Movie Musings: Disney and More

Carl and Rob: Like Father, Like Son

When we think about talented show business families, we think the Barrymoores, the Redgraves, the Douglases, or even the Cusacks. One other name that would fit that bill would be the Reiners. Like all show business families, the Reiners have many generations of talent. Carl and Rob, in particular, both have exceptional skills in telling funny stories, though they also have other talented people in their families and in my own personal view, their range of talent hasn’t been given all the attention it deserves, so I thought we could explore that.

Carl Reiner was born in the Bronx, New York City on March 20th, 1922. He started on Broadway in his early 20s, performing in musicals like Inside U.S.A. and Call Me Mister, but ultimately worked his way up to television as one of the regular performers on Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows (1950-1954). (Prior to his career as an entertainer, at 21 years old, Reiner married Estelle Lebost, who was eight years his senior.) Five years after “Your Show of Shows,” he developed a television pilot titled Head of the Family which was to be sit-com that parodied his real life with himself in the lead role of Rob Petrie. But CBS, who was to distribute it, disliked him in the leading role and suggested that he find someone else to play himself. Reiner then discovered Dick Van Dyke, and cast him along with Mary Tyler Moore as Laura, and Head of the Family was renamed The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966). Reiner cast himself as Rob, and his writing buddies, Buddy and Sally’s prima donna of a boss, Alan Brady on “Dick Van Dyke.” 

During and after “Dick Van Dyke,” aired on television, Carl Reiner also wrote and starred in the Doris Day/James Garner film The Thrill of It All (1963), and began a career in directing with the romantic comedy Enter Laughing (1967) based roughly on an autobiographical play that he wrote for Broadway in ’63. He also starred in the war comedy, The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (1966). Reiner also directed Steve Martin in four movies, The Jerk (1979), Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982), The Man with Two Brains (1983), and All of Me (1984), the middle two of which he also wrote with Martin. Reiner is also an accomplished author having written 16 books. He announced his 17th book, Too Busy to Die in 2017. 

Rob Reiner was born on March 6th, 1947 in New York City, New York. Rob made his acting debut in “Enter Laughing,” though the role that made him a household name was that of Michael “Meathead” Stivic in the sit-com All in the Family (1971-1978). Though he was talented as an actor, Rob Reiner aspired to follow in his father’s footsteps to be a director, and he became a true revolutionary of a director when he directed the very first film ever that defined the genre known as the mock-documentary or “mockumentary,” when me made This Is Spinal Tap in 1984. He followed that film with The Sure Thing (1985) and then the cult classic The Princess Bride (1987) and When Harry Met Sally (1989). Although his career as a director skyrocketed throughout the ‘80s, he never completely went away from appearing in front of the camera, alongside good friend Billy Crystal in Danny Devito’s Throw Momma From the Train (1987) and in Sleepless in Seattle (1993) which was written and directed by Nora Ephron (who also wrote “When Harry Met Sally.”) He achieved the highest honor of his career when A Few Good Men (1992), a film that he directed and co-produced was nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture. 

Both “Princess Bride,” and “When Harry Met Sally” were special projects for Reiner because “Bride,” was based on his all-time favorite book and he was more eager to make it than any of his other movies. “When Harry Met Sally,” was also special because he identified with the character of Harry Burns in the sense of what it was like to be a bachelor after his divorce from Penny Marshall. He cast both his mother, Estelle, and his adopted daughter from his marriage to Marshall, Tracy Reiner, in small roles in “When Harry Met Sally.” Estelle is the woman in the Katz Deli scene where Meg Ryan “fakes it” and the woman next to her says “I’ll have what she’s having,” and Tracy plays the woman who is dating Harry in the “Pictionary.” Ironically, while making the film, Rob Reiner met his second wife, Michele Singer, which inspired he and Nora Ephron to have Harry and Sally get together by the end of the movie. He and Singer were married on May 19th, 1989, two months before “When Harry Met Sally,” was released to theaters.

The Reiners have a special legacy of humor in the entertainment industry. No doubt film and television audiences will continue to benefit from it.