INT: You had asked, obviously, Stevens [George Stevens] what he did with Shelley Winters. You just mentioned that that's a problem. Did you ask any, sort of like, okay, if you do have, in general, a problem with an Actor, how do you solve it?I mean would-- Did any of these guys--? [Seasoned Directors]
JR: No. I was always respectful of the distance. You just didn't invade that space. That was my thought, at least. I thought it would be very invasive to talk about--. I did want to talk to Capra [Frank Capra] about doing--linking telephones on a set and he had done that, he said. You know, in a picture; but that was about as close as I ever came. It was on an airplane. We were going to New York, and it was not the kind of thing--I always felt that I would be intruding. [INT: Alright.]

INT: Let's talk about your first experiences working with Actors. And I assume it was not--I'm talking about as a Director now. [JR: Alright.] And as you said, I MARRIED JOAN was the, I think, the first-- [JR: Yup.] What was the process? [JR: Well, Dennis Day and Pinza [Ezio Pinza] first, yeah.] Got it. What was the process--what were you learning about how to communicate to them? What was beginning to work? Now, obviously, you have the respect of what you know works there. [JR: Yup.] But I'm curious what you--
JR: Well a lot of it was survival. I mean, certainly the first two episodes of I MARRIED JOAN was a real trial, because I knew that I was on trial. That I had to have quit my job at NBC [National Broadcasting Company], which I reasoned--look, I don't have a contract, anyway. Everybody thinks it's a 52 week job, but it's not. So there's no job security there. I'm plunging into a whole new world with these two episodes, but nobody's giving me any guarantee that I'll get beyond those episodes, so it's up to me to make my way. And the first week, I muddled through. It was okay. Didn't do bad. Second week, the script was weaker and I thought, "Oh, this is gonna be a little bit of trouble," but we worked it out. And we did, as I said, we rehearsed for five days. We got to the sixth day, and this was a nightmare because the sixth morning, I remember lining up, or having all the shot lined up, and I'm behind the cameras, because in those days, with no video assist, I had to watch all the cameras and make sure that particularly these side cameras would stopped and turn from a cut to a close-up, or I would see how they rolled and say, "No, they're rolling on the wrong joke, don't do that." So I would stand way behind, so in front of me would be this phalanx of three cameras, and two booms, and then these enormous scoop lights that Hal Morey hung. And then the set, and in this case, the Actor was right upstage; it was Joan Davis. And we had that--it was an astonishingly difficult moment because just as we're about to roll, Joseph Depew said, "Quiet! We're about to roll." And Joan Davis said, "John! John, where are you?" in that whiny voice. I said, "Here. What is it?" "I don't think this bit is funny." Well there's close to a 100 people on the set when that call came and I'm thinking, "My god. How do I answer this one? This is a test. What does she mean it's not funny?" I said, "Look, it's been funny all week." "Well I don't think it's funny now. I'm not su-- I don't like it. What should we do?" Geez. "Everything's ready for roll, but we rehearsed five days!" She said, "Why don't you come up here and show me how to do it?" Now, I was up for the task, apparently, because I answered very swiftly. But in my mind, everything went into stroboscopic time. It felt like three minutes. The machinery had stopped and in that interstice it was like, "My god, I can't do this. What the hell is she asking? This is insane. 'Show me'" This great comedienne female is asking a Director show her how to be funny? That's insane. Now that all happened, I say, in a flash. [INT: Right.] And my response was as follows, 'cause it was like, what you would call in the theatre a cubite. She gave me the straight line and I bent right back. She said, "Show me how to do it." I said, "Show you? For Christ's sake, if I could show you, I'd be out there making 25,000 dollars a week. You show me and I'll tell you if it's funny." And the crew went bananas. Applause, applause, applause. I don't know where it came from. But that was my answer. And I learned later, she did that with every Director. And she would ruin Director after Director who would try to show her. Poor Mark Daniels. Remember him? Lovely man. Would try to show her, and she would make a fool of him, because they'd go around putting lampshades on their head and acting stupid! You can't do it.

