The Dick Van Dyke Show (1962)

Given that today it is still considered one of the best situation comedies in television history, it's hard to believe that The Dick Van Dyke Show was virtually canceled after its first season due to dismal ratings, finishing 80th and nearly dead last at season's end. As author Vince Waldron notes in The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book, producer Sheldon Leonard, who had already found success in the sit-com format with The Danny Thomas Show and The Andy Griffith Show, believed that the program's initial CBS time slot on Tuesday evening at 8:00 Eastern worked against it, as this was a time favored for family-friendly fare, whereas The Dick Van Dyke Show was aimed at a more adult audience. So with Leonard's maneuvering, the network moved the show, beginning on January 3, 1962, to the more adult-friendly spot on Wednesday at 9:30 Eastern, but to Leonard's dismay the change did not improve the show's viewership. The situation was probably not helped by some of the episodes themselves, which included the least favorite in the series for both producer Carl Reiner and titular star Dick Van Dyke. Reiner comments in Waldron's book that he did not care for "The Curious Thing About Women" (January 10, 1962) in which Laura cannot resist the temptation of opening Rob's mail or his packages, one of the few episodes Reiner did not write himself, because Laura's insatiable snoopiness was at odds with his own personal experience with his wife Estelle. He felt that the episode made Laura's character look uncharacteristically silly for the sake of a cheap laugh. Reiner was equally dissatisfied with "The Twizzle" (February 28, 1962), an episode he wrote at someone's suggestion as a favor to 50s pop singer Roberta Sherwood as a vehicle for her son Jerry Lanning. Unsurprisingly, neither Lanning's career nor his song and dance The Twizzle took off as a result of the TV exposure. Van Dyke's least favorite was "The Bad Old Days" (April 4, 1962), which recycled an already worn-out premise that modern man has become emasculated by the rising empowerment of women and included a dream sequence in which Rob and Laura are depicted in a silent-movie style sequence. Van Dyke was thankful that they did not film the dream sequence in front of their usual live audience: "It didn't work and we all knew it."

Late in the first season the actors themselves began to hear rumors of the show's impending demise, and by the wrap party after the 30th and final episode of Season 1, everyone assumed the show would not be renewed. And they were right, as CBS had already hammered out the fall 1962 schedule without The Dick Van Dyke Show about a week earlier but did not publicly announce their decision at the time. Sheldon Leonard felt that the network could be strong-armed to change their mind as long as he had the show's sponsor, Proctor & Gamble, in his corner. But even that was in doubt when Leonard learned from advertising executive Lee Rich that the sponsor planned to drop the show as well. So Leonard boldly got Rich to invite him to a Proctor & Gamble board meeting in Cincinnati where he gave an impassioned speech about the show's potential that convinced the board to reconsider and agree to continue to sponsor the show. But when he returned to Los Angeles, Rich phoned him to inform him that P&G backtracked to agreeing to sponsor only half the show, forcing Leonard to find another sponsor to cover the other half, which he was able to do by giving another impassioned speech to the Lorillard Tobacco Company. Even with two heavyweight sponsors in tow, CBS still planned to cancel the series until P&G threatened to pull their support of CBS' daytime programming, which suddenly forced the network to see the light.

Season 2 proved to be the exact opposite of Season 1 in terms of ratings, as the series vaulted into the top 10 early in the year and finished solidly as the #9 program in the Nielsen chart. While Waldron quotes Van Dyke as believing that the sudden surge in viewership was due to gaining fans from summer reruns, the more likely explanation is that the program road the coat-tails of the 1962 breakout show that aired immediately before it--The Beverly Hillbillies­--which took only 5 weeks to shoot to the #1 spot in the ratings. Reiner also tried to spur more interest by filming a new opening sequence in which Van Dyke uses his slapstick skills to trip over a living room ottoman, and to keep things interesting filmed a second version in which he sidesteps the same ottoman, just to keep viewers guessing.

Despite the big boost from its Beverly Hills neighbors, The Dick Van Dyke Show would eventually develop its own distinctly loyal following and be critically deemed superior to the low-brow humor of The Beverly Hillbillies. Author Joanne Morreale in her Wayne State University Press TV Milestones Series monograph The Dick Van Dyke Show cites the program's embodiment of New Frontier-era liberalism, its argument that TV can represent high culture just like films and other art forms, and its treatment of race, ethnicity, and gender as examples of how the series was a trailblazer in the sit-com format. One can find examples of other programs who dabbled in all of these themes, if not quite as cleverly or successfully, just as one can find plenty of fore-runners for Morreale's other observation that The Dick Van Dyke Show bridged the transition from the variety show format to the situation comedy. Certainly earlier sit-coms such as I Love Lucy, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and The Danny Thomas Show revolved around entertainment professionals and afforded opportunities for the stars and their guests to occasionally demonstrate their real-life talents shoe-horned into otherwise flimsy plots. While Morreale also cites The Jack Benny Program as an antecedent, its brand of self-deprecating, fourth-wall-shattering deconstruction of television and entertainment fabrications is unlike anything on The Dick Van Dyke Show, which always maintains its artifice. 

But as the show continued, Reiner and his writers seemed to find more excuses to showcase his stars' and guest stars' talents. "Who Owes Who What?" (January 24, 1962) is built around an old vaudeville skit about borrowing money that Rob proposes as a possible sketch for The Alan Brady Show. Though Sally and Buddy don't think it's funny, and when they act it out for Mel he agrees, the larger plot for the episode is a similar scheme in which Rob thinks Buddy owes him money when he actually owes money to Buddy. In "The Secret Life of Buddy and Sally" (November 28, 1962) the aforementioned writers are secretly performing at a woodsy resort upstate while Rob begins to suspect they are actually having an affair and sneaks up to the resort with Laura only to catch their song-and-dance routine rather than any hanky panky. And in "Somebody Has to Play Cleopatra" (December 26, 1962) Rob is recruited to direct the neighborhood association fund-raising gala, a variety program in which Laura sings and dances a calypso number written in real life by Morey Amsterdam.

Guest stars get to exhibit their wares in the aforementioned clunker "The Twizzle," the two-part Jerry Van Dyke vehicle "I Am My Brother's Keeper" (March 21, 1962) and "The Sleeping Brother" (March 28, 1962), the Vic Damone showcase "Like a Sister" (November 21, 1962), and the child flamenco exhibit in "The Talented Neighborhood" (January 31, 1962), which also includes appearances by Dick Van Dyke's sons Christian and Barry. The Jerry Van Dyke episodes are notable in that, as on Ozzie and Harriet, Dick Van Dyke's real brother plays his fictional brother and that Reiner wrote the episodes before ever meeting Jerry, which, as Waldron relates, almost backfired when Jerry seemed completely overwhelmed by the role until a weekend talk with his older brother loosened him up.

And then there are several episodes built solely around Dick Van Dyke's slapstick and pantomime talents, such as "Father of the Week" (February 21, 1962) wherein Rob has to visit Ritchie's class at school to tell the students what he does for a living. Initially he fumbles nervously about and bores the students until he discovers that he can make them laugh by pretending to trip over things and hurt himself. "My Husband Is Not a Drunk" (October 31, 1962) makes use of Van Dyke's trademark drunk routine, first seen on the program pilot, but rather than actually have him inebriated he only believes he is drunk under posthypnotic suggestion. And Reiner wrote "Gesundheit, Darling" (December 12, 1962) after witnessing Van Dyke's feigned sneezing routine on-set, then wove a story about Rob thinking he may be allergic to his family, not realizing that Ritchie and Freddie Helper have been taking care of a pet kitten, to which he is actually allergic. Each of these episodes builds an entire 30-minute episode around a gag that would have lasted no more than a few minutes on an earlier variety program and can hardly be said to have advanced the state of the sit-com.

