Articles and Stories

September 23, 2014

“Every Language Has Its Own Song” – Sid Cesar

There is no one who could quite understand and reproduce the feel of a language like comedian Sid Cesar (1922 – 2014). Do you recognize languages based on the way they sound?

Those of us who regularly hear foreign languages can at least pinpoint the group of languages one belongs too, such as Scandinavian languages, Latin languages, Baltic languages and more. But most of us would never be able to reproduce that feel, certainly not after listening to a language for 10-15 minutes, likes the master Sid Cedar could, take a look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL7efWcaVnk

A highly regarded comedian in the 1950ies, Sid distinguished himself from the slapstick comedians by offering a more sophisticated style of comedy relying more on body language, accents and facial contortions rather than just dialogue. Writers like Mel Brooks and Woody Allen aspired to write for him.

Sid said that he was thinking in English while singing the song of the language he was ‘speaking’, like in the sketch where he plays a German general (written like Mel Brooks):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m6Czgl1acU

One can still hear some English with “spick and span” with German pronunciation! Or the s* word, which seems to blend into the gibberish German dialogue perfectly.

In the fifties, Mel Brooks tried to talk Cesar into going to Hollywood to be immortalized on the big screen, but he refused, having given all he had to television. Mel Brooks did get into big screen productions, but earlier this year, after Cesar’s death, still claimed that “No Sid Cesar, no Mel Brooks”.

Sid was best known for the “Your Show of Shows” episodes. Many feel that the “This Is Your Story” sketch is the funniest that the show ever did. “But for all the honors heaped on the program, both when it first aired and ever since (because it was never syndicated, it is more often praised than actually watched), one superlative is overlooked. That night nearly sixty years ago, the show produced what is probably the longest and loudest burst of laughter—genuine laughter, neither piped in nor prompted—in the history of television.” (“Sid Cesar’s Finest Sketch”, The New Yorker, February 2014, by David Margolick).

Like for many comedians and other celebrities, Sid’s story also has a dark side of alcohol and drug addiction. His autobiography “Where Have I Been?” is a horror story of him suffering an alcoholism that seemed to match in size his talent, he lost whole years of his life. In the midst of one of his darkest periods, Sid learned to his surprise that he had recently made a feature movie in Australia!

What talent he had to make people laugh and forget about their worries while slowly sinking into a dark world himself. Treat yourself to his “This Is Your Life” episode.