Johnny Carson was a runner-up for the role of Rob Petrie.
The running gag about Alan Brady's toupee was based on Max Liebman, the producer of Your Show of Shows, who also wore a toupee.
The show's production company was called Calvada Productions. The name came from the names of all of the key persons involved in production: Carl Reiner, Sheldon Leonard, Dick Van Dyke and Danny Thomas. In one program, co-producer, Leonard played a character called "Big Max Calvada".
"Head of the Family", the original pilot which starred series creator Carl Reiner.
Inspired the later series Mad About You. In 1995, series creator and occasional guest star Carl Reiner reprised the role of Alan Brady for an episode of that show.
CBS cancelled the show after one season, then renewed it. When the show finally did go off the air, it was because the cast and producers wanted to quit while they were still proud of it. In addition, Carl Reiner said at the very beginning that the show would not run for more than five years.
The show's pilot was created by Carl Reiner and was highly autobiographical. CBS executives decided that the main character was too Jewish, too intellectual and too New York and cast Dick Van Dyke instead of Reiner.
For the first few years of the show, Alan Brady's face was never shown but his voice was heard, because Carl Reiner wanted to get a big star to play Alan. Reiner eventually decided to take on the role himself as the egotistical star.
The first episode filmed without a live audience was "The Dick Van Dyke Show" (1961) {The Bad Old Days (#1.28)} which aired on 4 April 1962. It used speeded-up filmed inserts during Rob's dream of a 1920s lifestyle, which made shooting in front of an audience impractical.
A small controversy occurred because of Mary Tyler Moore wearing Capri pants on the show. Up until the show's premiere most housewives were seen in dresses, but Moore's explanation was that most of the housewives she knew wore pants. Because of Moore, Capri pants became a huge fashion craze in the early 1960s.
In the 1959 television pilot "Head of the Family" which eventually became the basis for the show, Carl Reiner played the Rob Petrie, Barbara Britton played Laura Petrie, and Sylvia Miles played Sally Rogers.
Rob originally was from Danville, Illinois, which is where Dick Van Dyke spent his childhood.
The series originally was to focus on Rob at the office with Sally Rogers as the lead female character and Laura as a minor one. The character of Laura became so popular that Mary Tyler Moore became the lead female character and more of the focus of the show shifted to the relationship between Rob and Laura. Many times situations at the office were still focused on Rob and Laura. This put a strain on the relationship between Rose Marie and Mary Tyler Moore, and while the two ladies got along well, they never became close friends.
In the series' penultimate episode (a "best of" show), Rob writes his autobiography and shows it to everyone. At the end of the episode Alan decides to buy the rights to the manuscript and turn it into a TV series with him as the star after he finishes the variety series.
Laura usually wore Capri pants on the show. The network was against this at first, and said that she had to be in a skirt for a certain number of scenes per episode. To fight this, they filmed a scene where Laura walked into the kitchen in Capri pants and came out a second later in a skirt. The network finally relented.
Dick Van Dyke initially objected to having Mary Tyler Moore on the series, because he felt that she was too young to convincingly play his wife. He changed his mind once their remarkable onscreen chemistry became apparent.
Ann Morgan Guilbert was pregnant during the first season. Since her pregnancy was not written into the show, great pains were taken to conceal that fact.
A grief-stricken Rose Marie wanted to leave the show when her husband, Bobby Guy, died. Director John Rich talked her out of quitting and she stayed until the end.
Reportedly Mary Tyler Moore told the producers she was older than she really was in order to get the role of Laura. This fact was later incorporated in the episode in which Rob and Laura have to get remarried because Laura had lied about her age, telling Rob she was 19 when she really was only 17.
Although "My Blonde-Haired Brunette" (when Laura dyes her hair blonde) was the ninth episode filmed during the first season, it was the second episode to be aired. Carl Reiner was so impressed with Mary Tyler Moore's rapid development that he wanted to showcase her in an episode as soon as possible.
Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore played a married couple so convincingly on the show that many viewers actually thought they were married in real life. They did in fact become very close - "like brother and sister", as Van Dyke said - and both admit they had crushes on each other while the show was in production. They have remained close friends ever since.
The famous theme song actually has lyrics, which were written by co-star Morey Amsterdam, though they were never used.
Another episode filmed without a live audience was "The Dick Van Dyke Show" (1961) {Happy Birthday and Too Many More (#3.19)}. In the middle of rehearsals, the cast and crew got the news that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The cast then decided to go ahead and film the episode, but without a studio audience present. The feeling was that no one would be in the mood to laugh at such a somber time.
Laura's maiden name was changed from Meeker to Meehan following Mary Tyler Moore's divorce from her first husband, Richard Meeker.
Rose Marie recommended Morey Amsterdam for the part of Buddy Sorrell as soon as she had signed on to play Sally Rogers.
Carl Reiner would often ask cast and crew members about funny things that had happened to them, then he would write whole episodes about these occurrences. As a result, many of the episodes over the course of the show's five-year run were based on actual events.
When CBS canceled the show after one season, Sheldon Leonard traveled to Procter & Gamble's main headquarters in Cincinnati to make a personal plea for sponsorship, hoping it would sway CBS toward renewal. Procter & Gamble agreed to sponsor half a season. Eventually, Lorillard Tobacco Company, makers of Kent Cigarettes, agreed to pick up the other half, and the show was picked up by CBS for a second season. Ironically, when the show went off the air on its own five years later, CBS was doing the pleading for the show to continue.
Carl Reiner seriously considered filming the show in color as early as the third season, but due to the resulting higher production cost, it didn't happen.
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