TV.com

Carl Reiner was born on March 20th, 1922, in The Bronx, New York. His interest in entertainment obviously came at an early age, for he had joined the WPA Dramatic Workshop while still in his later teens. He would rise to work with actor Maurice Evans's troupe of GI's during the Second World War, in the South Pacific. After the war, he worked onstage with a variety of road companies and even on Broadway. But his real success came in the 1950's, when he began to costar with Sid Caesar on the television series "Your Show of Shows." Yet after that, success began to fade, and he found himself out of work in the early '60s. So, he decided to create a show for himself, based on his actual life as a television writer. He called it "Head of the Family." It was filmed without a live audience, yet the laugh track was actually a recording of an audiences' reactions while watching the episode, to give the illlusion of a live audience. It was rejected by the network, and that would have been the end of it, if it wasn't for Sheldon Leonard, who claimed that it just needed to be re-cast. It was, and then named "The Dick Van Dyke Show," after it's new star. It was a great success, and stayed on the air for five seasons. During this time, he also starred in the motion picture "The Russians Are Coming, the Russians are Coming." By the late '60s he graduated to directing for the big screen, and became quite successful in the late '70s and '80s for films such as "The Jerk." He is also the father of Rob Reiner, who is best known as Mike on "All in the Family." Today, Carl continues to inspire a
new generation of writers, directors, actors, and other members of the entertainment field.