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How the Yonkers-born son of Jewish immigrants became the king of American comedy
When Caesar Was King
By David Margolick
Schocken, 400 pages $35
His comedic DNA is everywhere — The Dick Van Dyke Show, All in the Family, the riffs and routines of Johnny Carson and Larry David. His writers included Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Neil Simon and Woody Allen. Even so, when author David Margolick interviewed the 2,000 Year Old Man for his new biography of Sid Caesar, Brooks told him, “People are going to say, `Gee, this is really good and really interesting. Just one question, David: Who’s Sid Caesar?’”
Now the book is out, and Margolick, a longtime New York Times and Vanity Fair writer, has put the question to rest. When Caesar Was King: How Sid Caesar Reinvented American Comedy is a lively and thoroughly engrossing account of who Caesar was, why he was so important, and how he transformed American comedy with his short-lived (1950-1954) but influential TV program Your Show of Shows.
At the peak of the show’s popularity, Caesar was the most highly paid comedian in America. Some 20 million people tuned into NBC every week to watch the program that was broadcast live on Saturday night from a studio in midtown Manhattan two decades before Saturday Night Live. The variety show featured film spoofs, pantomime, and sketches in which Caesar played a beleaguered husband opposite the brilliant Imogene Coca with her rubbery, “wonderfully flexible face,” as one critic put it.
Despite their comedic hijinks, Margolick repeatedly makes the point that Caesar, who died at age 91 in 2014, was “the unlikeliest of comics: introverted, ill at ease, tongue-tied.” Larry Gelbart, a writer for Caesar who went on to create the hit TV series M*A*S*H in the 1970s, described his boss’ personality as “zero, non-existent.” According to Simon, he was “extremely smart but completely inarticulate.” Even so, he could bring down the house by impersonating everything from an imperious German general to a fly crawling on a piece of feta cheese. He had what another one of his writers, Howard Morris, called a “meshugana energy.”
Though nothing about Your Show of Shows was overtly Jewish, Margolick makes a convincing argument that Caesar’s humor was intrinsically Jewish and that Jews across America read it as such. Among other things, it was Jewish in its “literate, detached, irreverent” point of view, in its “resentment toward the establishment and sympathy for the underdog,” and “in its obsession, born of privation, with food.”
Caesar grew up in Yonkers, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia, who ran a rooming house and luncheonette. Since the eatery catered to laborers, many of them foreign-born, Margolick speculates that Caesar, who didn’t learn to talk until he was 3, developed his uncanny ability to mimic foreign languages — his signature double-talk — by absorbing the “sounds and sensibilities” of the conversations he overheard while busing tables.
After a deadbeat boarder left behind a saxophone, young Sidney learned to play it, eventually offering him a way out of his straitened circumstances. Soon he was playing gigs in the Catskills, where he branched out into comedy to earn a little extra money. By the 1940s, Caesar was back in New York, where he had the great good fortune to meet the Viennese-born Max Liebman, who had been producing musical revues at a resort in the Poconos and thought Caesar was “the finest comic talent since Charlie Chaplin.” Liebman would go on to direct Your Show of Shows and, more than anyone else, make Sid Caesar a star.
But the toll of producing a 90-minute live show over 30-odd weeks for more than four years was tremendous. By its fourth and final season, Your Show of Shows couldn’t sustain the level of brilliance and innovation it had achieved during the so-called golden era of live television production in the 1950s. Audiences were changing as more and more Americans outside the big cities, mostly in the Northeast, were acquiring TVs, and their taste skewed more in the direction of the bandleader and accordionist Lawrence Welk.
Caesar turned 32 during the last year of Your Show of Shows and would go on to headline other shows including Caesar’s Hour and Sid Caesar Invites You, the latter briefly reuniting him with Coca. But by the 1960s, he was largely off the air, grappling with alcoholism, depression and an addiction to pills.
In what is overall a tender and sympathetic portrait, Margolick doesn’t shy away from showing Caesar’s dark side, offering a complex portrait of an enigmatic genius who seemed to be just as much of a mystery to himself as he was to others. Beautifully written and brimming with life, this book establishes Margolick as one of the ultimate mavens of an era of American Jewish history in the mid-to-late 20th century that has all but ceased to exist.
