended to be softer than the actual broadcast.
Max Liebman, the producer of “Your Show of Shows,” kept the kinescopes of the episode to review what worked and avoid the content flaws for his later shows. These kinescopes were not publicly seen until Julian Schlossberg, an executive with the Walter Reade Organization, became aware of their existence in the early 1970s and worked with Liebman to review the kinescopes and create a film based on the best sketches from “Your Show of Shows.”
This belated interest in “Your Show of Shows” came at a serendipitous time for Sid Caesar, whose career had mostly tanked by the start of the 1970s. Indeed, his decline was so severe that Esquire ran an article in 1972 called “Great Caesar’s Ghost” that waxed enthusiastically about Caesar’s halcyon days on early 1950s television while sourly noting how he had been mostly absent for years from the small screen except for a few guest appearances on other entertainers’ show.
The Esquire article also observed how Coca had disappeared from television and was mostly working in touring stage productions. In the article, she lamented, “I’m tired of talking about ‘Your Show of Shows.’ But deep inside, I know I’ve done nothing as good since. I’d love to do it again.” Reiner and Morris were identified as mostly moving behind the camera as writers and directors.
For audiences in 1973 who fondly recalled when Caesar and Coca were the king and queen of comedy, “Ten From Your Show of Shows” was an answered prayer. More than a half-century later, “Ten From Your Show of Shows” offers a fascinating consideration of how that seminal series laid a television sketch comedy foundation.
In many ways, the first of the 10 sketches, “Breaking the News,” is the best thanks the fascinating mix of a deceptively simple situation and the complex manner in which the actors plumb the material. Set in the kitchen of a suburban home, Coca is the wife in a telephone call to her mother with a dreadful dilemma – she drove her husband’s beloved car into a liquor store and has to break the bad news to him. Caesar is the husband who arrives home from work in a rotten mood and decides he wants to take the car out for a relaxing drive. Coca aggressively lobbies him to sit for dinner while trying to break the news about the car and the liquor store – and, we later learn, the pharmacy across the street that she also drove into when backing out of the liquor store.
The brilliance of the sketch is how Caesar and Coca use a very limited setting – being seated a kitchen table – as the launch pad for a wild cyclone of emotions. She is initially deceptive, trying to reframe the story about an imaginary third person who had the calamity she endured, and he become hysterical laughing at the fate that he imagines is happening in another household. As the truth seeps out, she is equal parts evasive, defensive, and sorrowful while goes into a wild anxiety attack with a force that no other comic could possibly duplicate. It all wraps up with a sweet happy ending that saves their marriage and closes the sketch with satisfying warmth.
The opening sketch is so powerfully funny that the three sketches that follow – Caesar as a shlub in a movie theater caught up in a fight between hair-triggered lovers Coca and Carl Reiner, Caesar as noisy guest during a chorale recital, and a lunchtime board meeting where Caesar is the only one without a sandwich due to a snafu at the deli – are okay-level funny but not hilarious.
The laughs pick up considerably with the next three sketches. “The Sewing Machine Girl” is a brilliant takeoff on silent film melodrama, with Caesar and Coca as poor lovers working for villainous factory owner Reiner. Coca is a consumptive who goes into a wildly slapstick fit before collapsing, and her genius for physical comedy is astonishing.
“Roving Reporter with Dr. Spacebrain” has Reiner as a journalist awaiting the LaGuardia Airport arrival of an eminent aerospace German professor, played by Caesar in a burlesque-level Teutonic accent. This is vaudeville-style humor with Caesar getting the funny responses to Reiner’s straight man inquiries.
More German tomfoolery is offered in the genius pantomime sketch “Bauhoffer Clock,” with Caesar, Coca, Reiner, and Morris as the life-size figures on a Bavarian town clock that malfunctions. The mix of zany sound effects and the extraordinary physicality of the four stars in simulating the mechanical movements of the clock figures is peerless. And still more German joking pops up in the next sketch “The Doorman,” with Morris as the lackey dressing Caesar as a bemedalled officer in a Kaiser-era uniform. If there is a drawback to “Ten From Your Show of Shows,” it would be having three consecutive German-tinged sketches, especially since Caesar was a master of mimicry in varied languages.
The film’s final two sketches are devastatingly funny parodies. “From Here to Obscurity” riffs on the film “From Here to Eternity,” with Caesar capturing the distinctive oddness of Montgomery Clift’s voice. “This is Your Story” has fun with the reality TV show “This is Your Life,” with Caesar as an unwilling audience member dragooned into having his biography presented for the cameras and Morris as an excessively emotional uncle clinging to him like a deranged barnacle.
Much of the credit for these sketches goes to the writers. Mel Brooks, Lucille Kallen, Mel Tolkin, and Tony Webster are credited with Reiner and Caesar for this release. Liebman originally shot new scenes with Caesar in his German professor guise introducing the segments, but the footage turned out unsatisfactorily and was scrapped.
“Ten From Your Show of Shows” received mostly rapturous reviews from critics that were happy to revisit the classic television program. However, the film was only a modest success at the box office – perhaps audiences weren’t eager to pay to see old television shows, even if these were sketches that were not available for two decades. Caesar spoke hopefully of producing a sequel, but that never happened.
The film would later turn up on television and later on VHS video and LaserDisc. To date, there has not been a DVD or Blu-ray release. However, a fine copy can be enjoyed on the Internet Archive.
And if you’ve never seen “Your Show of Shows,” put time aside for this gem – you are in for a real treat!
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