The Dick Van Dyke Show - Celebrating the 60th Anniversary

I mentioned this in another thread. Been watching this for the first time and the only character I like is Rob. Laura is too whiny and a nag. The sidekicks are pretty annoying, especially Buddy. Did he really pass for funny?

One of the greatest shows ever!! The cast was excellent except for Larry Matthews who was awful as Richie.

Let me guess R1, you’re a Diff’rent Strokes kind of guy?

R2, my partner and I are horrified every time we see the Christmas episode where Richie sings Little Drummer Boy. Parumph a pum blech.

It's a mostly funny show but I always skip any flashback shows to Rob's army days and any appearances by Jerry Van Dyke. Why does Hollywood insist on forcing unappealing siblings on audiences just because they share the same name with someone beloved?

Jerry Van Dyke was hilarious on Coach.

My favorite episode...

I always enjoyed tbe Manhattan interplay between Morey and Rose Marie joined sometimes by Alan and his toupee.

Rob and Laura and Ritchie were just too New Rochelle. Taught you at an early age that you didn't want to end living in a place like that. Or being people like that.

I'm a weirdo, because even when I was a kid watching reruns of the DVD Show, I just really LIKED the Richard Deacon character. I still think he's sorta hot.

Sort of a Ted Baxter subliminally gay character, wasn't he.

They should do a reunion special.

As a kid I loved the Dick Van Dyke Show. Compared to other sitcoms they actually looked and acted like real people. We had a similar suburban house, my mom had the same furniture and I was a whiny brat like Richie

R9 I'd say the reverse, that Mel Cooley played a big role stigmatizing being gay, at least in a young boy's mind.

I didn't want to grow up to be Rob and certainly not Mel, God forbid. Happy to be Alan though so long as I could keep my own hair.

They did one, r11, in 2004.

I love that episode too, R7. Especially Millie's song. And Rob mocking Laura's dance audition.

I was embarrassingly hot for DVD himself since I was a kid. He had total BDF......

R7, when Mel does his ventriloquist act and drinks the glass of water, I always laugh. That and Laura doing a run-through of what she's going to do ("...sell it with a look!"). Great comedy.

Following from the MTM thread about sitcom characters we never see, do we ever see Pickles?

"do we ever see Pickles? "

I do remember seeing her once in one of their Christmas shows. I think she played a cigarette girl or something in a skit

Here we go, there were two Pickles...

"Dick Van Dyke Show trivia buffs will know Barbara Perry as “Pickles,” the wife of joke writer Buddy Sorrell (Amsterdam), on two first-season episodes of the famed sitcom. (Joan Shawlee took over the role for three installments in 1963.) And she was one of Murphy Brown's secretaries — No.May 5, 2019"

I loved Rose Marie.

How many performers associated with Vaudeville ALSO had a Twitter account?

Joan Shawlee was Sweet Sue, the leader of the all girl band in "Some Like It Hot."

the *look*

You should have hung out at Happy Hour at Numbers in the '80s, r9.

[quote]Rob and Laura and Ritchie were just too New Rochelle.

New Rochelle, like Mt Vernon, were two of the Lower Westchester suburbs that were not restricted. So New Rochelle was heavily populated with Jews, and even way later when the others opened up, the primary ethnicity was Jewish. Now there's a heavy blacks-with-money population.

I find nothing "New Rochelle" about the Petries at all. The only reason it was chosen was because Carl Reiner once lived there.

Rob & Laura Petrie...

Unlike other tv couples, they seemed relatively contemporary---living in the suburbsand dressing more like modern people. You could imagine them doing progressive dinners and playing jarts on holidays.

R14, and The "Revisited" special was awful. MTM could not hide the fact she had plastic surgery two days before filming.

R25 Didn't really mean to pick on New Rochelle specifically, just the Westchester suburban commuter life generally. And that is how the show presented their lifestyle.

How funny, this episode is on tonight...

R21 Rose Marie was actually a pretty good singer. Here she covers Come Rain or Come Shine.

Rose Marie clothes for work were classic.

the...Twizzle

I remember watching the very last episodes in first-run and then on CBS days in syndication for many years after that over the summers. Corniest show I remember, everybody was so Waspy and all seemed to buy their same most very square clothes and shoes out of some specially built Sally, Dick & Jame Basic Reader fashion outlet. Pretty much the whitest 1960s sitcom that every whited. The characters are just so dorky and over-the-top.

