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Overview
In the history of television, there are very few shows that can truly be called "classics." The Dick Van Dyke Show is one of those few--and for the first time, authors Weissman and Sanders have succeed in capturing the unique flavor of this very appealing, warm comedy that went straight to the heart of the American public.
An affectionate and nostalgic portrait of a show more than twenty years old that is still in reruns, The Dick Van Dyke Show tells the inside story of the situational comedy whose phenomenal success was a surprise even to its creators.
Tracing its evolution from the pilot, Head of the Family starring Carl Reiner, through the ordeal of finding the right actor to play the clumsy but talented TV writer Rob Petrie, gathering the supporting cast that included Rose Marie and Morey Amsterdam, whose presence added a sharp-edged humor to the series, to the discovery of the largely unknown Mary Tyler Moore to play the Capri pants-clad Laura Petrie, The Dick Van Dyke Show plots the day-to-day course of getting and keeping the show on the air.
Written with the complete cooperation of every member of the cast, this book takes us through the weekly process of consistently fine writing, rehearsing, improvising, and polishing the show in which the entire company participated. From start to finish, the cast was a tight group whose personal warmth, vitality, and camaraderie created a unique chemistry that shone through every episode.
Containing over 100 photos, synopses of all 158 episodes and the complete script of one of them, lists of all the awards garnered by the show and its cast during its five-year run, and an update on where everyone is today, The Dick Van Dyke Show is a loving and carefully researched tribute to one of the most beloved comedy series of all time.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466885011 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 11/11/2014 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 146 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
About the Author
Ginny Weissman was the editor of the Chicago Tribune TV magazine for six years, where she interviewed hundreds of celebrities for that and other publications. A native of Chicago, she currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Coyne Steven Sanders ia freelance photographer who lives in Los Angeles, where he is head writer for Capricorn entertainment.
Ginny Weissman was the editor of the Chicago Tribune TV magazine for six years, where she interviewed hundreds of celebrities for that and other publications. A native of Chicago, she currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She is the author of The Dick Van Dyke Show: Anatomy of a Classic.
Read an Excerpt
The Dick Van Dyke Show
Anatomy of a Classic
By Ginny Weissman, Coyne Steven Sanders
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 1983 Ginny Weissman and Coyne Steven SandersAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-8501-1
CHAPTER 1
Anatomy of a Classic
"I remember exactly where it happened—it was on 96th Street by the East River in New York. I was driving my car downtown from New Rochelle, wondering what ground do I stand on that no one else stands on? I thought, I am an actor and writer who worked on the Sid Caesar shows. That's a different milieu: the home life of a television show writer." —Carl Reiner
It was 1959. Carl Reiner had just ended an illustrious nine-year association with Sid Ceasar on Your Show of Shows, Caesar's Hour, and Sid Caesar Invites You. As resident member of a sterling company that included Imogene Coca, Howard Morris, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart, Joe Stein, Mel Tolkin, Lucille Kallen, and Tony Webster, Reiner won Emmy Awards in 1956 and 1957 as "Best Supporting Actor."
Although billed as a performer, Reiner was also an uncredited writer who was always in the writer's room—"the most interesting room I'd ever been in," claims Reiner. Gradually he began thinking of himself as more of a writer than a performer. During his summer vacations, he wrote his autobiographical novel, Enter Laughing, published in 1958.
At the conclusion of his television association with Sid Caesar, Reiner felt that the revue form (comedy/variety) was dying and that situation comedy would come into its own. Besieged with offers, he was inundated with scripts that by his estimation—and that of his wife, Estelle—were not very good. Discouraged by inferior material, Reiner didn't know what to do. Estelle Reiner read some of the scripts offered to her husband and told him, "You can write better scripts than these."
The challenge appealed to Reiner, who had never written a situation comedy. "That little nub stayed in my head—I kept asking myself, 'What do I know about that's different from anything else?'"
Reiner spent the summer of 1959 on Fire Island, where he worked on the concept. He would star in a situation comedy as Robert Petrie—a name he thought sounded like a television writer's name. (Robert was also the name of Reiner's twelve-year-old son—who would eventually costar in All in the Family.)
