My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business_ A Memoir - Dick Van Dyke [67]
One day I noticed that Marty was missing a finger, and I wondered how he could still manage to play complicated pieces. He had lost the finger in an accident, he explained, then retaught himself to play.
“The fickle finger of fate,” he quipped, referencing a popular line from Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.
That reminded me of my own fateful story, which I proceeded to tell him.
One night after a taping of The Dick Van Dyke Show, I was driving home on Sunset Boulevard, and as I rounded the bend near UCLA known as “Suicide Curve,” I lost control of my car, a new Jaguar XKE. The back end spun out and all of a sudden the car itself was spinning and there was a crash. I had no idea exactly what else happened.
When everything stopped, the car’s body and all four wheels were gone—basically scattered, blown out, or disintegrated—and I found myself sitting on the chassis. I undid my seat belt and got up. The guy who had been driving behind me rushed over to me. He said I careened off the road, hit a wall, spun in the air, and landed right side up on the street. The only things that held together were the engine and me.
Even though no one else was involved in the wreck and there was nothing to report, the police showed up. They asked me who was driving the car. I said that I was.
“No,” one of the cops said. “Whoever was driving the car is dead.”
You would have thought. But I was unbelievably, and inexplicably, lucky. My hair was perfectly combed and my suit and tie looked as they had earlier when I left the studio—at least from the front. When I turned around, the cops pointed out that the entire back side of my suit was ripped to shreds. It turned out I had a slight concussion, and the next day I was too sore to move, but in all the ways that mattered I was perfectly fine.
“How does that relate to the show we’re doing?” Marty asked.
I laughed.
“It means you never know what’s going to happen,” I said. “You do your best, then take your chances. Everything else is beyond our control.”
“Yeah, but how do you think we’re going to do?” he said.
My brother Jerry and me in the backyard. My father had piled up a bunch of rocks and called it a garden.
My mother, maternal great-grandmother, and me at about age two or three. I don’t remember the man in the picture.
My cousin Phyllis and me at my Aunt Katherine’s wedding. We were the flower girls.
My fourth birthday, sitting atop a pony.
Out on Hazel Street in 1933, in my backyard—surrounded by my cousins Phyllis, Helen, Betty, and Neal, and brother Jerry.
My dad, Jerry, and me shortly before I went into the service. My dad had finally switched to a four-in-one tie.
With Chita Rivera in the Broadway production of Bye Bye Birdie, 1960. (photo credit i1.1)
Being silly on the set of The Dick Van Dyke Show, 1962.
Mary Tyler Moore and me in costume for “The Doodlin’ Song,” performed on The Dick Van Dyke Show, 1963. (photo credit i1.2)
Mary, me, Sheldon Leonard, and Carl Reiner with our Emmy awards for The Dick Van Dyke Show at the 16th annual Television Academy awards, 1964. (photo credit i1.3)
The cast and crew of The Dick Van Dyke Show begging the sponsor to pick us up again. Carl Reiner is at the top, with my assistant Frank Adamo and Jerry Paris beneath him. Morey Amsterdam is on my left.
With Julie Andrews in rehearsal for Mary Poppins, 1964. (photo credit i1.4)
Julie, helped by turtles, keeping me afloat in “Jolly Holiday.” (photo credit i1.5)
Me (Bert the Chimney Sweep), Julie (Mary Poppins), Karen Dotrice (Jane Banks), and Matthew Garber (Michael Banks) in “Chim Chim Cher-ee.” (photo credit i1.6)
With the chimney sweeps in “Step in Time.” We rehearsed for weeks in the sweltering San Fernando Valley summer heat. Darned near killed me, but it was worth it. (photo credit i1.7)
At Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, putting my hands and footprints in the cement, June 1966.
The family band.
Gathered around a harpsichord my wife had just bought me for my birthday.