More consequential than the gags and pratfalls, The Dick Van Dyke Show in these early episodes made significant strides in the development of character through the mechanisms of flashbacks, family members, and old friends. With the exception of The Andy Griffith Show, most sit-coms of the era had somewhat one-dimensional characters who each week deal with isolated situations, whereas The Dick Van Dyke Show dedicated certain episodes to fleshing out the back story or motivations of the principal characters. "Where Did I Come From?" (January 3, 1962) has Rob retelling the story of the day that Ritchie was born, a tale full of slapstick gags such as Rob going to bed fully dressed and literally being caught with his pants down when he gets the call at the office from Laura that she is ready to go to the hospital, but it also shows Rob as a nervous first-time father who takes his role very seriously, perhaps a bit too seriously. "The Attempted Marriage" (October 10, 1962) flashes back to Rob's army days to recount how he and Laura failed to get married on the first try due to first Rob's insecurity and bad luck and then illness, but ultimately the story proves Rob's willingness to go through any obstacle to marry the woman he loves. And "What's in a Middle Name?" (November 7, 1962) recounts how Ritchie came to have an unusual middle name while also introducing Rob's and Laura's parents. When no one can agree on what Ritchie should be named, Rob and Laura come up with a middle name that is a compromise of all their suggestions, typical of Rob's nonconfrontational character.

Family members dominate the aforementioned two-part story "I Am My Brother's Keeper" and "The Sleeping Brother" in which we meet Rob's brother Stacey and the just cited "What's in a Middle Name?" in which we meet both Rob's and Laura's parents. Though he is probably the least developed of the principal characters, we meet Buddy's black-sheep brother Blackie in "Hustling the Hustler" (October 24, 1962) when Blackie drops by to try to convince Buddy that he has changed his ways and has gone into legitimate business. But when Buddy is still suspicious that Blackie is looking for his next hustle, Blackie decides to play along and lure Rob into a game of pool in which Rob, who again has trouble saying "no," ends up losing $300 only to have Blackie make a show of giving it back to him once Buddy shows up trying to catch him in the act. Blackie is finally able to convince Buddy that he has gone straight, all because his fiance insisted on it.

As with a pair of 1961 episodes, Rob's old buddies show up to fill in part of his back story. Sol Pomeroy returns in "Sol and the Sponsor" (April 11, 1962) to demonstrate that Rob is somewhat ashamed of his low-brow past with the decidedly working class Sol unexpectedly arriving the same day that Rob and Laura are scheduled to entertain wealthy sponsor Henry Bermont and his wife at their home. Rob tries to gently give Sol the hint that he doesn't want him there for dinner with the Bermonts, but Sol is slow on the uptake and shows up anyway with a brassy Bronx-accented blonde. Despite Rob's fear of disaster, Sol and Bermont are able to break through their class differences over a shared enthusiasm for fine automobiles. Rob doesn't come off too well in this episode in that he is willing to ditch an old friend in pursuit of social elevation. But Rob bends over backwards in the other direction in the next episode, "The Return of Happy Spangler" (April 18, 1962) when he goes to bat for and encourages his original comedy-writing mentor Happy Spangler to return to the profession as a member of Rob's writing team, only this time things don't work out so well as Happy only seems capable of reliving his glory years in radio rather than turning out anything new. Spangler can see the writing on the wall and resigns to return to his clothing business even after giving Rob the inspiration for a successful sketch that makes fun of so-called sophisticated audiences who look down on slapstick humor. These two episodes serve as bookends that perhaps show Rob learning to balance his humble origins with his contemporary success while also illustrating Joanne Morreale's point about The Dick Van Dyke Show synthesizing low-brow and high-brow culture.

But the most fully realized character on the show is Sally Rogers, who gets laughs in her desperate attempts to snag a man but in the 1962 episodes is also shown as a pathetic character, a clown who cries in her solitude. In "Where Have You Been, Fassbinder?" (March 14, 1962) she assumes that when she gets a call from old high school chum Leo Fassbinder that he is interested in her, only to learn when he shows up that he is an insurance salesman who was given her name by his company as a prospective client. She angrily throws him out, but he runs into the Petries and the Sorrells who make up an excuse to drop by and see how things are going and discovers that she had cooked dinner for him, so he returns to apologize and stays for dinner. When Rob and Buddy ask her the next day if she thinks she will see him again, she says she is sure of it because she stole his watch. She gets her hopes a bit too high again in "Like a Sister" (November 14, 1962) when she swoons over singer and Alan Brady Show guest star Ric Vallone. Rob senses that she is way more serious about Ric than he is about her, even though he goes out with her almost every night after they first meet, and comes up with a plan to let her down easily by having Ric pretend to be a mean drunk at a dinner party at the Petrie's. But even after Ric insults Sally she insists on driving him home rather than sending him off in a cab, and the next day Buddy says that Rob's plan backfired because all it did is awaken Sally's maternal instincts. However, when he talks to Ric that same day, Sally's caring for him opens his eyes and makes him want to continue to see her, perhaps seriously. Neither of these turnarounds results in a lasting relationship for Sally--she will continue to be a conventional man-chaser throughout the duration of the series, but they provide her character with new levels of depth beyond a one-joke stereotype. Developing multi-dimensional characters with flaws as well as positive qualities is one reason The Dick Van Dyke Show remains one of the best sit-coms not just of its era but in all of television.

The Actors

For the biographies of Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Rose Marie, Morey Amsterdam, Richard Deacon, Larry Mathews, and Ann Morgan Guilbert, see the 1961 post on The Dick Van Dyke Show. For the biography of Jerry Paris, see the 1960 post on The Untouchables.

Carl Reiner

Carl Reiner was born in the Bronx, New York on March 20, 1922. His father was a watchmaker, and Reiner initially worked as a sewing machine repairman until his older brother Charlie told him about an acting workshop being hosted by the Works Progress Administration when Reiner was 16. During World War II he served as a radio operator in the Army Air Forces until contracting pneumonia, after which he was assigned as a French interpreter at Georgetown University, where he staged a theatrical version of a Moliere play, and was then stationed in Hawaii, where he attended a production of Hamlet and met Maurice Evans, who auditioned him and got him assigned to the Special Services for the duration of the war.  His TV debut came in 1948 on The Fashion Story, and he made his Broadway debut the following year in Inside U.S.A. His next play, Alive and Kicking, introduced him to producer and director Max Liebman, who would move over to television to produce and direct Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, Liebman hired Reiner as an actor on the program midway through its first season in 1950. During his tenure on the program, Reiner was nominated for an Emmy and often sat in on the writing team meetings. When the show was spun off into Caesar's Hour in 1954, Reiner actually got to contribute as a writer as well as a performer. Reiner won two Emmys and was nominated for a third while performing on Caesar's Hour. In 1959 he wrote a pilot titled Head of the Family in which he starred as television comedy writer Rob Petrie who tries to balance the demands of work and family while working for a boss, Alan Brady, who was based on Caesar. CBS declined to pick up the series until it was recast with the less New Yorkish and less Jewish Dick Van Dyke, then fresh off his Tony Award-winning performance in Bye Bye Birdie, as The Dick Van Dyke Show with Reiner writing, directing, and producing in the fall of 1961.