The post How the Yonkers-born son of Jewish immigrants became the king of American comedy appeared first on The Forward.
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Cuba Defiant After Trump Says Island to Receive No More Venezuelan Oil or Money
A view shows part of Havana as U.S.-Cuba tensions rise after U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to stop Venezuelan oil and money from reaching Cuba and suggested the communist-run island to strike a deal with Washington, in Havana, Cuba, January 11, 2026. REUTERS/Norlys Perez
US President Donald Trump on Sunday said no more Venezuelan oil or money will go to Cuba and suggested the Communist-run island should strike a deal with Washington, ramping up pressure on the long-time US nemesis and provoking defiant words from the island’s leadership.
Venezuela is Cuba’s biggest oil supplier, but no cargoes have departed from Venezuelan ports to the Caribbean country since the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by US forces in early January amid a strict US oil blockade on the OPEC country, shipping data shows.
Meanwhile, Caracas and Washington are progressing on a $2 billion deal to supply up to 50 million barrels of Venezuelan oil to the US with proceeds to be deposited in US Treasury-supervised accounts, a major test of the emerging relationship between Trump and interim President Delcy Rodriguez.
“THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday.
“Cuba lived, for many years, on large amounts of OIL and MONEY from Venezuela,” Trump added.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel rejected Trump’s threat on social media, suggesting the US had no moral authority to force a deal on Cuba.
“Cuba is a free, independent, and sovereign nation. Nobody dictates what we do,” Diaz-Canel said on X. “Cuba does not attack; it has been attacked by the US for 66 years, and it does not threaten; it prepares, ready to defend the homeland to the last drop of blood.”
The US president did not elaborate on his suggested deal.
But Trump’s push on Cuba represents the latest escalation in his move to bring regional powers in line with the United States and underscores the seriousness of the administration’s ambition to dominate the Western Hemisphere.
Trump’s top officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have made no secret of their expectation that the recent US intervention in Venezuela could push Cuba over the edge.
US officials have hardened their rhetoric against Cuba in recent weeks, though the two countries have been at odds since former leader Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.
CUBA DEFENDS IMPORT RIGHTS
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said in another post on X on Sunday that Cuba had the right to import fuel from any suppliers willing to export it. He also denied that Cuba had received financial or other “material” compensation in return for security services provided to any country.
Thirty-two members of Cuba’s armed forces and intelligence services were killed during the US raid on Venezuela. Cuba said those killed were responsible for “security and defense” but did not provide details on the arrangement between the two long-time allies.
Cuba relies on imported crude and fuel mainly provided by Venezuela, and Mexico in smaller volumes, purchased on the open market to keep its power generators and vehicles running.
As its operational refining capacity dwindled in recent years, Venezuela’s supply of crude and fuel to Cuba has fallen. But the South American country is still the largest provider with some 26,500 barrels per day exported last year, according to ship tracking data and internal documents of state-run PDVSA, which covered roughly 50 percent of Cuba’s oil deficit.
Havana produce vendor Alberto Jimenez, 45, said Cuba would not back down in the face of Trump’s threat.
“That doesn’t scare me. Not at all. The Cuban people are prepared for anything,” Jimenez said.
It’s hard for many Cubans to imagine a situation much worse. The island’s government has been struggling to keep the lights on. A majority live without electricity for much of the day, and even the capital Havana has seen its economy crippled by hours-long rolling blackouts.
Shortages of food, fuel and medicine have put Cubans on edge and have prompted a record-breaking exodus, primarily to the United States, in the past five years.
MEXICO BECOMES KEY SUPPLIER
Mexico has emerged in recent weeks as a critical alternative oil supplier to the island, but the supply remains small, according to the shipping data.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum last week said her country had not increased supply volumes, but given recent political events in Venezuela, Mexico had turned into an “important supplier” of crude to Cuba.
