Morey Amsterdam, Comic Actor, Dies

Morey Amsterdam, the comic actor best known as the wisecracking television writer on “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” died of a heart attack Monday. He was in his 80s.

Amsterdam started in vaudeville and performed in nightclubs before doing radio in the 1930s. In the late 1940s, he moved to television.

In the 1960s hit sitcom “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” Amsterdam played Buddy Sorrell, part of a television writing team that included Dick Van Dyke and Rose Marie.

“There was something ageless with him. Probably 100,000 jokes in his head went with him,” said Dick Van Dyke.

Various Hollywood reference books listed his birthday as Dec. 14 in 1912 or 1914, making him 83 or 81. Rose Marie said he was 87.