The Dick Van Dyke Show/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Directed by Cast Member: Jerry Paris took over as the show's chief director during the third season, leading to his acting role in the show being cut down.
  • Executive Meddling:
    • Carl Reiner wrote the role of Rob Petrie for himself (sensibly, considering the show was based on his experiences writing Your Show Of Shows), but the studio rejected him in the role and instead cast Dick Van Dyke. In fact, there exists a pilot of Carl in the role of Rob Petrie called "Head of the Family". It actually aired in the summer of 1960. The whole cast - including Reiner - consider this a rare case of good executive meddling.
  • Harpo Does Something Funny: Writers would occasionally leave space for Dick Van Dyke to fill in as he saw fit.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!:
    • During much of The Dick Van Dyke Show's early run, the actor who played Mel Cooley, Richard Deacon, simultaneously played Ward Cleaver's co-worker Fred Rutherford on Leave It to Beaver.
    • Harry Mudd heads up Alan's Payroll Department in the episode "It Wouldn't Hurt Them To Give Us a Raise".
    • Barney Collier is both Mr Peters, and one of Rob's Army buddies "Sticks".
    • Corpal Newkirk is Racy Tracy Rattigan.
    • Sam the butcher shows up in a couple of episodes.
  • Hey, It's That Voice!: Along with providing the voice (and later body) of Alan Brady, Carl Reiner can often be heard as a TV announcer in episodes such as the one in which Rob tries to watch a broadcast of Citizen Kane but is annoyed by the number of commercial interruptions.
  • Marathon Running: Nick@Nite's The Dick Van Dyke Collection.
  • Real Life Relative: Jerry Van Dyke appears in a few episodes as Rob's brother Stacey.
  • Uncancelled: CBS officially cancelled the show after its first season, and the cast had even had a farewell party before Procter & Gamble threatened to yank all their popular soap operas (As the World Turns, The Edge of Night, Guiding Light, and Search for Tomorrow) off of the network's daytime schedule if the series wasn't renewed. Amusingly, when Carl Reiner decided to end the show on his own accord after the fifth season, CBS was now begging him to continue on the grounds that it was pretty much the only top ten hit on the network's prime time schedule.
  • Write What You Know:
    • The entire basis of the show. Carl Reiner has said that he was a New York comedy writer who lived in New Rochelle with his wife and son, so he decided to write a show about a New York comedy writer living in New Rochelle with his wife and son.
    • Reiner carried this over into running the show, insisting that the plots should be based not on old sitcom tropes but on real things that happened to the writers in their family or work lives. Ironically, many of these stories have themselves become stock sitcom plots thanks to their use on this show.
    • The Petries even live on the same street as the Reiners did (although Carl DID add a 1 to the house number).
  • Write Who You Know:
    • Carl Reiner based Buddy and Sally on fellow comedy writers Mel Brooks and Lucille Kallen.
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