My buddy Vince Waldron is the world's foremost expert on my favorite TV program, The Dick Van Dyke Show. On August 14, he posted some vital information on Facebook and with his permission, I'm quoting some of it here. The first season, the show had a different opening from the one most folks today remember. It involved still photos of the characters spilling out of a manila folder. I'll let Vince take it from here…
Today marks a little known but nonetheless significant anniversary in the history of The Dick Van Dyke Show, for it was on this date, August 14, in 1962 that director John Rich finally got around to filming a new opening credit sequence for the show's second season — a short live-action scene in which Rob stumbles over an ill-placed ottoman and falls flat on his back in the Petrie living room.
Actually, Dick and company also filmed the alternate version of the scene — in which Rob doesn't fall, but instead deftly sidesteps the ottoman — that same night, making this anniversary a double-header.
Both variations were filmed, rather quickly, as a kind of bonus assignment that the cast undertook immediately after filming the show's 32nd episode, "The Two Faces of Rob." That's why if you look closely at the opening credit sequence, you'll notice that Buddy, Sally, and Laura are wearing the same wardrobe they had on in their respective closing scenes in that episode.
Although Carl Reiner has said his intention was to randomly rotate the two original ottoman sequences at the start of the show to keep the audience guessing, in fact, the version where Rob trips over the ottoman appeared almost exclusively in the show's opening titles until well into the second season.
The tripping version of the opening first appeared on the season two opener, "Never Name a Duck," which debuted on September 26, 1962, and was then repeated at the top of the next seven consecutive episodes. As it happens, audiences didn't get their first glimpse of a more sure-footed Rob until the second variant that shows him sidestepping the ottoman appeared on episode #39, "The Night the Roof Fell In," which premiered on November 21, 1962 — almost two months after Rob took his first tumble over the family footrest.
Vince goes on to note that there was a third opening sequence filmed for the third season. It was shot on August 13, 1963, the same night they filmed "The Masterpiece," the episode in which Rob accidentally buys a painting by the great artist, "Artanis." In it, everyone was dressed a little nicer than in the first two versions and Rob again sidesteps the ottoman before he stumbles on his own.
This one first ran on "That's My Boy??" — the one in which Rob thinks they brought the wrong baby home from the hospital — which first aired on September 25, 1963. It was then used intermittently during the show's third season. For the fourth and fifth seasons, they went back to the two original openings, leaning heavily on the one in which Rob avoids the ottoman and doesn't fall.
My thanks to Vince for letting me post this here. If you love The Dick Van Dyke Show anywhere near as much as I do, you must have a copy of his wonderful volume, The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book It's a must-have for lovers of Rob, Laura, Buddy, Sally, Ritchie, Mel and even Alan.