Today marks the 50th anniversary of the premiere of The Dick Van Dyke Show and this post is my contribution to the tribute blogathon hosted by Thrilling Days of Yesteryear. Click here for more on participating blogs...
In 1991, Nick at Night acquired and began airing The Dick Van Dyke Show, that sitcom über-classic originally shown on CBS from 1961 -1966. Thrilled to be able to once again watch a favorite series I hadn’t seen in 25 years, I was ready to celebrate "our television heritage” with Nick at Nite...
To hear that tune and see those faces again was uplifting. The Dick Van Dyke Show lost none of its charm over the years. It sparkled still with that trademark mix of sophistication and slapstick ingeniously created by Carl Reiner, written by Bill Persky and Sam Denoff and performed by an unparalleled cast comprised of old pros and newcomers.
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| TV's first lady |
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| America's first lady |
Of course, I noticed a thing or two about the show that I hadn't long, long ago. One thing that caught my eye was that Rob and Laura Petrie (Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore) resembled nothing so much as a loosened-up, middle-class (and very funny) rendition of John F. and Jackie Kennedy, who were in the White House when Dick Van Dyke premiered and through its early years. Later I learned that on the day JFK delivered his famous inaugural address ("...ask not what your country can do for you..."), the cast and crew of The Dick Van Dyke Show were filming the show's first episode. Who knew that two New Frontiers would open on the same day...
Laura Petrie was a perkier sort of of Jackie Kennedy. She was a cooking, cleaning, singing, dancing, housebound helpmate whereas the first lady masterminded state dinners, kept up with the arts, treasured all things French and spent weekends riding horses. But both ladies were fashion trendsetters. Beautiful Jackie popularized not just pillbox hats but an overall look of elegant simplicity. Meanwhile, New Rochelle's lovely Laura Petrie started a fashion craze of her own when she wore Capri pants...
In the early '90s, as I watched Laura whip up a cake (or was she frying liver?) on Nick at Nite, I felt a sudden wave of nostalgia for the age of single-income families and stay-at-home moms. Laura's life seemed so simple. She had most of her day to herself. While Rob was at work and Ritchie in school, all she had to do was keep the house and clothes clean, make sure there were groceries in the kitchen and food on the table. Rob probably even handled the bills! I didn't take this line of forbidden thinking very seriously for very long - but it gave me pause as I recalled my youthful scorn for the world of the housewife. A few years after The Dick Van Dyke Show ended, Mary Tyler Moore moved on to her own show. No longer a housewife on the New Frontier, she resurfaced as that beyond-iconic single working woman, Mary Richards of WJM-TV, Minneapolis. As I write this it occurs that, like Mary, I (eventually) became a single woman working for a local TV station - hadn't really thought about it before! Time to toss my hat in the air...
The first episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show aired 50 years ago tonight (2600 weeks ago tomorrow night at 8:00) - here's what viewers saw when they tuned in:
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by title The Dick Van Dyke Show Blogathon: Wandering Down Memory Lane. You can bookmark this page with a URL https://news-these-days.blogspot.com/2011/10/the-dick-van-dyke-show-blogathon.html. Thank you!
Posted by: Tukiyooo
The Dick Van Dyke Show Blogathon: Wandering Down Memory Lane Updated at :
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Monday, October 3, 2011
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