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THEME: YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS Your Show of Shows was among the first major successes of American television broadcasting. This ninety-minute comedy-variety program aired live every Saturday night on NBC from 1950 to 1954, offering its viewers the equivalent of a new Broadway revue each week. |
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| National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting, The Jewish Museum, New York (click images for more) |
   Photofest (all) |
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Although the program featured music and dance sequences alternating with comedy sketches, Your Show of Shows is best remembered for its inspired comedy. A number of the writers for Your Show of Shows or its successors, Caesar's Hour (NBC, 1954-57) and Sid Caesar Invites You (ABC, 1958) — including Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Selma Diamond, Larry Gelbart, Carl Reiner, and Neil Simon — went on to notable careers, writing, directing, producing, and performing in Hollywood films, Broadway plays, television situation comedies, and talk shows. |
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On Your Show of Shows these writers explored comedic devices — dialect humor, ethnic stereotypes, slapstick, and parody — that informed their later efforts, which sometimes pushed the limits of acceptable taste. A generation after it left the air, Your Show of Shows was proclaimed a fountainhead of American Jewish comedy. The program's performers and writers have celebrated the inspiration derived from their shared sensibility as American children of immigrant Jews, growing up in New York City during the Depression and coming of age during World War II. A few have created works that paid homage to the series. These include Reiner's situation comedy The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS, 1960-66), in which he originally intended to play the lead role of Robert Petrie, and Simon's 1993 play Laughter on the Twenty-Third Floor. |
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