It has been confirmed that legendary actor, Dick Van Dyke, will present the Screen Actors Guild’s 48th Life Achievement Award to Mary Tyler Moore, reflecting achievements in her career and her humanitarian work, at the 18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards.Past recipients of SAG’s Life Achievement Award include Ernest Borgnine, Betty White, James Earl Jones, Charles Durning, Julie Andrews, Shirley Temple Black, James Garner, Karl Malden, Clint Eastwood, Edward Asner, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier, Kirk Douglas, Elizabeth Taylor, Angela Lansbury, Robert Redford and George Burns.
For those who are not familiar with Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke, they became known in Hollywood when they were cast as suburban couple Rob and Laura Petrie in Van Dyke’s eponymous sitcom based on the experiences of comedy writer Carl Reiner. The series broke new ground in television and is said to have ushered in the golden age of the situation comedy. Adored by audiences and critics alike, the series earned four Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy® Awards during the show’s five-year run, three Emmys for Van Dyke and two Emmys and a nomination for Moore.
In 1969, Van Dyke and Moore reunited for a one-hour variety special called Dick Van Dyke and the Other Woman. They joined forces again in a 1979 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Hour reprising their roles as the Petries in a tongue-in-cheek comedic sketch. Other notable collaborations by the famously funny TV spouses include a PBS version of D. L. Coburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning nursing home-set stage play "The Gin Game," as well as a reunion with former cast mates in TV Land’s nostalgic “The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited.”After the series ended, Van Dyke went on to star in such classic feature films as “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” “Mary Poppins,” “The Comic” and “Dick Tracy.” Over the years, he continued his work on network television starring in “The New Dick Van Dyke Show,” “Van Dyke and Company” (for which he received his fourth Emmy) and a critically-acclaimed, Emmy-nominated dramatic performance in the made-for-television movie “The Morning After.” In his fifth decade in television, Van Dyke starred in the 1990s prime time series “Diagnosis Murder” for CBS. He returned to his Broadway roots in productions of “Bye Bye Birdie” and “A Dancers Life,” and most recently penned a New York Times best-selling memoir “My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business.”
The 18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards®, will be simulcast live coast-to-coast on TNT and TBS on Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012, at 8 p.m. (ET) / 5 p.m. (PT) from the Shrine Exposition Center in Los Angeles.
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Words: Emily Smith
Rememba Entertainment
Dick Van Dyke Picture courtesy of nndb.com
Mary Tyler Moore Picture courtesy of squidoo.com