" everybody was so Waspy "

Huh?

Buddy, Mel and Alan Brady were about as New York Jewish as it got on 60s sitcoms

"Sometimes I want to kill myself

I'm funny that way

But seriously, darling, you're OK."

Sylvia (Anita) Lewis

R35 Don't forget Millie and Jerry!

The only WASPs on that show were the Petries.

Sally seemed like a gal who could hold her liquor and be a lot of fun at office parties.

R29, would you prefer they lived a semi-suburban life in Brooklyn? The you could complain how Rob Petrie is just too much of a Brooklyn Subway Commuter.

The Petries were "white flight " suburbanites. They each had a car. Rob had a sports car, a "Tarantula" and Laura had a station wagon

The point is, the Petries aren't Brooklyn people. Where people choose to live tells you a whole lot about them.

I always thought it was weird how Buddy and Sally spent so much time at Rob and Laura’s. I thought they were both so annoying. Her for the grating voice and constant neediness and him for just being mean and not funny. They both came across as kind of psychotic.

I never got the impression that they were even New Yorkers. They don't sound New York like the others on the show. I always thought Rob landed the big writing job and they moved there. Did they ever talk about their pre-Army days?

Wasn’t Jerry in the Army with Rob? But that’s another thing about the show I thought was dumb… Rob’s Army days. I hated those shows, always hated it when Rob and Laura “performed.” The dumbest was that Christmas show when they all performed on the Allan Brady show. Yeah like writers and their spouses do that 🙄.

What difference does it make where they lived? Like most sitcoms of the era, they lived in suburbia. Usually it's some nameless or fake named town outside a city. In this case, they name the town and the road - which actually exist.

R44, I lived in the NYC suburbs in the 1960s. That's they way many people who lived there looked and talked. Some had re-located (my family from CT).

R46: In those days, sitcom characters either lived in generic small towns (Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show, Leave it to Beaver) or in NYC (Lucy, Ann Sothern) or LA (Burns & Allen). Living in the 'burbs, let a lone one with a real name was novel.

I forgot to add that if a character had a regional accent on TV in the 60s, that was to indicate they were ethnics.

R48, that's what I said.

[quote]Did they ever talk about their pre-Army days?

Not really, maybe a little bit when his brother shows up. We do get several references to his Army days, just not much about the time before that.

Rob was surely drafted, I'm not sure if they ever said one way or the other, but he wasn't the kind of kid who went into the Army voluntarily. Wikipedia tells me he grew up in Illinois and was stationed in Missouri, so he's decidedly Midwestern, and Laura must be as well.

@r45, Hahahaha! Their Christmas shows were as bad as Mary Richards boring-ass diner parties

[quote]I always thought it was weird how Buddy and Sally spent so much time at Rob and Laura’s.

It must have been quite a schlep to get out to New Rochelle, and half the time they were only there a few minutes. No one would have traveled that far to visit friends in the burbs for just a few minutes.

Whoever came up with this crap ought to be shot

The DVD Show was definitely a pre-Beatles sensibility, even though there was an episode with a Beatles-like group in it, plus they had musical and Vaudeville performers in the cast, so the song and dance stuff made sense in that context. It looks really out of place to us today, it's weird to have dumb Middle American musical numbers in the same show that had the alien walnut episode.

Rob was from Danville, Illinois. In the episode with the ugly brooch that his mother gives to Laura, Rob points out the stone in Danville that represents him. I don't know if it was ever stated where Laura was from. But they met when Rob was in the army and Laura was a dancer in a USO show.

Hey elitist smarty pants R42, Laura was originally from Brooklyn. We learn that in the flashback where Rob meets her when she’s a dancer in the USO.

R55, The Beatles and "rock n roll" was for teenagers in the 1960s. Adults didn't listen to that kind of music, and there was plenty of new pop music for adults that wasn't rock, such as Herb Alpert.

Herb Albert?

Ok

R58 is correct. The last season of DVD was 1966. They'd done the Twizzle and Redcoats (Chad & Jeremy) episodes that nodded at current music. But the show wasn't aimed at teenagers so I don't understand why one would think the musical numbers are out of place for that time period. Those numbers add an absolutely campy charm.

