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BOOKSHELF

The Caesar Experience

Eddy Friedfeld '83

On the 10th anniversary of his grandmother’s death, Eddy Friedfeld ’83 wanted to do something special in her memory. While attending the annual Video Software Dealer’s Conference in Las Vegas in August 2000, Friedfeld, a lawyer and writer, learned that comedy legend Sid Caesar was releasing his television shows on DVD for the first time. Remembering how much his grandmother enjoyed Caesar’s comedy, and a lifelong fan himself, Friedfeld arranged to interview the comedian. After spending three hours with Caesar, far more than any other interviewer, Friedfeld had more than just an article — he had the satisfaction of honoring his grandmother by giving Caesar a hug, something she certainly would have done. Friedfeld also had the makings of what would become Caesar’s Hours: My Life in Comedy With Love and Laughter (Public Affairs, $26, 2003), Caesar’s autobiography, which Friedfeld co-authored.

Friedfeld and Caesar’s goal was to produce an artistic biography that would be educational as well as entertaining. He began by gathering every article on Caesar since 1950, a natural process ingrained by what he called “Columbia’s compulsive training.” Friedfeld hoped that the book would not only be Caesar’s personal story but also a history of the “Golden Age of Television,” the development of comedy in America and a primer for aspiring performers and writers.

In Caesar’s Hours, special attention is paid to Caesar’s Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour, the weekly live television shows that helped pioneer television’s popularity. Caesar also reflects on the “Writer’s Room,” where comedy greats such as Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart and Woody Allen helped him craft timeless comedy sketches.

What Friedfeld finds most exciting about Caesar’s comedy is its ability to make “20-year-olds and 70-year-olds laugh at the same thing.” Friedfeld feels that today’s “narrow-casting” lacks the broad appeal of the comedy that dominated the 1950s and ’60s. The book captures the wide range of Caesar’s comedy by including excerpts from original scripts, and recalling movie satires of classics like On the Waterfront and From Here to Eternity; the domestic comedy of The Hickenloopers, which predated The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy; The Professor, the alleged expert on everything; and sketches driven by pantomime and sense memory. Unlike the slapstick comedy of vaudeville and burlesque, these Broadway-inspired acts generated humor through quality stories. Many of Caesar’s writing troupe later created their own schools of comedy, espousing the importance of humor through storytelling.

Caesar’s Hours: My Life in Comedy With Love and Laughter

Friedfeld’s storytelling abilities were forged as an undergraduate. After reading Raymond Chandler’s Red Wind, he was convinced that he should become a writer. Friedfeld wrote news stories and humor features as a staff writer for Spectator. He also took several creative writing courses while majoring in political science and is quick to list influential faculty members of his College years: Marjorie Dobkin, Joy Chute, Howard Teichman, Sam Vaughan, George Stade, Karl-Ludwig Selig, Jim Shenton ’49 and Flora Davidson. “It was their passion that gave me the incentive and drive to be creative in my own right,” Friedfeld noted. He believes that his writing could not have developed without the “strong foundations” of the Core Curriculum and the skills learned from the writing courses.

Friedfeld continued his education at NYU Law School, graduating in 1986. Today, he can best be described as a workaholic who enjoys his dual lives as chief restructuring officer and general counsel of a national healthcare company and syndicated film critic and entertainment writer. Friedfeld has contributed to The New York Times and The New York Post and is a regular contributor to the syndicated “Joe Franklin Memory Lane Show” on WWOR radio. He also is working on a history of Jews and comedy in America and has interviewed more than 100 celebrities.

Last November, as part of the New York leg of the tour to promote the release of Caesar’s Hours and Buried Treasures, the third DVD/video collection from Creative Light Entertainment, Caesar was honored by NYU. Friedfeld served as host of a “master class” and, between sketches, some of which had not been seen in decades, interviewed Caesar about his career and the genesis and development of his art and comedy. The co-authors plan to tour other universities to lecture on the Golden Age of Television and Caesar’s experiences.

While a friendship has developed between the 42-year old Friedfeld and the 81-year old Caesar, Friedfeld still reveres the comedian. In a remark fit for a true Core believer, he commented on his Caesar’s Hours experience: “Imagine taking Music Hum and Art Hum and actually getting to meet and talk to the masters who created the works you’ve studied. Fifty years from now, people will look back and wonder what it would have been like to have met and interacted with one of the masters of comedy.”

P.K.

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