Your Show of Shows
Episode 36
TV Flash files “Episode 36” as the last listed hour of season 4 — Your Show of Shows (1950–1954) on NBC, season 4, episode 36, aired 1953-05-23, 90 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S04E36: listed hour 124 of 150 in the Your Show of Shows guide, last listed hour of season 4. It aired 1953-05-23 (90 min). The listed hour before it is “Episode 35” (S04E35). Next is “Episode 1” (S05E01).
Viewer FAQ
Where does Episode 36 sit in the Your Show of Shows guide?
S04E36 is listed hour 124 of 150 — last listed hour of season 4, season 4 episode 36.
When did Your Show of Shows S04E36 air?
Episode 36 aired 1953-05-23 and is listed at 90 minutes.
Where should I start?
Start with surviving kinescopes of Caesar and Coca at full voltage, especially the foreign-film parodies and domestic-disaster sketches the company was built to detonate live.
In the series
Why this series still plays
Your Show of Shows is live ninety-minute sketch at factory voltage: Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, and a writers' room that later filled American comedy. Watch it in 2026 as the founding faculty meeting — Brooks, Simon, Reiner, and Caesar's elastic faces proving vaudeville could become appointment TV.
Saturday night on NBC was not a drop, not a queue, not a vending machine with a PR department. From February 25, 1950 through June 5, 1954, it was ninety live minutes of Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca detonating sketches while a nation was still learning what television comedy could do. Carl Reiner and Howard Morris rounded out the on-camera chaos; Max Liebman produced one of early TV's most demanding weekly formats. The writers' room — Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Mel Tolkin, Lucille Kallen among them — fed the beast…
Filed against
- Sid Caesar as Performer
Sid Caesar detonated live ninety-minute sketch at factory voltage on Your Show of Shows — Imogene Coca, a writers’ room that later filled American comedy — then kept the flame on Caesar’s Hour with the same unfair talent density. Elastic…
- Imogene Coca as Performer
Imogene Coca detonated live ninety-minute sketch on Your Show of Shows — Sid Caesar, a writers' room that later filled American comedy, Brooks and Simon and Reiner, vaudeville becoming television at factory voltage. Elastic faces,…
- Carl Reiner as Performer
Carl Reiner created The Dick Van Dyke Show and occasionally terrorized it as Alan Brady — writers’-room meta-comedy with dance breaks, an ottoman as thesis, and the boss as weather system. The hybrid home/work sitcom still copies that New…
- Howard Morris as Performer
Howard Morris’s performer weather helped Your Show of Shows run live ninety-minute sketch at factory voltage — 1950s catalog Caesar gang, then Caesar’s Hour keeping the farm system stocked. TV Flash files him as the elastic face in the…