Petrie would be head writer for a weekly variety series, The Alan Sturdy Show. Reiner chose the name Alan Sturdy because "it was metaphoric, a poetic name—a name that was strong," he says. (Later the name would be changed to Alan Brady after Sheldon Leonard and Morey Amsterdam both remarked that Alan Sturdy sounds like "Alan's dirty.")
Sturdy surrounded himself with a first-rate, disparate writing staff. Under Petrie were Sally Rogers—modeled after two TV writers, Selma Diamond and Lucille Kallen, with whom Reiner had previously worked—and Buddy Sorrell.
The producer of The Alan Sturdy Show was Calvin Cooley (later renamed Melvin Cooley), who not-so-coincidentally was the star's brother-in-law.
Petrie had a home at 448 Bonnie Meadow Road in New Rochelle, New York—Reiner simply added one number to his own address "so nobody would come visit me." The Petrie family consisted of Rob, his wife, Laura—"a name romantic to me somehow," Reiner says—and their only child, Ritchie. Rob met Laura Meehan when he was a sergeant in the Army, stationed at Camp Crowder in Joplin, Missouri, and she was a dancer in the USO. Laura willingly had given up her career to become Mrs. Robert Petrie.
"It was actually what my wife and I were doing. She was an artist who decided she wanted to be a mother. She had three children, and gave up her own career for that," explains Reiner.
At first glance those ingredients might seem mundane. What propelled the story out of the ordinary was Reiner's execution of the work/home relationship. He had conceived a first in television history. "What I was doing was examining my life and putting it down on paper," recalls Reiner. In doing so he would create what in essence was "the first situation comedy where you saw where the man worked before he walked in and said, 'Hi, honey, I'm home!'"
Danny Thomas had followed that formula to some extent in his series, but, as Reiner points out, Thomas's series focused on his home life and only occasionally showed him in his nightclub.
In no time, Reiner wrote a pilot script that he titled Head of the Family. After completing the draft, he decided he needed several scripts to illustrate the emphasis and the kind of behavior and relationships he was striving for. "I didn't want to leave it to anybody else," he recalls.
Completely absorbed in Head of the Family, Reiner wrote, by his estimation, a complete script every three or four days. At first he thought he'd write four to eight scripts before showing them to anybody; the total mushroomed to thirteen. "This would be a nucleus, a bible, for anybody who would help write it after that," recalls Reiner. "It would guard against supposition; everything would be spelled out."
He did not submit any of the scripts until all thirteen had been completed. Reiner's agent, Harry Kalcheim of the William Morris Agency, was astounded that someone would write thirteen scripts for a series that had neither a sponsor nor a network.
Academy Award-winning writer Frank Tarloff (who would later write three Dick Van Dyke Show scripts) recalls being "aghast" during a conversation with his prolific friend. "I said to Carl, 'Did you write the pilot?' and he said, 'No, I wrote all thirteen of them.' As an old, experienced person in the business, I said, 'Carl, you don't do it that way. You don't write number two until they've bought number one.'"
Kalcheim sent the scripts to Peter Lawford, who had expressed an interest in producing a television series. Lawford, at that time the husband of Pat Kennedy (sister of the soon-to-be- President), gave the scripts to his father-in-law Joseph Kennedy because, as Reiner discloses, "Everything the Kennedy money went into had to be approved by him." Kennedy okayed Reiner's material and subsequently financed the pilot with Lawford.
The pilot then was cast and filmed in New York as a one-camera show, that is, it was shot out of sequence without an audience.
The storyline: Rob Petrie—originally pronounced PEE-TREE not PET-REE—(Carl Reiner), and wife Laura (Barbara Britton) attempt to convince their son Ritchie (Gary Morgan) that Petrie's occupation as a television writer is as important as those of the fathers of his classmates. Rob brings his son to the office to show him how valuable he is to his colleagues, Sally Rogers (Sylvia Miles) and Buddy Sorrell (Morty Gunty), and to the star, Alan Sturdy (Jack Wakefield).
