Comedy legend Carl Reiner dead at 98, used his Camp Crowder experiences in Dick Van Dyke Show episodes

Comedy legend Carl Reiner (shown in 2000 with Dick Van Dyke) whose career lasted nine decades died Monday at age 98.

Reiner was stationed at Camp Crowder in Neosho during World War II and later used that experience, as well as the location and references to various surrounding communities, including Joplin, in episodes of the situation comedy The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Reiner, who was executive producer and a writer for the show, as well as playing the role of Alan Brady on it, used Camp Crowder in a number of flashback episodes of the series, stationing Vandyke as Rob Petrie as a soldier at Camp Crowder and Mary Tyler Moore as Laura Petrie as a USO entertainer.

From the Official Dick Van Dyke Book:

And, as a quick glimpse of Carl Reiner's personal dossier reveals, the Van Dyke show's many Army flashback episodes were indeed rife with autobiographical echoes of Reiner's own life and career. Like Rob Petrie, the writer/producer had also been stationed at Camp Crowder, Missouri though Reiner's hitch began a bit earlier than Rob's, in 1943 not long after the writer met his own real life Laura, the former Estelle Lebost.

"She wasn't in the USO," says Reiner, but she did visit me at Camp Crowder."

In addition to his work on the Dick Van Dyke Show, Reiner's career included directing a number of films, including four starring Steve Martin, a comedy act with Mel Brooks, writing and performing on the Sid Caesar variety shows of the 1950s and acting and performing through the 2000s, with a role as a con artist in the George Clooney-Brad Pitt Ocean's 11 series, right up until earlier this year when he appeared in a public service announcement encouraging social distancing.