Carl Reiner entered American living rooms in the 1950s as a comedy writer during the early years of television; “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” his semiautobiographical 1960s sitcom, cemented his reputation.
Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty ImagesCarl Reiner, the entertainer whose sense of the absurd helped define comedy for the first generation to grow up with TV sets, died of natural causes Monday night at the age of 98.
Mr. Reiner, an actor, writer, director and producer—and sometimes several of those roles at once—first entered American living rooms in the 1950s, as a writer for Sid Caesar’s comedy series “Your Show of Shows.” But it was “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” Mr. Reiner’s semiautobiographical 1960s sitcom about a television comedy writer, that cemented his show-business stature, winning him seven of the 12 Emmy Awards he would receive over a career spanning more than seven decades.
“Last night my dad passed away,” his son, filmmaker Rob Reiner, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday morning. “As I write this my heart is hurting. He was my guiding light.”
At the start of the 1960s, Mr. Reiner, with lifelong friend Mel Brooks, released the first of five “2000 Year Old Man” comedy albums. He moved on to directing in the 1970s and ’80s, with movies including “Oh, God!,” “The Jerk,” “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” and “All of Me.”
Carl Reiner, center, with Sid Caesar, left, and Howard Morris on ‘Your Show of Shows.’
Photo: Globe Photos/Zuma Press“Inviting people to laugh at you while you are laughing at yourself is a good thing to do,” Mr. Reiner, the author of novels and memoirs, wrote in his 2003 book “My Anecdotal Life.” “You may be the fool but you are the fool in charge.”
The native New Yorker—whose comedic pose was part Jewish humor jokemeister, part wry straight man—won the Mark Twain Prize for American humor in 2000. “I think Carl Reiner is funnier than Mark Twain,” Jerry Seinfeld said during the ceremony. At the event, Rob Reiner recalled being 8 years old and telling his father he wanted to change his name to Carl.
Carl Reiner was born in the Bronx to Jewish immigrant parents on March 20, 1922. That year, his father, a watchmaker, assembled the family’s first radio. Mr. Reiner grew up listening to it.
Carl Reiner, left, and his son, director Rob Reiner, made handprints in Hollywood in 2017.
Photo: danny moloshok/ReutersIn family trips to the movies every Sunday—with tickets his father sometimes bartered for with watch repairs—he lapped up comedy lessons from legends like the Marx Brothers and Charlie Chaplin.
A quick mimic who imitated the British swashbucklers he saw on the screen, he was too shy to talk openly about wanting to become an actor. His parents were too poor to pay for college, so when he graduated from high school early at age 16, he went straight to work as a shipping clerk in the garment industry. Near the end of the Depression, his older brother Charlie told him about a free government-funded acting class organized through the federal Works Progress Administration, and his path was set.
Carl Reiner directing the film ‘Where's Poppa?' in 1970 in New York City.
Photo: David Attie/Getty ImagesOn the first day of class, the teacher had all the students perform Queen Gertrude’s speech on the death of Ophelia from “Hamlet.” Mr. Reiner told late-night TV host Conan O’Brien in 2017 that he still could recite the monologue, even if woken from a deep sleep—and promptly delivered an animated rendition.
Mr. Reiner served in the Army during World War II starting in 1942. While in Hawaii, a friend working in a military entertainment unit asked him if he could riff at a microphone for 40 minutes. Mr. Reiner said yes—having honed his skills performing in the Catskills—and he left the Signal Corps to tour the South Pacific. His Army bits included “Monty the Talking Dog,” about a canine who could imitate movie stars. In an audition after the Army, he performed Monty for a stone-faced hotel owner looking for talent. Mr. Reiner broke out in flop sweat but got the job.
A writing conference on the penthouse terrace of Sid Caesar’s New York City office in 1954, with Carl Reiner, in bow tie, leaning on the railing.
Photo: Bob Wands/Associated PressAfter a stint in two Broadway musical revues, Mr. Reiner was hired to write skits in 1950 for “Your Show of Shows,” where he stayed until 1954, then moved on to a new sketch-comedy show, “Caesar’s Hour.”
In his 2012 memoir “I Remember Me,” Mr. Reiner recalled how the staff writers on “Your Show of Shows,” including Mel Brooks and Neil Simon, once tried to figure out the funniest number. They landed on 32. Sure enough, he wrote, performer Imogene Coca got laughs from the studio audience every time she said, “Thiiirrrrty-twooo” in the skit.
Mr. Reiner’s career appeared to founder in 1960 when a TV show he had hoped to star in, “Head of the Family,” wasn’t picked up as a series. The 13 episodes Mr. Reiner wrote were reinvented as “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” with Mr. Reiner’s madcap TV-writer character embodied by the patrician Mr. Van Dyke.
The cast of ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show,’ including Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, right, with Carl Reiner, left.
Photo: Everett Collection“It was a perfect piece of casting,” Mr. Reiner said in an interview with the Archive of American Television in 1998. “If I had done the show, it would have lasted a year.”
Mr. Reiner created, wrote, produced and acted in the hit show, which ran from 1961 to 1966. It was a grueling period for Mr. Reiner, who wrote roughly 40 of the first 60 scripts. “The first two or three years were murder for me,” he told the archive.
He had written more than two dozen books. In addition to several coffee table books on TV, film, radio and art, he wrote five novels, seven memoirs and six children’s books.
His 1958 debut, “Enter Laughing,” a “bio-novel” about a frustrated young man who wants to break into show business, became a 1963 Broadway play. The 1967 movie version marked Mr. Reiner’s directorial debut.
Carl Reiner performing ‘The 2000 Year Old Man’ with Mel Brooks on ‘The Andy Williams Show’ in 1966.
Photo: Globe Photos/Zuma PressMr. Reiner’s humor reached new generations with “The 2000 Year Old Man.” In the skit, he played the bemused reporter interviewing Mr. Brooks as an ancient man, an old kibitzer who knew Jesus Christ (“Nice boy—he wore sandals”) and married hundreds of women including Helen of Troy’s sister, Janice. The men had ad libbed the routine at parties through the 1950s. Comedian George Burns vowed to steal it if they didn’t tape it, Mr. Reiner told the archive. The pair performed the bit on TV in the 1960s, created a 1975 animated TV special and churned out albums including “The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000,” which won each of them a 1998 Grammy Award.
Carl Reiner and his wife, Estelle Reiner, at the 1965 Emmy Awards in Hollywood.
Photo: Associated PressMr. Reiner is survived by his three children, Rob, Annie and Lucas. His wife, Estelle Reiner—who delivered the famous line “I’ll have what she’s having” in Rob Reiner’s 1989 romantic comedy “When Harry Met Sally”—died in 2008.
In the 2000s, Carl Reiner played retired thief Saul Bloom in “Oceans 11” and the two follow-up movies with George Clooney. In 2017, he narrated the HBO documentary “If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast,” chronicling the vibrant lives of notable people in their 90s. “Every morning, I pick up my newspaper, get the obituary section and see if I’m listed,” he said in the film. “If I’m not, I’ll have my breakfast.”
Carl Reiner, wearing a hat, in a scene from ‘Oceans 11.’
Photo: Warner Bros./Everett CollectionWrite to Ellen Gamerman at ellen.gamerman@wsj.com
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