INT: Where did you pull this one? Because she could have fired you at that moment.
JR: Yeah, I expected to be fired right after that. Instead I was hired for the rest of the year! [INT: Wait, I want to finish this for a second. So, you expec-- Did you think, "I'm gonna say the truth. That's the truth..

JR: It never crossed my mind as to consequence [when working on I MARRIED JOAN with Joan Davis]. I just said, "I'm gonna say this because it's true." I know that I’m dead if I go up there and try it. That's all I knew. [INT: Right.] I said, "I must not do this." And what came out, instead of being meek, was very aggressive. [INT: Yeah.] Now, by the way, I hadn't had the experience of watching other Directors at this time; it was my own head that said, "I'm not gonna put up with that crap. This is nonsense. This woman is an accomplished comedienne and all I can do is be stupid. Besides, I've seen her do it. I know that it works." Or, I felt that it worked. It was a little sweaty, I must say, I did not like the woman. But thank god I was up for the task, apparently, because after the crew exploded, then it was told, you know, you passed an incredible test that nobody else has passed, that he'd be firing Director after Director who tried that. [INT: Did she say anything to you?] No. [INT: Not that you remember.] Not a word. [INT: And the work--] She went right on and did the bit. [INT: Got it.] I said, "Let's roll," and we rolled and she did it. And then I was hired for the rest of the season. I did all the shows. I did 39 of them. [INT: And what was the relationship like between you and her as the Director and Actor?] Always distant. I mean, respectful, and she would do what I tell her--or ask her to do. She was very adept. By the way, she changed the couch [laughs]. [INT: The striped couch? Before you came on or after? [laughs]] Oh yes. Before I came on. I noticed that. That was a subtlety. The couch was changed. It was quiet. No, I used to watch her a lot and either applaud or--by applaud, I don't mean literally applaud-- I mean, I would say, "Yeah, that's good." Or withhold a comment, and she would try something else. It's like, I learned this later from Willy Wyler [William Wyler]. He would say, "Do it again!" [laughs]; I didn't know it at the time. But my instinct was correct. She knew it all. She was really an accomplished comedienne. She was very good. I mean, broad, obviously way over the top.

INT: Now, what were you learning that worked with the Actors or didn't work? 'Cause obviously, you're still--you know, you're learning on the job.
JR: Oh boy. Was I! I don't know, just a--the truth! I think the ability to tell the truth at all times was very useful. Because Actors would learn that if I didn't laugh, it wasn't funny. And if it worked, I would laugh. I was really a good audience. But I was also a critical audience. And they would look at me and I'd say, "I think you can do that another way." And they would try another way. And sometimes when I got a little more courage, I would say, "I think the right reading is something like this." You know, I wouldn't give them the reading unless they were really stupid. It's like--[INT: What?] Can I take a tangent? [INT: Go.] Early DICK VAN DYKE [THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW], a young Actor was cast as the coffee boy. He brought coffee to the writing room. And he came up and he said, "Who had the coffee and Morey Amsterdam said, "Mine is with eight sugars." Something to that effect. And he said, "Eight sugars? This is the line." He said, "Eat candy. Why ruin good coffee?" Okay, was the joke. [INT: Right, right.] So this Actor said, "Eat candy! [emphasis on 'eat']" I said, in rehearsal, I said, "No, you're putting the emphasis on the wrong place." "Oh right. Eat candy [emphasis on 'candy']!" I said, "No, no. Simplify that." It's really not a hard line to say, I don't believe. And he tried every which variation and it was all wrong. And Rose Marie used to do things with me; she would look at me with what Morey [Morey Amsterdam] used to call 'eyes akimbo' [laughs] and she would say, "What are you gonna do, John?" Which became what Mary Tyler Moore would say, "What are you gonna do, Rob?" Or Rosie [Rose Marie] would say that on occasion. "What are you gonna do, Rob?" That became a key line. "What are you gonna do, John?" I would say, "Shut up." I said, "He'll get it. Don't worry." Rehearsal after rehearsal. I said, "The kid is tone deaf, he just--" I said, "Well, don't worry. We'll get it." [yelling, inaudible] No, no, no, not quite. So we got on the night and he did it badly, and I said, "We'll do a pick-up." And one of the rare times in my life, I said, "Look, the line is 'Eat candy. Why ruin good coffee?' It's simple. 'Eat candy. Why ruin good coffee?' It's a question." And he finally got it. Okay. That kid was Jamie Farr, who later became a huge hit on M*A*S*H. So one day, this was about five or six year ago, I was changing planes in Chicago at O'Hare [Chicago O'Hare International Airport], and I saw Jamie coming through the other way, and we both saw each other at a distance. And without stopping, I said, "Jamie?" And he said, "Eat candy? Why ruin good coffee?" I said, "No." He said, "But it's getting better. I'll get it, I'll get it." We never stopped [laughs]. [INT: [laughing] Great, great, great.] That's one of my favorites.

