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One of the most memorable episodes we did that season and also one of the funniest was called “Never Bathe on Saturday.” In it, Rob and Laura go away for a romantic weekend—a second honeymoon, as those types of getaways were called. After being shown into their luxurious suite, Rob grabs his wife by the waist with a hungry look in his eye.

“Darling,” she says, “what about the bellboy?”

“You first,” he says.

The risqué line got big laughs—and so did the rest of the show, depicting their weekend taking an abrupt downhill turn after Laura’s big toe gets caught in the bathtub faucet. Behind the scenes was a little less funny. Mary had decided to quit smoking earlier in the week and she hadn’t had a cigarette for several days. She was white as a sheet, shaking and nervous—like anyone going through nicotine withdrawal.

As an actress who was pretending to be stuck in the bathtub behind a locked door, she did not get much camera time. Normally it wouldn’t have bothered her, but she was on edge, a rarity for Mary. At one point she even had kind of a tiff. I was so startled that I said, “Mary, will you please go outside and smoke a cigarette.”

She scrunched up her face, looking frustrated but adorable and funny, and all of us laughed.

A side from the opportunity to work, the most enjoyable upside to the celebrity I received from starring on a top-rated TV series was entrée to some of my idols—the greats who had inspired me. I took full advantage of this and developed a good friendship with Stan Laurel, though my first introduction to him happened purely by chance.

We were shooting the second season of the TV series, and I was at home one day, looking up a name in the telephone book, when I came across the name Stan Laurel.

“Stan Laurel?” I said to myself. “It couldn’t be.”

But I called the number. A man answered promptly.

“Hello,” I said. “This is Dick Van Dyke. Is this Mr. Laurel?”

“Yes, it is,” he said.

It turned out that Stan knew the show and knew who I was. He invited me to the Santa Monica apartment he shared with his fifth wife, Ida Kataeva Raphael, a Russian woman who kept a careful eye on him. As I walked down the hallway and approached his door, it suddenly opened and there he was.

“Hello, Dickie,” he said.

I could not have been happier as I shook the hand of my idol. He’d had a slight stroke, but I never saw any noticeable effects as he led me inside.

My visit was everything I could have hoped for. I tried to take it all in without being rude. His Academy Award was displayed on top of his TV set. He had a small typewriter on a modest desk that was covered with fan mail, which he answered personally, though he acknowledged being months behind. I asked if he still wrote sketches or ideas, and he answered, with his famous nod, “Yes, Dickie, I do, when they come to me.”

As a lifelong fan, I couldn’t resist asking him questions, and he generously let me ask whatever I wanted. I asked him about my favorite movie of his, Way Out West. As he recalled some of his scenes with Oliver Hardy—whom he still referred to as Babe—playing prospectors trying to find gold, he sounded as if they had made the film a few years earlier, not in 1937.

Stan also confirmed that he did not like scenes in which he had to cry, even though they turned into his signature. To get Ollie to do his slow burn, Stan took advantage of his partner’s love of golf. Knowing that Oliver always wanted to finish the day in time to play at least nine holes, he saved for last the scenes where Ollie lost his temper and did his slow burn. As soon as he noticed his partner getting anxious about missing his tee time, he shot them.

“I hated to cry, though,” Stan told me. “I didn’t think it was funny, either.”

Of course, Stan thought Oliver was the funniest guy in the world. That, he said, was the secret to their partnership. Ollie made him laugh. I nodded. He didn’t need to say any more. I understood perfectly.

It was, I explained, why I had become a fan, and in some