My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business_ A Memoir - Dick Van Dyke [15]
This was the early 1950s, when there were only a few stations on the dial, and oh my God, the phone calls poured into the station. I was almost fired.
Eventually the station moved into a more proper studio and I partnered with a quick-witted woman named Fran Adams (later Fran Kearton) on The Fran and Dick Show, also known as The Music Shop. We wrote and produced skits, clowned around, satirized popular TV shows, and pantomimed hit songs. Like all such shows done live, it was a little bit of everything we could think of.
In her 1993 memoir, Fran recalled a play on the show Dragnet, with Detective Friday and his partner, Thursday, investigating the murder of Goldilocks, of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” fame. She was found on the street “wearing a derby and slacks,” intoned Friday. “At least she died like a man,” said Thursday. Ugh. As I said, it was everything we could think of.
One day, as I was lip-syncing Andy Griffith’s 1953 comedy hit “What It Was, Was Football,” a monologue about a hillbilly preacher watching his first football game and trying to figure out what was happening on “the pretty little green cow pasture,” I looked up and saw Andy himself, watching me.
It turned out he was in town promoting his record, but no one told me he was stopping by the studio. I was too far into the bit to stop. I thought, Oh, God, I’m in trouble. He’s not going to appreciate my interpretation. (Given the quality of the Dragnet satire, you can only imagine.)
But Andy was quite amused.
And I was quite relieved.
At some point, I left Fran and repartnered with Phil on a show for WSP, the local NBC affiliate. The show was more elaborate than anything either of us had done up to that point. We had a little band, a girl singer, and a kid who helped us write. In other words, it was a real show.
We embraced the challenge of producing what was essentially a variety show every day. We poured every ounce of creative energy into writing sketches and rehearsing songs. I even painted scenery on the weekends. I was so passionate that I was nearly possessed. It was also fun, and the show was quite popular—or so we thought. We figured we would do it a long time.
Phil had also opened a comedy club called The Wit’s End. It was located near the Biltmore Hotel and Georgia Tech University. The club’s motto was to the point: “Bring money.” And people did. It was an instant hit with the college kids and would, by the 1970s, send improv groups all over the country. In its early days, though, it complemented our TV show.
After about a year, the TV station’s general manager came to me and said they wanted me to do the show alone.
“What about Phil?” I asked.
The station manager shook his head.
I raised my eyebrows. I didn’t know what that meant.
“We want you to do it,” he said. “We don’t need Phil.”
I felt a pit in my stomach. I had been in this situation before. Now, granted, it wasn’t the Mob making me an offer. It was the station manager. But he was persuasive. He said they were going to cut back and fire Phil, anyway. They didn’t want to pay two people for a job they thought one person could do adequately enough.
I needed a job, but I couldn’t leave Phil hanging like that. I didn’t know what to do until I remembered that some months earlier a New Orleans TV station had contacted me about a job. I ignored them at the time, but I found out the position was still available, and though it paid the same as I currently made, two hundred dollars a week, I took it. It still meant breaking up with Phil, but I thought it was better than continuing to do our show without him.
I didn’t tell him about my conversation with the station manager, and he was