My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business_ A Memoir - Dick Van Dyke [86]
It made me appreciate even more the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that had come my way back when Carl Reiner sent me not a treatment or a script but eight completed scripts for a new series—and they were all brilliant in every way. What had changed since then? Were there fewer geniuses? Was it the business? Or were expectations off? Did every decade have only a few gems that would stand the test of time, and those of us who were part of them simply have to thank our lucky stars?
George C. Scott lived near us for a while and the two of us wanted to do a series together. We came up with an idea that would have us playing two retired attorneys who opened a tiny law office and did pro bono work, except we were on opposite sides of the political fence. He would be the conservative who helped tax cheats and white-collar criminals, and I was the liberal with the bleeding heart. We thought it would be great, but we could not get anyone at the networks to bite.
Instead, I made the rounds as a guest star on other series, starting with Andy Griffith’s show Matlock. For years, Andy had periodically checked in from his North Carolina home and said, “Let’s do something.” For this first and only time we actually did. I played the bad guy, the judge in a murder trial who turned out to be the murderer.
Next was Highway to Heaven with Michael Landon, who ran the perfect company, since practically all of his crew started with him on Bonanza. They were like an extended family. I played a homeless guy who had a little puppet show on skid row. It was perfect for me: dressing up like an old man, entertaining kids. I think it was one of my best performances ever. But my favorite moment was off-camera.
We shot late at night on skid row in downtown L.A., and during a break I took a walk slightly beyond the production and the cops who were protecting us. I wanted to stay in character for the next scene. I sat on the curb and placed my props—a brown sack of puppets and a bottle—next to me. Soon a couple of real-life homeless guys sat down and asked if I would share my drink.
“It’s—” I was going to explain that it was not booze, that it was actually a prop. Then I thought better of it.
“Here, take it,” I said, after which I walked away so I would not be there when they realized it was tea.
I got another dose of the streets when I worked with comedian and Sanford and Son star Redd Foxx on the TV movie Ghost of a Chance. I played a detective who misfires his gun while chasing a drug dealer in a nightclub and accidentally kills the club’s piano player. Naturally, the musician comes back and haunts him—but with the charge to turn both of their lives around. Some network executives saw it as a possible series. We would not have survived twenty-six episodes. The one was dangerous enough.
On the set, Redd fueled his funny bone with Grand Marnier and cocaine. Always high, he was volatile and unpredictable. You never knew what might set him off. One day, he thought he overheard the director make a racial slur. The director had said the word “boy,” as in “boy oh boy,” while speaking to a black guy on the crew, but it was not a slur.
Only Redd heard it that way. But that was enough to incite him. First he glared at the director. Then he pulled a large knife out from a sheath in his pant leg and said, “I’m going to cut him up.”
Taking him at his word, I moved quickly to head off any bloodshed that wasn’t fake by wrapping my arms around Redd and physically restraining him until I was able to convince him that he had misheard things. It was the most tension I had ever experienced on a set and the first physical altercation I’d been involved in since kindergarten.
At the end of March 1987, I flew up to Vancouver to work with my son Barry on the series Airwolf. The show, starring Jan-Michael Vincent, Ernest Borgnine, and Alex Cord, had been canceled by CBS after three years, but the USA network picked it up for a smaller-budgeted fourth season. They moved production