R59, Herb ALPERT

Mrs. Alpert...

The actor singing "The Twizzle" was named Jerry Lanning. He was one of the sons of a torch singer who made it pretty big when she was in her 40's. Her name was Roberta Sherwood and she had a good sized hit record of "Up A Lazy River." She would come out on stage of various variety shows wearing a little sweater over her shoulders and sing the song while accompanying herself on a little hand held cymbal. I liked her voice, kind of raspy and husky sounding. She went on to guest star in one of the Lucy series with her 3 sons.

Lanning's bigger claim to fame...

R59 Marv's brother the Mexican musician.

Chad and Jeremy were on the Patty Duke Show too.

R66 I believe they were on Bewitched too.

Neither Patty Duke nor Bewitched is on their IMDb page.

Nevertheless, they were on the Patty Duke show.

But they weren’t on Bewitched. That was Boyce and Hart.

Rob and Laura Petrie had a lot of sexual chemistry. Lots of embracing and kissing on the show. You knew they were pretty busy...as compared to other shows, like Leave It To Beaver....where Ward would just kiss June on the cheek. They were a hot looking couple.

Oh, yeah, hot and heavy in their separate beds...

50s/ early 60s dumbass codes back then...^^

In 1905 George M. Cohan wrote a Broadway musical called 45 MINUTES FROM BROADWAY (with the hugely popular title tune of the same name), extolling the virtues of the nearby leafy suburb of New Rochelle. I imagine by the early 1960s New Rochelle was an even quicker trip to Times Square.

It was certainly one of the first suburbs New to which New Yorkers escaped who were sick of living in the city but still had to make a daily commute for work.

New Rochelle...

I could swear the early episodes of I Love Lucy had them sleeping in one bed. The early reruns just aired and the first episode for sure showed one bed. I think a few eps showed it. They might not have been in it together though.

^ Looky here...

But I guess the censors didn't like it...

Here's the original pilot of the show. It was originally named, Head of the Family.

Good find, R76. I knew my eyes weren’t deceiving me.

When I was a kid watching these shows, I found it creepy when the couple were always hugging and kissing. Especially when Samantha Stephens constantly kissed that frog husband of hers.

R69 Thanks. I guess I got Chad and Jeremy mixed up with Boyce and Hart.

I could have sworn it was either Sadler and Young or Peter and Gordon.... you guys sure?

According to Peter, Peter and Gordon were only ever on the Red Skelton show. Before COVID, Peter and Jeremy actually toured together as a duo (Gordon had long since died and Chad who has since died was in poor health) and did a hilarious bit in their act about how C&J had been guest stars so many big name shows in the 60s while P&G had only taken part in a country bumpkin song and dance number dressed as hayseeds on the Red Skelton Show, and they even show a clip from it).

R9 You are not weird at all. I only saw the show in reruns, but as a young gayling, I too was infatuated with Richard Deacon.

BTW I am pretty sure Bald men were not considered sexy but I didn't care. I have always preferred to see a man with no hair just be bald rather than wear a toupee.

I never thought Rob was hot or funny. I just saw a goofy and needy attention whore.

Buddy was ugly and annoying.

Laura Petrie was stylish and classy. She was not really pretty to me, but she was gorgeous compared to every other woman on the show. Sally and Millie were dogs.

Mel (Richard Deacon) was sexy.

Jerry was a weak character.

Everyone else was just filler. DVD's brother has been annoying in everything I have seen him in. He is also an attention whore, just a less attractive one.

And I agree with everyone who said Richie couldn't act. What a snotty and whiny little brat he was.

I'm not sure why I watched this show. It must have been because my dad liked it. Congrats to DVD being 95. He looks good for his age and still moves well.

R23, etc I was reading Penny Marshall's book and she grew up going to her mom's dancing school and being in productions and she refers to "selling it" several times. I watched this episode recently and laughed anew at her using that phrase.

More dancing!

[Quote]Sort of a Ted Baxter subliminally gay character, wasn't he.

Yes R10 Richard Deacon was indeed gay!

He was good friends with Lucille Ball. She cast him in a lot of stuff.

I love Richard Deacon in The Birds. He's only in one scene as Mitch Brenner's neighbor in the city but I crack up at his bitchy side-eye to Tippi Hedren.

[quote] I always thought it was weird how Buddy and Sally spent so much time at Rob and Laura’s.

