Monthly Archives: April 2011

I typoed the date that Dick Van Dyke is appearing at the Barnes and Noble in New York. It's actually May 4.

If you're in Southern California and would like to see Dick Van Dyke in person, you have three upcoming opportunities that I know of. There will probably be many, here and in other towns, since he's going to be out promoting his new autobiography, My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business: A Memoir. The book comes out May 3 and you can advance order it here.

He'll be signing copies on Tuesday, May 10 at the big Barnes and Noble in The Grove here in Los Angeles at the Farmers Market. (For those of you in New York, he'll be at the Union Square Barnes and Noble on Wednesday, May 4. I assume we'll see him on many of the New York-based talk shows that week, as well. By the way, the Barnes and Noble in The Grove will have Albert Brooks there on May 17 signing his new novel.)

Even better is what happens the evening of May 31 in Beverly Hills. I have written here before about a fine group called Writers Bloc which stages events where one celebrity interviews another, then the one who has a new book out signs copies for those who wish to purchase one. They did that Dick Cavett-Mel Brooks evening I wrote about. On May 31, they have Carl Reiner interviewing Dick Van Dyke. How can that not be wonderful? If you want to attend, get a reservation now because it's not a big theater and it'll sell out before long.

(And here's another by-the-way: On May 12, the very same Mr. Reiner is interviewing Betty White at another Writers Bloc evening.)

Mr. Van Dyke will also be performing July 29 and 30 at the Hollywood Bowl along with Michael Feinstein in an evening called "Michael Feinstein and the Singing Stars of Television." And he told some of us on Sunday evening that he expected to restart his one-man show at the Geffen Playhouse. You may recall that it closed after one night due to an injury to its one man.

All in all, it looks like a good couple of months for Dick Van Dyke fans in the Southland. I may see you at a couple of these events.

As I related here, I went to see a filming of The Dick Van Dyke Show when I was twelve. I cannot count the ways in which that evening changed my life, all of them for the better. I'd always wanted to be a writer. I have no memory of a time when I didn't want to be a writer. But it was at that filming that I realized I wanted to be a TV writer, not necessarily to the exclusion of other venues.

I also wanted to be — well, I'm not sure if I wanted to be Dick Van Dyke or Rob Petrie or even if it was possible to make much of a distinction. I know I didn't want to be a performer so I guess I wanted to be Rob. He only had to perform at parties and he got to sleep with Laura. I mentioned something in the above-linked article but a moment like the one I'm about to describe deserves more attention. It was the moment when Mary Tyler Moore walked onto the set and passed about six feet in front of me.

She was 28 years old and if I thought she looked great on my TV at home — which I did — I was unprepared for the sight of her live and in color. If Satan had appeared and said, "You can have one year of hugging this woman and staring at her all day but then I will have your soul and you will rot in the bowels of Hell for all eternity," he would have had a deal. On the spot, no questions asked. I wasn't even thinking of sleeping with her, not even in the Petries' twin beds. I just wanted to be around her and I admired/envied Dick/Rob because he was. (Sixteen years later, I actually met Ms. Moore and in a move worthy of Rob Petrie at his Petriest, I started things off by stepping on her left foot — the same one Rob broke in the episode about how he and Laura met.)

So I wanted to be Dick and/or Rob because that's the kind of guy who got to be around women like that…but there were other reasons. Dick/Rob was cool. He was funny. People liked being around him. He was friends with one of my other favorite performers, Stan Laurel, and did a darned good impression of the guy. He could sing. He could dance. He could deliver a joke. On the set of The Dick Van Dyke Show that evening, there was a delay for technical reasons. It was the flashback episode where Rob and Laura bought their house and Mr. Van Dyke was holding a business card that the actor playing the realtor had just handed him. Instantly, to keep the audience amused, Van Dyke began doing sleight of hand, back-palming the card to make it disappear and appear and disappear and appear.

And I sat there and thought, "Boy, he can do anything." Where I guess I leaned more towards wanting to be Dick was because Rob was a klutz — the kind of guy who'd step on the foot of a woman he'd always wanted to meet — whereas Dick was just so darned good at everything he did.

That's about how he's always been. When people make fun of his English accent in Mary Poppins, I think they do so because that's like the only thing they can nail him on. And they still usually admit that he was wonderful in that movie, along with all the rest, even the crummy ones. I haven't liked everything he's been in but I've always liked him.

