Fame can be a fickle thing. For many, celebrity status can feel elusive, no matter how much they yearn for it. For others, viewers only have to see you once for it to change your life.
Rob Reiner was no stranger to stardom. Even before he became an actor and director, as the son of famed writer and director Carl Reiner, Rob had brushed elbows with famous people on the set of his father’s series, The Dick Van Dyke Show. However, it wasn’t until he’d won a role as Mike Stivic in All in the Family that the younger Reiner finally began to make a name for himself.
But despite his television star status, Reiner had a special trick up his sleeve so that he could still live everyday moments as a normal person without fans mobbing him for autographs.
While Betty Garrett’s character of the Bunker’s neighbor Irene Lorenzo was well-loved by audiences, she didn’t have the same issues as the main cast of All in the Family when they were recognized in public. In her memoir, Betty Garrett and Other Songs: A Life on Stage and Screen, she wrote about a farmers market near the All in the Family stage that she frequented. However, many of her costars wouldn’t go out to eat with her. She wrote, “Carroll, Jean, and Sally could not go because they would be mobbed. People would just gather around and literally prevent them from eating.”
However, Reiner didn’t face a similar issue. Like Superman putting on his glasses to become Clark Kent, Reiner would actually remove the toupee he wore as Mike Stivic before he went out in public, rendering him unrecognizable to passersby.
Garrett wrote, “All Rob had to do was leave his toupee back in the studio and nobody knew who he was.” She continued, “I was always glad I never had that kind of celebrity, although one day a lady behind a coffee counter did recognize me.”