INT: Alright now what were you learning in the sense of the Directors responsibility dealing with comedy? Here you are on this show--
JR: You had to survive. No matter how tough it was. I remember Sherwood Schwartz was one of the Writers. Robin Hood's rabbi. Hal Kanter's line. And Jesse Goldstein and Phil Sharp. It's what Jim Backus used to call the 'Habima scribes' after the Hebrew theater in Jerusalem, I guess it was--or Tel Avi, one of those. Where is it? Where are the Habima players? [INT: Tel Aviv.] Clurman [Harold Clurman] once did a lecture for the Habima Players and he said, "We'll do an improv." Harold Clurman. "We'll do an improv." He said, "You're the wife, you're the father, you play the doctor,and the doctor--" "I'll do it with a limp." [laughs] He already had the character. [INT: Right. [laughs]] Anyway, I love that story. The Habima scribes. And Jim used to write a line which they never wrote, of course, but he would say, "By the way--" he'd look at the early versions of the script. He'd say, "Look at this script." Jim would have to say, as the judge, "Come in, State Senator. Sit down. Have a peace fruit." They never wrote a line like that, but that was Jim's commentary on [INT: --the writing.] the Hebrew staff that we had. But Sherwood and the guys once wrote, on one of my early shows, a chimpanzee who did all kinds of things. And I was too stupid to know a chimp can't do this. And I made him do it. I got the trainer and I was very persistent. And when it was done and I had--the chimp did things like, he loved Joan [Joan Davis], he hated Jim. That sort of a thing. And I would get these [inaudible] by being very patient with the trainer. By the way, I hate working with animals because they're so tough. And Sherwood later said, "How did you do that?" I said, "Well, you wrote it in the script." He said, "We never expected you could get it!" I said, "What was that, a test?" He said, "No, we were looking at it as kind of a house number to--as to how to do get from here to there, but you can really do that!" I said, "I had no idea." I was being too persistent.

INT: Wait, wait. You just used the phrase, I like it [inaudible] a house number. What is that?
