"Laughter on the 23rd Floor" by Neil Simon [Theater program]

Abstract

Laughter on the 23rd Floor is Neil Simon’s hilarious and heartfelt tribute to the time he spent working for Sid Caesar during the Golden Age of the television variety show. Max Prince, Milt Fields, Ira Stone and all the other characters are loosely based on the many famous comedy writers who gathered together in Caesar's now-infamous writer's room. The group included Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Carl Reiner, and more — comedians who went on to shape and define 20th century comedy. Now we know them as legends and we remember fondly the seemingly innocent humor of the clean-cut 1950s. Still, at the time, television was popular with America but a volatile place for artists. Shows were quickly started and ended if ratings did not meet the standards of studio executives and advertisers. The East Coast, sarcastic wit, that dominated Vaudeville and gave immigrants and their children a way to Americanize their unique culture and story, was not an easy sell in little towns in the Midwest — the great marketplace for television to conquer. And, looming like a dark cloud over the entire country, was the threat of both Communism, with its nuclear bombs and cold wars, and McCarthyism, a modern-day witch hunt that murdered the careers, reputations and, sometimes, very lives of hundreds of actors, writers, directors, and everyday Americans. While many remember the 1950s as the era of June Cleaver’s pearls and Ed Sullivan, Laughter on the 23rd Floor reminds us that it was also the era of the Blacklist and Edward R. Murrow. It was an era of suspicion and hostility, and an era of great comedy and entertainment; it was the last decade where men wore hats and women wore white gloves and it was the first decade in which, to paraphrase journalist David Frost, people were entertained in their living rooms by people they wouldn’t have in their homes. So began the era of television.