10

SHOWTIME

Less than a month after shooting the pilot, Carl called me at home in New York. I was reading the paper before going to the theater, but I immediately put it down when I heard the excitement in his voice. CBS had loved the pilot, he said, adding, they were picking it up for an entire season and we were going to get started as soon as I got to Los Angeles.

I am not even sure how I got through that night’s performance of Birdie. I hung up with Carl and danced around the living room with Margie, who was pregnant with our fourth child. I don’t remember exactly where I was later, whether I was standing outside our house before getting into the car to drive into the city or had paused next to the artists’ entrance at the theater, staring up at the New York skyline, but I do remember feeling blessed, like something greater than me was happening, and yet, it was happening to me.

I planned nothing.

This was my lucky life.

We put our house up for sale and I gave notice at the play. The timing was perfect. I was only signed to the play for a year and that contract was just about up. My final performance in Birdie came in April 1961. It was a bittersweet night, as expected. The little girls with whom I sang “Put On a Happy Face” had tears running down their rosy cheeks, and Chita, who had become a dear friend, and I cried onstage, not caring if anyone in the audience noticed.

Two months later, I was buried in work on the TV series but still making news in the play. Apparently I won a Tony Award for Featured Actor. I say apparently because I had no idea that I was among the night’s winners, which included Richard Burton for Camelot, Joan Plowright for A Taste of Honey, Zero Mostel for Rhinoceros, and Gower Champion for Birdie. Charles Nelson Reilly accepted the award on my behalf.

“Dick says thank you,” he quipped. “And since he can’t be here, I’d like to sing a few of my hits.”

He had such a good time that night in my stead that he forgot to call and let me know the good news. No one else called, either. Notification did finally arrive via a congratulatory telegram, but somehow it ended up under the welcome mat outside our front door, and days passed before our housekeeper found it when she swept the front porch.

Oh, well.

As much as I loved New York, it was in the past. We had settled into a new house in Mandeville Canyon, a secluded Brentwood neighborhood close to the kids’ schools. Byron Paul, who was managing my career, had gone ahead of us, bought a home for his family and then found one for ours two doors down from his. Our move went smoothly, except for my poor Chrysler, which I had put on the train in perfect running condition. It was dead on arrival, though.

I marveled at my kids, whose lives were unfolding in a very different manner than mine. Whereas I had been brought up in a small town surrounded by relatives, they had lived in Atlanta, New York, and now L.A. But they were great kids: smart, respectful, studious, adaptable, generous, and well-adjusted. I was more proud of them than anything else I had ever done.

Plus, as the little bump in Margie’s belly attested, we had one more on the way that fall.

All of us adored L.A. It was warm and beautiful. Life was lived outdoors. None of us had any problems adjusting, not that I remember, but when minor issues with the children did arise, I simply turned to Carl and his wife, Estelle, both of whom were attuned to the latest advice in child-rearing. Actually, I turned to Carl whenever I had a question on any topic.

Over the years, I have accepted numerous awards and made sure to thank Carl. In fact, on more than one occasion, I can recall thanking Carl for my life. It always gets a laugh. But it’s never been a joke. It’s true. In addition to all his show-business smarts, he has always been someone with genuine wisdom about life. The two don’t necessarily go hand in hand. With Carl, they did. When he put me in his show, he literally changed my entire life.

I only saw him lose his temper once and by then we were already a few years into the show. It was during rehearsal, early in the week, and we were playing around too much with a bad script, trying to fix it. Carl came to the set to watch a run-through and raised hell because we not only failed to fix the script, but we had, he said, made it worse as well.

Aside from that, the man was a model of hard work and comedy genius who was determined to do things right from day one, and he did. He set the tone, wrote the scripts, and the rest of us enjoyed the ride of our lives.

Our first season, like all the others, was both effortless and joyful. I didn’t have to be at the studio until ten A.M., so I was able to spend time with Margie and the kids before I made the thirty-minute drive to the Little Desilu studio in Hollywood. My workweek began on Wednesdays with a read-through of the new script. We all sat around a table, read lines, shared opinions, and tossed out new ideas. It was the beginning of a process that didn’t stop until we got in front of the audience and shot the episode the following Tuesday, and even then we still added lines.

Carl was firmly in charge, but it was such a sharing environment, one where everyone knew the goal was to make the best and funniest episode possible, that we all felt comfortable voicing thoughts to that end. At the table, Carl took to calling me “Doc.” It was always good-natured and casual. I didn’t get it, though. We were halfway into the season when I finally told him that. He explained that everyone on Your Show of Shows had called Neil Simon by that name, Doc.

“He was a great writer, but quiet,” said Carl. “All of us in the writers’ room would be yelling and Neil would mention an idea, but no one could hear him. I’d say, ‘Wait a minute, Doc’s got something.’ I made it a point to sit next to him so I could hear him.”

