of Comedy.

Hail Caesar!

He was the King: A Natural Caesar.  Sid Caesar.

And he was a natural Entertainer from the start:

Max and Ida Caesar ran a restaurant, a 24-hour luncheonette. By waiting on tables, their son learned to mimic the patois, rhythm and accents of the diverse clientele, a technique he termed “double-talk,” which he would famously use throughout his career. He first tried his “double-talk” with a group of Italians, his head barely reaching above the table. They enjoyed it so much that they sent him over to a group of Poles to repeat his native-sounding patter in Polish, and so on with Russians, Hungarians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Lithuanians and Bulgarians.

He was the King.  Hail to King. Long Live the King. The King of early television comedy.

“Every language has its own music … If you listen to a language for 15 minutes, you know the rhythm and song.” Having developed this mimicry skill, he could create entire monologues using gibberish in numerous languages, as he did in a skit in which he played a German general.

Performers have the special ability, even among the Artisans, to delight those around them with their warmth, their good humor, and with their often extraordinary skills in music, comedy, and drama. Whether on the job, with friends, or with their families, Performers are exciting and full of fun, and their great social interest lies in stimulating those around them to take a break from work and worry, to lighten up and enjoy life. [Please Understand Me II]

The Entertainers [Performers and Composers] are often the most natural mimics.

In Memoriam

Isaac Sidney “Sid” Caesar, Performer Artisan, (September 8, 1922 – February 12, 2014) was an American comic actor and writer, best known for the pioneering 1950s live television series Your Show of Shows, a 90-minute weekly show watched by 60 million people, and its successor Caesar’s Hour, both of which influenced generations of comedians.

Like the other Artisans, Performers are incurably optimistic – “Always look on the bright side,” is their motto — and they will avoid worries and troubles by ignoring them as long as possible. They are also the most generous of all the types. [Please Understand Me II]

A list of Mr. Caesar’s writers over the years reads like a comedy all-star team. Mel Brooks (who in 1982 called him “the funniest man America has produced to date”) did some of his earliest writing for him, as did Woody Allen. So did the most successful playwright in the history of the American stage, Neil Simon. Carl Reiner created one landmark sitcom, “The Dick Van Dyke Show”; Larry Gelbart was the principal creative force behind another, “M*A*S*H.” Mel Tolkin wrote numerous scripts for “All in the Family.” The authors of the two longest-running Broadway musicals of the 1960s, Joseph Stein (“Fiddler on the Roof”) and Michael Stewart (“Hello, Dolly!”), were Caesar alumni as well.

In putting on a show Performers have a way with words, not in putting words together, but in delivering them. … It is not so much what they said as it was how they said it; not so much, that is, the meaning of their words, as it was the sound of their words, that caught and held the attention of their audience.

Performer Artisans love the excitement of playing to an audience, and they try to generate a sense of show-time wherever they are. They aren’t comfortable being alone, and seek the company of others whenever possible—which they usually find, for they make enjoyable playmates. Lively, witty conversationalists, they always seem to know the latest jokes and stories, and are quick with wisecracks and wordplay—nothing is so serious or sacred that it can’t be made fun of. [Personology]

His TV shows’ subjects included satires of real life events and people—and parodies of popular film genres, theater, television shows, and opera. But unlike other comedy shows at the time, the dialogue was considered sharper, funnier and more adult-oriented. He was “…best known as one of the most intelligent and provocative innovators of television comedy,” who some critics called television’s Charlie Chaplin, and The New York Times refers to as the “…comedian of comedians from TV’s early days.”

Other Performer Artisans include: Steve Martin, Brittney Griner, Janis Joplin, Gene Krupa, Louis Armstrong, Alex Karras, Kim Jong Un, Phyllis Diller, Jim Cramer, Magic Johnson, Josephine Baker, Whitney Houston, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley.