[11] By waiting on tables, their son learned to mimic the patois, rhythm, and accents of the diverse clientele, a technique he termed double-talk, which he used throughout his career.

They enjoyed it so much that they sent him over to a group of Poles to repeat his native-sounding patter in Polish, and so on with Russians, Hungarians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Lithuanians, and Bulgarians.

Mentored by Don Appel, the resort's social director, Caesar played in the dance band and learned to perform comedy, doing three shows a week.

[18] Vernon Duke, the composer of "Autumn in New York", "April in Paris", and "Taking a Chance on Love", was at the same base and collaborated with Caesar on musical revues.

[13] During the summer of 1942, Caesar met his future wife, Florence Levy, at the Avon Lodge in the Catskills village of Woodridge, New York.

[14] After joining the musicians' union, he briefly played with Shep Fields, Claude Thornhill, Charlie Spivak, Art Mooney and Benny Goodman.

[20] Still in the military, Caesar was ordered to Palm Beach, Florida, where Vernon Duke and Howard Dietz were putting together a service revue called Tars and Spars.

Caesar also performed in a Broadway revue, Make Mine Manhattan, which featured The Five Dollar Date—one of his first original pieces, in which he sang, acted, double-talked, pantomimed, and wrote the music.

[25] Burgess Meredith hosted the first two shows,[25] and the premiere featured musical guests Gertrude Lawrence, Lily Pons and Robert Merrill.

[13] The show was a mix of sketch comedy, movie and television satires, Caesar's monologs, musical guests, and large production numbers.

Guests included: Jackie Cooper, Robert Preston, Rex Harrison, Eddie Albert, Michael Redgrave, Basil Rathbone, Charlton Heston, Geraldine Page, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Pearl Bailey, Fred Allen, Benny Goodman, Lena Horne and many other stars of the time.

[29] An example of this "silent film" style is a live sketch with Nanette Fabray, where they both pantomime an argument choreographed to the music of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

In describing his control during the live performances, actress Nanette Fabray recalled that unlike most comedians, such as Red Skelton, Bob Hope or Milton Berle, Caesar always stayed in character: "He was so totally into the scene he never lost it.

"[29] Caesar was able to pantomime a wide variety of things: a tire, a gumball machine, a lion, a dog, a punching bag, a telephone, an infant, an elevator, a railroad train, a herd of horses, a piano, a rattlesnake and a bottle of seltzer.

Alfred Hitchcock compared him to Charlie Chaplin, and critic John Crosby felt "he could wrench laughter out of you with the violence of his great eyes and the sheer immensity of his parody."

In an article in The Saturday Evening Post in 1953, show business biographer Maurice Zolotow noted that "Caesar relies upon grunts and grimaces to express a vast range of emotions.

"[35] Having developed this mimicry skill, he could create entire monologs using gibberish in numerous languages, as he did in a skit in which he played a German general.

[citation needed] The most prominent recurring sketch on the show was "The Commuters", which featured Caesar, Reiner, and Morris involved with everyday working and suburban life situations.

As for Caesar, Nachman describes him basically as an "inspired idea man who allowed the writers to take more risks" than other TV shows.

[29] Woody Allen remembers that "...you wrote situations," instead of jokes, as in "This Is Your Story" with Carl Reiner, a parody of the popular TV show This Is Your Life.

[29] In many cases, sketch dialogue was not even written down, but simply indicated by describing a scene, as in, "Sid does man coming home from business mad."

"[29] Neil Simon recalled that after writing out a sketch and giving it to Caesar, "Sid would make it ten times funnier than what we wrote.

"[29] Writer Mel Brooks, who also became his close friend, said, "I know of no other comedian, including Chaplin, who could have done nearly ten years of live television.

"[29] In 1977, after blacking out during a stage performance of Neil Simon's The Last of the Red Hot Lovers in Regina, Saskatchewan, Caesar gave up alcohol "cold turkey".

The event was taped, broadcast on PBS in the United States and the BBC in the UK, and later released as a DVD titled Caesar's Writers.

[46] In 1997, he made a guest appearance in Vegas Vacation and, the following year, in The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit based on a Ray Bradbury novel.

Also that year, Caesar joined fellow television icons Bob Hope and Milton Berle at the 50th anniversary of the Primetime Emmy Awards.

[49] In what TV Land called "...a hilarious, heartfelt, multilingual, uncut acceptance speech,"[49] Caesar performed his double-talk for over five minutes.

[citation needed] In a November 2009 article in the Toluca Lake, California, Tolucan Times, columnist Greg Crosby described a visit with Caesar and his wife Florence at their home.

[54] Vanity Fair republished a brief tribute written by Billy Crystal in August 2005, in which he said of Caesar and his contemporaries: I get nervous when I am with these giants.