Richard Wayne Van Dyke (born December 13, 1925) is an Emmy-Award winning American actor of film, stage, and screen, comedian and dancer. He is known for his starring roles in Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Dick Van Dyke Show in the 1960s, and Diagnosis: Murder as Dr. Mark Sloan in the 1990s. He recently played the role of Cecil Fredericks in Night at the Museum.
Van Dyke was born in West Plains, Missouri, and grew up in Danville, Illinois, the son of Loren Wayne Van Dyke, a traveling salesman for the Sunshine Biscuit Company with a talent for comedy, and Hazel Vorice McCord. He attended elementary school in Danville, starting in 1931. In 1938 the Van Dykes, of ancient Dutch origin (originally Van Dijk), moved to Crawfordsville, Indiana, for two years, and returned to Danville in 1940 where he attended high school. As a child, he was inspired to go into show business by watching Laurel & Hardy films at the movie theater. After appearing in many high school plays and community theatre productions, Van Dyke enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. There he participated in stage shows and worked as a radio DJ.
After hosting local comedy television shows in Atlanta and New Orleans, Van Dyke signed a contract with CBS in 1956. His first network series was as the host of the first network prime-time cartoon show, The CBS Cartoon Theater, which aired for 12 episodes during the summer of 1956. He appeared on numerous CBS game shows and talk shows, either as host or guest. He made his acting debut in an episode of The Phil Silvers Show.
Van Dyke then left CBS for the Broadway stage. In 1960, he starred in the Broadway musical Bye Bye Birdie opposite Chita Rivera. The show was a box-office success and he won a Tony Award. Carl Reiner saw Van Dyke in Bye Bye Birdie and cast him in the role of Rob Petrie in the highly-rated and critically acclaimed CBS sitcom, The Dick Van Dyke Show. The show was about a staff of writers for The Alan Brady Show, a fictional TV variety show conceptually based on the 1950s hit, Your Show of Shows. The show divided its time between the office and home, making a star of a young Mary Tyler Moore as his wife, Laura. Reiner originally planned to star as Rob Petrie but after filming a pilot he realized he was wrong for the role. Reiner instead opted to play Alan Brady, the role loosely based on Sid Caesar. For the role of Rob Petrie, Van Dyke won three Emmy Awards. The Dick Van Dyke Show ran for five seasons, ending its successful run while it was still in the top 10 of the Nielsen Ratings. This unusual move kept the program fresh instead of allowing it to deteriorate.
Van Dyke began his film career by reprising his stage role in the film version of Bye Bye Birdie in 1963. Although Van Dyke was unhappy with the adaptation because the focus was shifted to Ann-Margret's character, the film was a major success. He followed that up with Walt Disney's Mary Poppins in 1964, in which he played Bert, a Cockney chimney sweep, and also, in heavy disguise, the elderly owner of the bank. His attempt at a Cockney accent (and his tendency to lapse in and out of it) was widely ridiculed[citation needed] (especially in the United Kingdom[citation needed]). But the film was very popular and innovative and also showed his versatility as a singer and dancer. One of his showcase songs, Chim Chim Cher-ee, won the Oscar for the Sherman Brothers, the film's songwriting team.
Van Dyke made several more comedy movies throughout the 1960s including What a Way to Go!, Lt. Robin Crusoe, USN, Fitzwilly, The Art of Love, Never a Dull Moment, and Divorce American Style. Although most of his movies from this era were relatively unsuccessful, the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was a worldwide success and is still fondly remembered today. In later years, Van Dyke would complain that he had "never made a good movie".
In 1969, Van Dyke appeared in his first semi-dramatic role in the comedy-drama The Comic, which was written and directed by Carl Reiner. Van Dyke plays a silent-film era comedian who struggles with alcoholism and depression. Reiner wrote the film especially for Van Dyke, who would often talk of his admiration for silent film era comedians such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Ben Turpin and his hero, Stan Laurel. He also began starring in a series of commercials as a spokesperson for Kodak.
In 1971, Van Dyke starred with Hope Lange in another sitcom called The New Dick Van Dyke Show. In it, he played Dick Preston, a local talk show host in Phoenix, Arizona. Van Dyke was living in Arizona at the time and the show was filmed there. Despite airing for three seasons, the show was not as popular as his previous series had been.
In 1973, Van Dyke voiced his animated likeness for the October 27, 1973 installment of Hanna-Barbera's The New Scooby-Doo Movies, "Scooby-Doo Meets Dick Van Dyke" (aka "The Haunted Carnival"), the series' final first run episode.
