“What’s the matter with you?” the professor asks.
The snake says, “You gotta get me out of here. It’s dangerous!”
The professor says, “Why?”
The snake replies, “I’m surrounded by snakes!”
“I have bad news for you,” the professor says. “You’ll have to stay. You’re a snake too.”
That joke didn’t get any laughs. Complete silence.
“Mel,” Sid said, “I will see you after the show.”
From that point on, whenever someone in the writers’ room suggested that we use an unpopular joke we’d say, “You want to do the snake joke again?”
Carl Reiner trying futilely to separate Howie Morris from Sid Caesar’s leg in the classic sketch “This Is Your Story.”
We got to do a few live shows at the Center Theatre, the sister theater to Radio City. The five-thousand-seat theater had its own amazing energy. It was there that we did probably the funniest sketch ever done on television. It was the now celebrated takeoff of This Is Your Life. In the sketch that we wrote, Carl Reiner as the host of “This Is Your Story” comes down into the audience, walks up the aisle, and when he reaches the row that Sid is sitting in, he smiles. Sid thinks he is picking the guy sitting next to him to be in the show, and chuckles at what’s going to happen. But when Carl points directly at Sid and says, “Al Duncey, this is your story!” Sid passes out.
When Carl takes him by the arm, Sid wakes up, and instead of sticking to the script, which has Carl leading him to the stage, Sid shows the genius that made him immortal. He swats Carl with his raincoat, driving him back, and decides to improvise—telling us in pantomime that he is not going up there on that stage no matter what. Carl, thinking on his feet, grabs a couple of ushers and says, “Let’s get him up there!” When the ushers go for Sid, he once again smashes them back with his raincoat and runs up the aisle. Thank god we had a guy with a handheld camera who followed him on his mad chase all over the Center Theatre. It was amazing. Nobody knew what was happening, but it was absolutely hilarious!
Finally, all the ushers in the theater tackle him and carry Sid to the stage. He relents, and reluctantly becomes part of the show. Now, the parade of relatives begins. The funniest and most memorable is Howie Morris playing Sid’s “Uncle Goopy.” They hug each other ceaselessly, crying tears of joy to be together again. When Carl finally gets control of the show for a moment, he takes Sid downstage to introduce a new relative. But Howie will have none of it. He leaps onto Sid’s leg and never lets go. Sid carries him around as if Howie was always part of his leg. Occasionally, Carl is able to tear him off Sid’s leg and carry him back to his seat, but only for a second. Before you can count to three, he is back on Sid’s leg. The sketch is exploding with hilarious improvisations between Howie, Sid, and Carl. The laughter was nonstop; you couldn’t catch your breath.
Sid Caesar was a crazy comic genius, but occasionally he was also just crazy. Let me take you back to Chicago in 1950. It was just after the first season of Your Show of Shows and Sid had a two-week engagement at the Empire Room at the Palmer House Hotel. He took me along to punch up his act and as good company. Things were going swell for a while, but then doing his act twice a night finally started to get to him. After the show, he’d go up to his room and to help him relax, he’d drink a half a bottle of vodka and light up a cigar.
“Give me some new material!” he would shout. “I’m sick and tired of doing the same stuff every night!”
The hotel suite was filled with cigar smoke and it was hard to breathe. One night I asked Sid to open the hotel window, which was jammed shut. I tried with all my might to open it but it wouldn’t budge. So I said, “Please, Sid, I can’t breathe in here. I need some air! Please open the window.”
Sid went over to the window, and with one hand yanked it wide open. （He was very strong.） Then, with a crazy look in his eye, he said, “So you want some air? I’ll get you plenty of air.”
He picked me up by my collar and my belt and hung me out the window! There was State Street directly below me! I could see the traffic so clearly; I knew which taxis were empty by the lights on the top.
Sid said, “Got enough air?”
In a very calm voice I said, “Oh yes. Plenty! I’ve had enough.”
I was very calm. I didn’t want to make him any more crazy than he already was.
He brought me inside, sat me in a chair, and said, “Let’s go to work.”