the creative and the suave

"Any good show that you see on television is going to reflect one person's reality."
-- Carl Reiner.

[excerpt, V. Waldron - Dick Van Dyke Show Book / pub., Hyperion]--------------------- INTRODUCTION, by Dick Van Dyke, February 1994 -- Malibu, California:
...After all these years, people still ask me what made our show so special -- what was that secret ingredient in our success?  I always answer that our show represented a perfect marriage of players and playwright.  We had that great, great cast; and Carl Reiner understood exactly how to write to every one of our strengths.

Unlike a lot of writers, Carl never wrote a character and expected the actor to come in and play it as written.  Carl is a student of human nature -- before he'd write a script, he'd have his eye on us.  He'd watch us on the set; he'd listen to us as we talked.  Then he'd filter those observations...and out would come one of those terrific scripts he wrote for the show. ...

And it didn't take me very long to figure out how good I had it on that series, either. 

After all, I wasn't a kid when we started -- I'd already been knocking around the business for about fifteen years.  So I was acutely aware, every minute that I was on that show, that it just didn't get any better than that.  We had so much fun -- we had so much latitude to be creative -- that I knew even then that things would never get any better. 

And, as a matter of fact, they didn't!

I suppose the funniest part of it all is that if someone had walked on to our set in 1964 and told us that people would someday be writing entire books about our show, we probably would've had a good laugh.  And then we would have very politely shown them the door!  Who would have thought our show would still be around thirty years later?...
================ (end Dick Van Dyke Introduction)

In its September 20, 1958, issue, TV Guide carried the first public announcement of the series that would eventually evolve into The Dick Van Dyke Show.  "Carl Reiner has written eight of the first thirteen chapters in a new series," read the newsbrief, "tentatively titled Head of the Family, in which he will star.  Peter Lawford put up the money for the test film, which will be shot in October in New York.

...Peter Lawford's involvement came about after Harry Kalcheim discovered that the former matinee idol -- who himself had recently signed to star in NBC's Thin Man series -- was actively looking to get a toehold in the extremely lucrative production end of the business. 

Since Kalcheim was well aware of Lawford's ties to the Kennedy family -- the movie star was at that time married to Patricia Kennedy...the agent had good reason to believe that Lawford could, in fact, put his hands on sufficient capital to make a pilot film of Reiner's series.  And so Kalcheim submitted the first of Reiner's thirteen scripts to Lawford, who liked what he saw well enough to request a meeting.

Carl Reiner's first and only meeting with Peter Lawford took place one morning in early September 1958, in Lawford's suite in New York's swank Pierre Hotel.  "It was the kind of meeting you have with a producer who's not going to do much except put up the money," Reiner says. 

"But I'll never forget it."  As he recalls, it was already past 11:00 A.M. when he and his agent arrived at Lawford's suite; even so, the suave actor answered the door dressed in nothing but a thick, plush bathrobe and a pair of matching velvet slippers.  In his palm, Lawford cradled an oversized snifter of what Reiner describes as "one of those giant red drinks -- something and grenadine on the rocks.  At eleven in the morning!"

As it turned out, the meeting didn't last long.

"Lawford agreed to put up the money to do the original pilot," recalls Reiner.  There was, however, one slight condition.  "They said I had to send a script down to Joseph P. Kennedy in Florida!"

Although Harry Kalcheim had correctly surmised that Lawford's financial backing would come from the Kennedy family coffers, the agent never dreamed that Lawford's financial arrangement would be dependent on script approval from the Kennedy family patriarch himself.  But, apparently, that was the case.

  "Joe Kennedy had to read it," explains Reiner, "before any of his family's money went into the product."  And so, a few days later, the script was dutifully submitted to Joseph P. Kennedy in Palm Beach, Florida.  The elder Kennedy was apparently impressed -- or so Reiner has always assumed, since he got the official go-ahead to start casting his pilot within a few days of the Florida submission.
-------------------------- [end excerpt]

People want to be in the movie business. ...
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{excerpts from The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book, by Vince Waldron.  Copyright, 1994.  Hyperion.  New York, New York.}

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