Dick Van Dyke turns 100 this weekend. Here’s how his career began: NPR

Comedian and actor Dick Van Dyke danced on rooftops more than 60 years ago in Mary Poppins. And he danced barefoot in his backyard last year to “All My Love,” a Coldplay video that went viral on his 99th birthday.

As he begins his second century on Saturday, it seems like a good time to remember how he came into our lives: during six years of multimedia glory that debuted on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theater on April 14, 1960.

He was billed second after Chita Rivera in Goodbye Birdiecourting him and proposing songs to Conrad Birdie, a fictional rock star in Elvis Presley mode. Plus, as would be his habit throughout his career, he did his best to elicit a smile in the show’s biggest hit song, “Put on a Happy Face.”

Bird received mixed reviews, but the lanky Midwestern 34-year-old was a hit from the start. He won a Tony Award as Best Featured Actor in a Musical and charmed audiences. And when he took a week off to audition for a TV sitcom that Carl Reiner was preparing, he charmed its producers, too. So much so that even though he was almost unknown, when no one could come up with a good title for the series, they simply named it after him: The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Reiner had initially chosen se as television screenwriter Rob Petrie, because he had based the character on his own experience in comedian Sid Caesar’s writing room. But with Van Dyke paired with 24-year-old newcomer Mary Tyler Moore as Laura Petrie, the series wasn’t just a workplace comedy — there was heat on the home front.

From the first episode, Laura and Rob Petrie were sexy together, especially compared to the Andy Griffith and Danny Thomas sitcom characters who were their main competition.

Rob and Laura were also mid-century modern – the kind of contemporary suburbanites you could imagine living on the streets – but with a head of house who, when denied his favorite pillow at bedtime, could do five minutes of broken-neck pantomime.

The Dick Van Dyke Show Ratings started slowly, but by the second season the series was firmly in the top 20 in prime time. And there she stayed, even as Van Dyke began doing other projects. He shot the film version of Goodbye Birdie during the TV show’s first summer vacation. And soon, the Disney people were snooping everywhere, looking for a chimney sweep to pair with a nanny played by Julie Andrews.

When Van Dyke told an interviewer that he wished there were more quality children’s entertainment, Walt Disney took note and called him to offer him the role of Bert the Chimney Sweep in Mary Poppins.

Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews dance Mary PoppinsJune 1963.

Don Brinn/AP

hide caption

toggle caption

Don Brinn/AP

Shot during the summer of 1963, the film would require nearly 11 months of editing and animation before it was ready for theatrical release, but in October, just a month after filming wrapped, the cast of The Dick Van Dyke Show winked at him when Buddy from Morey Amsterdam started a sketch like: “What if Alan goes out dressed as a cockney chimney sweep but he gets so fat he can’t go down the chimneys?” This joke was played almost silently, but would have gotten a lot more laughs a year later, once the audience had met Bert the Chimney Sweep in Mary Poppins.

As Van Dyke recalls, Pamela Travers, who wrote the children’s books that inspired the film, thought he was all wrong for the role — and she didn’t like Julie Andrews either. It’s true that Van Dyke had perhaps the worst cockney accent ever.

But the film did so well that Disney was able to buy land in Florida to build a theme park in Orlando. And its buzz continued The Dick Van Dyke Show near the top of the ratings until the end of its fifth season – 158 episodes – when Reiner decided to call it quits while they were still at the top. It was a bittersweet ending, as Van Dyke recalled on NPR. Wait, wait… Don’t tell me!

“We’re all in this together,” he told host Peter Sagal, “let’s say The Dick Van Dyke Show have been the best five years of our lives. We were like otters playing.”

Dick Van Dyke at the 43rd annual Kennedy Center Honors press conference in May 2021.

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

He then starred in Chitty Chitty Bang Bangtelevisions Diagnosis: Murder, and dozens of other projects up to an Emmy-winning guest spot on the soap opera The days of our livesjust a few years ago, at the age of 97.

It’s been a full life – almost entirely dedicated to making people happy – including at the end of his visit to Wait, wait… Don’t tell me!when he delighted the audience by singing the lyrics written by Morey Amsterdam The Dick Van Dyke Show musical theme:

So you think you’re in trouble/

Well problems are a bubble/

So tell old Mr. Trouble to get lost. /

Why not keep your head high and/

Stop crying, start trying/

And don’t forget to cross your fingers. /

When you find the joy of living /

It’s loving and giving /

And you see that when the winning dice are thrown /

A smile is just an upset frown/

So smile and that frown will thaw/

And don’t forget to cross your fingers.

Ivy Buck produced this digital story.