More on Carl Reiner

My spies tell me that today, Dick Van Dyke recorded — from his home, of course — a special intro to run on tomorrow night's airing of two colorized episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show. The two episodes they selected — "Coast-to-Coast Big Mouth" and "October Eve" are exactly the ones I would have picked if you asked me to pick two that showed what a fine comic actor Carl Reiner was.

It doesn't really bother me that they're colorized. I mean, they were perfectly fine in black-n-white but if the gimmick of colorization gets a few more eyeballs tuning in — especially a few more younger eyeballs — then I'm fine with it. It does bother me that someone has had to chop a few minutes out of each of them. And I hope someone fixes the mistake they made in the end credits the last time they aired "Coast-to-Coast Big Mouth" colorized…

Richard Deacon did not play a dual role in that episode. The role of Johnny Patrick was played by Dick Curtis.

Speaking of multiple roles: I mentioned earlier that in addition to his role as Alan Brady and as the painter in "October Eve," Mr. Reiner also played the budding English anti-existentialist Yale Sampson in "I'm No Henry Walden." Nobody has written to point this out but I should have mentioned that he also played that drunken actor Willie Cook in Part II of "Stacey Petrie"…

Actually, Carl played a lot of roles on that series if you count off-camera parts like voices heard on a TV set that the Petries were watching. His stint as Alan Brady started that way. Brady's voice, furnished by Carl, was first heard in "The Meershatz Pipe," which was the tenth episode of the series to be aired. Later on, Alan Brady became an on-camera part but his face was concealed. Again, Carl played the role.

And they finally decided to let him be seen…a good decision since "Coast-to-Coast Big Mouth," which is the episode most folks think was the best, wouldn't have worked if you couldn't see his face and especially his scalp.