Sid Caesar’s ‘Special Dessert’ Might Make You a Little Queasy
In the book Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests, authors Tom Shales and Andrew Miller talked to multiple members of the cast and crew over the years. While the entire book itself is fascinating, some of its more riveting sections include cast and crew discussing the celebrities they dealt with when working. One segment involves Andrew Kurtzman, a writer for Saturday Night Live in the early years, who talks about a night out with actor Sid Caesar.
The TV star was a natural on ‘Saturday Night Live’
Caesar hosted Saturday Night Live on Feb. 5, 1983, but he had plenty of experience under his belt before his time as host. In 1950, Caesar starred in Your Show of Shows, a 90-minute variety show that aired weekly in the United States. When the series ended in 1954, Caesar went on to star in Caesar’s Hour, another comedy sketch show. This gave Caesar more than enough experience to host Saturday Night Live, but by the time creator Lorne Michaels invited him to host, Caesar was a bonafide movie star.
When 1983 rolled around, Caesar had added hit movies like Grease, and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World to his resume. Cast members like Dan Aykroyd looked up to Caesar because of his time on Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour.
Sid Caesar claimed to ‘only eat one meal a day’
In Live From New York, SNL writer Kurtzman says his knowledge of Your Show of Shows caused Caesar to “lock onto him” the week he hosted. He then elaborates on a night Caesar took him to dinner and ordered the “strangest thing he’d ever seen.”
“He [Caesar] took me to a dinner at some hotel, not the Algonquin, but one of these faded-glory places where they knew him when he was the TV god of the fifties,” Kurtzman explains. “And he ate the strangest meal I’ve ever seen. Sid claimed to eat one meal a day. He starts wth a veal chop as big as a baby’s head. The thing is oozing cheese, and he eats his and then eats half of mine, because I couldn’t get near it. He eats both our portions of spaghetti.”
While the meal might seem like a lot, Kurtzman says that wasn’t the weird part. The weirdness arrived in the form of Caesar’s “special dessert.”
Sid Caesar’s ‘special dessert’ is unlike anything you’ve ever heard of
Kurtzman continues to describe Caesar’s order, “As we’re gasping after all this food, he says, ‘Wait – they do me a special dessert. You won’t like it. It’s just for me. It’s this health thing.’ They bring to the table a salad bowl, a large-sized box of Shredded Wheat – the ones where the biscuits are the size of Brillo pads – and it’s a full box, not your little individual service packs. Then comes a 32-ounce container of yogurt, an enormous bowl of berries, and an equally large bowl of raisins and nuts. I would say there were probably four pounds of food there.”
As if the amount of food for one dessert wasn’t shocking enough, Kurtzman’s description of what Caesar did next might turn your stomach.
“And he proceeds to combine this into a mash in this big salad bowl and then just drops it on top of this Italian pasta we’d just been eating. It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” Kurtzman concludes.
While the conversation focused on a sketch that never even made it onto the air, Kurtzman couldn’t get over Caesar’s “special dessert.”
