From 'All in the Family' to 'Spinal Tap II,' Rob Reiner was a comedy giant in TV and film

As the son of the multihyphenate comedy legend Carl Reiner and the comedian Estelle Reiner, humor was clearly in his genes — but Rob Reiner found his own warm-and-fuzzy style, one that lent itself equally to the rom-com, the coming-of-age story and the fairy tale.

Reiner, who with his wife, Michele, was found dead Sunday night, left a bear-hug impression on the world of comedy. Here’s a look at his work, both on screen and behind the camera.

While famous as a director, Reiner's early TV acting career was inauspicious. He appeared in a couple dozen shows in his late teens and early 20s, occasionally in bit parts that stretched for a few episodes, and often typecast as a hippie.

 "I was the resident Hollywood hippie at the time," he explained. A young Reiner sang "Blowin' in the Wind" with Jim Nabors on "Gomer Pyle, USMC" and nearly became a regular on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour," the closest TV came to something that could be called "countercultural" in the late 1960s.

But fame was coming, and it would be colossal. Reiner first appeared in Norman Lear's "All in the Family" on the episode entitled "Meet the Bunkers," on Jan. 12, 1971. Gloria (Sally Struthers) had instructed her new boyfriend, Mike Stivic (Reiner), to wear a tie on the occasion of meeting her father, Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor). Instead, he wore a tie-dyed open-necked shirt. The next few moments yielded one of the most famous scenes in American TV history and scored a put-down for the ages as Archie declared: "Mr. Stivic, you are a meathead, dead from the neck up."

Stivic was to become Archie's most important foil, — the punching bag who punched back, and a counterpoint to his stream of slurs, put-downs, smears and outrages.  Stivic also paid the price, or as Reiner would explain in his Emmys Legends interview years later, "Literally every day of my life someone will say, 'Hey Meathead.' I could win the Nobel Prize and they'll say, 'Meathead Wins the Nobel Prize.' I have Norman Lear to thank for that." Lear based the character on Mike Rawlins (Johnny Speight) from the original Britcom "Till Death do Us Part," but also on his own life — "Meathead" the homegrown epithet from his own father.

Reiner had known Lear growing up — his father and Lear were friends — and had him audition for a pair of ABC pilots that were never produced. A successful screen test with Struthers got him onto "Family."

In his own memoir, "Even This I get to Experience," Lear — who died in 2023 — wrote that Reiner became a critical voice in the creative process of "All in the Family," as well as the linchpin of one hard-and-fast rule — that no Archie slur would ever go unanswered, and Mike would typically be the one doing the answering.

After "All in the Family" came a career lull, and so it was something of a surprise to find Meathead in the director’s chair for 1984’s "This Is Spinal Tap." An improvised mockumentary before that was really a thing, the film focused on three dim-bulb rock musicians (Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest) in a critically reviled heavy-metal band called Spinal Tap. (Reiner cast himself as a filmmaker so inept he could not cross his arms properly.) The film became a modest hit, then a cult classic, then spawned a genre thanks to Guest, who applied the formula to "Best in Show," "Waiting for Guffman" and other hit comedies.

So began Reiner’s roughly 20-year filmmaking hot streak. His entry into the teen film canon, "The Sure Thing" (1985), gave John Cusack his first leading role and brought an old-fashioned sweetness to a genre then mostly known for snickering sexual humor. Clearly, Reiner had a crowd-pleasing touch.

From there, Reiner made his three best-loved films, starting with "Stand by Me" (1986), an adaptation of a Stephen King novella about four bullied kids who search their local woods for a dead body. Reiner gathered a stellar young ensemble (including River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Kiefer Sutherland), leavened the ominous storyline with lowbrow humor,  and borrowed his title from the 1961 Ben E. King song for a twinge of nostalgia. The result: a $53 million hit that’s widely regarded as one of the best films of its decade.

Another would be "The Princess Bride," Reiner’s follow-up in 1987. In William Goldman’s postmodern screenplay, adapted from his own novel, a grandfather (Peter Falk) entertains his grandson (Fred Savage) with a fairy tale that seems both self-spoofing and utterly sincere. Reiner deftly juggled a swooning romance (between Robin Wright and Cary Elwes) with a parade of colorful supporting players (Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn, Andre the Giant, Billy Crystal) and came up with an all-ages favorite that has charmed multiple generations on home video. I

Reiner’s crowning moment came with 1989’s "When Harry Met Sally …," starring Crystal and Meg Ryan as longtime friends who hesitantly attempt a romance.

Working from a Nora Ephron screenplay indirectly inspired by his own divorce (from Penny Marshall), Reiner beautifully captured the chemistry between his stars. Their scene in Katz’s Deli, where Ryan’s Sally fakes a passionate orgasm over lunch with Crystal’s mortified Harry, is now as famous in its way as anything between Bogart and Bacall. Reiner cast his mother, Estelle Reiner, as a customer who closes the scene with a one-liner for all time: "I’ll have what she’s having."

From there, Reiner expanded successfully into other genres. He directed the horror-thriller "Misery," which won a Best Actress Oscar for Kathy Bates; the legal drama "A Few Good Men," which marked the screenplay debut of Aaron Sorkin; "The American President," another Sorkin effort, starring Michael Douglas and Annette Bening; the courtroom drama "The Ghosts of Mississippi"; and the 2007 comedy "The Bucket List" with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.

Reiner never fully stopped acting, either. His recent roles felt like the appearance of Hollywood royalty when least expected. Most recently, in the fourth season of "The Bear," he played a fast-talking flimflam "consultant" hired by Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) to figure out a way to monetize his popular Italian beef sandwich.

Reiner’s final film was a sequel to his first: "This Is Spinal Tap II: The End Continues." The wattage of the cameos — Garth Brooks, Tricia Yearwood, Elton John, Paul McCartney — spoke volumes about the iconic stature of the original film, even if critics were less than impressed. 

"To be alone with Rob Reiner," Lear wrote in his memoir, "is to be in a crowd. His brain and his mouth, like a chain of Chinese firecrackers, are firing constantly." He added, "What was great about Rob was that the person, the actor, the director, the friend, the participant, the activist, the star, the husband and the father all come from the center of his being."