My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business_ A Memoir - Dick Van Dyke [23]
Philadelphia was where the show came together and I got to know my talented castmates, and they were a brilliant lot, starting with Gower and my pal Chita. Then there was Paul Lynde. No one has ever played the part of Mr. MacAfee like him. My God, he was funny, just off-the-charts funny, but he was also very prickly. He made it known that he didn’t want anyone stepping on his lines, and God help those who did. He could be vicious.
Michael J. Pollard was a sweetheart, though on matinee days he went out between shows and got a little tipsy, and invariably, not long before the second show, I’d hear a knock on my dressing room door, and there would be Michael, his smile just a little off, his eyes glazed, wanting to know what was going on. I didn’t even have to ask. I knew that he was plastered.
I brewed him some coffee, threw him in the shower, and he was fine by showtime. If he wasn’t, I never knew the difference.
I was especially fond of my understudy, Charles Nelson Reilly. I hadn’t met anyone quite like him, but I took to him instantly. He was hysterically funny, clever, quick, and intelligent. I was never bored around him. On the first night of previews, it was raining and he came into my dressing room with a scarf around his head and purred, “Hello, my name is Eve Harrington. I’m such a fan of your work.”
He did the whole scene from All About Eve, which put me on the floor. He was one of a kind.
The truth is, I owed everything to Gower, who put me in the show and then gave me the benefit of his time, talent, and creative eye. I can’t tell you what he saw in me as a singer and dancer, but he saw something, and then he made the most of it, or rather enabled me to make the most of it. As a dancer, I was strictly an amateur. Yet he taught me tricks and moves that not only added to my ability and repertoire but also made me more comfortable, and that was key.
Singing was another matter. I could carry a tune. That much I’ll say. But I was not a good singer. Dick Gautier, who had the title role as Conrad Birdie, was the same way. Both of us learned that you can’t sing incorrectly eight times a week without getting hoarse. We had a scene where he came downstairs holding a beer and I said, “Hi, Conrad. How are you doing?” Between the two of us, we barely managed to eke out a sound.
It wasn’t really funny, but it was to us, and we laughed. Others weren’t as amused, though. Unbeknownst to me, during previews, the show’s producers didn’t think I was cutting it. I probably wasn’t; not then, anyway. They wanted to replace me, but Gower stepped in and asked for more time.
“Look, he’s going to be all right,” he said. “Let me work with him.”
He had an idea. He put the writers to work and overnight they came back with a revised version of the song “Put On a Happy Face,” which they had originally written for Chita. But Gower gave it to me, explaining, “The skinny kid doesn’t have anything to do in the first act. Give it to him.”
Of course, that song changed my life.
The show opened in New York at the Martin Beck Theater on April 14, 1960. I was a nervous wreck all day and into the evening before the show. I brought Margie and the kids into the city and we got adjoining rooms at the Algonquin Hotel. Despite my nervousness, the performance could not have gone better. We heard nothing but enthusiastic applause after each song and a long, foot-stomping ovation at the end.
It felt like a hit, and it was—even though the New York Times’ venerable critic Brooks Atkinson chided the show’s folksy simplicity and called some scenes “ludicrous.” But he praised Dick Gautier and Paul Lynde. My role puzzled him. “Mr. Van Dyke is a likeable comedian, who has India-rubber joints; and Miss Rivera is a flammable singer and gyroscopic dancer.” But, as he put it, our scenes “have little