My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business_ A Memoir - Dick Van Dyke [54]
Indeed, I had a full plate of TV specials and movies. I had invested in a Phoenix-based radio station. I also volunteered with Big Brothers, served on the board of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, worked with the California Educational Center, donated time to the Society for the Prevention of Blindness, and of course cared for my wife, four children, various dogs, and our ornery cat. But really, until The Dick Van Dyke Show finished, I preferred to concentrate on, no, I preferred to savor, each and every last episode.
Like the others before it, the final season continued to take inspiration from our personal lives. Carl’s earliest literary efforts were the source of “A Farewell to Writing,” which has Rob struggling to begin the novel he always wanted to write. In “Fifty-Two, Forty-Five or Work,” Rob recalls a time when he was out of work with a new home and a pregnant wife, and that storyline was ripped straight out of my family album.
Likewise, “The Man from My Uncle,” about government agents using the Petries’ home to stake out a neighbor, may have sounded far-fetched, but the script from Jerry Belson and Garry Marshall was rooted in another actual event that happened to me. After the Watts Riots in August 1965, I gave some of my time to Operation Bootstrap, a group that endeavored to help people in Watts develop skills and businesses of their own without government aid.
They began on a shoestring budget in a former auto-parts store and eventually gave rise to the Shindana Toy Factory, a business that designed toys for African-Americans. I made several trips with members from my church to the empty store where Bootstrap was headquartered, engaged in some heated debates, and got to know this one guy named Lenny.
In his thirties, Lenny was a member of the Black Panthers, extremely political, but also extremely thoughtful and sensitive. I learned that he was a painter. He showed me his canvases, which I admired. I also found out that he was married and had a daughter. On those levels at least we related to each other easily, more than one might think given our different worlds.
Interested in bridging those different worlds, I invited Lenny and his family to my house for dinner with my family. My kids were fascinated by Lenny. He was fairly articulate but tough as nails, which was reflected in the stories he told during dinner. Those stories pinned the kids to the table. I mean, nobody moved while Lenny spoke—that is, until the phone rang.
I answered and a detective from the LAPD identified himself and told me not to worry, they had things under control.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“We heard there was going to be an armed robbery in your house tonight,” he said.
“What?!” I exclaimed.
“We have your house surrounded,” he said.
“Holy Jesus!” I said, looking across the room at Lenny and cringing at what he was going to think.
After I hung up, I told everyone what was going on. Lenny erupted in anger, got up, and walked toward the phone.
“I’m going to make a call,” he said. “In two minutes I’ll have forty guys here with guns.”
“What?” I said.
“We’ll take care of them,” he added.
“Dick!” said Margie, who had gotten up from the table and was now standing next to me. “Do something.”
First, I calmed the situation inside my house, and then I walked outside and dealt with the police. There were cops everywhere. I had no idea where the LAPD got their information, whether a neighbor saw Lenny and his family enter our house and called the local precinct or whether it was a mistake, which seemed unlikely. But I was pissed—and embarrassed.
While the memorable evening did eventually morph into a good TV episode, I wish it had turned out differently.
As for the series finale, an episode titled “The Gunslinger,” it was a Western spoof in which Rob goes to the dentist and gets put under, descends into a dream, and everyone is transported