Reiner began appearing as the egotistical comedy show host Alan Brady in the late Season 1 episode "The Sleeping Brother" (March 28, 1962), though he had voiced Brady without appearing on screen in 4 previous episodes. He would continue appearing as Brady sporadically through the remainder of the series. But he landed a higher profile role when he teamed with Mel Brooks in the skit "The 2000 Year Old Man" on The Steve Allen Show, which proved so popular that it spawned a series of comedy albums, a 1975 animated TV special, and finally a Grammy Award for the last album in 1998. Reiner won four Emmys for writing on The Dick Van Dyke Show, and the program won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series in its final season. After the show ended, Reiner branched out into feature film directing, beginning with Enter Laughing, based on a stage play that was based on his own 1958 novel. He would direct Van Dyke in the unsuccessful feature The Comic in 1969 and direct the equally unsuccessful but cult favorite Where's Poppa? in 1970 before finally hitting it big in the 1970s with George Burns in Oh, God! in 1977 and Steve Martin in The Jerk in 1979. He would work with Martin again co-writing and directing Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, The Man With Two Brains, and All of Me. Nor were his acting days over: besides small cameos and bit parts in a number of features and TV programs, he played Mr. Angel in the 1976 TV series Good Heavens, played Marty Pepper 4 times on Two and a Half Men, and played Max on Hot in Cleveland between 2010-2014. He also appeared as Saul Bloom in the Steven Soderbergh features Ocean's 11, Ocean's Twelve, and Ocean's Thirteen. He has done voicework on animated series such as Father of the Pride and The Cleveland Show. He was elected to the Television Hall of Fame in 1999 and received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2000.

Notable Guest Stars

Season 1, Episode 15, "Where Did I Come From?": Herbie Faye  (shown on the left, played Cpl. Sam Fender on The Phil Silvers Show, Waluska on The New Phil Silvers Show, and Ben Goldman on Doc) plays office coffee man Willie. Jerry Hausner (see the biography section for the 1960 post on The Mr. Magoo Show) plays the Petrie's cleaning pickup man. Frank Adamo (Dick Van Dyke's personal assistant) plays the office dry cleaning pickup man.

Season 1, Episode 17, "Punch Thy Neighbor": Peter Leeds (Tenner Smith on Trackdown and George Colton on Pete and Gladys) plays police Officer Jack Bain. Jerry Hausner (see "Where Did I Come From?" above) plays milkman Vinnie. Frank Adamo (see "Where Did I Come From?" above) plays a singing messenger.

Season 1, Episode 19, "The Talented Neighborhood": Doris Singleton (Caroline Appleby on I Love Lucy, Susie on Angel, and Margaret Williams on My Three Sons) plays the Petries' neighbor Mrs. Kendall. Ken Lynch (see the biography section for the 1961 post on Checkmate) plays new neighbor George Mathias. Barry Livingston (shown on the right, see the biography section for the 1961 post on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet) plays his son Philip. Christian Van Dyke (son of Dick Van Dyke) plays auditioner Frankie. Barry Van Dyke (son of Dick Van Dyke, played Stuart Stafford on The Harvey Korman Show, Lt. Dillon on Galactica 1980, Russell Donovan on Gun Shy, St. John Hawke on Airwolf, Matt Burgess on The Van Dyke Show, and Steve Sloan on Diagnosis Murder) plays child violinist Florian.

Season 1, Episode 20, "A Word a Day": William Schallert (shown on the near left, see the biography section for the 1960 post on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis) plays neighbor Mr. Kirk. Leah Waggner (shown on the far left, wife of William Schallert) plays his wife.

Season 1, Episode 22, "Father of the Week": Isabel Randolph (Mrs. Boone on Meet Millie, Ruth Nestor on Our Miss Brooks, and later played Clara Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show) plays Ritchie's teacher Mrs. Givens. Pat Thompson (Pat on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet) plays airline pilot Mr. Harper.

Season 1, Episode 23, "The Twizzle": Jerry Lanning (son of singer Roberta Sherwood, played Nick D'Antoni on Search for Tomorrow, Justin Marshall on Texas, and Cain Harris on Guiding Light) plays singing sensation Randy Twizzle. Jack Albertson (starred in Days of Wine and Roses, Kissin' Cousins, The Flim-Flam Man, and Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and played Lt. Harry Evans on The Thin Man, Walter Burton on Room for One More, Lt. Cmdr. Virgil Stoner on Ensign O'Toole, Paul Fenton on Mister Ed, and Ed Brown on Chico and the Man) plays his agent Mr. Eisenbauer. Fred Blassie (shown on the right, legendary hated professional wrestler, appeared in My Breakfast With Blassie and When Nature Calls) plays himself.

Season 1, Episode 24, "One Angry Man": Sue Ane Langdon (shown on the left, played Kitty Marsh on Bachelor Father, Lillian Nuvo on Arnie, Rosie on Grandpa Goes to Washington, and Darlene on When the Whistle Blows) plays defendant Marla Hendrix. Dabbs Greer (see the biography section for the 1960 post on Gunsmoke) plays her lawyer Mr. Burger. Lee Begere (George on Hot L Baltimore and Joseph Anders on Dynasty) plays prosecutor Mr. Mason. Herbie Faye (see "Where Did I Come From?" above) plays a juror. Patsy Kelley (Brigid Murphy on The Cop and the Kid) plays another juror. Herb Vigran (Judge Brooker on Gunsmoke) plays a juror. Doodles Weaver (narrated Spike Jones' horse-racing songs and hosted A Day With Doodles) plays the court bailiff.

Season 1, Episode 25, "Where Have You Been, Fassbinder?": George N. Neise (Capitan Felipe Arrellanos on Zorro, Dr. Nat Wyndham on Wichita Town, and Colonel Thornton on McKeever & the Colonel) plays Sally's former high school classmate Leo Fassbinder. Barbara Perry (Thelma Brockwood on The Hathaways) plays Buddy's wife Pickles. Sally's cat Mr. Henderson is played by Orangey (appeared in The Diary of Anne Frank, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and The Comedy of Terrors and played Minerva on Our Miss Brooks and Rusty on The Beverly Hillbillies).

Season 1, Episode 26, "I Am My Brother's Keeper": Jerry Van Dyke (shown on the right, Dick Van Dyke's brother, appeared in The Courtship of Eddie's Father, Palm Springs Weekend, and McClintock! and played Dave Crabtree on My Mother the Car, Jerry Webster on Accidental Family, Jerry Brownell on Headmaster, Steven Winters on 13 Queens Boulevard, Luther Horatio Van Dam on Coach, Grandpa Jerry Beauchamp on Teen Angel, Grandpa Max on You Wish, Big Jimmy Hughes on Yes, Dear, and Tag Spence on The Middle) plays Rob's brother Stacey. 

Season 1, Episode 27, "The Sleeping Brother": Jerry Van Dyke (see "I Am My Brother's Keeper" above) returns as Rob's brother Stacey. 

Season 1, Episode 29, "Sol and the Sponsor": Marty Ingels (shown on the left, played Arch Fenster on I'm Dickens, He's Fenster, Norman Krump on The Phyllis Diller Show, and was the voice of Pac-Man on Pac-Man) plays Rob's old army buddy Sol Pomeroy. Roy Roberts (Capt. Simon P. Huxley on The Gale Storm Show, Admiral Rogers on McHale's Navy, John Cushing on The Beverly Hillbillies, Mr. Cheever on The Lucy Show, Frank Stephens on Bewitched, Norman Curtis on Petticoat Junction, and Mr. Botkin/Bodkin on Gunsmoke) plays show sponsor Mr. Bermont. Isabel Randolph (see "Father of the Week" above) plays his wife Martha.

