After getting his start performing comedy on radio and TV, he earned a Tony for 1960’s Bye Bye Birdie. In 1961, he beat out performers like Johnny Carson to play Rob Petrie on a reworked version of scribe Carl Reiner’s pilot script, originally titled Head of the Family. Based on his own experience as a TV writer, Reiner created it for himself and even starred in a pilot, but that didn’t move forward.
Retitled The Dick Van Dyke Show, the project focused on Van Dyke’s character balancing work and family. It co-starred Morey Amsterdam, Rose Marie and 24-year-old Mary Tyler Moore as wife Laura. “We became a family,” Van Dyke told THR last year. Upon its debut in October 1961, THR‘s review deemed Van Dyke “sure to…
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