Cheap Sid Caesar Collection - 3 Volume Gift Boxed Set (DVD) (Sid Caesar, Sid Caesar) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Sid Caesar Collection - 3 Volume Gift Boxed Set

I was lucky to be alive in the 1950's
When "Your Show of Shows" aired in the early 50's, I was 15 years old. I thought it was the funniest variety show I had ever seen. This was in the heyday of Uncle Miltie and Jackie Gleason. I loved them all, but the one I loved the most was the great Sid Caesar and his peerless ensemble cast of comic geniuses and writers. I lived for Saturday nights when these wonderful people did what no one since then has done so well. Everything they did was screamingly funny, and the high level of comic madness they sustained has never been equaled since. It truly was a golden age, and those of us who were priviledged to see it live were blessed beyond measure. Thank God these priceless treasures were preserved for future generations. If you never buy another DVD set, let this be your last one.

---

Sid Caesar, the first and the best.
I wasn't much of a Sid Caesar fan until I saw parts of "The Sid Caesar Collection" as a fund-raiser for PBS. I had never watched his shows in my childhood, but after seeing several sketches this time around, I absolutely had to have the whole set!
A few months later I bought the second boxed set, called "The Fan Favorites." I play a tape every day -- a great mood lifter.
It is said that Sid Caesar owns probably 400 sketches from "The Admiral Broadway Revue," "Your Show of Shows" and "Caesar's Hour" in kinescope (thank heaven they were preserved!) and I hope someday they will all become available. (Admiral, by the way, was an early TV manufacturer, and the story is that their "Broadway Revue" was so successful they had to cancel it in order to save their financial resources for supplying the huge new demand for TV sets.)
The Caesar sketches are the first of their kind and have many descendents but no equals. For example, check out "The Five-Dollar Date" (dated January 1949, when he was 26), a solo masterpiece from this first collection. What comedian does such virtuoso work today?

---

Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, the King and Queen of Comedy
Sid Caesar was the most talented comic performer of the live television era with his classic programs "Your Show of Shows" and "Caesar's Hour." Caesar also had the greatest ensemble cast of all time headed by the late Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris, and others. Add to that a writing staff that included, at various times, Reiner, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Neil Simon and Larry Gelbart and how could it not be the best Comedy Variety show of all-time? The three volumes in this DVD collection include some of the best comedy sketches from both shows, digitally remastered from the original kinescopes. Caesar picked the sketches personally and interviews with the cast members and writers are used as introductions. Sketches included on this first volume, "The Magic of Live TV," includes "The Commuters in '7 Dwarfs Bet,'" "The Professor in 'Board Rooms of hollywood,'" "The Five Dollar Date," "Sid Plays Sax with Benny Goodman," "The Clock," "A Fella Needs a Girl," "The Haircuts--'So Rare' and 'Flippin','" and my favorite, "This Is Your Story." The second volume, "Inside the Writer's Room" has the Hickenloopers in "The Sleep Sketch," "Boy at First Dance," "The German General," and "Aggravation Boulevard." The final volume, "Creating the Comedy" includes the immortal sketch "From Here to Obscurity," as well as "The Cobbler's Daughter" and "Argument to Beethoven's 5th," along with the "Commuters" in "The Fur Coat" and Progress Hornsby in "People to People."

Milton Berle was Mr. Television, but Sid Caesar was Mr. Comedy. I have waited decades for these treasures to be available, my appetite whetted by seeing that infamous "From Here to Obscurity" clip of Sid and Imogene getting hit by all that water. Thank goodness these priceless shows have been preserved. They deserve to be as well known as episodes of "I Love Lucy" and "The Honeymooners." Besides, just look at all the bonus stuff that comes when you get all three DVDs instead of picking them up separately. The Sid Caesar Collection establishes a standard for how classic television should be preserved on DVD. Hopefully we can expect similar collections for Berle, Bob Hope, Ernie Kovacs, Nat King Cole. Arthur Godfrey and similar giants from the first era of network television programming.