Which I guess is all I really wanted to say here. There's no real point to this whole mini-essay except to say how much I've always liked Dick Van Dyke. If you've gotten that idea by now, I guess we can move on.

People keep asking me, "What's up with Groo? When are we going to see more Groo? What's with this 'Groo vs. Conan' thing we've heard about? What are you doing here? Why don't you go away? What's the deal with your hair?" Those kinds of questions.

I can't answer any of them but this article will tell you what's up with the Groo-related ones.

Abe Vigoda…alive or dead? I'm going to go with "alive." Let's go check.

Last night in Malibu was the fifth of five (only) performances of Neil Simon's play, The Sunshine Boys. Jerry Van Dyke played Willie Clark, the role played on Broadway by Jack Albertson and in the movie by Walter Matthau. Dick Van Dyke played Al Lewis, the role originated on stage by Sam Levene and played in the film by George Burns. It was in a tiny theater on Pacific Coast Highway called the Malibu Stage Company and I believe the five performances were a benefit for that operation.

For those of you interested in how a play gets changed in local regional productions, there were many alterations. You know the scene where Lewis and Clark rehearse their classic doctor sketch in a TV studio before doing it on a big special? Well, in the Van Dyke version, they came out, sang a duet and never quite got around to rehearsing the sketch. There were also a few "in" jokes added. When Dick made his entrance into the apartment, there was a footstool in his way and he did a familiar move to avoid it. Big laugh. Later, the two Van Dykes got to arguing about the sketch they were rehearsing and about the British accent Dick was doing. Jerry told him it was lousy and that he "sounded like Bert in Mary Poppins." Bigger laugh…though I wonder if Mr. Simon would have been amused.

I think he would have liked the 80% of it where they did what he wrote. Jerry had a little trouble remembering some of the dialogue…though some of the ways he dug himself out of lapses were quite funny and very much in character. Dick Van Dyke was not as well suited for his role as his brother was for his but hey, it's Dick Van Dyke. I've seen him perform in person before but I was never sitting (literally) eight feet away from him and able to see how he acted with every muscle in his body up to and including his eyelashes. It's been said that you really can't play The Sunshine Boys if you're not Jewish…and I once saw a production where Brian Keith (in the Clark part) seemed out to prove it. But you can get around it if you're as good a comic actor as the Van Dyke boys are. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed just watching them work.

Part of that was because they're both so good at what they do. Part of that was because of my warm feelings about the two men, Dick especially. I've written elsewhere on this site about that.

I did want to mention two others in the cast because it's really easy to overlook folks in their position when there are Van Dykes on stage. Brent Moon was real good as Willie Clark's nephew. Nancy Valen was quite splendid as the nurse who cares for Willie after he has his heart attack. The nurse as written is black but she made the transition to Hispanic without anything being lost. (Hey, if two brothers from Danville, Illinois can play non-related Jews…)

After the show, some of my friends and I chatted with — and I got a hug from — audience member Dolly Martin, widow of Dick "Laugh-In" Martin. At one point in my life, I wanted very much to be Dick Van Dyke…or maybe Rob Petrie. And about the time I was getting over my crush on Laura Petrie, I got one on Dolly, who was then named Dolly Read and still looks as cute as she did in Playboy in 1966. So last evening, I really felt connected to the person I was back then. Whatever happened to that guy?

Just back from a wonderful evening. I went to see two of the three people in the above photo starring in a production of The Sunshine Boys. I'll tell you all about it when I get a little more time.

By the way, in case I forget: Sol Burton was the manager from the Belasco and it wasn't the Belasco, it was the Morosco.

Conservatives want to shut down any government agency that doesn't work and a lot that do. But a bunch of them, led most vocally by Senator Orrin Hatch, are upset that the Obama Adminstration has closed the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force that was set up under G.W. Bush to try and get rid of pornography on the Internet. Can anyone name a division in any corner of federal, state or local government that has succeeded less in its intended goal? The Presidential Commission to Have One Guy Sweep the Beach Clean of Sand has done a more effective job.

Whether the government should be trying at all to stop adults from making and buying porn at all is a very good question. So, quite apart from that, is another darn good question: Is it even possible? I think the answer to both those questions is no. You might be able to zone it and do more to not have it displayed where kids can see it and where it's hard for those who want to avoid it to avoid it. But I'm guessing my government could reinstate that task force and fund it with enough loot to double the deficit…and the end-result would be that it would take you two mouse-clicks to find porn instead of just one.