The same thing happened on our show. I would throw out a line, but not loud enough to be heard over Sheldon, Morey, Rosie, Jerry Paris, or the others. But Carl would raise his hand to quiet the table and say, “Hey, Doc has got something.”

Jerry Paris had ideas, too. A student of comedy, he possessed all the talents that can’t be taught—timing, a sharp eye, and an intuitive sense for what worked. He was also one of those people who did not have an edit button. He said whatever he thought. Usually it was funny, but he pissed off his share of people. Jerry had acted for years, but he was more interested in directing. In preparation, he observed everything. Nothing happened on the set that Jerry did not know about or have an opinion on.

Before the end of the second season, he would get his chance, and then in the 1970s go on to even greater heights directing Happy Days. But during the first season of The Dick Van Dyke Show we all were obedient soldiers. Sheldon directed the pilot and then John Rich took over the rest of the season and much of the following one. John epitomized the value and purpose of a director, especially on a sitcom. Blessed with a marvelous sense of the ridiculous, he was brilliant at seeing all the possibilities in a scene. I did whatever hit me instinctively as I read the script. I never thought about another way to play a scene. John only thought about other ways.

He worked from a rolling lectern that he leaned on or gripped with his hands as we worked. His script was poised on top. A cigar was usually in his mouth. When he got upset—and he has a ferocious temper—John hit the lectern and chomped on his cigar. I braced myself for a thunderclap whenever I saw his cigar bouncing up and down. But when something worked, John laughed his head off.

Even with personalities as strong and persuasive as Sheldon and John, it was still always Carl’s show. If it was funny, Carl’s ear, as well as his office door, were always open. He was a first-rate collaborator. But he was the maestro and we were his orchestra. He had the final word.

On Mondays, we came in and spent all day blocking for the camera. It was the most boring day of the week, but it added to the anticipation of Tuesday, the day we performed the show. We arrived at one P.M. and did a run-through of the show, which I felt was when I did my best thinking. For me, that’s when the magic happened, when the funny bones took over.

After rehearsal, we broke for dinner. While we ate, the audience came in. Then we did the show. By that point, I knew it was good and couldn’t wait to get out there and show them what we had. Mary took a few weeks to get used to performing in front of an audience. She hadn’t done that before. But soon she was like everyone else—chomping at the bit, excited.

On taping nights, Carl always greeted the audience with some lighthearted banter and got them laughing. Then he brought out Morey to further warm them up. That was always dicey. Morey knew as many jokes as anyone I ever met, but if he saw someone in the audience of a distinct ethnicity, his brain turned to that page of jokes in his head and he rattled off one after the other without thinking that he might be offending someone.

Those were delicate times compared to today, so I would often be backstage with the others, wincing at some of his jokes and praying we didn’t have a problem. We never did. But we had other problems. Though it might seem quaint now, the network’s censors had a problem with Mary’s Capri pants. They thought they were too tight, and that turned into a bit of a battle, which Carl eventually won. Following the show’s October 3, 1961, debut, I am sure Mary helped to sell Capri pants across the country.

The attention that Mary got didn’t sit well with Rosie. She had come on board thinking the focus was going to be on the comedy writers and the TV show Rob worked on. She felt Mary’s part should be a more minor one, at least as the role of wife was thought of in those prefeminist days, meaning she should serve more as window dressing to Rob’s glitzier life in show business. However, Carl made it clear that the show was about both of Rob’s lives, work and home, and that the marriage was the foundation for everything else. Indeed, Rosie came to understand that the show worked just fine as it was.

From the outset, Carl envisioned a show that would be timeless. He wanted it to be fresh to audiences fifty years down the line. It was such a bold, confident vision, and correct. To that end, he made sure the scripts never contained references to the period. In other words, no politics, no slang, no mention of popular TV shows, films, or songs. In their place, he emphasized work, family, friendships, and human nature.

Carl was the master of knowing the difference between funny and not funny, but occasionally Sheldon took exception and the two of them got into a discussion that typically had them meeting in the middle, in agreement, and understanding that their difference of opinion came from their different approaches. Carl was a comedy purist, and Sheldon was all about the story, all about how the show was built.

I received a first-class education in comedy from listening to these two brilliant men argue with each other not about whether something was funny, but about what constituted funny, and what made something funny.

I listened to such discussions, but I stayed out of them, and avoided debates in general. My dislike of confrontation was so obvious that Rosie turned it into a joke. She dubbed me “the Six-Foot Tower of Jell-O,” and anytime it seemed like someone needed to speak with Carl about a line, a scene, or some other issue, she turned to me and said, “Let’s send the Six-Foot Tower of Jell-O.”

From the get-go, we cracked each other up all the time. It was part of the process, and out of all of us, Richard Deacon, who played Alan Brady’s brother-in-law Mel Cooley, was the worst at keeping it in. He started in the very first episode when he asked Rob if the writing staff could show him a little respect and Morey quips, “A little respect is all we’re trying to show you.” It was just zing—funny on the page and even funnier when we performed it.