Season 1, Episode 30, "The Return of Happy Spangler": Jay C. Flippen (shown on the right, appeared in Winchester '73, The Wild One, Oklahoma!, Kismet, The Killing, and Cat Ballou and played CPO Homer Nelson on Ensign O'Toole) plays former radio comedy writer Happy Spangler. 

Season 2, Episode 1, "Never Name a Duck": Jane Dulo (Liz Murray on Hey, Jeannie!, WAC Pvt. Mildred Lukens on The Phil Silvers Show, Molly Turner on McHale's Navy, Agent 99's mother on Get Smart, Nurse Murphy on Medical Center, and Grandma Mildred Kanisky on Gimme a Break!) plays dog owner Miss Singleton. Jerry Hausner (see "Where Did I Come From?" above) plays pet owner Mr. Fletcher. Frank Adamo (see "Where Did I Come From?" above) plays the vet's assistant.

Season 2, Episode 2, "The Two Faces of Rob": Herbie Faye (see "Where Did I Come From?" above) plays deli delivery man Willie. 

Season 2, Episode 3, "The Attempted Marriage": Sandy Kenyon (Des Smith on Crunch and Des, Shep Baggott on The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, and Reverend Kathrun on Knots Landing) plays the army doctor. Dabbs Greer (shown on the left, see "One Angry Man" above) plays army Chaplain Berger.

Season 2, Episode 5, "Hustling the Hustler": Phil Leeds (appeared in Rosemary's Baby, Don't Drink the Water, and Beaches and played The Kid on Double Rush, Uncle Mel on Everybody Loves Raymond, and Judge Dennis "Happy" Boyle on Ally McBeal) plays Buddy's brother Blackie. 

Season 2, Episode 6, "My Husband Is Not a Drunk": Charles Aidman (narrator on the 1985-87 version of The Twilight Zone) plays hypnotist Glen Jameson. Roy Roberts (see "Sol and the Sponsor" above) plays show sponsor Mr. Boland.

Season 2, Episode 7, "What's in a Middle Name?": J. Pat O'Malley (shown on the right, see the biographical section for the 1961 post on Frontier Circus) plays Rob's father Sam. Isabel Randolph (see "Father of the Week" above) plays Rob's mother Clara. Carl Benton Reid (starred in The Little Foxes, In a Lonely Place, Lorna Doone, and The Left Hand of God and played The Man on Burke's Law) plays Laura's father Mr. Meehan. Cyril Delevanti (Lucious Coin on Jefferson Drum) plays Rob's grandfather.

Season 2, Episode 8, "Like a Sister": Vic Damone (popular singer once married to Diahann Carroll, starred in Rich, Young and Pretty, Hit the Deck, and Hell to Eternity) plays singer Ric Vallone. 

Season 2, Episode 10, "The Secret Life of Buddy and Sally": Phil Arnold (vaudeville actor , appeared in Little Miss Broadway, Deadline, G.I. Jane, The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, and Robin and the 7 Hoods and played Dr. Zerbo on Cowboy G-Men) plays a resort waiter.

Season 2, Episode 11, "A Bird in the Head Hurts": Cliff Norton (shown on the left, appeared in McHale's Navy Joins the Air Force, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, and The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! and played Boss on It's About Time and Isaac Meyer on General Hospital) plays a game warden.

Season 2, Episode 12, "Gesundheit, Darling": Sandy Kenyon (see "The Attempted Marriage" above) plays Rob's doctor.

Season 2, Episode 14, "Somebody Has to Play Cleopatra": Eleanor Audley (Mother Eunice Douglas on Green Acres and Mrs. Vincent on My Three Sons) plays neighborhood association chairwoman Mrs. Billings. Bob Crane (shown on the right, played Dr. Dave Kelsey on The Donna Reed Show, Col. Robert E. Hogan on Hogan's Heroes, and Bob Wilcox on The Bob Crane Show) plays neighbor Harry Rogers. Shirley Mitchell (Yvonne Sharp on Sixpenny Corner, Kitty Devereaux on Bachelor Father, Janet Colton on Pete and Gladys, Marge on Please Don't Eat the Daisies, and Clara Appleby on The Red Skelton Hour) plays Harry's wife Shirley.

The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961)

Today The Dick Van Dyke Show is considered one of the best situation comedies in television history, but it had a shaky beginning, required many risks in getting off the ground, and ultimately had a premise that undermined the whole idea of television entertainment--that everyday situations are more interesting than what you see on TV. Carl Reiner, the show's creator, producer, and, in its early days chief writer, originally conceived the show as a slightly fictionalized version of his own experience in the television industry and at home. And as the show evolved he encouraged the actors and writers to bring situations in their personal lives into writing sessions as possible material for scripts. But despite the fact that the main characters on The Dick Van Dyke Show are television writers, the focus is not on the fruit of their labors; it's on their personal lives. In fact, during the show's first 14 episodes that aired in the year 1961, we never see a glimpse of the show they write for, nor do we ever see the show's star, Alan Brady. The closest we get is in the episode "Jealousy!" (November 7, 1961) when Rob Petrie has to help that week's guest, movie star Valerie Blake, rehearse a scene she will be doing with Brady, and even that scene is shown in the broadest, vaguest way before Rob's wife Laura interrupts the proceedings by bursting into Blake's hotel room expecting to find her husband and the movie star having an affair. The scenes we see of Rob and fellow writers Sally Rogers and Buddy Sorrell at work in their studio office most often show them sitting around talking about other things or rejecting ideas that never make it into their show. In other words, the last thing Reiner wanted his viewers to see was what made it onto television. This concept took TV's critique of itself to a level beyond The Jack Benny Program, which depicted its star as a self-absorbed cheapskate but allowed us to see him bumble through his own program. 

But The Dick Van Dyke Show, despite its later success, would never have happened had not Reiner's agent and wife prodded him. As reported by Vince Waldron in The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book, Reiner began his career as an actor, first on the stage and then as a supporting actor on Your Show of Shows and subsequent Sid Caesar programs. Not completely satisfied with his role as a second-tier star, Reiner began hanging out with the show's writers, which included such legends as Mel Brooks and Neil Simon, contributing his own ideas to each week's script, though he never received credit because of the writers' protectiveness of their own turf and the fact that he was already being credited for his acting contributions. Finding that he wanted a larger voice, he went off on his own to write story ideas, character vignettes, and eventually a semi-autobiographical novel Enter Laughing in 1957, which depicted his early beginnings in show business. In 1958 Reiner intended to write another novel covering his more recent experiences, but his agent Harry Kalcheim suggested that there was more opportunity starring in a TV situation comedy than in writing novels. So Kalcheim began sending him show treatments for his consideration, but Reiner found them awful. When he showed them to his wife she concurred and told him he could write a better series himself. And so at the family's summer home on Fire Island in the summer of 1958 he pounded out 13 scripts for a series titled Head of the Family. Kalcheim then connected him with actor Peter Lawford, who had access to the Kennedy family fortune since he was then married to Patricia Kennedy, to finance the filming of a pilot with Reiner in the lead role of Rob Petrie. But the pilot failed to find a network willing to make it into a series, and Reiner figured his chance at his own sit-com was gone, so he returned to acting as a supporting player on The Dinah Shore Show and in feature films, as well as writing the script for the feature film The Thrill of It All.