JR: A house number would be--a for instance. I'll tell you a line I'd like to use, but it's not the line. It's a house number. It's something to stand in for the real line to come. [INT: Got it.] How about if we say this? But you have to preface it by saying, I'm not suggesting this as the line to come. It's a house number. It's on the trail of, in the path of. [INT: Oh, so like a detective looking for something? I'm curious where the phrase came from. It's a great phrase.] I don't know where it came from. We had certain curiosities like, one day, Carl Reiner used to say, "32 is a funny number." We'd say, "What do you mean?" He said, "It's always been a funny number. On SHOW OF SHOWS [YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS], any number they said was 32." So we incorporated it into a sketch once. Not a sketch. It was a segment of DICK VAN DYKE [THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW]. [INT: Right.] They were talking about building a package that Mary Tyler Moore would open because she was curious. Turned out to be a big boat. I don't know if you recall that, but the whole boat exploded. Very funny stuff. But they were gonna--she had been accused of opening his mail, and so they got that as the germ of an idea for a sketch. They said, "We've got it! We'll send the wife in the sketch a big box of 15 pounds of sour cream," and Morey [Morey Amsterdam] or somebody said 15 pounds. He said, "Sour cream is a great idea, but let's not make it 15. Make it 32." And Rose Marie said, "Why 32?" And Morey said, "'Cause 32 is a funnier number." And she said, "Since when?" And Morey said, "It's always been a funnier number." And she said, "I don't under--" And he said, "Look. Try me." So she looked at him and said, "32." And he fell off the couch, beating the floor, laughing like crazy. And she said to Dick [Dick Van Dyke], "I gotta admit, he's right." [INT: [laughing] That pair, they were spectacular, those two.] Are you kidding? They were the best. The best. [INT: Did you walk in with that? I'm gonna jump to it now, 'cause it's there.] Did I walk in with that? [INT: The two of them. How did they get in that show?] Well they were both great vaudevillians. They only discipline I had to do was on Morey, who always had a joke on top of a joke on top of a joke. He would say, "This is funny." I'd say, "It stops the action. Morey, you can't say this one." For every ten jokes he gave, I would use maybe one. Maybe half of one. [INT: Wow.] Because he was the human joke machine. You would say anything and then he would pop out with a punch line. And Rose Marie was the epitome of what we used to call a fast-talking straight woman. You ever hear that phrase? That was from burlesque. Not that I was in burlesque, but I learned this later [INT: Oh yeah.]. A fast-talking straight woman was a woman who laid it out with such clarity that you couldn't miss the joke. You had to know exactly what was being said because the joke, as I've often lectured at universities--by the way, I'll lecture at your university any time you want me. [INT: Good. Thank you.] The joke is not where it's made. It's made in the straight line. If you don't understand what is being discussed, and not done with absolute clarity, you can't get a laugh. And I once heard--god, this is incredible. I actually heard this man speak: Mack Sennett, in his fading years, I happened to be doing an episode of BAT MASTERSON, where we shot at the Hollywood Hotel on Vine Street 'cause it was a casino. They front looked like a casino. It could have been 1860, and I used the sidewalk for carriages and used the front of the house. And Mack Sennett was in residence, at the end of his life; near the end of his life. And we were talking about comedy, and he said one line that always stuck in my head. "The audience will not laugh if it is mystified." That's a great observation about comedy. It's gotta be clear. And if you have a mangled straight line, you've got no joke. The comic can say everything he wants to with the punch. If you don't know what's going on, where's the fun? Rosie [Rose Marie] could lay out that line better than anybody.

INT: Were you involved in the casting of that show?
JR: No, not at all. That was all Sheldon [Sheldon Leonard] and Carl [Carl Reiner]. I got there just after my five years as a western Director, and it was because of the Directors Guild [Directors Guild of America] Board of Directors. It was still the Screen Directors Guild. Sheldon came up to me once in between a session. He said, "Hey John, would you like to come back in out of the mud and the mire?" [INT: [laughs]] I said, "What are you talking about?" He knew I was doing [INT: Westerns, right.] westerns. He said, "I got a new show." He said, "You might be interested in doing it. It's a thing called THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW." I said, "What's that?" He said, "He's an Actor. A guy from New York. Carl Reiner--" "What? Carl Reiner is writing and producing?" "Yeah, I'd love to meet. Yeah, great." So he said, "I'll set up a meeting." So I had a meeting on a Saturday at Carl Reiner's home and there was Dick Van Dyke and the first thing I said to him was, "God, I loved your work in VINTAGE 60." And he said, that wonderful Van Dyke. That was Dick, no, that was another guy. My first line was a faux pas I said, "Gee, I got that wrong, didn't I?" I can't remember his name either. But it was a Dick something. VINTAGE 60. But we hit it off right away. We liked each other, and Carl, god I love that man. He is so great. And I'll tell you what he and Sheldon--'cause Carl was a new Producer, and this came from Sheldon. Leave the Director alone for three days, nobody bothers him. How do you like that one? That's where I learned, really directing, I had three days with the cast and the set was closed, nobody was permitted in. [INT: Wow.] And on the third day or night, at 6 o'clock, 7 o'clock at night, we used to shoot on a Tuesday schedule, so it was Friday night, I would show it to Carl. He was the [emphasis on 'the'] Writer at that time. And then he would give me notes, but they never--unless I was in deep trouble and he always used to say, "If you're in trouble, work it out."

