My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business_ A Memoir - Dick Van Dyke [72]
I had three more drinks before I got sick to my stomach. I poured the rest of the bottle down the sink.
Mad and disappointed with myself, I called home and made a tear-filled confession to Margie. Then I did what any other alcoholic must do if he or she is determined not to succumb to this insidious disease: I acknowledged my slip as evidence that I was powerless over my addiction and started my sobriety again from day one.
Midway through the second season we had an uncharacteristically rocky moment when CBS rejected an episode Carl wrote (“Lt. Preston of the 4th Calvary”) because it contained a scene in which Dick and Jenny’s daughter Annie peeks in their bedroom and sees them having sex. The audience did not see anything other than Annie looking in the door, and in the next scene, after noticing Annie acting peculiarly, we wonder if in fact she saw us making love.
We have a talk with her, and in what I thought was a beautifully written moment, I explain sex to Annie as an intimate physical expression of love. My character goes on and on, as he was wont to do, and he is still talking when Annie gets up and starts to leave the room. Since he’s not finished, Dick asks if she has any questions.
“No,” she says. “But you sure looked silly.”
I thought that was the perfect response. The scene was smart, really sensitive, and funny—a classic example of Carl Reiner’s trademark touch. Today no one would question the propriety of such a scene. But back then the network thought it was too risqué and the show was shelved except in Canada, where it played without complaint.
Incensed, Carl vowed to never again work with CBS (though he appeared in several specials in the early 1980s).
I delivered a shocker of my own to the network when at the end of the third season I met with CBS executives and said that, despite a bump in ratings, I did not want to do a fourth. I was finished. Out of the previous three seasons, I explained, I counted only about seven episodes that I thought achieved the standard that I envisioned.
“I want my fellow actors to be able to work again,” I said in a joking tone. “If we keep going, I might ruin their careers.”
Once the series wrapped production, Margie and I fled to Coronado, a secluded jewel of an island just outside of San Diego, for a long, much-needed vacation. I decompressed and she soaked up the scenery. We took long walks along the Pacific, stared at the waves, went sailing, and talked endlessly as if we were getting to know each other all over again.
Indeed, we were trying to do exactly that. If either of us realized deep down that we might have started to grow apart, we did not acknowledge it. We were high-school sweethearts who had pledged togetherness for the rest of our lives. We had four children. And so much history together, so many stories.
And yet.
Deep down.
The knowledge that people change.
Margie wanted me to retire.
I wasn’t ready to stop work. Even though I held the record for talking about retiring and then changing course, what was I going to do?
“Enjoy life,” Margie said.
“I do,” I said.
“Take up hobbies, like me,” she said.
“I already have one,” I said. “It’s my job.”
A couple of weeks on the beach, however, put us in a more like-minded, sympathetic frame of mind and we decided to move there. In AA they call that a geographic cure—instead of facing your problems, you simply change locations. As Margie looked for homes, I started work on a movie.
I did not expect to jump back into work, but the ABC movie The Morning After turned out to be one of the best and most powerful pieces of acting in my career, as well as one of the most personal. Based on Jack Weiner’s novel, the script told the story of an oil company public-relations man’s battle with alcoholism, something he first refuses to admit, believing he is merely a “social drinker,” but then struggles with after seeking help.
It was unflinchingly raw and honest, and for that reason, I think, it was powerful, disturbing,