Carl Reiner, comedy’s rare untortured genius, dies at 98
NEW YORK (AP) — Carl Reiner was the rare untortured genius of comedy, his career a story of laughter and camaraderie, of innovation and triumph and affection. Reiner’s persona was so warm and approachable — everyone’s friend or favorite uncle — that you could forget that he was an architect of modern comedy, a “North Star,” in the words of Billy Crystal.
As a writer and director, he mastered a genial, but sophisticated brand of humor that Steve Martin, Jerry Seinfeld and others emulated. As an actor, he was the ideal straight man for such manic performers as Mel Brooks and Sid Caesar and dependably funny on his own. As an all-around talent, he helped perfect two standard television formats — sketch and situation comedy.
Reiner’s death Monday at 98 from natural causes prompted an outpouring from t hose he inspired, a group that included Brooks, Dick Van Dyke, George Clooney and Billy Eichner and millions more.
Tall and agile, equally striking whether bald or toupeed, he entertained in every medium available to him, from movies and vinyl records to Broadway and Twitter. But he will be remembered best for “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” the landmark series which aired from 1961-66 and was a master class of wit, ensemble playing, physical comedy and the overriding good nature of Reiner himself.
Based on his time in the 1950s with Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows,” the forerunner to “Saturday Night Live,” it was among the first sit-coms about TV itself and inspired such future hits as “Mad About You” and “30 Rock.”
As millions of fans
know, Van Dyke starred as comedy writer Rob Petrie, who worked for the
demanding, eccentric Alan Brady (Reiner) and lived on Bonnie Meadow Road
in suburban New Rochelle with his wife Laura (Mary Tyler Moore, in her
first major TV role) and young son. Petrie’s fellow writers were veteran
character actors Morey Amsterdam as Buddy Sorrell and Rose Marie as
Sally Rogers. Reiner originally had a very different title and cast in
mind. The pilot was called “Head of the Family,” which starred Reiner
and Barbara Britton, and aired as a single episode in July 1960. But CBS
executives worried that Reiner would make Petrie seem too Jewish, so
Van Dyke was cast instead.
Reiner likely needed the time spared
from playing the lead. Besides acting in and producing the “Van Dyke”
series, he wrote or co-wrote dozens of episodes — a feat that exhausted
Reiner and amazed the cast and others in the business. Some of the more
notable shows: Laura inadvertently revealing to the public that Alan
Brady was bald; Rob on a radio marathon, delirious from lack of sleep,
calling out to a kitten he’s learned is stuck in a tree; Rob as a jury
foreman, clumsily smitten by the attractive defendant (Sue Ann Langdon),
and unaware that Laura is in the courtroom.
“I can explain … nothing,’’ a sheepish Rob later tells his wife.
“Although
it was a collaborative effort,″ Van Dyke wrote in “My Lucky Life In and
Out of Show Business, a memoir published in 2011, “everything about
the show stemmed from his (Reiner’s) endlessly and enviably fascinating,
funny, and fertile brain and trickled down to the rest of us.″ On
Tuesday, Van Dyke called Reiner “kind, gentle, compassionate, empathetic
and wise.”
Reiner and Co. had parodied current events and popular
culture on the Caesar program, but for the Van Dyke show he
deliberately avoided topical references, hoping it would seem timeless.
The sitcom remained highly popular in re-runs, with Laura Petrie’s
plaintive “Oh, Rob!” a lasting catchphrase. One famous fan, Orson
Welles, was known for rushing to his bedroom in the afternoon so he
could be near a TV set when the show was on. First lady Michelle Obama
once joked that she preferred watching “Dick Van Dyke” to viewing her
husband’s debates.
