When Your Show of Shows morphed into Caesar’s Hour, the writing staff grew even larger, adding the talents of the likes of Larry Gelbart, Joe Stein, and Mike Stewart. All of whom would go on to great success: Larry Gelbart, who created one of television’s most celebrated series, M*A*S*H; Joe Stein, who wrote Enter Laughing and Fiddler on the Roof for Broadway; and Mike Stewart, who later created the books for great Broadway musicals like Bye Bye Birdie, Hello Dolly, and 42nd Street. Though we had lost Lucille and Imogene to their new show, we gained another great female comedy writer, Selma Diamond, and the beautiful and talented Nanette Fabray was Sid’s new leading lady on Caesar’s Hour. We had a bigger budget, real offices in the Milgrim Building in midtown Manhattan, and our own theater at the Century on Eighth Avenue. Writing comedy with all those truly gifted comedy writers on Caesar’s Hour was like the thrill of jamming with great musicians. We made great comedy music in that room. But Sid would take it and bend it through the prism of his heart, his crazy mind, and what evolved would be beyond our wildest expectations. He always took our material to a higher level.
Doc Simon was incredibly funny but very shy. Carl Reiner knew this and would sit next to him in the writers’ room and quite often Doc would whisper his contributions into Carl’s ear. Then Carl would leap to his feet and say, “Doc’s got it!” And another great Neil Simon joke was born.
Larry Gelbart and Doc Simon both really enjoyed my comic spontaneity, and we’d often have lunch together. One day we were walking up Fifty-seventh Street and coming down toward us were three nuns. They immediately knew I couldn’t resist.
Larry said, “Mel, leave it alone.”
Doc said, “Mel, whatever you were gonna do—don’t do it.”
I answered, “Not to worry, not to worry.”…But I was lying.
As the nuns approached, I shouted: “Get out of those costumes! The sketch is OUT!”
Both Larry and Doc collapsed in laughter and hit the sidewalk. They were my best audience.
On another occasion after lunch we were on Sixth Avenue and there in a store window were a hundred little toy microscopes selling for ninety-nine cents each. I walked into the store, Larry and Doc followed.
I said to the store owner, “I’m Dr. Melvin Brooks, head of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.” Larry and Doc stifled their laughter, wondering where I was going with this.
I continued, “At Johns Hopkins I am working on multi-celled anomalies and need a very strong and powerful microscope to detect cellular differences. Will those microscopes in the window do the job?”
The shop owner shrugged and said, “Yes, they’re very good.” Again Doc and Larry, unable to contain themselves, screamed in laughter and hit the floor. They never stopped telling the microscope story.
At the 1957 Emmy Awards ceremony, Sid, Carl, Nanette, and Pat Carroll all won Emmys and the show won for best series of one hour or more, but The Phil Silvers Show beat out Caesar’s Hour for best comedy writing. I leapt up onto the table and screamed, “Coleman Jacoby and Arnie Rosen won an Emmy for comedy writing and Mel Brooks didn’t! That writers like that can win the award and geniuses like me would be denied? Nietzsche was right! There is no god! There is no god!”
Me desperately selling Sid a joke with fellow writers Woody Allen and Mel Tolkin looking on.
They were good writers. But we were great writers. We were the best comedy writers that ever wrote for television. And they still won the Emmy! I went backstage and found a pair of scissors in the wardrobe room. I cut up my tuxedo. I cut my bow tie first. Then I cut my jacket into little black shiny confetti. Then I took my trousers off and proceeded to cut them up too. I was just in my shorts. I was almost naked in front of everybody when I said, “I’m never wearing a tuxedo again!” Somebody put a sheet around me, and put some ice on my head, and took me home. I might have been a little drunk.
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The pressures and grind of a weekly live network television show took its toll on Sid. On set he was alert and prepared. Off camera, he was drinking more and more to cope with the pressure. He would spend Sundays, our only day off, in the shower for hours, trying to decompress.
The writers, his friends, were extremely protective of him. What is now known as “the Coleslaw Episode” occurred on a Wednesday night during the run of Caesar’s Hour. A sketch unexpectedly fell apart and we had to write an entirely new sketch in a single day. Sid, Carl, and the other writers and I went to dinner at a nearby restaurant. “First we’ll have a drink,” Sid said, “then we’ll eat, and then we’ll work.”