Caesar’s Rise and Fall
Hosted By: The New York Jewish Week, UJA-Federation of New York
Join New York Jewish Week and UJA-Federation New York for the next event in our Folio literary series: author David Margolick will discuss his new book When Caesar Was King: How Sid Caesar Reinvented American Comedy with Andrew Silow-Carroll, New York Jewish Week, editor at large.
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.
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.
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 Son
