Glimpsed here and there throughout the 1950s in amiable acting supports on film, it was as a TV producer and director that Jerry Paris found his true calling. In front of the camera, however, most fans will remember him quite fondly as the neighborhood dentist to Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore on Van Dyke's treasured TV comedy sitcom of the ...
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series
Nominations
DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Television
Movies
Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment, Police Academy 3: Back in Training, Marty, The Caine Mutiny, Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River, Viva Max!, Never a Dull Moment, The Grasshopper, How Sweet It Is!, Star Spangled Girl, Evil Roy Slade, The Naked and the Dead, Zero Hour!, D-Day the Sixth o...
TV Shows
The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Untouchables, Michael Shayne
Star Sign
Leo
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Trademark
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Frequently appears in a small (often one scene) role
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Quote
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My trouble as an actor was twofold, I was too tall, and I wasn't handsome enough. Richard Widmark wanted me in a couple of movies, and they told him I was too tall; I'd make him look short. Widmark said what the hell, we can dig a hole. And I remember I was Robert Taylor's roommate in D-Day the Sixth of June (1956), and I had to sit down all the time. Yeah. I remember the scene where I was leaving, and I was supposed to bid him goodbye. The director told me to sit on the bed. What's this? I said. I'm leaving, and I'm sitting on the bed? The director says, "Give him a can of beer or something. He can be drinking a can of beer, and then we cut to him outside the door".
2
You name it. I was the co-pilot, the best friend, the roommate, the army buddy. In three movies I was second banana to Bonzo the monkey. Remember Bonzo? He was the number- one monkey in Hollywood, bigger even than Cheetah the Chimp, until he was killed in a tragic fire. Let's see. I was in Bonzo Goes to College (1952), and in Monkey Business (1952), and another one. Monkey Business (1952) also had Marilyn Monroe and Cary Grant but, as I recall, Bonzo got equal billing. Bonzo had a trainer who started to talk as if he were the monkey. Hell, the monkey was making the money. One day the trainer tells me I have a part in Bonzo's next picture because Bonzo likes me. Can you imagine that? Getting the part because the monkey likes you?.
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[on unnecessary violence in motion pictures] There have been violent pictures that were masterpieces. I think of pictures like Gone with the Wind (1939), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), "The Battle of Algiers" [aka The Battle of Algiers (1966)]) and All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). These pictures knew how to employ violence. I took my kid to see "Gone with the Wind", and the scene where the street is filled with dying soldiers, she found tremendously moving. But, then, she went to see Point Blank (1967)--I wouldn't have let her but, somehow, she went without me realizing what kind of movie it was--and here was all this brutality, shooting, torture. What does it mean in a context like that?
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[on becoming a film director] At last I can paint the whole canvas. How's that for a figure of speech, eh? When I was a character actor, I was painting only one color--blue or green, as it were. Now I can work on the whole movie.
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[on the difficulties of being a tall actor] You ever see a picture called The Flying Missile (1950)? I was in it, and Glenn Ford starred. We were on a submarine, and I was looking out of the periscope all the time. Only it would look bad if we had to lower the periscope for Ford after I finished looking out of it. So I spent the whole picture crouched over.
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Fact
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There is some irony in Jerry Paris directing Henry Winkler as "The Fonz" in Happy Days (1974), Winkler's character deriving his style from Jerry and other Black Rebels Motorcycle Club members in The Wild One (1953).
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He directed 5 of the 158 episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961) after being hired as an actor to play next-door neighbor Jerry Helper, a dentist. He found he had a real gift for directing and went on to direct Happy Days (1974) and the pilot for Laverne & Shirley (1976).
$14 Million
