When Carl Reiner set out to create the sitcom that eventually became The Dick Van Dyke Show, he knew that he had to try something that hadn’t been done before. During the 1950s, Reiner wrote and performed on Sid Caesar’s popular TV variety programs Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour. During that time, he worked alongside other comedy writers who would also go on to have great success in the business, including Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart, and Woody Allen. As Reiner wrote in his 2015 book Why & When The Dick Van Dyke Show Was Born, being a comedy writer in New York City and commuting every day from suburban New Rochelle in Westchester County was the piece of ground he stood on that nobody else did.
After he realized that, he wrote a pilot that he called Head of the Family. He was so inspired by his own experiences that he wrote 12 additional scripts to accompany it, just in case the show got greenlit. In the pilot, Reiner plays New Rochelle comedy writer Rob Petry, who takes his son Richie to work with him one day so that he can see what his father does for a living. Head of the Family premiered without much fanfare in 1960 and wasn’t picked up as a series.
Reiner was ready to put the sitcom dream behind him at that point, but future Dick Van Dyke Show producer Sheldon Leonard had gotten wind of his idea and wanted to discuss it with him further. Reiner wasn’t keen on failing twice with the same material and was reluctant to give it any more thought. Leonard then offered him a straightforward suggestion to make the concept work: “We’ll get a better actor to play you,” he said. Apparently, he felt they needed better actors to play every single other character, too.
Among the characters that we thankfully got to see more of once the show was retitled The Dick Van Dyke Show was Rob’s co-worker/fellow writer Buddy Sorrell, played by Morey Amsterdam. Although other characters, like the star of the show-within-a-show Alan Brady, were based on multiple people, the Buddy character was actually modeled after Mel Brooks. According to The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book, Reiner kept the events in the fictional writer’s room “pretty close to reality.” One notable difference between Brooks and Amsterdam’s character, however, was that in real life, Brooks was the youngest member of Sid Caesar’s writing staff.
Brooks continued to be influential as the show went on as well. Any episodes involving the PTA were directly inspired by Brooks, who was regularly involved with the benefit shows at his children’s schools. Reiner also took issue with people coming up with storylines that didn’t reflect the reality of his relationship with Brooks. When he was pitched the idea of someone stealing Rob’s watch and Rob suspecting Buddy, Reiner angrily asked his writers, “Would I ever think Mel Brooks took a watch from my house?”
Reiner and Brooks remained lifelong friends for 70 years. The two would have dinner and watch TV together every night until Reiner died in 2020 at the age of 98.
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