Continuing with our Christmas week sharing of great photographs: I have a column on this site about going to see The Dick Van Dyke Show filmed when I was a wee lad. As it happens, that particular week's show was one which Roddy McDowall selected to photograph. Mr. McDowall was, of course, a fine actor but he was also pretty facile with a camera, and he liked to go to sets and snap off a few. The photo at left is one that he took during a rehearsal, probably a few hours before filming the episode, "Your Home Sweet Home is My Home," which was shot on February 2, 1965. It's the one where Rob and Laura bought their house with the big rock in the basement and got into a fight with Millie and Jerry about it.
The actor at right, playing Rob Petrie's accountant, is Eddie Ryder. Mr. Ryder was one of those ubiquitous TV actors in the sixties, doing bit parts on just about every show, usually as some sort of clerk or government official, and he also got into a number of movies. (He's the third guy in the air traffic control tower, along with Carl Reiner and Jesse White, in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.) When filming began on this Dick Van Dyke Show episode, Mr. Van Dyke blew the first take by addressing him as "Eddie" instead of his character name, "Bert."
I'm not sure who the man at left is — perhaps the director of that episode, Lee Phillips; perhaps, a camera coordinator or lighting guy. I remember being impressed with the precision involved in the process. Technical advances later made it a bit easier to film a show with three cameras (and tape made things even simpler) but back then, it required the actors to hit specific marks in order to be properly lit and framed. It looked like a lot of work.
I noticed this kind of thing during the scenes that did not involve Mary Tyler Moore. During the scenes that did involve Mary Tyler Moore, I noticed Mary Tyler Moore. And almost nothing else.