Editor's Note: Bruce Watson is a Contributing Editor at American Heritage and has authored several critically acclaimed books. He writes a history blog at The Attic.

FEB 25, 1950 — AMERICA’S LIVING ROOMS — For a silent majority of Americans, it’s another ho-hum Saturday night at the radio. Just 10 percent of homes have this new-fangled thing called television. The rest listen, as they have for decades, to Jack Benny, “The Great Gildersleeve,” “Fibber McGee and Molly. . .” But at 9:00 p.m. on NBC, a revolution in American comedy is about to be televised.

For its first year on the air, “Your Show of Shows” masqueraded as just another variety show.  It even opened with a half-hour musical revue from a theater in Chicago. But when the show cut to the Center Theater in New York — live on Saturday night! — comedy would never be the same. To wit:

— Doris and Charlie Hickenlooper are trying out a “health food restaurant.” When the waiter puts flowers on the table, Doris begins eating them as appetizers.

— Cut to a movie scenario. “From Here to Obscurity” or “Aggravation Boulevard.” Or for the more film literate, parodies of “Bicycle Thief” and “Streetcar Named Desire.”

— Next up, a pontifical lecture from Professor Siegfried von Sedative. . .

There are no jokes, no one-liners, no stand-up. This is a new kind of comedy — “sketch comedy” — and the sketches run for ten minutes or more.  Watch:

“Your Show of Shows” aired for just four years, yet its impact has never been equalled. This month, as we celebrate 50 years of “Saturday Night Live,” remember that without “Your Show of Shows,” there would have been no SNL. Because this singular show, the New York Times wrote, “sent into the world a group of writers and performers who set the comic agenda for American mass culture for two decades to come.”

Each show was a neurotic miracle. Ninety minutes every Saturday night. All live. No cue cards or teleprompter.  All written on the fly, often on that same Saturday afternoon.

At the show’s center were two gifted comedians. Both were shy offstage. Neither ever wrote a line they spoke. But Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca were the heart and soul of the show.

Caesar set out to be a musician, playing saxophone in big bands. He only came to comedy during the war when he broke up fellow soldiers in stage reviews. Big and brawny, a chameleon of characters, he was, Saturday Evening Post wrote, “a new kind of comedian.”

Mocking the ethnic babble he had overheard at his father’s Manhattan luncheonette, Caesar could improvise nonsense that sounded like several languages. He could