However, Kalcheim was not ready to throw in the towel. He kept urging Reiner to retool the series but to no avail. So he set up a meeting between Reiner and producer Sheldon E. Leonard, then producing The Danny Thomas Show and in the process of launching The Andy Griffith Show, to give him advice. Only after Leonard viewed the pilot for Head of the Family and looked through Reiner's 13 scripts, he said he would be interested in developing the series himself, provided that Reiner agreed to recast the show without him in the lead. He was able to persuade Reiner that he was a better producer, even though he had never produced a television show, than he was an actor by pointing to his detailed instructions in his scripts about how each scene was to be arranged, filmed, and acted. And he sealed the deal by showing Reiner how he, a one-time actor who most notably played the bartender Nick in It's a Wonderful Life, had became a very rich man as a producer.

Once Leonard got Reiner's agreement on how the series would be developed, he set out to find a cast that would make The Dick Van Dyke Show a hit. Leonard started by securing Dick Van Dyke, who was then starring in the Broadway production of Bye Bye Birdie, even though Van Dyke was little known outside theater circles. He had notched a few TV appearances at that point but was more noted for having been a part of two failed TV pilots. Mary Tyler Moore was recommended by Leonard client Danny Thomas, for whom Moore had auditioned and been turned down for a regular role on his show. Leonard selected Rose Marie, with whom he had co-starred on radio, to play man-chasing writer Sally Rogers, and she in turn recommended her long-time friend Morey Amsterdam to play Buddy Sorrell, even though the part was initially meant for a young writer just starting out in the business as it was cast in the Head of the Family pilot. Jerry Paris, who would be cast as Petrie neighbor Jerry Helper, was another old friend of Leonard, and Paris' on-screen wife Ann Morgan Guilbert was recommended to him by an old friend who happened to be her husband, George Eckstein. Even with a talented cast assembled, the show was not a guaranteed success and struggled early on in the ratings. As the show was being launched, one headline in the press asked the question, "What's a Dick Van Dyke?"

Knowing that he was at a huge disadvantage with such an unknown star, Reiner, as Waldron again discusses in his book, selected the episode "The Sick Boy and the Sitter" (October 3, 1961) as the pilot because it was the script that best introduced the characters. It also provided a great introduction to the talents of its actors in the party scene at Alan Brady's house where Rob, Sally, and Buddy are asked to entertain the guests while the host is busy with a telephone call in another room. Van Dyke reprises a sketch he used to do in his stand-up act depicting a drunk man returning home late one night trying not to let his wife know he has been drinking. Rose Marie gets to perform a song in her old vaudeville style, and Morey Amsterdam displays his talents as The Human Joke Machine by inventing jokes on the spot based on suggested topics from the guests. This scheme is used again in the episode "To Tell or Not to Tell" (November 14, 1961) when Rob and Laura are hosting a party and Rob performs a few more of his impressions and Mary Tyler Moore is given the chance to show off her background in dance, which leads to Laura being offered a regular spot as a dancer on The Alan Brady Show. "Oh How We Met the Night We Danced" (October 31, 1961) is yet another episode that uses this device, this time in a flashback sequence from when Rob and Laura met during World War II and ended up dancing a routine together in a show for the troops at Rob's army base. Besides showing off the talents of the cast, these episodes are also a chance for Reiner to revisit his variety show days by interjecting comedy and song and dance routines that often are only tangentially related to story development.

As for the show's actual story line, they typically involve the usual subjects for comic payoff--miscommunication and its off-shoots jealousy and forgetfulness. In "Empress Carlotta's Necklace" (December 12, 1961) Rob fails to see that Laura does not like a gaudy knockoff necklace he bought for her and she doesn't have the heart to tell him the truth.  In "My Blonde-Haired Brunette" (October 10, 1961) Laura misinterprets Rob's slovenly dress and ho-hum response to their settled household routine to mean that he has lost interest in her, prompting her, at neighbor Millie's suggestion, to dye her hair. And in "Sally Is a Girl" (December 19, 1961) Laura's request for Rob to treat Sally like a lady rather than one of the guys causes Buddy and producer Mel Cooley to think that Rob and Sally are having an affair. Jealousy rears its ugly and comic head both in both the aforementioned episode "Jealousy!" and in "The Meerschatz Pipe" (November 28, 1961) in which Buddy goads Rob into thinking that he is Alan Brady's favorite writer because of a pipe he claims Brady gave him when in fact it is a cheap replica that can be found anywhere. Rob's faulty memory is the source of hilarity in both "Harrison B. Harding of Camp Crowder, Mo." (November 6, 1961) when Rob doesn't remember an old army buddy who comes to visit and in "Forty-Four Tickets" (December 5, 1961) when he forgets to request enough tickets to the Brady show for the members of Ritchie's school PTA. But while these storylines may sound similar to scores of other less successful situation comedies, when executed by the talented cast assembled by Sheldon Leonard and with Carl Reiner's keen eye for comic detail, they are pure TV magic that even real life can't measure up to.

The theme music and individual scores for The Dick Van Dyke Show were composed by longtime Sheldon Leonard house composer Earle Hagen, who was profiled in the 1960 post for The Barbara Stanwyck Show. Oddly, the theme for the show remembered by everyone was not the one used in the series' first 14 episodes. The original theme used the same melodic sequence but with numerous time-signature breaks with bongos that many years later Hagen says he hated and couldn't even remember composing.

The complete series has been released on DVD and Blu-ray by Image Entertainment.

The Actors

Dick Van Dyke

Richard Wayne Van Dyke was born in West Plains, Missouri and grew up in Danville, Illinois, the son of a salesman who also played minor league baseball and a stenographer with his family roots going back to an original passenger who came to America on the Mayflower. In Danville Van Dyke was classmates with Donald O'Connor and Bobby Short and was good friends with a cousin of Gene Hackman. He originally planned to be a Presbyterian minister but a high school drama class convinced him of his true calling, though he eventually became a church elder and taught Sunday school after launching his entertainment career. His younger brother Jerry also became a successful actor on TV series such as My Mother the Car and Coach. He became a radio announcer in Danville at age 16 and after joining the Air Force during World War II served as a radio announcer and then as an entertainer for the troops stateside. After the war he formed a mime duo called the Merry Mutes with Danville friend Phil Erickson, which West Coast nightclubs before relocating to Atlanta, where they appeared on local TV. He married first wife Marjory Willett in Los Angeles in 1948 on a radio show called Bride and Groom because it paid for their wedding and honeymoon. After 7 years Van Dyke broke up the group and moved to New Orleans where he was a TV weatherman, performed his own comedy, and hosted a comedy show. He made his first network TV appearance in 1954 on the Dennis James program Chance of a Lifetime. The next year a friend from the military, Byron Paul, offered him a 7-year contract with CBS. He made a couple of appearances on The Phil Silvers Show in the late 1950's as well as The United States Steel Hour and a couple of pilots that were not picked up--a variety show called The Dick Van Dyke Show and a situation comedy titled Poor Richard, which eventually aired on the anthology series of failed pilots New Comedy Showcase under the title The Trouble With Richard. But he found more success on the stage, starring in 1959's The Girls Against the Boys and then being selected to play the lead of Albert Peterson in Bye Bye Birdie by famed choreographer Gower Champion even though he had no dance training. It was while performing Bye Bye Birdie, for which he won a Tony in 1961, that he was spotted by Sheldon Leonard, who convinced Carl Reiner that he would be perfect for the lead in their new situation comedy, eventually named The Dick Van Dyke Show.

