An exuberant and prolific personality both onscreen and off, actor-writer-director Carl Reiner’s illustrious career straddled the line between the earnest, the intelligent and even the outrageous. Reiner took up dramatic acting as a teen, but a detour performing during World War II pulled a deft, untapped sense of comedic timing out of him. Segueing from postwar Broadway stages into television comedies, Reiner’s famous beginnings with Sid Caesar led to a successful run as creator and co-star of the legendary TV classic, “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (CBS, 1961-66), and instilled in him a love for
