Rob Reiner’s humanity was a signature of his work on TV and film

Rob Reiner was a filmmaker who started out as an actor who wanted to make films. The bridge between these careers was 1984's This Is Spinal Tap, his first feature film, in which he also starred. His original intention, based on the music documentaries he studied, was to stay off screen, but he decided there was practical value in greeting viewers with a familiar face from eight seasons of All in the Family as Archie Bunker's left-wing son-in-law, Michael “Meathead” Stivic.

Reiner's television career began at age 21, when he partnered with Steve Martin and wrote for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. His early years as an actor were characterized by small roles and guest spots that describe the early careers of many performers we know well. He played several characters in the episodes “That Girl” and “Gomer Pyle, USMC”, a courier in “Batman”, and also appeared in “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Room 222”. His last such role came in 1971, the same year All in the Family premiered, in The Partridge Family: he played a soft-hearted, poetry-writing, tattooed biker who becomes attached to Susan Dey's character and, somewhat improbably, takes her to the school dance. This is a performance that is a prototype of the tenderness and humanity that will become the hallmark of his work as a writer, director and performer – and, it would seem, as a person.

In All in the Family, wearing jeans and a work shirt, with a drooping mustache that seemed to emphasize a note of sadness, Reiner largely played the straight man, Carroll O'Connor's annoying Archie Bunker, emphasizing the issue-oriented dialectic. From time to time he was given extensive comic fare to chew on, such as when wife Gloria (Sally Struthers) went into labor while they were out for dinner and he went into a classic dad-to-be sitcom panic. But aside from the Meathead material, All in the Family is as much a social drama as it is a comedy, with Mike and Gloria struggling with money, living with her parents, new parents, and a relationship that heats up and cools down until it finally ends for good. He's not a comic relief like Archie or Edith, with their misplaced props and mispronunciation, or even Gloria, but his importance to the narrative was confirmed by two supporting actor Emmys.

What Reiner brought from The Family to his subsequent performances was a kind of scale. He could seem loud—and loudness is what Norman Lear's shows reveled in, even when he spoke softly. Physically he took up a lot of space, more as time went on, and starting perhaps with Spinal Tap, in which he played director Marty DiBerga, he transformed tonally into a kind of gentle Jewish Buddha. In the 2020 miniseries “Hollywood”, An alternate history of the 1930s movie business as told by Ryan Murphy. The studio executive he plays is not a cliché but a man with an appetite. (“Bring me some brisket, some of those cheesy fries, and a lemon meringue pie,” he tells a store waiter—against doctor’s orders, having just emerged from a heart attack-induced coma. “One meal won’t kill me.”) He’s the boss, but in a scene as wonderful as it is historically unlikely, he allows his wife (Patti Lupone), who has been running things during his absence, to be the boss, too.

Reiner left All in the Family in 1978, after the eighth season, to explore life outside of Michael Stivic. (In 1976, while still starring on Family, he tested that water by appearing in an episode of The Rockford Files as a narcissistic third-rate football player.) Free Country, which he co-created with frequent writing partner Phil Mishkin, about a family of Lithuanian immigrants in the early 1900s, aired five episodes that summer. That same year, ABC aired the television movie More Than Friends, written by Reiner-Mishkin (available on Apple TV), in which Reiner co-starred with then-wife Penny Marshall. Directed by James Burrows, whose dance card will be filled with “Taxi,” “Cheers” and “3rd Rock From the Sun,” this is something of a test run for Reiner's film. “When Harry Met Sally…” tracking a not-quite-romantic but ultimately destined relationship over time.

Future Spinal Tap lead singer Michael McKean appears there as a protest singer, and in the 1982 CBS TV movie “Million Dollar Infield” again written with Mishkin, it features Reiner along with future Spinal Tap lead guitarist Christopher Guest and bassist Harry Shearer; it's a story of baseball, families and therapy. His co-star Bruno Kirby had co-written and starred in Reiner's directorial debut a year earlier, “Tommy Rispoli: The Man and His Music.” a short film aired on the long-gone On TV subscription service as part of the Likely Stories anthology. Kirby's character, a limousine driver who loves Frank Sinatra (who drove Reiner as himself), found his way into This Is Spinal Tap, although here he is the center of a Reiner-esque love story.

After Spine Tap, as Reiner's directing career took off, he continued to star in other people's films (Sleepless in Seattle, Primary Colors, Bullets Over Broadway and The Wolf of Wall Street, to name a few) as well as some of his own films, up until this year's film. “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.” On television, he mostly played himself, that is, versions of himself, on shows like It's the Garry Shandling Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Hannah Montana, among others, with a few notable exceptions.

Rob Reiner and Jamie Lee Curtis play the divorced parents of Jess (Zooey Deschanel) on Fox's New Girl.

(Ray Mixshaw/Fox)

The most notable of these, in my opinion, is New Girl, in which Reiner appeared in 10 episodes spanning five of the show's seven seasons as Bob Day, the father of Zooey Deschanel's Jess. Jamie Lee Curtis, who is married to Guest in the real world, played his ex-wife Joan, and Kaitlin Olson played his new, much younger partner Ashley, who went to high school with Jess. He's simply amazing here, whether he's being overly protective of Deschanel or enduring her ministrations, dancing around Curtis or fencing with Jake Johnson's Nick. Improvisational rhythms characterize his playing, whether he sticks to the script or not. More recently he reappeared in season four of “Bear” which also featured Curtis, mentor to sandwich genius Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson); their scenes are very similar to the meeting with Reiner.

Coincidentally, I've been listening to the audiobook version of Reiner for the past couple of weeks. “A fine line: between stupid and smart.” which he narrates with the participation of McKean, Shearer and Guest. A story of friendship, creativity and absurdity, a miraculous event that grew larger over the years, and Reiner's happy reading makes this tragedy even clearer. I have a DVD on the way, although I don't know when I'll be able to watch it. I just know that I will do it.