While still working on The Dick Van Dyke Show Van Dyke was cast in the Disney musical Mary Poppins because Walt Disney approved of comments he made in the press about the need for wholesome entertainment. He has been lambasted for years about his fake Cockney accent in the film, though he explains that his dialect coach was Irish and therefore no better at the accent than he was. But besides the film's immense popularity, he and co-star Julie Andrews won Grammy Awards for the soundtrack album. Other films he starred in after The Dick Van Dyke Show ended its run proved less successful with the exception of another Disney musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. In 1971 he and Reiner teamed up again to create The New Dick Van Dyke Show in which he played a TV talk show host, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe, but he canceled the show after 3 seasons when it moved to Hollywood from Phoenix, where he then lived. In 1974 he was nominated for an Emmy for the TV movie The Morning After in which he played an alcoholic, which Van Dyke later admitted that he had was, too, though he overcame the addiction in the 1980s. In 1976 he hosted a comedy variety show called Van Dyke and Company, which also included Andy Kaufman and Super Dave Osborne, but it was canceled after 3 months and later won an Emmy. In 1977 he became a regular cast member on The Carol Burnett Show's final season. Van Dyke spent the rest of the 1970s and most of the 1980s appearing in TV movies with an occasional TV series guest spot or feature film. In 1988 he starred in The Van Dyke Show playing a retired Broadway performer living with his son, who was played by Van Dyke's real-life son Barry. The show lasted only 10 episodes before being canceled. But an appearance as the character Dr. Mark Sloan on a 1991 episode of Jake and the Fatman eventually led to his next successful series, Diagnosis Murder, which began as a series of TV movies before being made into a regular series that aired from 1993-2002.An attempt at a Dick Van Dyke Show  reunion called The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited in 2004 was not well-received. But Van Dyke has continued to remain active up to the present, first in a series of Murder 101 TV movies and more recently in the Ben Stiller feature films Night at the Museum. He divorced his wife of over 30 years in 1984, then lived with an unmarried partner Michelle Triola for another 30 years until her death in 2009. In 2012 he married again to 40-year-old Arlene Silver, whom he met while attending the SAG awards.

Mary Tyler Moore

Born in Brooklyn, the daughter of a clerk and an alcoholic mother, Moore's family moved to California when she was 8 years old. Her great-grandfather had been a lieutenant for the North in the Civil War who had loaned his house to Gen. Stonewall Jackson to use as his headquarters, and Moore had the house restored in honor of her father, a Civil War enthusiast. She started out as a dancer and her first prominent job was playing Happy Hotpoint, the Hotpoint Appliance elf in danced on commercials that ran during The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, but when she married Richard Carleton Meeker at age 18 and became pregnant with her only child, Richie, born the following year, she lost the job when her pregnancy became noticeable. She next became an album cover model before turning to acting and began getting a few minor roles in the late 1950s. She auditioned for but was turned down to play Danny Thomas' daughter because he felt no one would believe she was related to him given the difference in their nose sizes. Her first regular role was as Richard Diamond's secretary Sam on Richard Diamond, Private Detective, though only her legs ever appeared on camera. Besides 7 appearances on this show, she appeared on other programs 8 times in 1959 and 10 times in 1960 on shows such as 77 Sunset Strip, Riverboat, Bachelor Father, and Hawaiian Eye. She had a few more such appearances in 1961 and 1962 before landing the role of Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show, thanks to a recommendation from one executive producer, Danny Thomas (who remembered her from her audition for his show), to the other, Sheldon Leonard.

After the show's 5-year run, she turned her attention to feature films, having appeared only in 1961's X-15 at that point. She starred alongside Julie Andrews in Thoroughly Modern Millie, opposite George Peppard in What's So Bad About Feeling Good? and as a nun/Elvis Presley love interest in the widely panned Change of Habit. The reaction to this last picture was so negative that she didn't appear in another feature film (other than TV movies) for another 11 years. In the meantime, she divorced her first husband and married TV executive Grant Tinker in 1961. In 1970 the couple formed MTM Enterprises and launched The Mary Tyler Moore Show, the first program centered around a successful single woman with her own career. She won four Emmys and a Golden Globe for her work on the show, and the show produced three spinoffs--Rhoda, Phyllis, and Lou Grant. But when ratings started to slip in its seventh season, it was canceled. Though MTM Enterprises continued to produce successful programs, such as The Bob Newhart Show, WKRP in Cincinnati, St. Elsewhere, and Hill Street Blues, Moore never found the same success in her future projects. Her next two efforts were musical/variety programs--Mary in 1978, which included cast members Michael Keaton and David Letterman amongst others, and The Mary Tyler Moore Hour in 1979, which also included Keaton. In 1980 she returned to feature films and received an Oscar nomination for playing Beth in Ordinary People. That same year she received a Tony Award for her performance in the Broadway production of Whose Life Is It Anyway? But she only appeared in two more feature films and two TV movies before returning to her own TV series, this time as Mary Brenner in Mary, which ran for only 13 episodes in 1985-86 after Moore asked that it be canceled when she didn't like the direction it was heading. Two years later she was back as the title character in Annie McGuire, but this show lasted only 10 episodes. After a few more TV movies, including 1993's Stolen Babies for which she won an Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Mini-Series or Special, she headlines New York News as newspaper editor Louise Felcott, but again only 13 episodes were produced before cancellation. Since then, she has remained active doing more TV movies, such as The Gin Game with Dick Van Dyke in 2003, feature films, such as Flirting With Disaster (1996), Keys to Tulsa (1997), and Cheats (2002), and a few limited recurring TV parts on The Naked Truth (1997), That 70's Show (206), and Hot in Cleveland (2011 & 2013). She reportedly will appear in the feature Big Finish along with elder celebrities Bob Newhart, Debbie Reynolds, and Jerry Lewis, though there have been recent reports of her failing eyesight as a result of her Type 1 diabetes, diagnosed in 1970 when she was 33 years old and about which she has written extensively in her second autobiography Growing Up Again: Life, Loves, and Oh Yeah, Diabetes. She is the International Chairman of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and has done work for Farm Sanctuary and with Bernadette Peters has helped make New York a no-kill city. In 1980 her son Richie was killed when he shot himself with his own sawed-off shotgun, a gun that was later taken off the market for having a hair-trigger. She divorced Grant Tinker in 1981 and since 1983 has been married to Dr. Richard Levine. The couple currently have residences in upstate New York and Manhattan.

Rose Marie

Rose Marie Mazetta was born in New York City, the daughter of Broadway and vaudeville performer Frank Mazetta, who performed under the name Frank Curley. Blessed with a remarkably adult-sounding singing voice, her entertainment career started at age 3 when she was discovered by a talent scout singing on the beach in Atlantic City. In 1927 she appeared in a Vitaphone musical short that was run before the feature film The Jazz Singer. When she approached Al Jolson at the premiere and complimented his performance, he reportedly replied, "Get away, you little brat!" At age 5 she was given her own radio show on NBC radio and had her first credited film appearance in the short Baby Rose Marie, the Child Wonder. She continued making musical shorts into the 1930s and appeared in the feature film International House with W.C Fields in 1933. She appeared in vaudeville alongside stars such as Dick Powell, Rudy Vallee, and Jimmy Durante and met her future Dick Van Dyke Show co-star Morey Amsterdam when she was 9 years old. She was invited to appear at the White House by request of Presidents Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt. She also appeared on at least 17 records between 1930 and 1938. As a teenager, she dropped the "Baby" from her stage name and began performing at top night clubs along the east coast as well as being one of the performers on the bill the night that mobster Bugsy Siegel opened the first luxury hotel/casino in Las Vegas, the Flamingo. In her autobiography Hold the Roses, she admitted that during her career she had been helped by mobsters such as Siegel and Al Capone, who called her "The Kid" and protected her. She retired from show business for a time during her teens but then staged a comeback in the 1940s adding Broadway to her repertoire in shows such as Spring in Brazil with Milton Berle, Lunatics and Lovers with Zero Mostel, and Top Banana with Phil Silvers, with whom she also appeared in the film adaptation in 1954. Around this time she also had a supporting role on the radio program The Phil Harris - Alice Faye Show, playing the sister of Sheldon E. Leonard, who would later hire her to play Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show. In the mid-1950s she began also appearing in television guest spots on shows such as The Red Skelton Hour, Gunsmoke, and M Squad. In 1959 she had her first recurring role as Martha Randolph on The Bob Cummings Show and the following year was cast as Bertha on My Sister Eileen, which ran during the 1960-61 season.