In 1974, Van Dyke received wide acclaim and an Emmy nomination for his role as an alcoholic businessman in the television movie The Morning After. Regarded by many as the most realistic television film ever made dealing with alcoholism, it is sometimes shown at treatment centers. The final scene in particular is regarded by many as chilling and unforgettable. It was at this time that Van Dyke admitted he had recently overcome a real-life drinking problem.
In 1975, he played another atypical role as a murdering photographer in an episode of the popular series Columbo. He also began doing public service announcements for the National Fire Protection Agency through 1984. Van Dyke returned to comedy in 1976 with the sketch comedy show Van Dyke and Company which also starred Andy Kaufman and Super Dave Osborne. Despite being cancelled after only three months, the show won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy-Variety Series, beating Saturday Night Live. In 1977, Van Dyke then joined the cast of The Carol Burnett Show after Harvey Korman left the show. Unfortunately, his comedy style did not work as well with Burnett's, and he left the show after three months. For the next decade, he appeared mainly in low-rated TV movies. One exception was another atypical role as a murdering judge on the first episode of the TV series Matlock in 1986 starring Andy Griffith. In 1988, Van Dyke returned with another sitcom called The Van Dyke Show which co-starred his son, Barry. The show was cancelled after just five episodes.
His career seemed essentially over by 1989 when Dick Van Dyke started a career comeback. First, he took a guest starring role on NBC's hit TV series The Golden Girls playing Dorothy's (Bea Arthur's) beau, who decides to give up being a lawyer to become a circus clown. The role earned him his first Emmy nomination since 1977. In 1990, Van Dyke, whose usual role had been the amiable hero, took a small but villainous turn as the crooked D.A Fletcher in Warren Beatty's movie Dick Tracy. The reviews he received for Tracy led him to star in a series of TV movies on CBS that became the foundation for his popular television drama, Diagnosis: Murder, which ran from 1993 to 2001. (He first played the character, Dr. Mark Sloan, in an episode of Jake and the Fatman.) He continued to find television work after the show ended, including a dramatically and critically successful performance of The Gin Game, produced for television in 2003 that reunited him with Mary Tyler Moore, a 2004 on Scrubs, where he played a doctor who could not keep up with the changing ways of medical care, and a starring role as Dr. Jonathan Maxwell in a made-for-TV movie in 2006. In 2004, he reunited with Moore once again as he reprised the role of Rob Petrie for a Carl Reiner-produced TV special The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited.
Van Dyke returned to motion pictures in the 2006 film Curious George as Mr. Bloomsberry. His most recent role is Cecil in the Ben Stiller film Night at the Museum, released in December 2006. Van Dyke also has plans to reprise his role as Dr. Jonathan Maxwell in another Murder 101 mystery movie for the Hallmark Channel in January 2007. In an interview included on the DVD release of Night at the Museum, Van Dyke jokes that he keeps trying to retire but something seems to always come up.
Van Dyke was a great admirer of Stan Laurel and even gave the eulogy at his funeral. He also produced a TV special soon afterward, A Salute to Stan Laurel. He once met Laurel and told him he had copied a great deal from him. He said Laurel only laughed and said, "I've noticed that". Van Dyke received a Grammy Award for his performance on the soundtrack to Mary Poppins. One of Van Dyke's modern passions is producing 3D computer graphics. He created many of the 3D rendered effects shown in Diagnosis: Murder, and continues to work with LightWave 3D.
Van Dyke is the older brother of actor Jerry Van Dyke, who is best known for his role on the TV series Coach.
He married Margie Willett in 1948, with whom he had four children: Christian, Barry, Carrie Beth and Stacy. They divorced in 1984 after a long separation. Van Dyke's son Barry Van Dyke and grandson Carey Van Dyke are also actors; both along with other Van Dyke relations and grandchildren appeared in various episodes of the long-running Diagnosis: Murder series. Each of Van Dyke's children are married, and he has seven grandchildren. He currently resides with girlfriend, Michelle Triola.
During The Dick Van Dyke Show, he fought alcoholism, which he successfully conquered. He has also served as an elder in the Presbyterian Church.
In 1970, he published Faith, Hope and Hilarity: a Child's Eye View of Religion, a book of humorous anecdotes based largely on his experiences as a Sunday School teacher.
Van Dyke is a computer animation enthusiast and has displayed some of his CGI work at trade shows. This interest is referred to in the 2004 TV movie The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited, which shows that Rob Petrie has also become a CGI hobbyist.
