By Wednesday, the script was essentially finished. Props, sets, and costumes had to be put together on Thursday. If the show was a little long, they always cut the sketches in the Show of Shows days because it was easier to cut than to cut music and dancing. We'd get a premise, and we'd bang it out. We had very talented guys.
Live television is a merciless taskmaster.
Occasionally, in a pinch, the staff would dig into its own archive and pull out a sketch that had been done before. But it was retyped, sometimes reworked, and performed again live on Saturday night. A version of it is in the Writers Guild Foundation Tolkin script collection, dated February 2, 1952. The same sketch appears on the Sid Caesar Collection. That version originally aired April 3, 1954.