Legendary funnyman Sid Caesar, whose wild-eyed, rubbery, and improvisational characterizations made him one of the pioneers of the early Golden Age of Television during the 1950s with the program Your Show of Shows, has died at the age of 91. His death was revealed via a Twitter post by talk show maven Larry King.

Caesar represented one of the very first funny men of television. His Your Show of Shows, along with sidekick and equally funny and manic Imogene Coca, and with sketches written by people who would become absolute luminaries in television, Broadway, and films, like Carl Reiner, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, and others, was a smash hit during the early 1950s. It also won scores of Emmy awards, was performed live each week, and most importantly, was an early proponent of the sketch comedy that programs like Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In and especially Saturday Night Live would later flower and crystallize. Caesar’s zany, off-the-cuff, off-the-radar, maniacal energy, which borderlined on lunatic, seemed to take every ounce of his inner grit to bring to fruition. In a way, other than maybe arguably Jerry Lewis, no other performer sweated to make his comedy 100 percent successful more than Sid Caesar did.