Shark Bytes

Yes, never jumped - try to find the compilation film "Ten From Your Show Of Shows" at one of the more independent-minded video stores. After watching "From Here To Obscurity" you'll never take the beach scene of "From Here To Eternity" seriously again!

Trivia note: Selma Diamond was the inspiration for the Sally Rogers character on Dick Van Dyke.

Woody Allen never wrote for "Your Show of Shows." Woody wrote for "Cesar's Hour," which aired a couple of years later.

Actually, I don't believe that Woody Allen was ever a full-time staff writer on Your Show of Shows. In the early Fifties, Allen (born in 1935) was a teenager sending jokes in by mail on a free-lance basis. If they used them, he got paid, otherwise not, but naturally the producers would want to claim him now. I get the impression that most of the posters on this site were too young to have seen the show in the original run and know of it primarily from the "Best Of" compilation tapes. (I wasn't alive in the Fifties myself). One problem with that is you can take the "best of" any sketch comedy show that was on the air for five years and make the overall quality of the show look somewhat higher than it actually was.

Never jumped. This show had the equivalent of Murderer's row for a stable of writers. Ongoing proof that the core of quality television (and, by extension, the movies) comes from the writers. You can't make a list of why it was brilliant without starting with the writers. Everything else is secondary. Mind you, the cast was brilliant and this show had everything going for it.

This was classic television comedy and, of course, never jumped. Not much I can add to what's already been written except if anyone has a longing for that time and place they should go out and rent My Favorite Year with Mark Lynn Baker, Joe Bologna and Peter O'toole. Although not the 'real' thing it has the look and feel (and history) of Your Show of Shows and is a major hoot!

This is Your Story is probably the funniest thing I have ever seen on TV. Guffaws. Tears. Gasping for air. Rolling on the floor. All commence immediately and for a prolonged period of time, whenever I have the good fortune to view this sketch. BTW, a few of the staff writers for Your Show of Shows were Woody Allen, Neil Simon, Mel Brooks, and Carl Reiner...still the most impressive comedic writing talent ever assembled for a television show.

"Your Show of Shows" never jumped. It's influenced television, film, and theater (especially comedy) in every possible way. The writing staff of "Your Shows of Shows" (and also it's successor "Caesar's Hour") gave starts to Mel Brooks ("Producers" "Blazing Saddles" "Young Frankenstein"), Neil Simon ("Odd Couple" "Lost in Yonkers"), Woody Allen ("Annie Hall" "Bananas"), Larry Gelbart ("Tootsie" "M*A*S*H" - tv), Selma Diamond (Selma on "Night Court"), Danny Simon (worked on "The Carol Burnett" show), and head writer Mel Tolkin (worked on "All in the Family") in addition to other great, but lesser known names. And the cast of the two shows (who also helped write) were incredible. Carl Reiner (who created "The Dick Van Dyke Show"), Howard Morris, Imogene Coca ("Your Show of Shows"), Nanette Fabray ("Sid Caesar's Hour"), and television's greatest artist of all time - Sid Caesar. If you don't believe how funny this show was, go see if your video store has "Ten from Your Show of Shows" and you will see unsurpassable comedy. The Bavarian Clock, This is Your Story, the professor, and the doubletalk foreign movie spoofs. It doesn't get any better than that.

A show that stayed fresh, funny and original until the end. An hour 1/2 every week of intelligent humor written by the dream team.

Look at the writers on this show. It'll never get as good as that again.