The Sid Caesar Collection – Buried Treasures + Fan Favorites
(A&E/Two Triple DVD
Sets)
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: C+/B- Episodes: B+
Your Show Of Shows is one of the great, legendary,
classic, live, TV variety skit series, a groundbreaking series that brought
together some of the brightest names at the time in show business that became
some of the biggest legends of all time in the field. Under that title and later Caesar’s Hour, the show was a
critical and early commercial success that built television. Several DVDs have been issued of the
material to date, but New Video’s two triple-DVD sets are the most developed
and definitive to date. Buried
Treasures offers a collection of exceptionally smart skits that deserved to
be brought out of the vaults, while Fan Favorites collects the
best-known classics and both sets offer more extras than the series has ever
had before on DVD. More of the older
classic television series should be so lucky.
The main content of the two sets are as follows, with an *
after the exceptional segments:
Buried Treasures:
Nan Hires A Maid*
Professor on Sleep
La Bicycletta* (a satire of Italian Neo-Realist
films that asks why foreign films are so foreign decades before any beer ad)
Pantomime Cocktail Party*
Omnibus with Progress Hornsby*
The Bellini Cup*
The White Rug*
Bus Station
Bullets Over Broadway*
German U Boat 49
Professor On Magic
English Courtroom*
At The Movies*
Grieg Piano Concerto*
Lé Honeré du Juellé* (spoof of French films)
Toy Band*
Health Food Restaurant
Professor On Archeology
Prison Walls* (spoof of prison films)
Fan Favorites:
Auto Smash Up*#%
Professor On Mountain Climbing
Shadow Waltz
Mata Hari* (spoof of German WWI films)
A Streetcar Named???* (send up of Marlon
Brando Streetcar Named Desire)
Big Business*
A Drunk Was There* (remarkable silent movie spoof)
The Small Apartment
The Professor On Magic
Newspaper Movie*%
Pantomime To The 1812 Overture*
20 Minutes To Lunch*
Gallipacci*# (opera spoof)
Life Begins At 7:45*
Pantomime Of A Trained Seal
The Last Angry Bull
Professor On Self Defense
Break Your Brains*# (brilliant masterpiece send up
of TV game shows is one of the greatest skits in TV history STILL to this day)
The Haircuts in “Teardrops”* (the
classic send-up of Elvis and male vocal Rock groups of the 1950s, also
brilliant)
U-Bet-U* (surprising spoof of Japanese
Samurai films)
All offer introductions by the many interviewees who were
involved in the show. The stars and
casts of the two shows included Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, Nanette
Fabray, Howard Morris, Beatrice Arthur, Rod Alexander, Tom Avera, Johnny Bell,
Angela Castle, Virginia Curtis, Janet Blair, Dick DeFreitas, Pat Carroll, Ellen
Parker, Nellie Fisher, Bill Hayes, Judy Johnson, Shirl Conway, Sandra Deel,
Aariana Knowles, Bambi Linn, Robert Merrill, Marguerite Piazza, Earl Redding,
Jerry Ross, Jack Russell, James Starbuck, David Caesar, Florence Caesar, Edmund
Gaines, Milt Kamen, William Lewis, and Earl Wild. This show got the best and they had the knack of casting some of
the best talent around. Some are actors
you would know by seeing them, if not by name.
How many SCTV or Saturday Night Live casts would it take
to equal this? The first few at
least. They may not all be in these two
sets, but they were sure on the shows.
The writers included Mel Brooks, David Caesar, Sid Caesar,
Lucille Kallen, producer Max Liebman, Danny Simon, Neil Simon, Mel Tolkin, and
Tony Webster for the original series, then Woody Allen, Gary Belkin, Brooks,
the Caesars, Selma Diamond, Larry Gelbart, Sheldon Keller, Aaron Rubin, Phil
Sharp, Simon, Mike Stewart, Tolkin and Webster for the second. No series has had a roster that amazing
since, though a few classics came close.
Through them, most of the skits endure incredibly well 50+ years
later. Sigourney Weaver’s father, the
legendary Pat “Sylvester” Weaver, created the original show.
The 1.33 X 1 images vary in quality from the old
kinescopes of the original skits throughout and the newer taped interview
footage, monochrome and color, and all from the beginning and near end of
analog video. For the older material,
the repair and restoration by Crest National is impressive, up there with the
“lost” Honeymooners shows in quality.
Unlike previous unrestored releases on VHS, Beta and lesser DVDs, these
sets bring out a bit more definition and refinement from the original
sources. The Dolby Digital 2.0 is in
remarkably good, if simple stereo, remixed by the people at Chace. In this case, they have never sounded better
and the A&E/New Video people once again do the transfer at the higher than
usual 384 kilobits-per-second rate. The
combination is more impressive than you would think, which the competing DVDs
cannot come close to.
Extras are many on both sets. Buried Treasures has three bonus skits, one on each DVD,
which are Chinese Food, Dancing Towers and especially late night
mystery movie on TV spoof Invitation To Murder. All include brief cast and writer
biographies. Each also has a “Bonus
Story” which is one per DVD again. Simon
talks about his play Laughter on 23rd Street opening,
Sid talks about his early Catskill Mountain years and Fabray talks about trying
to get copies of Caesar’s Hour from NBC and the tragedy that
followed. Fan Favorites ups the
extras, with Caesar doing commentaries on one sketch per DVD, which can be
found on titles above with a # symbol.
Original teleplay sketch scripts are included on titles marked with a %
symbol, though The Professor: Child Psychologist is not shown on any of
the discs, the script is on DVD 3. Each
also has brief cast and writer biography text, still sections this time out,
“Interview Extras” (one per DVD) with Fabray, Caesar and Reiner separately, and
a bonus sketch per DVD. This time, it’s
the Beauty Contest, Pantomime At Coney Island, and the terrific
mystery-on-a-train spoof Continental Express.
The regular skits like The Hickenloopers (a
sort of spoof itself of sitcoms) are not bad, but the show shines in the film
spoofs, the silent skits and some of the one-shot situation bits that reveal
how funny human nature can be. The
dialogue is witty and the jokes endure.
Both sets are mandatory to see and to own in any serious TV DVD
collection, even at their most politically incorrect. Another classic lives!
- Nicholas Sheffo
