Funnyman Carl Reiner dies at 98

Carl Reiner, the ingenious and versatile writer, actor and director who broke through as a “second banana” to Sid Caesar and rose to comedy’s front ranks as creator of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and straight man to Mel Brooks’ “2000 Year Old Man,” has died. He was 98.

Carl Reiner, left, and his son Rob Reiner following a hand and footprint ceremony for them at the TCL Chinese Theatre on April 7, 2017, in Los Angeles. (Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

Reiner’s assistant Judy Nagy says he died Monday night of natural causes his home in Beverly Hills, California.

One of show business’s best-liked men, the tall, bald Reiner was a welcome face on the small and silver screens, in Caesar’s 1950s troupe, as the snarling, toupee-wearing Alan Brady of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and in such films as “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming” and “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

Reiner, the son of Jewish immigrants, was born in the Bronx on March 20, 1922.

He is the father of actor-director Rob Reiner.

— with AP