Editor
As the title of the autobiography, “Dick Van Dyke: My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business,” suggests, the longtime Malibu resident is indeed a lucky man. Of course, it also took hard work for the actor to achieve worldwide fame and a long-lasting career that is still going strong into his ’80s.
Van Dyke is a funny man, and his dry humor is sprinkled throughout the book, from his learning at the age of 18 from his Grandmother Van Dyke (“the most straightforward of the bunch”) that he was born out of wedlock to the recounting of his schools days, to his start in show business in radio through stage, film and television to present day.
The first half of the book extensively covers Van Dyke’s foray into show business, first starting in high school, when he joined the drama club after learning his athletic career was over, due to a heart murmur, to his first job at age 17 earning $11 per week as a part-time radio announcer.
His first lucky break in show business came during his stint in the Air Force when he met Byron Paul, who later became a director, then an executive producer at CBS Studios and was responsible for introducing Van Dyke to the studio, where the legendary 1960s “The Dyke Van Dyke Show” was born.
While Van Dyke writes in his introduction that readers will find nothing “salacious” in his book, he does recount a Hollywood party scene that involved a well-known actress getting drunk and ending up in a pool naked, as well as other amusing stories involving his peers.
Van Dyke was married to Margie Willet, mother of their four children, for almost 40 years. It is his relationship with his wife, and his subsequent 35-year one with Michelle Triola for whom he left Margie and which ended with Triola’s death in 2009, as well as his battle with alcoholism and the midlife crisis during which he found himself asking the question, Who did I want to be? that Van Dyke’s memoir really involves the reader on a much more personal level.
Van Dyke is quite straightforward about how he analyzed and approached the more difficult parts of his life. The index of the book says it all, especially regarding Margie; under the listing, “Van Dyke, Margie (wife),” it reads as a relationship doomed from the beginning: growing apart; health problems; illness and death; Librium addiction; marital hopes; marriage; miscarriage; no fondness for show business.
The tales of working on shows such as “The Dyke Van Dyke Show” and films like “Bye Bye Birdie,” “Mary Poppins,” and others, are interesting behind-the-scenes looks at how they came about, how he came to be cast in them and the friendships, business and otherwise, that grew out of them. The book is a great bible for those breaking into show business, because this man has done it all and loves what he does.