Being cast as the aging man-hunter Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show was a bit ironic for Marie because she had married trumpeter Bobby Guy, then with Kay Kyser's orchestra, in 1946. When Guy, who had become the lead trumpeter in The Tonight Show orchestra, died from a blood infection in 1964, Marie planned to leave The Dick Van Dyke Show, believing that she had lost half her life, but was talked out of it by director John Rich and stayed with the program till it ended in 1966. In 1965 she became a regular on the popular game show Hollywood Squares, sitting in a square next to Morey Amsterdam, and stayed with the program during its many incarnations. She also appeared on other celebrity-themed game shows such as Password and I've Got a Secret. Besides her game show appearances, she had occasional guest spots in the late 1960s on shows such as The Monkees, The Virginian, and My Three Sons before landing her next regular role plays Doris Day's friend and work colleague Myrna Gibbons on The Doris Day Show from 1969-71. In 1972 she headlined her own short-lived TV series Honeymoon Suite, which also included Richard Deacon as a hotel manager and Morey Amsterdam. In 1975 she had a recurring role as Hilda on S.W.A.T. She continued to make occasional TV guest appearances and get feature film roles through the 1970s and 1980s, including 4 appearances on The Love Boat, and toured the country as part of the revue 4 Girls 4 with Rosemary Clooney, Helen O'Connell, and Margaret Whiting from 1977-81. Her next recurring role was playing Frank Fontana's mother Rose on Murphy Brown in 1990-91. In 1994 she had her last regular TV role playing Mitzi Balzer on Hardball but has continued making appearances up to the present, including the 2004 Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited reunion. She remains active on Facebook and still  lives in the same house she shared with her late husband in San Fernando Valley, California.

Morey Amsterdam

Moritz Amsterdam was born in Chicago and by age 14 was performing in vaudeville as the straight man for his older brother's jokes and playing the cello. Two years later he was working in a speakeasy run by Al  Capone when he got caught in the middle of a shoot-out, which convinced him to get out and move to California. There he became a joke writer for performers such as Fanny Brice, Jimmy Durante, and Will Rogers, earning the nickname "The Human Joke Machine," which he incorporated into his own act by offering to tell jokes by request on any subject. This ability was worked into the debut episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show years later. He then began performing on radio in the 1930s, becoming a regular on The Al Pearce Show in 1937, and wrote songs such as "Why, Oh Why Did I Ever Leave Wyoming?" and screenplay dialogue for the East Side Kids. By the late 1940s he was all over radio on programs such as Stop Me If You've Heard This One and his own The Morey Amsterdam Show, which made the transition to TV in 1949. In 1950 he was one of two hosts when NBC launched Broadway Open House, a forerunner to The Tonight Show, but he left the show not long after its debut. His first TV acting role was in 1952 on Not for Publication, but steady work did not materialize until 5 years later when he logged appearances on How to Marry a Millionaire, December Bride, and The Gale Storm Show. In 1958 he appeared in the feature film Machine-Gun Kelly and two years later in Murder, Inc., in between he found a few more TV appearances until Rose Marie recommended him for the part of Buddy Sorrell on The Dick Van Dyke Show, a part originally intended for a much younger actor, as on the precursor pilot Head of the Family.

Like Rose Marie, he became a regular on Hollywood Squares beginning in 1965 and continued to get occasional parts in feature films and TV series for the rest of his career, perhaps most notably as the character Cappy in two mid-1960s beach-themed films Beach Party and Muscle Beach Party. In 1966 he co-wrote, co-produced, and starred in the feature Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title, which also included Rose Marie and Richard Deacon in the cast. In the 1990s he had a regular role on the soap opera The Young and the Restless, and his last TV appearance came in 1996 with Rose Marie on an episode of Caroline in the City. He died of a heart attack at the age of 87 on October 28, 1996.

Richard Deacon

Born in Philadelphia, Deacon was stricken with polio at age 11 and took dancing lessons to strengthen his legs. He studied drama at Ithaca College for two years before becoming the actor in residence at Bennington College for a semester. He began his acting career on the stage, where he was reportedly advised by Helen Hayes to give up the idea of being a leading man, given his looks and personality, and strive for a career as a character actor, which served him well for over 3 decades. His first appearance on film was an uncredited part in the features Invaders From Mars in 1953. He also had uncredited appearances in Them!, The Blackboard Jungle, This Island Earth, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Carousel.  In 1954 he also started getting bit parts on TV shows such as Public Defender, The Man Behind the Badge, and The Life of Riley. His first shot at a recurring role was playing Sherman Hall on The Charles Farrell Show in 1956, leading to a steady stream such roles for the next 15 years. In 1957 he began playing Roger Finley on Date With the Angels, and the next year saw him playing Uncle Archie on Walt Disney Presents: Annette.  In 1957 he began appearing on Leave It to Beaver as Fred Rutherford, father to Lumpy and business colleague of Ward Cleaver, a role he continued to play throughout the series' duration even after he was cast as Mel Cooley on The Dick Van Dyke Show. He also continued to make numerous appearances on other shows during this time including The Danny Thomas Show, The Jack Benny Program, The Donna Reed Show, The Red Skelton Hour, and Mister Ed. He also over this period appeared in feature films running the gamut from Hitchcock's The Birds to Jerry Lewis' The Patsy. 

After The Dick Van Dyke Show terminated, he spent a season playing the character Baldwin on The Phyllis Diller Show, then replaced Roger C. Carmel as Kaye Ballard's husband in the second season of The Mothers-in-Law. He would star opposite Diller again on Broadway during the 1969-70 season production of Hello, Dolly! In 1970 he appeared as Dr. Klingner in 4 episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies and nearly a decade later played Sheriff Masters in 4 episodes of B.J. and the Bear and 1 episode of The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo. He had plenty of other one-off guest TV guest spots in between these and more work in feature films up until his death from heart failure at the age of 63 on August 8, 1984. Besides being a prolific actor, Deacon was an accomplished cook who published several cookbooks. The most successful of them, selling over 1.7 million copies, was connected to a Canadian TV program he hosted in the 1970s and '80s on cooking with a microwave.

Larry Mathews

Larry Mazzeo was born in Burbank, California to a large Italian-American family. When he auditioned for the role of Richie Petrie, he had never done any professional acting and had only been enrolled in a children's drama workshop a few months earlier where he was noticed by a talent agent who recommended him to Carl Reiner. Reiner wanted the actor playing Ritchie to appear natural, so he explicitly stated that he wanted someone who hadn't done anything. The audition required Mathews to act sick, as he would have to in the pilot episode, and based on that audition, Reiner knew he would be perfect for the part. Unlike many other child actors of the time, Mathews said his experience on The Dick Van Dyke Show was a positive one. He grew to be great friends with Morey Amsterdam and also showed an interest in the production side of the business, watching editor Bud Molin at work and asking him questions and getting director John Rich to let him see how things look from behind the camera. During the show's 5-year run, he appeared on only one other program, a 1962 episode of Dick Powell Theater.

