My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business: A Memoir
Dick Van Dyke
Language: English
Pages: 320
ISBN: 0307592243
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Dick Van Dyke, indisputably one of the greats of the golden age of television, is admired and beloved by audiences the world over for his beaming smile, his physical dexterity, his impeccable comic timing, his ridiculous stunts, and his unforgettable screen roles.
His trailblazing television program, The Dick Van Dyke Show (produced by Carl Reiner, who has written the foreword to this memoir), was one of the most popular sitcoms of the 1960s and introduced another major television star, Mary Tyler Moore. But Dick Van Dyke was also an enormously engaging movie star whose films, including Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, have been discovered by a new generation of fans and are as beloved today as they were when they first appeared. Who doesn’t know the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?
A colorful, loving, richly detailed look at the decades of a multilayered life, My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business, will enthrall every generation of reader, from baby-boomers who recall when Rob Petrie became a household name, to all those still enchanted by Bert’s “Chim Chim Cher-ee.” This is a lively, heartwarming memoir of a performer who still thinks of himself as a “simple song-and-dance man,” but who is, in every sense of the word, a classic entertainer.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Faulk, whom I replaced after he was wrongly labeled a communist by a McCarthy-backed group and blacklisted from the business. I wasn’t aware of the reasons for Faulk’s departure until later when he chronicled his ordeal in the wonderful book Fear on Trial. I walked into my new job as the Morning Show’s announcer wonderfully, blissfully ignorant—and quite late. My first day was July 18, 1955. I woke up at four A.M. because I had to be at the studio at six for rehearsal and I had an hour’s drive.
Pretty much the same person on and off the set—maybe to a fault. Early on, Sheldon gave me the only acting lesson I ever had when he came up to me after a taping, put his hands on my shoulders, and told me that I was doing a terrific job except for one small thing. It was my voice. He said that I spoke the same in every scene, in a monotone. “Exaggerate a little,” he said. “Let the audience hear your reaction.” “Okay,” I said. “Don’t do much,” he said. “Just raise and lower your voice.” I.
Presbyterian Church. I didn’t teach Sunday school as I had in New York, but I spoke to the congregation on occasion. My brief interest in becoming a minister was far behind me, but I was intensely curious and even passionate about God. I had read and continued to read Buber, Tilich, Bonhoeffer, and Tournier, all theologians whom I thought helped explain religion in a practical, rational sense as far as everyday life as opposed to the strict doctrines of religion. I was all about living a kind,.
Everyone—Chris, Jessica’s mom, her stepfather, me, Michelle, Margie, the whole family, and countless others in her school and community who knew her. My first grandchild was a bright, vibrant girl just coming into her own. She played sports, liked the outdoors, and wrote poetry. Always precocious, Jessica had been putting her thoughts on paper for years. Her feelings reflected an old soul, someone concerned with the big, more profound issues of love and death and the relative brevity of life. “A.
Sixties and up comprised most of the audience, I turned to the other guys in my group, all at least half my age, and warned them that these were my groupies. Sure enough, after the show, the women rushed the stage, albeit slowly and politely. We had to make a run for it. At the end of June 2010, we took the act to Washington, D.C.’s, Ford Theater and performed at a pre–July Fourth celebration for a crowd of dignitaries and politicians led by President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle. At a.