The Carl Reiner hot dog from the famous Pink’s Hot Dogs stand proved to be the TV icon's final meal before he died last Monday. “It was his favorite meal — a hot dog with mustard and sauerkraut and a side of baked beans,” said George Shapiro, the Seinfeld producer and Reiner's manager, a nephew of Reiner’s late wife, Estelle Reiner. Reiner spent his final day doing what he did every weeknight: watching Jeopardy! and Wheel with Brooks, his best friend of 70 years. Around 10 p.m., Reiner was walking out of his TV room with the help of a housekeeper when he stumbled. “He didn’t fall too hard. It was a gentle buckling of the knees,” Shapiro said. Minutes later, Reiner lost consciousness. “He went out within three minutes,” he said. “He didn’t suffer. Everybody wants to go that way.” Shapiro, who tweeted pictures of them together two days earlier in celebration of Brooks' 94th birthday, said Reiner had made a point of telling family and close friends in recent days how much they meant to him and how happy he was with his own remarkable life.
TOPICS: Carl Reiner, George Shapiro, Mel Brooks