Reiner had broken through in television’s early
days, before he even owned a TV: He joined “Your Show of Shows” in 1950
after performing in several Broadway plays, and much of his early work
came as a “second banana.” Reiner was part of an extraordinary writing
team that included Brooks, Neil Simon and Larry Gelbart, and a
performing cast featuring Caesar and Imogene Coca. He was never funnier
than as an unhinged mechanical figure from a Bavarian clock, never
steadier than in a spoof of “This Is Your Life,” in which he is the host
and Caesar a surprise honoree who desperately — violently — doesn’t
want the honor. “
As second banana,” Reiner told TV Guide, “I had a
chance to do just about everything a performer can ever get to do. If
it came off well, I got all the applause. If it didn’t, the show was
blamed.”
Off stage, Reiner and Brooks had a rapport which
launched a comic franchise. During the “Show of Shows” years, they
started improvising skits which became the basis for “The 2000 Year Old
Man.” Reiner was the interviewer, Brooks the old witness to history.
Reiner: “Did you know Jesus?”
Brooks:
“I knew Christ, Christ was a thin lad, always wore sandals. Hung around
with 12 other guys. They came in the store, no one ever bought
anything. Once they asked for water.”
Their routine was an
instant favorite at parties, and Reiner recalled that Steve Allen
insisted they should turn their banter into a record. “2000 Years with
Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks” came out in 1960 and was so popular that
Reiner would later tell NPR even Britain’s Queen Mother, “the biggest
shiksa in the world,” loved it. The duo updated their shtick over time
and won a Grammy in 1998 for their “The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year
2000,” the same year Reiner received the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize
for Humor. When the sound system failed at the start of the ceremonies,
Reiner called from the balcony, “Does anybody have four double-A
batteries?”
After the Van Dyke show, Reiner appeared in such hit
movies as “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming” and the
“Ocean’s Eleven” films that starred George Clooney. He directed George
Segal and Ruth Gordon in “Where’s Poppa?”, George Burns in “Oh, God!”
and Steve Martin in “The Jerk” and “All of Me.” He took pride in his
books, notably “Enter Laughing,” a “bio-novel” which later became a film
and Broadway show.
Reiner was the father of actor-director Rob
Reiner, who starred as Archie Bunker’s son-in-law on “All in the Family”
and directed “When Harry Met Sally…” Rob Reiner said in a tweet
Tuesday that his “heart is hurting. He was my guiding light.”
Carl
Reiner, a son of Jewish immigrants, was born in 1922 in New York City,
and raised in a three-room apartment. He loved to mimic voices and tell
jokes, and, after high school, attended drama school. He then joined a
small theater group. “It was a terrific experience, but I wasn’t getting
any money for it,” he told the Akron Beacon Journal in 1963. “I got
uppity one day — after all, the audience was paying from 22 to 88 cents
for admission — and I demanded to be paid. They settled for $1 a
performance and I … became their highest-priced actor.”
During
World War II, Reiner served in the Army and toured in GI variety shows.
After the war, he landed several stage roles, breaking through on
Broadway in “Call Me Mister.” He married Estelle Lebost, in 1943.
Besides son Rob, the couple had another son, Lucas, a film director; and
a daughter, Sylvia, a psychoanalyst and author. Estelle, who died in
2008, had a memorable role in “When Harry Met Sally…” — as the woman
who overhears Meg Ryan’s ersatz ecstasy in a restaurant and says, “I’ll
have what she’s having.”
Reiner, winner of multiple Emmys and
other awards, was in the business for life. In the 1990s, he won an Emmy
by reprising Alan Brady for an episode of “Mad About You” and more
recently made appearances on “Two and a Half Men” and “Hot in
Cleveland.” In the 21st century, he was writing books and commenting
daily through his Twitter feed, venting anger at the presidency of
Donald Trump. Most nights, Brooks came over and the two ate dinner
together. In the mornings, Reiner had a ritual that provided the title
for the 2017 documentary he hosted and received an Emmy nomination for,
“If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast.”
“Every morning before
having breakfast,” Reiner said in the movie, “I pick up my newspaper,
get the obituary section and see if I’m listed. If I’m not, I’ll have my
breakfast.”
Associated Press writer Mike Stewart contributed to this report.