Farewell to Carl Reiner, a Giant in a Generation of Giants

From Wikimedia Commons, a 1970 NBC publicity image, Goldie Hawn and Carl Reiner who appeared together in an episode of "Laugh-In."

When I teach media history, we usually spend some time watching clips from “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” The early 1960s sitcom is notable for several reasons. It’s witty, it presents a married couple who deeply love each other but, unlike idyllic home comedy couples of the 1950s, also fight and disagree. In that way, it’s the second decade’s “I Love Lucy,” a trend-setting show for its time.

In “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” Mary Tylor Moore wore slacks. She struggled and rebelled against the constraints of the American nuclear family. The show as also meta-media content—media content that comments on the nature of media.

And it was associated with an entertainment giant, Carl Reiner, who was part of a generation of giants, and who among a pantheon of comedic geniuses stood out.

Think of Reiner performing the “2,000-Year-Old Man” comedy routine with Mel Brooks. Sure, Brooks was the title character, but even he noted that it was Reiner who, as the interviewer, drove the routine.

It may not be great, edgy cinema of its era, but I am a fan of the 1966 movie “The Russians are Coming! the Russians are Coming!” I saw it when it ran several years later on TV, and it was a classic movie that my family and I enjoyed, a film my wife and children and I would view now and then on video. It’s partly notable for the comedic giants who assembled in that cast—including two of my favorites, Alan Arkin and Carl Reiner.

In comedy, Reiner was usually the straight man, but in that movie, it was Arkin’s Russian naval officer, Lt. Rozanov, who was the calm one against Reiner’s panicky Walt Whitaker. Whitaker is a comedy writer, and to have a director, writer, producer, comedian and actor play him seemed like a brilliant casting move.

In this early scene, watch the interplay between Reiner and Arkin:

And late in the movie, Reiner’s and Arkin’s characters finally come to some peaceful coexistence:

Reiner was born in the 1920s, and was thus is a member of my father’s Greatest Generation. He was behind the scenes in that generation's war—in fact, ended up sort of in theater—as a corporal in the Army Air Corps. Like many of his generation, his future path was set in motion by his World War II experience.

I am a fan. Almost anything he was associated with was worth watching. Late in life, he was one of my favorite characters in the Ocean films. He didn’t mind playing an old man as an old man.

I think some human touch, some realization of the possibility of being a genuine person but still extracting insight and comedy from the moment, was a mark of a Carl Reiner project. That’s what made “The Dick Van Dyke Show” so great. Sure, Dick Van Dyke had something to do with it, too. But a key to making that and to so many other Hollywood projects work was the gentle, brilliant humanity of Carl Reiner.

Goodbye, Carl, we will remember you and we already miss you.