“Your Show of Shows” drew early TV owners in New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles—a well-off, educated crowd ready for whatever curves Caesar threw. He and his writers steered clear of politics but satirized the movies and TV of the moment. In the 1954 sketch “This Is Your Story,” they went after the treacly show “This Is Your Life,” which hauled unsuspecting guests before the cameras to confront their past—even survivors of the Holocaust and Hiroshima. (The latter was introduced to a member of the Enola Gay’s crew.) Caesar, as the aghast “Al Duncey of Darling Falls, Montana,” tries to bolt, only to be dragged back and drowned in maudlin hugs from relatives, including Uncle Goopy (Howard Morris), who clings to his leg like an aroused sloth. The laughter soon curdles: it’s a vision of how mass media can hijack private lives and dictate feeling. Pauline Kael, in a mixed 1973 appraisal of Caesar for this magazine, wrote, “I never felt that he personally was funny—that his core was funny.” I’d argue that his core was both funny and tragic, which explains his peculiar fate. He was a revolutionary talent whose particular success may have been possible only in a brand-new medium.