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 and 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. 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, the head writer of a comedy/variety show produced in Manhattan. Viewers are given an "inside look" at how a television show was written and produced. Many scenes deal with Rob and his co-writers, Buddy Sorrell and Sally Rogers. Mel Cooley, 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. 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, and son Ritchie, who live in suburban New Rochelle, New York. Also often seen are their next-door neighbors and best friends, Jerry Helper, a dentist, and his wife Millie.
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 himself portrayed the Sid Caesar character. Van Dyke's character was based on Reiner himself.

''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
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 colored episodes will air as part of The Dick Van Dyke Show - Now in Living Color! A Special Tribute to Carl Reiner on July 3, 2020.
"The Last Chapter" was the last episode that aired; "The Gunslinger" was the last episode filmed.

Characters

Main:
alongside Mary Tyler Moore
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, Tiny Brauer, Bella Bruck, Jane Dulo, Herbie Faye, Bernard Fox, Dabbs Greer, Jerry Hausner, Peter Hobbs, Jackie Joseph, Sandy Kenyon, 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 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.

Crossovers

The show's theme was by Earle Hagen, who also wrote many other TV series themes, including those for The Danny Thomas Show, 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:

Broadcast history and Nielsen ratings

Primetime Emmy Awards

The Dick Van Dyke Show was nominated for 25 Primetime Emmy Awards and won 15.
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!
DVD NameEp#Release Date
Season 131October 21, 2003
Season 233October 21, 2003
Season 331February 24, 2004
Season 432April 27, 2004
Season 531June 29, 2004
The Complete Series158May 24, 2005
November 13, 2012
November 10, 2015
Now in Living Color!2March 3, 2017

Six episodes of the series are believed to have lapsed into the public domain and have been released by numerous discount distributors.

In popular culture