INT: Now in these three days, how much time would actually be devoted to the rehearsal process?
JR: Oh almost complet-- [INT: Now, but how much? Are we talking five hours? 10 hours?] Oh, minimum eight hours. [INT: Eight hours.] Oh, minimum. [INT: And what would you do first? Would these guys--would you first sit 'em down at a table?] First thing is to--we'd read around the table [for the DICK VAN DYKE SHOW]. [INT: Okay. Now Carl's there at this moment?] Oh yeah, definitely. [INT: At this moment, everybody's there.] Everybody's there, including Sheldon [Sheldon Leonard]. And the rule was--and this was brilliant--and they don't do it anymore, it's stupid. But Carl [Carl Reiner] had written thirteen scripts when I was engaged to do the show. He had all those scripts done, and they were pretty damn good. Now, they were, as any script, it's a blueprint. It's not really 100% producible at that time, but you could see where it was going. And the trick was this: Sheldon decreed, cause this is the way he worked, you read one script which is not the script of the week. It'll be the script of the week hence. And you would discuss it. And if there was an outside Writer, or even when it was Carl writing himself, you would say, "Take the script during this week, with these notes." So you had a week to fix that script. [INT: Got it.] Then you would address the second script, which was the one that had that same treatment the week before. [INT: Got it. And that's the script--but you're still all sitting down?] All sitting down at the table. We'd spend the entire day sitting down at the table. [INT: Now, but what would be happening now? At this point, you've read it through. It's a half hour thing. You'd be done in a half hour.] Well, the first thing I would do was I would read without comment. And I would say, "Nobody stop, no matter what." And we would time it. And that would give us an idea of where we were, and sometimes you'd be terribly long, and say, "Look--" As opposed to today's work where, god, they will re-write--I don't mean re-write, but they will write five or 10 more pages than you need. And I would say, "We're fat. Let's take this out." [INT: Now, if there was a bit. If there was a comic, physical bit, would somebody read that in the--?] I would read the structure. [INT: You would read the narrative.] Oh yeah. Dick [Dick Van Dyke] falls down, Dick hurts himself. [INT: Got it. So you've read it once. What's next?] We'd read it once and then there'd be a general discussion with Sheldon joining in the discussion. He had a remarkable eye and ear. And he would say things like, "I don't think the spine of this thing works. You've gotta go here." Oh, that would be the prior week; excuse me. That week, it'd just be, "Pretty good job" usually. He'd have a note or two. And then, whenever the attention of the room was focused on something else, he'd come back to where Sheldon was, he'd disappear. He used to make--we called him 'The Phantom' because--I christened him 'Lamont Cranston, the Shadow'. He would always disappear, quietly, without a comment, when the attention was elsewhere, he would get up and go! He was marvelous. But he was also producing three or four other shows at the time. And we'd look around and say, "Did anybody see him leave?" "No." "Okay, he's gone." Later on the board [DGA National Board], I don't know if you recall, when you were on the board, we used to have a-- [INT: No of course, we bet when Sheldon would leave, of course.] When will Sheldon leave? [INT: Absolutely.] 'Cause I-- [INT: You initiated the pool 'cause you knew it was--] I outed him. One day, he got up, he was going for coffee, and I said, "Sheldon, are you going for coffee or is this a faint?" He said, "You son of a bitch." I said, "'Cause the next one, I know you're disappearing." That's what started it. [INT: That's great. Now, go back to this, 'cause I'm really--the process, I'm really curious about it.] Okay, here's the process. So then with Sheldon gone but Carl still there, we would then encourage the Actors, if they had anything to say at all, say it. Or contribute. Or tell me there's a better joke here, or something that violates the way you want to speak. "How would you put this into your own words?" And we would do that. [INT: Now, you've got Morey [Morey Amsterdam] upstairs, you've got Rose Marie, you've got Dick Van Dyke, you've got Morey?] Oh yeah. Absolutely. [INT: Everyone's there. And they're all giving input?] Anything that bothered them, because I would find, much better to find it around the table and be up on your feet than have the Actor say, "You know, this doesn't work. I'm having trouble with this." Why not find out early.