Reiner contends that the pilot, which was aired on July 19, 1960, on Comedy Spot, was very well received by the sponsors. Yet, he recalls, only one situation comedy sold that year—Love and Marriage.(It was canceled at midseason.) The sponsors opted, in Reiner's words, "to go with horses and guns." Westerns were riding high that season. (Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, and Have Gun, Will Travel were the three top-rated shows of the 1959–60 and 1960–61 seasons).
But Kalcheim continued to remind Reiner that Head of the Family was too good to let atrophy. He insisted the scripts be submitted once again in the hopes of reviving the idea as a possible series. "He hounded me, week after week," says Reiner, who was opposed to the idea. He told Kalcheim, "I don't want to fail twice with the same material. They don't understand it or they would have bought it in a second. If they don't want it, they don't want it."
Undaunted by Reiner's protests, Kalcheim persisted. He then conspired to bring Reiner together with another client: Sheldon Leonard.
In 1953, Leonard had begun an extremely successful association with Danny Thomas. In the first season of Make Room for Daddy, he was signed as executive producer and director. With Thomas he had created, by 1960, The Andy Griffith Show and The Real McCoys. In fact, Leonard had never produced a pilot that didn't sell. That perfect record, coupled with his keen perception of what was salable, salvageable material, made him, in Kalcheim's opinion, the ideal candidate to resurrect Head of the Family.
Kalcheim arranged for Reiner, who was eager to learn more about situation comedy, to meet with the veteran Leonard, who offered him free access to observe and "audit" any productions he wished. During his visit, Carl spoke of his aborted venture. Leonard expressed an interest in screening the pilot to judge for himself, and Reiner agreed.
Leonard vividly remembers the day: "The lights went up, and I was torn between a desire to be helpfully honest and a desire to be tactful."
When Carl asked his opinion, Leonard answered, "I believe that if recast, the show would have every chance of making it."
Misunderstanding his carefully worded response, Reiner replied, "No, I don't want to do it again."
"The only honest thing I could say was, 'Carl, you're not right for what you wrote for yourself!'" recalls Leonard, who then asked to read the remaining twelve scripts.
"It was a tremendous body of material. For unrevised drafts, [it was] the best material I have ever read," states Leonard. Believing in the strength and quality of the scripts, he told Reiner, "This series deserves another shot. Do you mind if I try to rewrap the package?" Reiner accepted. The characters would be recast, Leonard would direct the pilot, and Reiner would produce and continue to write.
That would not be the last time Sheldon Leonard would save Rob Petrie from extinction.
Faced with the recasting of the crucial role of Rob Petrie, it no longer was enough for Sheldon Leonard to feel intuitively that Reiner wasn't right for the part: he had to find the actor who was.
A seemingly endless string of candidates was eventually narrowed to two actors: Dick Van Dyke and Johnny Carson. Van Dyke was the suggestion of Leonard, who remembered him from a 1958 Broadway revue, The Girls Against the Boys (also featuring Bert Lahr, Shelley Berman, and Nancy Walker). Previously the young performer had made several unsold TV pilots, had served as emcee on various daytime programs, and had been a frequent variety show guest. Back on Broadway, Van Dyke was in a leading role in Bye Bye Birdie (with Chita Rivera and Kay Medford), for which he won a Tony Award.
Although Carson was perhaps more well-known at the time, Leonard believed Van Dyke the ideal choice for the role of Rob Petrie. He also defied the trend of showcasing film stars, such as Robert Taylor and Dick Powell, who were, as Leonard believed, "too glamorous to be sharing your living room. Dick's [Van Dyke] jaw was a little too long, his walk a little too gangly—assets, not liabilities, on TV," explains Leonard. The part of Rob Petrie, Reiner contended, "required a performer who doesn't want to get up in front of an audience, but who can perform in a room at a party."
On Leonard's recommendation, Carl Reiner traveled to New York to see Bye Bye Birdie and meet with Van Dyke. As he watched him perform, Reiner remembers thinking, "He is the perfect choice. I was very impressed." Backstage he offered Dick the role of Rob Petrie and asked him to return to California. Van Dyke was reluctant to relinquish the security of a hit show, but Reiner's enthusiasm was so persuasive Dick agreed to star in the pilot and would arrange to get one week off from Birdie for rehearsal and filming, never imagining those seven days would be the turning point of his career.
