Dick Van Dyke

Four-time Emmy Award® winner Dick Van Dyke ( b. West Plains, MO, December 13, 1925 ) has been entertaining American television audiences in one guise or another for nearly sixty years. He is best known for the original Dick Van Dyke Show , which ran from 1961 to 1966, and its numerous reincarnations, his starring roles in the films Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang , and his portrayal of Dr. Mark Sloan in the long-lived television series Diagnosis: Murder (1993–2001). Richard Wayne Van Dyke is of Dutch and Scottish descent. Though he was born in Missouri, he was raised in Danville, Illinois, where he spent much of his youth at the local movie palace watching Laurel & Hardy comedies. While in high school he was active in community theatricals, but in college he aspired to become a Presbyterian minister, initiating an abiding sideline as a Sunday-school teacher. World War II intervened, and Van Dyke joined the U.S, Army Air Corps, whereupon he drifted back into announcing, singing, and dancing in variety entertainments for his fellow soldiers. After the War, he started up an advertising agency in Danville, but it soon failed. He also got married; his marriage to Marjorie Willett, with whom he would have three daughters and two sons, ended in divorce after thirty-six years. Van Dyke worked as an announcer for the local radio station, and partnered with a friend in a pantomime duo called “The Merry Mutes, Eric and Van,” which continued for a surprising six years. He hosted a morning TV show in New Orleans and was soon signed by CBS as a roving announcer and emcee ( Cartoon Theatre 1956, The Chevy Showroom Starring Andy Williams 1958). He made his television acting debut on The Phil Silvers Show ( Sergeant Bilko ) as a hayseed ball player in 1957. After a few freelance gigs as a game-show host, Dick Van Dyke had a Broadway breakthrough in a musical revue The Girls Against the Boys (1959). It ran for less than two weeks, but it led to another Broadway role, Albert Peterson in Bye Bye Birdie , which won four Tony Awards® in 1961, including Best Musical and, for Van Dyke, Best Featured Actor in a Musical as well as the Theatre World Award. (Broadway, however, did not see Dick Van Dyke again until 1980, when he led the cast of a City Center revival of The Music Man .) He was now a confirmed star, and a weekly television sitcom was created (by Carl Reiner) for him bearing his own name – The Dick Van Dyke Show – in which he played comedy writer Rob Petrie (the thinly disguised Reiner). The show received four Emmy Awards® for Outstanding Comedy Series, and three for Van Dyke himself. It also introduced Mary Tyler Moore, as Rob’s wife Laura, to television audiences. The filming of Bye Bye Birdie took Dick Van Dyke to Hollywood in 1963. That was followed in 1964 by an even greater success, Mary Poppins , in which Van Dyke sang and danced as a cockney chimney sweep (his accent has been judged one of the worst in film history). His showcase song, “Chim Chim Cher-ee,” won the Oscar® for the songwriters, the Sherman Brothers, and a Grammy Award® for Van Dyke for the soundtrack recording. He made several more movies during the ’60s, mostly mediocre comedies ( Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N. , Fitzwilly , The Art of Love , Never a Dull Moment , Divorce American Style ), but Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) with Sally Ann Howes was a smashing international success. The many attempts to resuscitate The Dick Van Dyke Show on television under various slightly altered titles, but with entirely different situations, were increasingly disappointing. The New Dick Van Dyke Show (1971–1974), shot in Carefree, Arizona, and again produced by Carl Reiner, portrayed a local television talk show host. Van Dyke & Co. (1976) was an hour-long sketch comedy show that lasted three months – although it won an Emmy Award® for Outstanding Comedy-Variety Series. In another short-lived stab at sitcom, The Van Dyke Show (1988), with his real-life son Barry as a regula