My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business_ A Memoir - Dick Van Dyke [81]
Reviews of the play were mixed, with most of the negative comments similar to those of the New York Times’ Walter Kerr, who declared me not enough of a scoundrel. “Mr. Van Dyke isn’t a dirty rotten crook,” he wrote. “He’s not even a natty gentleman crook. He’s not a crook at all. He’s a nimble performer, and an attractive one, and before the play is over he is able to bring into the play a good bit of the lively shtick he’s perfected over the years … [but] he is simply—and only—nice.”
Not according to some. After the play, I was the recipient of an atypical amount of bad press. There were small, nasty items and asides in features. They were like paper cuts, lots of little annoying cuts. I couldn’t figure out why. I guessed for some reason various writers decided that I was, at nearly fifty-five years old, fair game, and therefore eligible to be called temperamental and bitter.
I wasn’t any of that, though I was clearly something. What that was, I didn’t know. I had hoped Margie would return from her voyage with a fresh perspective, but she was not in any hurry to divorce.
I didn’t argue, and when our son, Chris, was sworn in as district attorney of Marion County in September 1980, the two of us stood side by side in Salem’s city hall, beaming like parents who had never been prouder, which was true. With a few minor contributions from Carl Reiner, Mary Tyler Moore, and Carol Burnett, Chris got himself elected by running a grassroots campaign emphasizing character, honesty, and dedication to the law. Most people never knew he had a famous father until I showed up for the swearing-in.
I wasn’t surprised. In high school, Chris played on the football team. One day after practice, as he and some of his teammates were cleaning up the equipment, a kid suddenly hit him in the nose. Blood was everywhere. When Chris asked why he did that, the kid said, “I wanted to see if a Van Dyke would bleed.” It was senseless.
I met him in the emergency room at the hospital. After I heard what had happened, I was livid. I wanted to know the kid’s name. But Chris refused to tell me. He said, “Dad, he’s from a dysfunctional family. He’s really screwed up.” Chris was well into his term as the DA before he finally told me, and even then he still made me promise not to track the guy down.
Of course, he was joking. But that’s the way he was.
He once accompanied a group of police officers on a drug raid in the country. As they snuck up on the house, they came upon a dead hog lying in the thick grass. Chris muttered, “Officer down,” and it nearly blew the operation as they all laughed. But he was tough. A year after he was elected, he won his biggest case, convicting a serial killer known as the I-5 Murderer.
In August 1981, the truth about my marriage began to leak out. A showbiz gossip column ran this item: “Just watch Dick Van Dyke finally get a divorce from his wife, Margie, and marry his longtime friend, Michelle Triola Marvin (of Lee Marvin palimony fame).” The reality that the public was now privy to my long-kept secret jarred me.
At the time, I was talking on and off to a therapist. I had started seeing her about my drinking, which I had convinced myself was due to emotional problems, not alcoholism. She quickly disabused me of that notion, though, and said flat out that I had a disease. As far as emotional problems, she got me to confront the obvious, the real reason I had started to see her: my marriage. As she said, I was caught between two strong women, and like it or not, I had to make a choice or else I would continue to torture myself.
The choice was almost made for me in August when the California State Court of Appeals ruled that Lee Marvin did not have to pay Michelle the $104,000 judgment handed down two years earlier. She was extremely upset. After years of fighting a fight that would affect numerous women but doing it very much alone, Michelle saw the only victory she had won taken away from her. I felt terrible for her and gave her the money. But that irked Margie. In fact, it was the last straw.
It seemed that Margie,