Maybe because they worked closely with Rob every day and were friends? That seemed plausible to me.

Anyway, it was one of the great classic tv shows. I didn't like Buddy; I found him unlikable and annoying. I liked Sally better, but her desperation to get married was cringeworthy. But I guess back in those days to be a single woman, even one with a successful career, was considered a fate worse than death. Her suitors were pretty funny, though. Her steadiest boyfriend was a milquetoast named Herman Glimscher. A funny episode was one where Stacey Petrie was at Sally's when Herman comes in and sees what he thinks is Stacey making unwanted advances to Sally. He shouts "I'll handle this, Sally!" and rushes in to defend her, attacking Stacey, engaging in a wild brawl. Sally is impressed; Herman is capable of forcefulness after all and it was all for HER. But he was still the Mama's boy. When Laura asked Sally where Herman is Sally replies "His mother came and picked him up. "

I remember reading that Rose Marie was disappointed that they steered the show away from the writer's room and focused more on Rob and Laura's home when they realized how popular MTM became in a very short time. Sally and Buddy became very supporting players when they were supposed to be right after Rob Petrie in the pecking order. Once Rob and Laura started to be compared to then President JFK and Jackie there was no stopping their popularity. MTM in being a skilled comic actor, even then, just cemented her fate.

Watching the shows today, I am impressed at how Jerry and Millie Helper added so much fun to certain episodes.

Carl Reiner looked like Gene Siskel.

^ Alan Brady always reminded me as a show business Mad Men. I pictured him driving a big Cadillac with a bitchy wife with big hair and a mink coat

Wasn’t there an episode when the Petrys thought the hospital had given them the wrong baby? In the last scene they were going to exchange Ritchie for the “right” baby but when the other parents showed up they were black.

^ Yeah, it was funny and very progressive for the early 60s

It's hilarious--longest sustained laugh on tv up until that time---it must have been really novel unlike most of the recycled schtick that was common on sitcoms then.. Yet, Sheldon Leonard (executive producer) had to pay for the episode because the sponsor was uncomfortable.

[quote]Wasn’t there an episode when the Petrys thought the hospital had given them the wrong baby? In the last scene they were going to exchange Ritchie for the “right” baby but when the other parents showed up they were black.

Yes - one of the best end of the episode pay-offs ever. I wonder how hard it was for them to get that approved.

I watched the first two seasons of Bewitched recently. They certainly made it clear that the newly wed Stephens had a healthy sex life.

Someone mentioned Ward and June earlier. The last time I caught some old Leave it to Beaver episode, it struck me how both June and Ward had wicked dry sense of humor and loved to banter with each other. They actually had really good chemistry.

Some of Carl Reiner's best work and one of the best scenes:

^ That was a good one where Laura tells the world that Alan Brady wears a toupee

I LOVE Alan Brady talking to his array of toupees on wig stands!

Fellas...

[quote]it was funny and very progressive for the early 60s

I also love the one where Rob and Laura accidentally dye their hands black and have to go to an awards dinner for an NAACP-type organization.

Why did they have a sofa in their dining room when they already had one in their living room?

^ Same reason they have a telephone in the middle of the living room nowhere near a jack.

anyone remember The New Dick Van Dyke Show?

[quote] anyone remember The New Dick Van Dyke Show?

I do. It wasn't bad at all. I remember it as being very funny. But it wasn't on long, only two seasons.

Does anyone remember "Van Dyke & Company?" It was a variety show, a bold move on Van Dyke's part because variety shows were on their way out. But it was a great show. And it featured Andy Kaufman! It only lasted one season but it beat out Saturday Night Live (the season that introduced Bill Murray) to win the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy-Variety or Music Series in 1977.

I couldn't stand the New Dick Van Dyke Show. Guess a lot of people agreed with me since it barely ran two season; today it would have run a month at most. It just didn't compare for an instant to the old show.

Oh, look what's on Hawaiian Eye(1960) tonight on Decades:

Cricket, Steele and Lopaka run for cover when a typhoon strikes, but they have to share their refuge---with four thieves. Susan: Mary Tyler Moore. Steele: Anthony Eisley. Kane: Robert Colbert...

"Why did they have a sofa in their dining room when they already had one in their living room? "

Overflow setting for dance recitals

R106 So Rob would have something to trip over in the intro! DUH!