INT: You get some Actors who are real needy, you get some who, in fact, don't want to reveal their neediness, some like to talk more than others.
JR: Not this group. Well, I say that with one caveat. It's not a caveat, exactly. We had great fun. There was always sideline laughter. In fact, sometimes, we would bubble over so much--I say we--mostly what Carl [Carl Reiner] would call 'the otters.' The otters are playing again. They'd would get silly giggly and I'd say, "Come on, let's get back to business." And we'd get back to business and we'd start to read. And Dick [Dick Van Dyke] was always very quiet, but every once in awhile he would say something very quietly and we'd have to say, "What was that, Dick?" And he'd repeat it and he was usually right. It was something about the text that he would fix. He was very clever. But he's diffident. He didn't make a big deal about it. Morey [Morey Amsterdam] of course, always had a joke. And we'd say, "Morey, it's enough." Rose Marie just read straight, Mary [Mary Tyler Moore] read straight, and Dick, for the most part, read straight except for an occasional mutter. Mary [Mary Tyler Moore] was very new at this. You know, she was not even supposed to be a key figure. She was what we called an 'ear.' You know what that is? Well an ear would be--the way the show was originally conceived, it was to be a show about a comedy Writer and his staff. And Dick would come home to the ear, his wife, and tell her what went on that day. And one day, we were watching her work, and Carl and I looked at one another and said, "My god, I think there's something going on here." He said, "Yeah." And she was getting it. And Carl wrote a script called "My Blonde Haired Brunette," in which she dyes her hair and is afraid to show Dick. It won't come out for awhile. It finally comes out and she's half blonde, half brunette. And boy, she carried it off, and that became a turning point. It became a show more about Dick and Mary at home, and a little bit less--and they became, in effect, the kind of ear for what went on at home. [INT: Got it.] And we had great fun with that.

INT: Alright, so here we are. This is the first day, and you've read through once?
JR: We may read it twice. [INT: And people talked about issues that are coming up.] We'd have lunch, it'd be leisurely. It'd be a semi-off day. Sometimes, if we finished real early, I'd go on the set. And the set, what was delightful to me, was that it was a permanent set. I was used to, in New York, where you had tapes. [INT: Everything changes.] You had a permanent set 'till the last day. So we would actually start to work with props, and what I would do is I would never say "Go here, go there." I would just say, "Let's just try it." And the Actors would get up and they'd start to read with their scripts. [INT: In their hand?] In their hand. And they'd start to move clumsily. And they'd move around a bit, and take certain steps, and I would make mental notes. I would say, "That's something to keep, that's something to throw away." But I wouldn't say anything. [INT: But, no commentary at this point.] No comment. And then at a given point, all of them would become terribly self-conscious. And they would stop. And they would look at me and I'd say, "What's the matter?" They'd say, "Well, we don't know where to go." I'd say, "Okay, well let's talk about what you have going on." And then I'd adjust a few things and say, "Try this, try that." I'm getting ahead of myself. [INT: No you're not.] Because the first day that I ever worked with that company, at this point I had been doing westerns and things like TWILIGHT ZONE and ROBERT TAYLOR'S DETECTIVES [THE DETECTIVES STARRING ROBERT TAYLOR] and CONFLICT, all those series that had, you know what I'm talking about. And it was one camera. So you had to get, as you know, you'd get up for the job and then commit it to film. Well I got these people running so fast and they were so good, that in the first day, by the end of the first day, I think that was actually a Wednesday, we had done the reading and we got on our feet to do, you know, we weren't spending that much time around the table yet. And we started to go through it and good god, it just was like cream. I had never seen anything like it. They were well-oiled already. And they were loving it, and we went through that whole day and it was terrific, and we went, "Boy was that an exciting day of rehearsal! Can't wait to come back to work tomorrow." I went home and I thought, "Oh my god, what have I done? What have I done?" I said, "I'm like the