TV icon Dick Van Dyke: 'I don't get the comedies today'

On Sunday, Van Dyke, 87, gets a lifetime achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild in Los Angeles, just a year after his 1960s "Dick Van Dyke Show" co-star Mary Tyler Moore received the same honor.

http://todayentertainment.today.com/_news/2013/01/25/16696778-tv-icon-dick-van-dyke-i-dont-get-the-comedies-today?lite



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• He's older than my grandparents but he's one man I would absolutely fuck the SHIT out of when he was younger...yum.

• That's funny. We didn't 'get' Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

  Two Broke Girls (and a cup)

• Oh, Dick. Chill. Let the young people do their own thing.

  Larry Matthews, Master Thespian

• I few weeks ago I started streaming the Dick Van Dyke show from Netflix. The show is fucking brilliant. Wished they'd used Millie a little more though. She was actually probably the funniest one on the show. She ended up playing Fran's grandmother on The Nanny.

• "I've had a shitty bang. Does that count?"

  One Broke Girl Trying to be Funny

• I love Laura and Millie together.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DF2G-uVEvdMs

• R5 I agree. Millie episodes are my favorites.

• Millie went on to play Yetta in 'The Nanny.'

• Millie Helper (real name: Ann Morgan Guilbert), the character who played Laura Petrie's (MTM) best friend on "The Dick Van Dyke Show" in the 1960s, went on to play Yetta Rosenberg in TV's 1990s sitcom, "The Nanny."

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Morgan_Guilbert

• someone please tell Dick that rabbit ears don't work anymore

• My rabbit ears work just fine, thank you.

• He's an AIDS boy all right. Like his fuckin' lame ass show was any good. Let's talk for a second then burst into song. Of course somehow Sally is playing the piano and a 100 piece orchestra appears from no where. Totally unrealistic show. Jerry Paris and Ann Guilbert were the only two that could act. Mary Tyler Moore over acted, Richie sucked the ass, Sally was a lesbo and Buddy a Jew.

• I kind of agree with him. Most television comedy is awful. But he is an elder gay if he is reminiscing about 1964.

• 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' and 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' were the two best sitcoms ever on television.

• OP we've just been catching reruns on TVLand. The show is funny as shit. Love the look and smart humor.

  GreenJeans

• His son Barry was hot as fucking hell. He was one of my first gay crushes.

• R15 I respectfully disagree. I think both shows were absolutely lousy! Although I agree that most of today's TV comedy programming is garbage, period.

• Does anyone remember his brief, depressing stint as the replacement for Harvey Korman on The Carol Burnett Show? Seeing a once-great star reduced to second banana status lent an air of melancholy to his efforts.

• r13, go fuck yourself with a razor blade.

  ff for you

• R13 is just saying what half the eldergays around here think. [quote]The show is fucking brilliant. You need to look up the word 'brilliant' in the dictionary, hunty.

• R18. Dick Van Dke and Mary Tyler Moore did not have 'lousy' shows. Even if they weren't your favorites, they were among the most well-written and well-acted with a truckload of Emmys between the them.

• I wanted to spank and anally penetrate him when I was a kid growing up in the 1960s. Also his brother Jerry when he was on My Mother the Car.

  anonymous

• What, you mean he doesn't like Mike and Molly?

  Melissa%20McCarthy%27s%20giant%20underwear

• WARNING... There is a freezing rain advisory in Chicago. DO NOT...REPEAT...DO NOT go out unless you have to, and then use EXTREME...REPEAT...EXTREME caution. Have a great day.

• R21, you're as full of shit as R13. Do the same as he should: kill yourself, you self-hating, Jew-obsessed closeted piece of shit.

• For all you Mille lovers- Had tickets for "Night, Mother" at Arena Stage in DC many years ago and arrived to find a paper slip with a cast replacement. The mother was being played by . . . Ann Morgan Guilbert. She was fucking brilliant. A wonderful actress. and yes, her Yetta was sublime.

• So, tell me, did Millie ever go on to other roles???

• In his day, situations were ironic, not people (that is why they were called situational comedies).

• r28 Millie didn't even want the role she had. She was the only cast member without a contract. After the first year, Paris and her were offered contracts by Reiner. Guilbert refused, as she was a wife and mother and she said, she felt that if she had a contract Carl Reiner would use her more. She only wanted to be in an episode if the role was big enough and she didn't want to be away from her family for a show where Millie was only in one or two scenes. She said, this way, by making Carl Reiner pay her for each episode she was in, he'd be sure to use her to get his money's worth. Guilbert did appear here and there through the 60s and 70s in walk in parts, like on Andy Griffith (Or was it Mayberry RFD?)

• She's very lucky she wasn't recast.

  Peter%20Bergman

• He's right, because most of them aren't funny.

• You don't have to be an eldergay to enjoy old tv and movies. I love the 30's and 40' especially. Cannot believe people are so naive about this fact. As for The Dick van Dyke show, I liked it but it wasn't great.

• 20 minutes is not enough time to tell a story. Commercials have ruined tv.

• Totally agree with you and DVD on that R34.

• What some of you are missing is that The Dick Van Dyke Show was considered brilliant and innovative in its time because it presented a young suburban married couple who were both genuinely sexy, fashionable and real, neither one a scheming lamebrain idiot-father/mother. There had been nothing like them before on TV. It's easy to take that for granted now.

  The New [...] PTA Amateur Theater Troupe

• Millie was Laura's Rhoda.

• R5, did you just hatch from an egg?

• The Dick Van Dyke Show is one of the best written and funniest TV shows of all time - and the best episodes were when that little brat, Richie, wasn't on. That kid was the one weak link in the cast and the worst child actor of all time.

