Born in 1922, Sid Caesar was the youngest of three children born to the Ziser family, who were Jewish immigrants who settled in Yonkers, NY. His parents ran a 24-hour luncheonette, and Caesar spent a lot of time around its diverse clientele. From a young age he developed a knack for imitating the cadence and accents of the customers, while speaking in gibberish vaguely reminiscent of their native languages. Caesar himself spoke only English and Yiddish, but could perform this ‘double-talk’, as he called it, to mimic Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Hungarian, French, Lithuanian, and Bulgarian. At the age of 14, Caesar performed in a band called The Swingtime Six as a saxophonist. In 1939, Caesar graduated high school and left home to become a musician. After establishing residency in New York City, working as a saxophonist at the Vacationland Hotel in the Catskill Mountains, he joined the local musicians’ union. Mentored by the resort’s social director, Caesar learned to perform...