football coach who got the team up for Thursday, and the game is Sunday. What have I done? I can't do this." I had committed the unpardonable sin of getting the company ready to shoot. We weren't ready to shoot. We had two or three more days. So I came in the next day and they were all enthusiastic. They said, "That was a wonderful day!" I said, "It was okay, but something's troubling me" and they said, "What?" I said, "I think the set bothers me." They said, "What's wrong with the set?" I said, "There's certain things about it. Let me try something. Indulge me." And I got the prop guys and I re-arranged the set completely. Redressed it so the couch was where it shouldn't be, and the chairs. Everything was wrong. But I said, "Okay, let's try it now." And the Actors looked at me with great suspicion. They said, "What the hell is going on? It was great yesterday." I said, "Yeah, but try this." Well, it was wrong. It was wrong fromt he outset, I knew it. And they stumbled around and they were getting a little bit angry, and they were looking at me like, "What's the matter with you?" And by the end of that day, I had got them thoroughly confused and we went home-- And the next day, now this was now Friday, I had blown Thursday completely, deliberately. And Friday I came in and said, "You know what? The set was better the first day." "Oh, thank god." So we put the set back the way it was. Within one pass, they had it back in control but still had a way to go. I kept--and I slowed them up the rest of that day and then, of course we rehearsed on Monday with cameras, and that slowed them up 'cause I said, "This is a technical day. We don't want acting. Just go through it." And then the next day, we hit home runs. And then I told them what happened. I said, "It was my fault. I got crazy. I was doing one camera. And I shouldn't have done that. We must never allow ourselves to get that far ahead." From then on, we spent more time around the table. If we got on our feet, we did it slowly, a little bit at a time, and we gradually worked our way through the Friday.

INT: Now would you work your way through--?
JR: I don't mean Friday. It was-- Yeah, it was Friday... [INT: Yeah, it was Friday. If now you're getting it on it's feet, would you work the entire show each day or would you try to actually work, let's say an act? I'm sure it depended, but I'm curious.] It depended. It was a very tough show, but I'll tell you what was wonderful about it. Because they were so competent--and Dick [Dick Van Dyke], particularly, was the greatest prop Actor I have ever worked with in my life, he could handle anything you threw at him. And I could make a suggestion and he would do it. And I'd say, "God, that's a better tangent to go on. Let's take this track." In fact, one day, I remember, we had a weak script. It called for Dick to be sneezing because he thought he was allergic to his wife, to Mary [Mary Tyler Moore]. It turns out in the end to be, a kid has brought home a cat and he was truly allergic. But the script really was not that great. It was not that fleshed out. And I said, in rehearsal--this is where it was wonderful to be a Director in rehearsal, when you were allowed to speculate, and to try... I said to Dick one day, "Dick, how many ways do you think you can sneeze that are different?" He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "How many variations of sneeze can you do?" And he said, "Well I don't know." Well, we started to invent variations on a sneeze and he was magnificent. Some of them were just--you would see, he would try to kiss Mary, and without showing her, you know, he'd have to hold back a sneeze, and then sometimes he would just turn his back and all you would see was the shoulders would hunch and he would have to sneeze. [INT: Great, great.] And we did things like that and we made the show about sneezing, which became much funnier in the long run than it was--- And later, I did the same thing with ALL IN THE FAMILY when it had a weak script. I remember one day, the script was not that strong and it called for dinner and I said, "Let's do a pantomime where nobody speaks." And again, here I was, doing danger. I said, "Let's do Jack Benny and Sid Caesar." I didn't say that, that was in my head. Danger. "We'll just play a ravenous group of people handling food. Ravenous and competitive." And I brought the real food in that we would use on the show, and that was a critical moment because from then on, I did it all the time. 