  Bubbles Sorrell

• No mention of Laura's Capri pants? You queens are slipping.

• r5 I loved Millie as well. I always thought those "nervous energy" characters were funny. Same with the first Mrs. Kravitz on Bewitched and Barney on Andy Griffith. To me, their energy was funny.

• Ann Guilbert's daughter is Hallie Todd, who was a regular on "Brothers. " She also played Blanche's horny niece on "Golden Girls".

• I think she's tremendous

  http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/mtm_04.jpg%3Fw%3D576

  Pats

• The peak of Dick's career was his 1960s show. Although he appeared in movies, he never made the leap to film star. His 1970s & 80s TV shows didn't redefine him as an actor. He's lucky he worked.

• I don't think anything past Friends and Raymond has been funny. The last two good sitcoms. DVD and MTM shows are two of my favorites from that era, but everyone always talks like everything back then was good and it wasn't.

  Anonymous

• He's not supposed to understand today's comedy. He's several generations removed from today's comedy. I never understood how people could find Milton Berle funny. Or WC Fields. They were several generations removed from me. My parents and grandparents generation thought they were funny I still find lots of currrent comedy funny, but find some comedy inexplicable. Like stand up comedians who only talk about their penises and getting laid. I think "Dude, we all have genitalia and have sex, it's not enough to build an entire comedy career." But I'm wrong. It is enough to build a comedy career. Like Dick van Dyke, I'm starting to lose touch with the comic sensibilities of younger generations. It happens.

• [quote] He's older than my grandparents but he's one man I would absolutely fuck the SHIT out of when he was younger...yum. Yeah, he was a handsome man. Supposedly has a HUGE cock. And...what R36 said. It was new and fresh at that time.

• The episode when Dick thinks his baby was switched with another at the hospital is a classic and groundbreaker. When he insists that the other couple visit them to work it out the other couple turns out to be African American - believe it or not, the network almost did not go through with it (it was over 50 years ago)

  Anonymous

• Comedy has changed over the years. Back in his day, it was either tell a joke or slapstick comedy. Today's comedy is insult and sarcastic comedy.

• [quote]I never understood how people could find Milton Berle funny. Or WC Fields Milton Berle was never funny but WC Fields is one of the best film comedians of all time and his humor holds up today. But you're right, comedy in general has a short shelf life.

• I remember "Millie" having a small part in one of the Seinfeld episodes when he was in Florida visiting his parents. She was always wonderful.

• And styles of comedy change. Some styles are very punchline oriented. I loved, say, Mary Tyler Moore's show or the "Mama" sketches during Carol Burnett, but those weren't very knock-knock punchline funny. MTM had some but those were more rooted in the characters. Carol Burnett said if you pay attention to the family sketches, there were no punchlines. People laughed at the situations. And some of them were really sad. Those people were stuck in their world and they weren't very successful or happy.

• Lol, r47, how do you know that he "supposedly" has a huge cock? Van Dyke was not a womanizer in the least. The only people who knew/know his size were his first wife, Michelle Triola and his current wife.

• Ann Morgan Guilbert (Millie) played the mother on the "The Fanelli Boys" sitcom - 1990-91. The brothers included Joe Pantoliano and Christopher Meloni.

• Opinions are like assholes. Everybody's got one. The Dick Van Dyke show is considered, historically, to be one of the finest and funniest television sitcoms of all time. Along with I Love Lucy, Mary Tyler Moore, All in the Family, Cheers, M*A*S*H, The Bob Newhart Show, etc. Anyone who disagrees can certainly have that opinion. But you are in the vast vast minority. As long as you are aware of that.

• R55 - MARY!

• It always annoyed me that, even though it was called The Dick Van Dyke Show, his character's name was Rob.

  Penis%20Van%20Lesbian

• "I think both shows were absolutely lousy!" You are an absolute idiot. Really, are you mentally retarded or something? Because The DVD show and the MTM show are both considered to be two of the greatest tv comedies of all time.

• Seriously, R53? Unless you're Dick, you have no way of knowing either.

  Not%20R47

• He did two more comedy shows after the original DVD show. Both of them had great moments. The second one was called "Van Dyke and Company: which co-starred Andy Kaufman! I remember that the show had a "Fonzie look-alike" contest; Kaufman, doing his "foreign man" accent, was one of the finalists (a black guy won the contest!). Crestfallen after the loss, Dick feels sorry for him and lets him do a performance as consolation. Thus encouraged, Kaufman kept coming back to the show and showing up at inopportune moments. Once, as Dick was starting to sing a number where he's in full clown costume, Andy showed up and in the background starts to set up his own performance number. It was funny as hell! At any rate, the show didn't last long; only three months. But it won an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy-Variety series.

• Let's not forget Diagnosis Murder, which exposed us to hunky but utterly untalented Barry Van Dyke.

• My HEART has a terrible scar I'll get you for this wherever you are But first I'll KILL myself I'm funny that way But seriously darling You're OK

  Mildred%20Helper

• I wish the show featured more of Joan Shawlee as Pickles, Buddy's wife.

• I remember 'The Dick Van Dyke Show,' but I was a bit young to fully appreciate how good it was at the time. But it was one of the best shows ever. However, no show surpasses my all-time favorite, 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show.' Of course, there have been other great, landmark shows along the way, but 'Mary' remains the absolute best for me.

• I rewatched the movie "Cold Turkey" recently. It's still pretty damn funny and features a slew of excellent actors. And Dick Van Dyke is superb as the Reverend Clayton Brooks, looked mighty fine, too.