US intelligence has painted a grim picture of Cuba’s economic and political situation, but its assessments offer no clear support for Trump’s prediction that the island is “ready to fall,” Reuters reported on Saturday, citing three people familiar with the confidential assessments.
The CIA’s view is that key sectors of the Cuban economy, such as agriculture and tourism, are severely strained by frequent blackouts, trade sanctions and other problems. The potential loss of oil imports and other support from Venezuela could make governing more difficult for Diaz-Canel.
Havana resident and parking attendant Maria Elena Sabina, a 58-year-old born shortly after Castro took power, said it was time for Cuba’s leaders to make changes amid so much suffering.
“There’s no electricity here, no gas, not even liquefied gas. There’s nothing here,” Sabina said. “So yes, a change is needed, a change is needed, and quickly.”
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NATO Should Launch Operation to Boost Security in Arctic, Belgian Minister says
Belgian Defence Minister Theo Francken speaks to journalists as he arrives to an informal meeting of European Union defence ministers in Copenhagen, Denmark, August 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Tom Little
NATO should launch an operation in the Arctic to address US security concerns, Belgium’s defense minister told Reuters on Sunday, urging transatlantic unity amid growing European unease about US President Donald Trump’s push to take control of Greenland.
“We have to collaborate, work together and show strength and unity,” Theo Francken said in a phone interview, adding that there is a need for “a NATO operation in the high north.”
Trump said on Friday that the US needs to own Greenland to prevent Russia or China from occupying it in the future.
European officials have been discussing ways to ease US concerns about security around Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.
Francken suggested NATO’s Baltic Sentry and Eastern Sentry operations, which combine forces from different countries with drones, sensors and other technology to monitor land and sea, as possible models for an “Arctic Sentry.”
He acknowledged Greenland‘s strategic importance but said “I think that we need to sort this out like friends and allies, like we always do.”
A NATO spokesperson said on Friday that alliance chief Mark Rutte spoke with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio about the importance of the Arctic for shared security and how NATO is working to enhance its capabilities in the high north.
Denmark and Greenland‘s leaders have said that the Arctic island could not be annexed and international security did not justify such a move.
The US already has a military presence on the island under a 1951 agreement.
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IDF Strikes Hezbollah Weapons Sites in Lebanon After Army Denied Its Existence
Israeli strikes targeting Hezbollah’s terror infrastructure. Photo: Via i23, Photo from social media used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law.
i24 News – The Israel Defense Forces carried out airstrikes on a site in southern Lebanon that the Lebanese Army had previously declared free of Hezbollah activity, Israeli officials said on Sunday, citing fresh intelligence that contradicted Beirut’s assessment.
According to Israeli sources, the targeted location in the Kfar Hatta area contained significant Hezbollah weapons infrastructure, despite earlier inspections by the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) that concluded no military installations were present.
Lebanese officials had conveyed those findings to international monitoring mechanisms, and similar claims were reported in the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar.
Israeli intelligence assessments, however, determined that Hezbollah continued to operate from the site.
During a second wave of strikes carried out Sunday, the IDF attacked and destroyed the location.
Video footage released afterward showed secondary explosions, which Israeli officials said were consistent with stored weapons or munitions at the site.
The IDF stated that the strike was conducted in response to what it described as Hezbollah’s ongoing violations of ceasefire understandings between Israel and Lebanon. Military officials said the targeted structure included underground facilities used for weapons storage.
According to the IDF, the same site had been struck roughly a week earlier after Israel alerted the Lebanese Army to what it described as active terrorist infrastructure in the area. While the LAF conducted an inspection following the warning, Israeli officials said the weapons facilities were not fully dismantled, prompting Sunday’s follow-up strike.
The IDF said it took measures ahead of the attack to reduce the risk to civilians, including issuing advance warnings to residents in the surrounding area.
“Hezbollah’s activity at these sites constitutes a clear violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon and poses a direct threat to the State of Israel,” the military said in a statement.
Israeli officials emphasized that operations against Hezbollah infrastructure would continue as long as such threats persist, underscoring that Israel retains the right to act independently based on its own intelligence assessments.