The Dick Van Dyke Show
The Dick Van Dyke Show is an American television sitcom created by Carl Reiner that initially aired on CBS from October 3, 1961, to June 1, 1966, with a total of 158 half-hour episodes spanning five seasons. It was produced by Calvada Productions[notes 1] in association with the CBS Television Network, and was shot at Desilu Studios. Other producers included Bill Persky and Sam Denoff. The music for the show's theme song was written by Earle Hagen.[1]
The Dick Van Dyke Show
Carl Reiner
Frank Tarloff (as "David Adler")
John Whedon
Sheldon Keller
Howard Merrill
Martin Ragaway
Bill Persky
Sam Denoff
Garry Marshall
Jerry Belson
Carl Kleinschmitt
Dale McRaven
Rick Mittleman
Earle Hagen
United States
5
158 half-hour black-and-white episodes + 1 reunion special in color (list of episodes)
Sheldon Leonard, in association with Danny Thomas
Carl Reiner
Bill Persky (1965)
Sam Denoff (1965)
22–24 minutes
Calvada Productions
October 3, 1961 –
June 1, 1966
The show starred Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Rose Marie, Morey Amsterdam, and Larry Mathews. The Dick Van Dyke Show centered on the work and home life of television comedy writer Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke), the head writer for the fictional Alan Brady Show in New York, who lived in suburban New Rochelle, New York with his stylish wife Laura Petrie (Mary Tyler Moore) and young son Ritchie (Larry Mathews). The series portrayed daily life, comic scenarios that charming, goofy Rob Petrie found himself in the middle of with his family, his colleagues – Buddy Sorrell (Morey Amsterdam), Sally Rogers (Rose Marie), Mel Cooley (Richard Deacon) – and his neighbors Millie (Ann Morgan Guilbert) and Jerry Helper (Jerry Paris) and friends.
The series won 15 Emmy Awards. In 1997, the episodes "Coast-to-Coast Big Mouth" and "It May Look Like a Walnut" were ranked at 8 and 15 respectively on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.[2]
In 2002, the series was ranked at 13 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time[3] and in 2013 it was ranked at 20 on their list of the 60 Best Series.[4] Also in 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked it #14 on their list of the 101 Best Written TV Series.[5]
Premise[edit]
The two main settings are the work and home life of Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke), the head writer of a comedy/variety show produced in Manhattan. Viewers are given an "inside look" at how a television show (the fictional The Alan Brady Show) was written and produced. Many scenes deal with Rob and his co-writers, Buddy Sorrell (Morey Amsterdam) and Sally Rogers (Rose Marie). Mel Cooley (Richard Deacon), a balding straight man and recipient of numerous insulting one-liners from Buddy, was the show's producer and the brother-in-law of the show's star, Alan Brady (Carl Reiner). As Rob, Buddy, and Sally write for a comedy show, the premise provides a built-in forum for them to constantly make jokes. Other scenes focus on the home life of Rob, his wife Laura (Mary Tyler Moore), and son Ritchie (Larry Mathews), who live in suburban New Rochelle, New York. Also often seen are their next-door neighbors and best friends, Jerry Helper (Jerry Paris), a dentist, and his wife Millie (Ann Morgan Guilbert).
Many of the characters in The Dick Van Dyke Show were based on real people, as Carl Reiner created the show based on his time spent as head writer for the Sid Caesar vehicle Your Show of Shows. Carl Reiner portrayed Alan Brady who is a combination of the abrasive Milton Berle and Jackie Gleason, according to Reiner, refuting rumors that Alan Brady was based on Caesar.[6] Van Dyke's character was based on Reiner himself.
Moore's character's "look" was influenced to some extent by that of Jackie Kennedy, who was at the time First Lady of the United States.[7]
Head of the Family pilot[edit]
The Dick Van Dyke Show was preceded by a 1960 pilot for a series to be called Head of the Family with a different cast, although the characters were essentially the same, except for the absence of Mel Cooley. In the pilot, Carl Reiner, who created the show based on his own experiences as a TV writer, played Robbie Petrie. Laura Petrie was played by Barbara Britton, Buddy Sorrell by Morty Gunty, Sally Rogers by Sylvia Miles, Ritchie by Gary Morgan, and Alan Sturdy, the Alan Brady character, was played by Jack Wakefield, although his face was never fully seen, which was also the case with Carl Reiner's Alan Brady for the first three seasons of The Dick Van Dyke Show.
The pilot was unsuccessful, which led Reiner to rework the show with Dick Van Dyke playing the central character (who went by Rob, not "Robbie", and pronounced his last name PET-tree rather than the pilot's PEE-tree.)[8]
The plot of the pilot was subsequently the basis of the series episode "Father of the Week".
Main:
Supporting:
Recurring:
A group of character actors played several different roles during the five seasons. Actors who appeared more than once, sometimes in different roles, included Elvia Allman (as Herman Glimscher's mother), Tiny Brauer, Bella Bruck, Jane Dulo, Herbie Faye, Bernard Fox, Dabbs Greer, Jerry Hausner, Peter Hobbs, Jackie Joseph, Sandy Kenyon (who also appeared in the 2004 reunion special), Alvy Moore, Isabel Randolph, Burt Remsen, Johnny Silver, Doris Singleton, Amzie Strickland, George Tyne, Herb Vigran and Len Weinrib. Frank Adamo, who served as Van Dyke's personal assistant and stand-in, also played small roles throughout the show's five seasons.
Image Entertainment has released all five seasons of The Dick Van Dyke Show on DVD in Region 1. Season sets were released between October 2003 – June 2004. Also, on May 24, 2005, Image Entertainment repackaged the discs from the individual season sets into a complete series box set. On Blu-ray, the complete series, remastered in high definition, was released on November 13, 2012.[30]
In Region 2, Revelation Films has released the first two seasons on DVD in the UK.[31][32]
In Region 4, Umbrella Entertainment has released the first three seasons on DVD in Australia.
Following the well-received colorizations of I Love Lucy in the US, two episodes, "That’s My Boy" and "Coast to Coast Big Mouth", were computer colorized by West Wing Studios in 2016 and broadcast by CBS.[33][34] They were later released on DVD and Blu-ray by CBS Home Entertainment as The Dick Van Dyke Show: Now in Living Color!
Six episodes of the series, all from the second season, are believed to have lapsed into the public domain and have been released by numerous discount distributors. There also seems to be no original record of copyright for episodes 33–62, which were released in 1962 and 1963. This does not preclude their creators from claiming royalties for them.[35] CBS policy has generally been to claim indirect copyright on such episodes by claiming them as derivative works of earlier episodes that were copyrighted.[36][37]