When The Dick Van Dyke Show ended in 1966, Mathews wanted just to go to school like a regular kid, though he later said that at first the transition was a bit difficult because he was not used to being around other children. He then attended UCLA as a theater major and was involved in school theater productions, but on the few occasions where he went to auditions for professional acting parts, he did not find the going easy, so he gradually moved into the productions side of the business. He began at the bottom with Danny Thomas Productions, working as an errand boy and gofer and worked his way up to production and post-production sales, which he has done since 1983. He participated in the 2004 reunion show The Dick Van Dyke Show revisited and surprised Reiner with the fact that he really hadn't done any acting since 1966 except for a 1993 TV movie titled Chairman's Choice. In 2011 he appeared in a 25-minute short titled A Day in the Life of Plain Jen but otherwise continues to work in sales for CCI Digital in Burbank. He has been married to his wife Jennifer since 1987.

Ann Morgan Guilbert

Guilbert was born in Minneapolis, but her family moved frequently because her father was a physician working for the VA who specialized in tuberculosis patients and was shipped around the country wherever he was needed. She attended Stanford University, originally intending to study nursing, but after flunking chemistry, she turned her attention to the theater. At Stanford she also met and married her first husband George Eckstein, and the couple moved to Los Angeles while Eckstein attended law school. Eckstein was friends from his high school days with Jerry Paris, and when Paris was cast to play Jerry Helper on The Dick Van Dyke Show, Eckstein nudged Paris to get Guilbert an audition. Carl Reiner was already aware of Guilbert's comic abilities, having seen her performing in the Billy Barnes Revue, so after a short audition with Paris, she was given the part, even though at the time Guilbert had only a single television credit on an April 1961 episode of My Three Sons. 

Guilbert continued playing Minnie Helper through the series' five-year run, but the same year the show ended she also divorced Eckstein. Though she found occasional TV appearances and a rare feature film role through the latter 1960s, she concentrated more on theatre roles, first around the Los Angeles area and later in Denver. She remarried to actor Guy Raymond, who joined her on stage in some of the Denver productions. In 1971 she landed her second recurring TV role as Nora on The New Andy Griffith Show, but the series lasted only 10 episodes. TV and film work took a back seat through most of the 1970s and '80s, though she did appear on 5 episodes of Emergency!, but in the 1990s she began to get more frequent TV roles, first as Theresa Fanelli on The Fanelli Boys, then as Myriam Wambaugh on Picket Fences, and most notably as Fran Drescher's grandmother Yetta Rosenberg in 56 episodes of The Nanny. More recently she has appeared on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, and Modern Family. She had a scene-stealing role as Andra in the 2010 independent feature Please Give, and in 2013-14 she appeared as Birdy Lamb in 11 episodes of Getting On. Guilbert still lives in Los Angeles to be near her two daughters, actress Hallie Todd (who played Hillary Duff's mother on Lizzie McGuire) and acting teacher Nora Eckstein, as well as her two grand-daughters.

Jerry Paris

See the biography section for the 1960 post on The Untouchables.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notable Guest Stars

Season 1, Episode 1, "The Sick Boy and the Baby Sitter": Stacy Keach, Sr.  (Carlson on Get Smart) plays the Petrie's physician Dr. Miller. Eleanor Audley (Mother Eunice Douglas on Green Acres and Mrs. Vincent on My Three Sons) plays a guest at Alan Brady's party.

Season 1, Episode 2, "My Blonde-Haired Brunette": Benny Rubin (appeared in Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Citizen Kane, and The Errand Boy, provided the voices for Pruneface, Joe Jitsu, and Sketch Paree on The Dick Tracy Show, and appeared in various roles in 53 episodes of The Jack Benny Program) plays a druggist.

Season 1, Episode 3, "Sally and the Lab Technician": Jamie Farr (shown on the left, played Maxwell Klinger on M*A*S*H and After MASH) plays the Snappy Service delivery boy.

Season 1, Episode 4, "Washington Versus the Bunny": Jesse White (appeared in Harvey, Bedtime for Bonzo, Million Dollar Mermaid, The Bad Seed, and The Reluctant Astronaut and played Mickey "Cagey" Calhoun on Private Secretary, Jesse Leeds on Make Room for Daddy, and Oscar Pudney on The Ann Sothern Show) plays an airline passenger named Bill. Jamie Farr (see "Sally and the Lab Technician" above) returns as the Speedy Service delivery boy.

Season 1, Episode 5, "Oh How We Met the Night We Danced": Marty Ingels (shown on the right, played Arch Fenster on I'm Dickens, He's Fenster and Norman Krump on The Phyllis Diller Show) plays Rob's army stage manager Sol Pomeroy. Nancy Ames (folk singer who was the That Was the Week That Was girl and co-wrote the theme song for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour) plays Laura's dancer colleague Marcia Rochelle.

Season 1, Episode 6, "Harrison B. Harding of Camp Crowder, Mo.": Allan Melvin (shown on the left, played Cpl. Steve Henshaw on The Phil Silvers Show, Sgt. Snorkle on Beetle Bailey, Sgt. Charley Hacker on Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., Sam Franklin on The Brady Bunch, and Barney Hefner on All in the Family and Archie Bunker's Place and was the voice of Magilla Gorilla on Magilla Gorilla, Drooper on The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, and Thun and King Vultan on Flash Gordon) plays Rob's old army buddy Harrison B. Harding. Peter Leeds (Tenner Smith on Trackdown) plays a policeman.

Season 1, Episode 7, "Jealousy!": Joan Staley (shown on the right, Playboy Playmate who appeared in Cape Fear, Roustabout, Valley of the Dragons, Johnny Cool, and The Ghost and Mr. Chicken and played Hannah on 77 Sunset Strip and Roberta Love on Broadside) plays movie star Valerie Blake.

Season 1, Episode 8, "To Tell or Not to Tell": Jamie Farr (see "Sally and the Lab Technician" above) returns as the Speedy Service delivery boy.

Season 1, Episode 11, "Forty-Four Tickets": Eleanor Audley (see "The Sick Boy and the Baby Sitter" above) plays PTA chairwoman Mrs. Billings. Joe Devlin (Sam Catchem on Dick Tracy) plays a ticket scalper. Paul Bryar (Sheriff Harve Anders on The Long, Hot Summer) plays a policeman.

Season 1, Episode 12, "Empress Carlotta's Necklace": Gavin MacLeod (shown on the left, starred in Operation Petticoat, The Sand Pebbles, and Kelly's Heroes and played Joseph Haines on McHale's Navy, Murray Slaughter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda, and Capt. Merrill Stubing on The Love Boat) plays Mel's cousin Maxwell Cooley. Carol Veazie (starred in The Catered Affair, Designing Woman, and Baby the Rain Must Fall and played Mrs. Maude Endles on Norby) plays Rob's mother Clara. Will Wright (Ben Weaver on The Andy Griffith Show and Mr. Merrivale on Dennis the Menace) plays Rob's father Sam.

Season 1, Episode 14, "Buddy, Can You Spare a Job?": Lennie Weinrib (the voice of H.R. Pufinstuf, Seymour Spider, and Ludicrous Lion on H.R. Pufinstuf, voice of Sam Curvy on Doctor Doolittle, and voice of Moonrock on The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show) plays nightclub comic Jackie Brewster.