My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business_ A Memoir - Dick Van Dyke [56]
The script, which also included parts filled by Jason Robards, Jean Simmons, Van Johnson, and Shelley Berman, was a hefty three hundred pages, more than double the standard length. The studio had told Norman the film couldn’t possibly be that long. His response was along the lines of: “It’s my story, and by God I’m going to make it the way I see it.”
Norman’s wife, Frances, was a smart, opinionated woman who, I’m going to guess, gave him good source material on the ever-shifting state of marriage. But then everyone seemed to be going through something. Debbie was in the middle of her second marriage, and she was, in addition to being a strong woman herself, and a teller of colorful stories about Hollywood, also a handful who regularly informed me that I didn’t know anything about making movies.
In a way, she may have been right. One day I did something terribly stupid. I was shooting a scene with actor Joe Flynn, best known as the captain on McHale’s Navy, and I was supposed to get drunk following a frustrating situation with my wife. After a handful of takes, I said, “What the hell, get me a real martini,” and three hours, numerous takes, and a couple of martinis later, I was smashed.
So much so that Norman drove me home. All the way there he asked, “Why did you do that? Are you crazy?”
I wasn’t the only casualty on the movie. One day we shot a scene with Pat Collins, who was known as “The Hip Hypnotist.” She was supposed to hypnotize Debbie, who then climbed onstage and performed a sexy dance. It was pretend, of course, except that cinematographer Conrad Hall, who later won an Oscar for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and several of the grips actually fell under Pat’s spell. Filming stopped while she brought them out of their trances.
At lunch that day, Van Johnson asked Pat to help him quit smoking. They did one session and he never smoked again. I ran into him years later, though, and he was about fifty pounds heavier. He was still off cigarettes, he explained with a smile. But he had a new vice—Häagen-Dazs ice cream.
From Divorce American Style, I went directly into the movie Fitzwilly, a light comedy costarring Get Smart’s Barbara Feldon. Despite Oscar-winner Delbert Mann’s direction, the movie flopped and, as film buffs can attest, will likely be remembered only as composer John Williams’s first collaboration with Marilyn and Alan Bergman.
Next, I tried to make a movie out of the book Fear on Trial, John Henry Faulk’s nightmarish account of being blacklisted. For whatever reason, I was unable to get it off the ground. Even with Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin attached as producers, the subject matter may have been too controversial for the networks. In 1975, it was finally adapted as a TV movie with George C. Scott and William Devane in the starring roles.
Then it was back to television for me, with my first special for CBS, which aired in April 1967. The network billed it as a homecoming, though it bore little resemblance to The Dick Van Dyke Show. Nor did it resemble a traditional variety show. I wanted to do something different and daring, instead of a theme and a bunch of guest stars, and the most different and daring idea I came up with was to challenge myself to do it all—or most of it, anyway.
Some may have thought it indulgent.
To me, it was fun.
Loads of it. I opened the hour-long show with a zany, silent-film era–style montage of my trying to get to the studio after my car breaks down. I kayak, roller-skate, skateboard, and ride in a golf cart, finally arriving onstage clinging to my car bumper.
I had only two guests. One was my old Merry Mutes partner, Phil Erickson, who leapt at the chance to take a week off from running his comedy club in Atlanta and reprise our old act on network television.