'Cause one day, I remember we had done a show where they rehearsed drinking orange juice; it was a breakfast scene. And on the night, the prop man had foolishly provided orange juice with pulp, and the Actors got the pulp stuck. So they got stuck and they had to deal with it. They said, "What the hell was that? Why did we--?" And from then on, I said, "Look, any time we have food, I want to have the real thing we're gonna actually use." I used to import food. I said, "The one thing that I would love to see in this family--" as opposed to what I see on television all the time, and you see more of it today because people don't rehearse, and that is to see an Actor fool with a plate of beans or an occational dab of potato, and they never eat. I said--[INT: Or they eat all the time and they never match.] It's not even matching because the Actor--I couldn't understand it. They were always afraid of getting caught with a mouthful of food. [INT: Food, sure, of course.] And the only way to eliminate that was to rehearse with the food so they could talk through a mouthful and be understood. And that has to be choreographed. You can't just fool with it. So I said, "I want this family, any time they eat, to be ravenous. This is a hungry group. You're sitting down to dinner, and you mean it." And that was one of he truths that we went for, which is always comical. Because to see people--they were never trying to be funny, you know. They were just as serious as could be. "I want that piece of meat." Or they would reach for the ketchup simultaneously. Meathead and Archie, there'd be exchange s of looks. One would be victorious.

INT: I'm gonna go back to DICK VAN DYKE [THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW] for a second, because the kid [Richie Petrie played by Larry Mathews] that you just mentioned. Working with kids.
JR: Five year old. He was one of the things that I wanted to--[INT: And you had worked with kids before. Well, you might have on some of the other shows, I'm sorry. On some of the westerns, you may have, but--] Yeah, but never to the extent of waiting for laughs, and not laughing at his own material. And I would say to him--Ritchie [Larry Matthews] was a five year old. [INT: Five year old.] Yeah, he was literally five. And I said to the parents, I said, "Let's keep this boy a boy. Don't indulge him as an Actor." And we had certain disciplines, but kindness. Always be very sweet. Remember, he's a kid. So I would talk to him all the time. He was a sweet little boy. [INT: Did you have issues getting a performance? I mean, 'cause sometimes getting performance--?] Sometimes it was difficult. Like, getting him to cry, once. I remember Sheldon [Sheldon Leonard] came down and helped out on that one, because he was good at creating imaging of death. [INT: Sheldon?] I'm just kidding. [INT: I like that one. I would have bought that. That was good. "Come inside young boy, let me tell you--] No, but Sheldon did help. He would--I'm sure he used images like--this really happened to Sheldon, by the way. When he was doing I SPY in England, he bought a Rolls Royce in England and he had it shipped. And he was called one day and said, "Your Rolls Royce has arrived in the port." And Sheldon went down to the port in great anticipation, and he watched his new Rolls Royce being lifted up by a crane and promptly dropped into the ocean. So I used to think, "That's the kind of story he would tell the boy as to how to cry. 'Think of my Rolls Royce.'" I mean he would use the images of a dog being dead, or whatever. He helped with that. I was new at that. I didn't get it, at first. But we had a wonderful rapport with little Ritchie [Larry Matthews]. [INT: It's interesting what you're saying, though. You're saying that the idea was to create an image--because I don't want you to run away from this so quickly--but create an image for the child that--] That would allow him-- [That stirs an emotion that may have nothing to do with the scene.] Of course. It was [Constantin] Stanislavski. Simply that. Although, I'd like to stay away from it for the most part. You know, Stanislavski, Boleslavsky [Richard Boleslavsky], [INT: -slavskis] all the -slavskis. [INT: The -ski brothers] The ski-brothers, exactly. Sheldon helped with that and most of the time, the big problem I had with Ritchie was I said, "You must wait for the laugh. Don't talk too soon. And if something is funny and you know that it gets a laugh, don't enjoy it yourself." I said, "Try to let the audience enjoy it." But that was difficult. We had to cut away from him sometimes because he would have the beginning of a smile as he delivered the joke.