EG here. I haven't watched an entire episode of this show in probably 30 years but I do remember watching the reruns as a kid and I never liked the Army flashback episodes.

I remember seeing Pickles in three episodes:

1) Sally has a date with an old friend from high school on her birthday

2) Laura gets mad at Rob for always picking up the check at dinner

3) Buddy wants a divorce

I should have researched this before I answered ^

[quote]Barbara Perry originated the role of Buddy's wife. She appeared in the episodes "Sally Is A Girl" and "Where You Been, Fassbinder?" Less than a year later, Pickles returned in "My Husband Is A Check-Grabber", but now she was played by the statuesque Joan Shawlee. She would go on to play the role twice more, getting to perform with the gang in "The Sam Pomerantz Scandals" and then blubbering her way to comic glory in her showcase episode "Divorce".

[quote](It feels as though Pickles appeared in far more episodes than she did because Buddy talked about her all the time.)

It does feel like she appeared in more than four episodes.

[quote]Did they ever talk about their pre-Army days?

Not that I remember, R44 but before the USO Laura was probably in high school. There is a two-part episode where Laura reveals she was only 17 when they got married which means their marriage isn't legal so they have to get married again.

There are also at least two episodes with Laura's ex-boyfriends, one of them became a priest who meets Rob on the golf course.

The other was Robert Vaughn whose character was one of the Alan Brady Show sponsors.

Laura also "stole Jacques Bergerac's heart".

I thought it was weird that their bedroom was right off the living room whike Ritchie’s bedroom was down a hall on the other side of the house where bedrooms would be. Rob and Laura’s room seemed more like it should be a den.

There was also a guest room right next to the closet. Where was the bathroom?

I found a fan made floor plan of the house.

^ Split bedroom plan. Common for parents who like to be apart from their whiny kids

@r112, "There are also at least two episodes with Laura's ex-boyfriends, one of them became a priest"

The show that almost made me convert to alter boy :)

The actor who played Laura's ex-boyfriend who became a priest is Michael Forest He also had a memorable turn as Apollo in the Star Trek episode "Who Mourns For Adonais?", where he wore a barely there toga. He still survives. He's 92 now.

Toga, toga, toga

kickin'

Watching it on the Roku channel. Laura is so neurotic!

[quote] Laura is so neurotic!

They all were! I think Mel Cooley was the sanest person on the show. And occasionally there was a guest character (Laura's former boyfriends Jim Darling and Joe Coogan come to mind) who was a nice, normal person. But all the main characters were nuts, like characters in sitcoms tend to be.

I caught part of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang over the weekend, and can see why he never really broke out as a big movie star. He was perfect for the Dick Van Dyke Show where he was largely a likeable straight man who could break out his comic bits and dancing in shorter segments, or - cockney accent aside - was good as a supporting character in Mary Poppins, but with a lesser script and direction his mugging could be a bit much for a full length movie.

The Alan Brady is bald episode was on MeTV last night - that really is a classic episode that is still funny.

I thought I read that Mary Tyler Moore was hired largely for her looks and to be a straight man and then they were surprised to discover she was actually good at comedy and could be funny.

I agree, R125. But look out for the resident DL Van Dyke fans who will insist he was a Big Movie Star based on reading his numerous film credits and box office (over decades) results.

[quote] The show that almost made me convert to alter boy :)

Oh, dear!

R121:Michael Forest also played Nick Andropolous, on "As the World Turns", at one time his character was married to Kim (Kathyrn Hays), kiddo.

Sylvia Lewis was very talented. She was on just about every sitcom in the 60s but each character was so different you’d never recognize her.

In real life the whole south wall of the house would be pushed out and be 2 other rooms, so not weird shaped. It’s a TV set, the third wall is never shown fool.

I used to see Richard Deacon cruising the popular WEHO gay spots back in the day. Loved his role on the show.

[quote]anyone remember The New Dick Van Dyke Show?

The first two seasons in which DVD was a local talk show host in Arizona were pleasant, but not classic. The retooled third season in which DVD was a soap actor in LA sucked and killed the show.

Rose Marie despised Mary Tyler Moore after she became the female star of the show.

^ And MTM hated, HATED that stupid bow Rose Marie wore until the day she died

Sally was always so desperate for a man. It was not appealing.