The Dick Van Dyke Show
The Dick Van Dyke Show is an American television sitcom 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 in association with the CBS Television Network; it was shot at Desilu Studios. The show was created by Carl Reiner and starred Dick Van Dyke, Rose Marie, Morey Amsterdam, Larry Mathews, and Mary Tyler Moore. It centered on the work and home life of television comedy writer Rob Petrie (Van Dyke). The show was produced  by Reiner with Bill Persky and Sam Denoff. The music for the show's theme song was written by Earle Hagen. 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. In 2002 the series was ranked at 13 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time and in 2013 it was ranked at 20 on their list of the 60 Best Series. Premise. The two main settings  show 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. 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. Section::::"Head of the Family" pilot. "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.) The pilot was subsequently the basis of the series episode "Father of the Week". Episodes. At least four episodes were filmed without a live studio audience: "The Bad Old Days," which featured an extended flashback sequence that relied on optical effects that would have been impractical to shoot with a live audience in the studio; "The Alan Brady Show Presents," which required elaborate set and costume  changes; "Happy Birthday and Too Many More," which was filmed on November 26, 1963, only four days after President Kennedy's assassination; and "The Gunslinger", which was filmed on location. Reiner considered moving the production of the series to full color as early as season three, only to drop the idea when he was informed that it would add about $7,000 to the cost of each episode. On December 11, 2016, two episodes from the series were presented on CBS-TV colorized. Two more colorized episodes aired December 22, 2017, and an additional two colorized episodes aired on December  15, 2018. On July 1, 2020, it was announced that two previously-aired colorized episodes would air as part of "The Dick Van Dyke Show - Now in Living Color! A Special Tribute to Carl Reiner" on July 3, 2020. Two more previously-aired episodes aired as "... Now in Living Color!" on May 21, 2021, with the 2018 episodes being rebroadcast the following Friday, May 28. "The Last Chapter" was the last episode that aired; "The Gunslinger" was the last episode filmed. Characters. 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. Production. "The Dick Van Dyke Show" was filmed before a live audience (one of  the few sitcoms at the time to do so) at Desilu-Cahuenga Studios in Hollywood, California, with audience "sweetening" performed in post-production. Many of the show's plots were inspired by Reiner's experiences as a writer for "Your Show of Shows" and "Caesar's Hour", both of which starred Sid Caesar. Reiner based the character of Rob Petrie on himself, but Rob's egocentric boss Alan Brady is not based on Caesar, but is a combination of the abrasive Milton Berle and Jackie Gleason, according to Reiner. CBS had intended to cancel the show after its first season , but Procter & Gamble threatened to pull its advertising from "the network's extremely lucrative daytime lineup" and the show was renewed, keeping its Wednesday night time slot. The show jumped into the top 10 by the third episode of its second season, helped by coming directly after "The Beverly Hillbillies", the number one show at the time. In 2019 the show's archives were donated to the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York. Theme. The show's theme was by Earle Hagen, who also wrote many other TV series themes, including those for "The Andy Griffith Show", "Gomer Pyle , USMC", "I Spy", and "The Mod Squad". In a 2010 interview on National Public Radio, Van Dyke revealed Morey Amsterdam's lyrics for the show's theme song: Primetime Emmy Awards. "The Dick Van Dyke Show" was nominated for 25 Primetime Emmy Awards and won 15. Home media. 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. In Region 2, Revelation Films has released the first two seasons on DVD in the UK. 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. 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. CBS policy has generally been to claim indirect copyright on such episodes by claiming them as derivative works of earlier episodes that were copyrighted. References. Informational notes Citations