My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business_ A Memoir - Dick Van Dyke [92]
Indeed, I rather enjoyed the reminder that even those immortalized are mortal, though there were those who were saying that I was looking more like TV’s iron man. I was almost sixty-eight years old and had a show on CBS’s fall schedule. Granted, it was Friday night at eight P.M., normally considered TV’s dead zone, but I was content in trying to transform the graveyard into an old-age home, and who knows, maybe bring in some younger viewers, too.
It worked. Although the Washington Post described Diagnosis Murder as “prime-time television as it was twenty years ago,” they were not criticizing me for that. On the contrary, they pointed out that there was an audience for NYPD Blue and one for my brand of entertainment, and added, “Buddy Ebsen didn’t need to walk around bare-butted to make Barnaby Jones worth watching.” I was pleased to find that viewers felt the same way. As a result, CBS ordered more shows beyond the initial eight.
For cost purposes, we’d shot the first round in Denver at a facility that had once been home base for the show Ironside. I stayed in Raymond Burr’s former hotel penthouse, which had unobstructed views of the Mile High City. I could watch the sun rise and set from different sides of the glassed-in perch. I felt like I was suspended in the clouds, and I probably carried some of that lightness into the way I played this funny doctor who danced and roller-skated when he wasn’t solving crimes.
It could not have been easier. But then, I feel as if every role is always a version of me.
The earliest version of me was put back on display on Nick at Nite, the bloc of nighttime programming the cable network devoted to classic shows. Some thirty years after its debut, The Dick Van Dyke Show was a hit again. I don’t mean this egotistically, but I was not surprised. However, others were. A reporter from the Los Angeles Times asked me why I thought the show was popular with a whole new generation, albeit a very different type of viewer from those who originally saw it.
The question made me laugh. Wasn’t it obvious?
The show was funny.
It was the same reason kids still giggled through Laurel and Hardy movies. Some humor is timeless. Clever people like Carl Reiner come along and figure out new ways to find the funny in human behavior, and then all of a sudden you have another hit.
With two shows on the air, I supposed sticking to family entertainment all these years had paid off. I was hot.
And then I got too hot. At the start of November, as I was promoting both shows and an NBC Christmas special I’d narrated, Malibu was engulfed by wildfires. Michelle and I watched nervously as the flames danced slowly but steadily down the brush-covered hills. This happened every five or ten years; it was almost like payback for living amid such beauty close to the ocean.
Later that day, the sheriffs evacuated our neighborhood. There was no time to pack up the house, not even to gather more than a few photo albums. Michelle and I shut the door on all of our furniture and clothing, as well as a lifetime of possessions, artwork, and awards. We had no idea whether any of this stuff would be there when we returned—whenever that would be—or if it would even survive the rest of the afternoon.
Standing on the porch, I looked at her and shrugged. What were we going to do?
“We’re leaving with each other,” I said. “That’s what’s most important.”
A short time later, I was updating my publicist, Bob Palmer, when he put me on hold to talk to another client, Anthony Hopkins. A moment later, Bob came back on the phone and said that Anthony, who also lived in Malibu, had called from London to get the latest news on the fire. Hearing that Michelle and I were suddenly homeless, he offered us an apartment that he kept in Westwood. Fortunately, we only had to spend one night