Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1951)

THIS IS ME (Continued from page 28) for instance . . . The scene was Avon Lodge, near Woodridge, New York. The time — early summer, 1942. The characters were Florence Levy, a children's counselor at the resort — tall, auburn-haired, beautiful — and Sid Caesar, a musician in the band — tall, brown-haired and awfully burned up. Florence: I'm really sorry, Sid, but, after all, I can't ""break a date once I've made it — Sid: (glaring) That's just the point. After all we're supposed to mean to each other, you made a date with somebody else. That's what I can't comprehend! Florence: But Sid, I told you — Sid : Enough ! This whole discussion is • futile! Just answer yes or no — you still insist on going out with that guy tonight? (Florence quietly nods) Sid: (in a towering rage) Very well! This is the finish! See what I mean? Get that big exit line: "This is the finish!" You'd think I was winding up a five-year-long engagement. The fact is, I had met Florence only three days before! That sort of silly behavior is familiar to everyone. Fortunately for most of us we can laugh at ourselves — later. Florence and I certainly laugh when we think back to that silly situation at Avon Lodge. Just one year after I yelled, "This is the finish!" Florence and I were married. Then the Axis boys started a global war. Our country was drawn into it. Me? I joined the IJ. S. Coast Guard. You see, I had it figured out that there would be less walking than in the infantry. I guess if it weren't for the Rome-BerlinTokyo Axis, I'd probably still be blowing my brains out playing saxophone in a dance band. Hirohito, Mussolini and Hitler — I hate to credit that Terrible Trio with anything, but because of them, I met the man who guided me to fame and fortune. His name is Max Liebman. How Der Fuehrer would have chewed the rug at that one! Well, I was wearing holes in the soles of my third pair of marching shoes when an opportunity to play in the Coast Guard band presented itself. They didn't have to twist my arm. I leaped at the chance. Things hadn't change much, it seemed. The previous summer I was tooting sax at a resort in the borscht belt near Monticello, New York. Here I was again, still tooting, but for the boys in blue. Being a Coast Guard bandsman made sense. While at school in Yonkers, my chief interest had always been music. Don't get me wrong — I wasn't any pale-faced highbrow about it. I liked to clown around with the guys in the gang. I liked to go out on little hunting trips with them. I was active in sports. But I had an unshakable conviction that a career in music was the thing for me. By the time I got half-way through Yonkers High I was playing sax in small dance bands. I can even remember one all-night job that paid two dollars. At the ripe age of seventeen I was playing with Charlie Spivak's Orchestra. Not long after that I was helping Shep Fields B make Rippling Rhythm. M Was I carving out a career with the name bands? It seemed that way but secretly I yearned for acceptance as a Serious Musi cian. And to that end I began to study the classical composers. But World War II changed that. This gets us back to how Hitler, et al, unintentionally brought about a very fateful meeting. The year was 1942. The U. S. Coast Guard, apparently inspired by "This Is The Army," decided to put on a show that would build recruiting and morale. Into our midst came a short, mild-mannered civilian — Max Liebman. Long before he appeared on the scene I had worked up a few monologues, pantomines and satirical sketches, just to keep from being bored stiff by our day-to-day routine. Most of my subjects (or maybe targets is a better word) were the officers. \ lampooned many an enlisted man, too, including myself. As a member of the band, I reported for the first rehearsal of "Tars and Spars." I had scarcely entered the hall when Max Liebman came over to me. "Your name Caesar?" "That's right, sir." With an odd little half-grin, he said, "Seems like you have quite a few press agents around here. Some of the officers have been telling me about the routines you do " I started to sputter defensively, "Look, I was only clowning around — " "Relax," Liebman cut in. "I'm not the Gestapo. I wanted to say the opinion seems to be that your routines are funny. Care to try out for 'Tars and Spars'?" And that's how one man's career was suddenly switched from musician to comedian. That marked the beginning of my wonderful association with the man who now produces Your Show of Shows. The Coast Guard's "Tars and Spars" had a successful production. Columbia JUNIOR MIRROR PUPPETS (Continued from page 61) puppet with a knife, starting at the neck, and going across the top of the head to the other side of the neck. Now you scoop the clay out (save it for future use) and you have two papier-mache halves. Now put the two halves together and paste more paper over the cut to join them firmly. Let the paste dry then paint the puppet head with ordinary poster paint. In the barn, Peppy and the Panda are putting on the eyebrows and eyes of their puppet. (Pic #3.) Clothes are easy to make. You need two pieces of material four inches wide and long enough to reach down to your elbow. Sew them together and attach them to the neck of the puppet with a needle and thread and paste. Cut holes where the puppet arms should be and attach sleeves large enough to hold your fingers. The animals' puppets, as you can see by picture (Pic #4) turned out very cute. To work the puppet, put your thumb in one sleeve, your pinky and ring finger in the other sleeve. Your index and middle finger work the head. With a little practice, you will be ready to have your own puppet show like Peppy, Honey and the Panda. Pictures later made a movie of it, and I repeated my routines. The critics wrote favorably about me and Columbia signed me to a term contract. A term contract doesn't necessarily mean a career in front of the cameras. It certainly didn't, in my case. After two years of much Hollywood sunshine and no picture-making, I headed back East. There were some theater and night club dates in New York and Chicago. More important, there was always Max Liebman's belief in me. His loyal friendship and his constant boosting eventually paid off. Max Gordon and Leo Lindy were two others who did a lot of drum-beating for me. At Gordon's insistence, producer Joseph Hyman caught my show at the New York Roxy. I was promptly offered a good comedy part in the successful Broadway revue, "Make Mine Manhattan." When Max Liebman began rounding up a company for his first big television venture, The Admiral Revue, he gave me the top comedy spot. Your Show of Shows followed that and here I am today — an exsaxophone player memorizing lines and business instead of musical scores. My day starts at 8:30 A.M. It ends when we finish rehearsal around 6:30 in the evening. Saturday is usually a killer. That's show day and we don't wrap it up until after 10:30 at night. It's the sort of schedule that leaves precious little time for family life. That's the toughest part of being in television. And yet at the same time, working with such a talented, knowing comedienne as Imogene Coca, makes it really fun. Florence and I have agreed that shop talk is strictly taboo at home. We have plenty of diversion with our delightful little girl, Michele. Shellie, we call her. Three and a half years old . . . chockful of charm . . . blonde-haired . . . blue-eyed — oh, well, I guess that I'm just a bit biased. After Shellie is put to bed, Florence and I like to relax. We enjoy good books and good music. We watch some of our favorite television shows. Once or twice each week Florence meets me in New York, after rehearsal, and we scout around in search of an unusual restaurant. Afterward, we hit a good movie. Florence shares my enthusiasm for fascinating foreign films. I hope you enjoy the impressions of them I've done on Your Show of Shows. I'm not altogether certain that Florence shares my enthusiasm for guns. Her approach to my hobby is pretty philosophical, though. "It could be worse," she remarked one day, "You might have been interested in collecting Amazonian shrunken heads." There's a rack, just off our living room, that holds ten beautiful hunting rifles and while it's pretty fancy dreaming for a guy who was born and raised in Yonkers, I have a mighty strong yen to go on a real African safari. Okay. So there isn't one chance in a thousand that I'll ever be in a spot like that. But I've actually done research on the planning of such an expedition. What I've learned, though, leads me to believe that it's tougher to cut through international red tape than it is to cut through an elephant's hide. Guess I'll just have to settle for my routine life in the laugh business!