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| Photo courtesy of today.com |
On this day, in 1925, Richard Wayne Van Dyke was born in West Plains,
Missouri. Dick grew up in Danville, Illinois as the older brother to
another future entertainer, Jerry Van Dyke. Their family on their mother's side
was deeply religious and Dick flirted with entering the ministry until he took
a drama class in high school. From that point on, he was set on the career path
of professional entertainer (incidentally, so were his classmates Donald
O'Connor, of
Singin' In the Rain fame, and Bobby Short, a well known
cabaret singer). Dick actually dropped out of high school in his senior year to
enlist in the Army Air Force during World War II, but was too underweight to be
accepted. He did eventually enlist as a radio announcer and would spend the
remainder of the war in Special Services entertaining troops stateside. Sixty
years later he would finally obtain his diploma at the age of 78.
Following World War II, Dick returned to Danville as a local radio DJ. In
1947, he began touring West Coast night clubs in a mime act with partner Phil
Erickson. By the early Fifties, the duo had migrated with their act to Atlanta
and starred in a local television show. By the mid Fifties, the show came to an
end and Phil stayed in Atlanta while Dick moved to New York City to try his
luck there.
Dick made his Broadway debut in 1959 in
The Girls against the Boys, a
revue that ran for 16 performances and also starred Bert Lahr. The following
year, he auditioned for a small role in
Bye, Bye Birdie. He nervously
improvised a soft shoe routine as part of that audition. The show's director
offered him the lead. Dick told him that the only dancing he knew how to do was
what he just did. The director said we'll teach you. And teach him they did.
Birdie
ran for 604 performances and earned Dick a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor
in a Musical. He would later star in the film version with Janet Leigh.
Dick had made various appearances on television starting in 1954, doing
episodes of
The Phil Silvers Show and
The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, but it
was in 1961 that his face became nationally known as the star of
The Dick Van Dyke Show. A perfect storm
of the comedy world of the early Sixties, the show also launched the career of
Mary Tyler Moore and featured veteran comedians like Carl Reiner, Rose Marie,
and Morey Amsterdam. Dick would pick up three Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead
Actor in a Comedy and the show would win Outstanding Comedy Series four times
over its five year run.
In the middle of his show’s highly successful run, Dick made his legendary
entry into the Disney world. Walt knew with great certainty that he wanted Dick
for the role of Bert, the chimney sweep, in
Mary
Poppins. According to Dick, he really didn’t even have to audition for the
role. The other role he played for the movie, Mr. Dawes Senior, the head of the
bank Mr. Banks works for, was an entirely different matter. Dick says that not
only did he have to lobby hard for it, but that Walt secured a donation to
CalArts from him as well. Mary Poppins herself would declare both parts to be
practically perfect in every way if it wasn’t for one hardly mentionable thing:
Dick’s cockney accent. Even huge fans of the movie have to admit it’s
really bad. But apparently no one, not
Julie Andrews, not Dick’s voice coach, not even Walt himself, said anything
about it during filming, so can we really blame him for it? It’s become a
(mostly) endearing part of the film, so the answer is probably no. Dick’s performance
of the Sherman Brothers tune
Chim Chim Cher-ee
helped propel it to a Best Original Song Oscar and earned him a Grammy
Award, along with his co-star, Julie.
Following
Mary Poppins, Dick starred in two more films for Disney, neither
of which was as successful. The first was
Lt.
Robin Crusoe, U.S.N. in 1966, an adaptation of the Daniel Defoe novel. The
most notable thing about the film is that it is the only movie that Walt ever
received a writing credit for. The second was
Never a Dull Moment in 1968, a crime comedy that also starred
Edward G. Robinson and kind of made its title a lie.
Throughout the rest of the Sixties, Dick starred in a string of mediocre
comedies with the likes of James Garner, Shirley MacLaine and Debbie Reynolds.
The highlight of the bunch would be the 1968 version of Ian Fleming’s
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. With Dick as
the Englishman Caractacus Pott (albeit with an American accent this time, he’d
learned his lesson) and songs from the Sherman Brothers,
Chitty is like
Mary Poppins
less successful cousin.
During the Seventies, Dick tried to capture lightning in a bottle once more
on television. Another sitcom,
The New
Dick Van Dyke Show ran for three seasons from 1971-1974, but only earned
its star a Golden Globe nomination. He tried again in 1976 with
Van Dyke and Company, a sketch comedy
show that only lasted three months (but still picked up the Emmy for Best
Outstanding Comedy-Variety Show). He joined the cast of
The Carol Burnett Show for the last half of its last season and did
various guest spots on shows like
Matlock
and
Airwolf.
Dick’s next performance for Disney was as a villain, DA Fletcher, in Touchstone
Picture’s 1990 action comedy
Dick Tracey.
The positive reviews from that role led to his next big success on the
small screen. After a guest appearance on
Jake
and the Fat Man, Dick’s character, Dr. Mark Sloan, got a set of TV movies
and then his own series.
Diagnosis:
Murder began in 1993 and gave Dick an opportunity to work with his son,
Barry, who is also an actor. For eight seasons, the father and son duo solved
crimes together.
Following the end of
Diagnosis: Murder,
Dick has continued to pop up occasionally on both the big and small screens. He
reunited with Mary Tyler Moore for a critically acclaimed televised version of
The Gin Game. He took another villainous
turn for the
Night at the Museum
series of films. He even made a cameo on his little brother Jerry’s hit show,
Coach. And, in just a few days, Dick
will return to theaters with a cameo in Disney’s
Mary Poppins Returns, at the ripe old age of 93.
After a career spanning over seven decades, Dick has earned his place as
entertainment royalty. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in
1995. He earned SAG’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. And, in 1998, he
became an official Disney Legend for his enduringly lovable performance of the
chimney sweep who may or may not be from England.