Script supervisor Marge Mullen recalls the very first time Dick came into the office: "Carl and Sheldon were wondering how many people would be in the entourage to protect him and talk about script ideas. Dick just walked in all by himself. I thought, here's somebody who just trusts them. He can talk to them on a man-to-man basis and not have an agent over his shoulder talking for him. He was secure enough in his own knowledge and talent to talk for himself. And that's the way it worked right from the beginning."
Van Dyke agreed to a five-year contract (if the pilot became a series) with a first-season salary, according to him, of $1500 weekly. (He states his top salary for the series was $2500 weekly.)
With Van Dyke signed as the lead the search was underway for a new supporting cast.
Unlike Van Dyke, Rose Marie had enjoyed a successful career in television prior to being cast as Sally Rogers, Rob Petrie's glib, perennially single coworker.
"I had done," Rose Marie flatly states, "almost every guest shot on television there was to do." In addition to a recurring role on The Bob Cummings Show she was a regular on My Sister Eileen, a short-lived series of the 1960–61 season.
Having begun performing at age three as "Baby Rose Marie"—and holding the distinction of starring in her own NBC network radio series at the age of seven—Rose Marie was unquestionably a show business veteran. Her lifelong career had reaped many benefits, including longstanding friendships with both Danny Thomas and Sheldon Leonard.
Yet those friendships had never resulted in her being cast by them. She recalls, "I always teased Danny and Sheldon by saying, 'Why can't I do your show? You put everyone else on but me!'"
At one point, Leonard flew to Las Vegas to see her nightclub act, and as Rose Marie remembers, said to her, "Don't you ever do badly?" She retorted, "Yeah, I must because I can't get a shot on your show!" He promised, "Your time will come."
It did a short time later when Rose Marie received a call from the casting office at Desilu–Cahuenga Studios. She was pleased Leonard had kept his promise and assumed he wanted her for a guest shot on The Danny Thomas Show. To her surprise she was told it was a continuing role in a series to star Dick Van Dyke. She hadn't seen him in Bye Bye Birdie, but the name registered since she had appeared with him on a game show, Pantomime Quiz, a year or so earlier.
When she met Carl Reiner he greeted her by saying, "I don't know that much about you, but Sheldon said, 'If you want the best, get Rose Marie!'" She was cast on the spot.
Rose Marie was curious to know who they had chosen to play the third writer, Buddy Sorrell. They hadn't decided, so she suggested Morey Amsterdam, whom she says she had known "for thousands of years"—they met when both appeared on Al Pearce's radio program when Rose Marie was only twelve years old.
Reiner jumped at the suggestion. Rose Marie quickly contacted Morey, who was living in New York, explained the concept of the series, and told him to expect Reiner's call. Morey warmed to the promise of the show as well as the opportunity to move to California. At the time Reiner phoned, Amsterdam remembers he was, "digging himself out of the snow in Yonkers."
Morey Amsterdam had had a show business career as durable as Rose Marie's, having begun performing at the age of ten as a boy soprano on radio. Known as "the human joke machine," he had established himself as a nightclub performer, comedian, and comedy writer—all perfect credentials for the role.
Reiner asked Morey to catch a plane to California the next day. He didn't hesitate and soon was cast as Buddy Sorrell.
As the book Watching TV notes, "In a stroke of genius, veteran comics Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie were cast as the new Buddy and Sally. Both brought a much needed sharp comic edge to their characters."
The next role cast was the blustering producer of The Alan Sturdy Show. Richard Deacon answered a casting call and remembers: "Twenty-two character actors—the best in town—auditioned for the part." He was scheduled among the first to read that day and recalls speaking to Carl Reiner, who promptly told him, "You're exactly what I had in mind."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Dick Van Dyke Show by Ginny Weissman, Coyne Steven Sanders. Copyright © 1983 Ginny Weissman and Coyne Steven Sanders. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Acknowledgments,
Foreword,
Introduction,
1. Anatomy of a Classic,
2. The Dick Van Dyke Show Alumni Association,
3. Flashbacks—158 Synopses,
4. "That's My Boy??"—A Milestone in Television History,
Awards,
Index,
Copyright,