Phreaky Phriday: Argument to the 5th

Sid Caesar and Nanette Fabray, from Caesar’s Hour, 1954. Remember, this was all done on live TV, without the benefit of edits or retakes.

6 Responses to “Phreaky Phriday: Argument to the 5th”


  1. 1 PortcullisChain

    Practice makes perfect. What were they fighting about in the first place? At some point it comes to them screaming about her mother and then she gets pissed off seeing the dog’s hair on his suit, but what set them off in the first place. My lip reading skill is a little out of practice. I haven’t had to use it since taking that girl to the GWAR concert.

  2. 2 june

    Now that, my friends, is performance art!

  3. 3 JC

    Brilliant…creative…I miss stuff like that.

  4. 4 Chris Hahn

    it’s also worth noting that Nanette Fabray is deaf.

  5. 5 Chris Hahn

    well, at least a signifigant hearing loss, according to Wikipedia.

  6. 6 Defjef

    Yeah, those two were great. I miss this stuff, too. I think Nanette’s hearing loss came over a long period of time. Her niece is Shelley, I believe, who sang some teen songs and who did some movies and tv parts. Sid was great! (I also miss Danny Kaye. Check out a song he did with Jimmy Durante, Groucho Marx, and maybe Jane Wyman. It’s called Black Strap Molasses and The Wheat Germ Bread.)

    Entertainment changed somewhere around 1971. Before that, you’d see all kinds of performances on tv “variety shows” and you’d hear an outrageously wide array of music on popular stations. It’s not that what we are given now isn’t creative; it’s just that everything seems to put in a corporate blender and much of it turns out so similar that it can be somewhat boring. No matter how many cameras and angles and special effects they use. Some of the funniest stuff ever has been done on just one or two cameras and live, not perfectly processed. We’re talking real cheese here, not Velveeta.

    Defjef, 50 % hearing impaired since 1991

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