Biography

Sid Caesar

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Comedian, saxophonist, composer, actor and musician, he performed within the orchestras of Charlie Spivak, Shep Fields and Claude Thornhill as saxophonist. Later, as super-hip jazz musician "Cool Cees" in television skits, he played tenor saxophone, and sang with the satirical trio "The Hair Cuts" (with Carl Reiner and Howard Morris). He sang the lead role in "Little Me" on Broadway. Joining ASCAP in 1955, his popular song compositions include "I Wrote This Song for Your Birthday" and "Was That You?".
- IMDb mini biography by: Hup234!

He gave up alcohol "cold turkey". His autobiography, "Where Have I Been", published in 1983 and his second book, "Caesar's Hours", both chronicle his struggle to overcome alcoholism and barbiturates.
Despite his apparent fluency in many languages, in reality he only spoke English and Yiddish.
He was the son of Jewish immigrants, Ida (née Raphael), from Russia, and Max Caesar, from Poland. The two ran a 24-hour luncheonette. Sid would help his parents by waiting on tables, and it was during this time that he learned to mimic many of the accents he would use throughout his long career.
Studied saxophone at the Julliard School of Music before becoming an actor.
Caesar's appearance in his first series The Admiral Broadway Revue (1949) with Imogene Coca was a huge hit with television audiences. Simultaneously broadcast on NBC and the Dumont network, its sponsor, Admiral Corporation, an appliance company, could not keep up with the demand for its new television sets, so the show was canceled on account of its runaway success.

After all those years of doing a live, hour-and-a-half show every week, I've got nothing more I need to prove.
The things I see now on TV and in movies are so outlandish. Kids doing rude things with pies! And the language that they use! It's being outrageous for the sake of being outrageous. I can't watch it. It turns me off.
The trouble with telling a good story is that it invariably reminds the other fellow of a dull one.
When I did comedy I made fun of myself. If there was a buffoon, I played the buffoon. And people looked at me and said, "Gee, that's like Uncle David", or "That's like a friend of mine.". And they related through that. I didn't make fun of them. I made fun of me.
The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was a genius.