And when Richard started to crack up, he got a quietly determined but panicked look in his eyes, and a single tiny bead of perspiration popped out on his forehead, which destroyed me. I always lost it before he did, then suffered the mirthful wrath of director John Rich yelling, “Cut.” That was par for the course. Two seasons later, Joan Shawlee came on to play Morey’s wife, Pickles, and little Larry Mathews, who played our son, Ritchie, kept saying, “Hi, Aunt Wrinkles.” And that stopped the show.

Likewise, on one of the later episodes that season, I was supposed to toss my hat onto the hat rack in my office. All week long during rehearsals, and even during the run-through on the day we filmed, I flipped my fedora toward the peg and missed. Usually I missed badly. But when we got in front of the audience Tuesday night, I tossed my hat and it went straight onto the peg, and I mean straight, as if it were on a string. I looked genuinely surprised, which I was and which was okay—it still worked in the scene—and Rosie gave me a look that said, Not bad, which also worked as a beautifully underplayed moment that got a laugh on its own. But Morey ruined it. He couldn’t hold back his astonishment.

“Holy shit!” he said to the audience. “He’s been trying to do that all week.”

Part of the fun of that first season was getting to know everyone. I was the new kid in town, so my eyes were wide open, and everyone had a full life going on outside of work. Rosie had been a performer since childhood, when she was a cute singer known as Baby Rose Marie, and she was a warmhearted New Yorker whose husband, Bobby Guy, the lead trumpet player in the NBC Orchestra, went through a mysterious illness that eventually took his life. She never lost the twinkle in her eyes, but it was hard on her.

Richard, who also played Lumpy Rutherford’s father, Fred, on Leave It to Beaver, was a gourmet cook and connoisseur of fine things. He enjoyed laughing at himself and often noted that the best acting advice he ever got came from Helen Hayes at the start of his career when she told him to give up any thoughts of becoming a leading man.

Richard and Morey were unlikely best pals, but they were, and they frequently went out for drinks after work and came up with some of the best one-liners, insults, and bad jokes. That was Morey’s specialty, coming up with those spot-on, hilarious insults.

Morey was a fascinating character with a joke for every person, situation, moment, or occasion. He claimed to know a hundred thousand jokes. But he had another side that few saw—or heard. The son of immigrants, he was a skilled musician who’d done stand-up with his brother in vaudeville and, as a teenager, worked in Al Capone’s Chicago speakeasy. He wrote a couple of well-known songs in the 1940s, including “Rum and Coca-Cola.” Few people know he also wrote lyrics to the show’s theme song.

So you think that you got trouble
Well, trouble’s a bubble
So tell old Mister Trouble to get lost.

Why not hold your head up high, and
Stop cryin’
Start tryin’
And don’t forget to keep your fingers crossed.

When you find the joy of livin’
Is lovin’
And givin’
You’ll be there when the winning dice are tossed.

A smile’s just a frown
That’s turned upside down
So smile, and that frown
Will defrost
And don’t forget to keep your fingers crossed.

I don’t think anyone outside the show ever heard those lyrics until I began performing them with my singing group around 2004. Once you hear them arranged with the theme song, they put a smile on your face.

Morey was like that, too. He was a devoted husband and father of two children, and above all else a very happy man. He used to say he was the happiest person he knew. He was probably right.

On the set, Morey was usually on the phone with his broker or reading the business section of the paper and then talking to his broker. It was as if he ran a second business. During rehearsals, someone was always paging him, “Morey, we’re ready for you. We’re waiting.”

It turned out the human joke machine was a financial genius. If not a genius, he had the magic touch when it came to picking stocks. He had bought a couple of winners early on, maybe Bethlehem Steel and Polaroid, and made a mint. I think he was richer than all the rest of us combined.

Mary was a hard worker who was going through a divorce from a man she had married at eighteen and was now falling in love with Grant Tinker, a former advertising executive turned TV producer who was frequently on the set with her. Mary kept her personal life quiet. She was a load of fun, though. Before we shot the pilot, Carl jokingly (I think he was joking) suggested that she and I go away for the weekend and get to know each other. We didn’t. Once the show began airing, though, our chemistry was such that people actually thought we were husband and wife in real life.

When she was about seven or eight months pregnant, my wife came to the studio and watched a show being filmed. Afterward, she came backstage and said it didn’t look like I was acting at all.

“You’re exactly like you are at home,” she said.

She was right, and that was all due to Carl’s ability to render me perfectly on the page. I was pretty much the same person on and off the set—maybe to a fault. Early on, Sheldon gave me the only acting lesson I ever had when he came up to me after a taping, put his hands on my shoulders, and told me that I was doing a terrific job except for one small thing. It was my voice. He said that I spoke the same in every scene, in a monotone.

“Exaggerate a little,” he said. “Let the audience hear your reaction.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Don’t do much,” he said. “Just raise and lower your voice.”

I did. It worked. Simple.