My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business_ A Memoir - Dick Van Dyke [96]
“Count me in,” I said.
Mary had the same reaction. So did Rosie. Sadly, the ensuing phone calls we made to one another and the rehearsals that followed reminded us of more than just the good times. We had lost some members of our TV family. Richard Deacon, who played Mel Cooley, had died in 1984. Two years later Jerry Paris, who had gone on to direct more than two hundred episodes of Happy Days, succumbed to a brain tumor that went undiagnosed until it was too late. He had called me from the hospital and was gone days later. Afterward, I wondered if the headaches he had always suffered from, as well as his sudden flare-ups of temper, were a result of the nascent tumor. Morey Amsterdam was our most recent loss. He died of a heart attack in 1996 at the age of eighty-seven. On the set, we spent a few minutes recalling some of his jokes, including a favorite—that he had moved into a Beverly Hills neighborhood so exclusive, the police had an unlisted phone number. We also missed Sheldon Leonard, who passed away in 1997.
The special, which aired in May 2004, hinged on Alan Brady hiring Rob and Sally for one last writing job, helping him prepare his funeral. He wanted a joke-filled eulogy written before he died. As for everyone’s lives, Rob and Laura had moved into New York City, Ritchie was grown up (and bald), Sally had finally gotten married, and Millie was a widow who was dating my brother, Stacy (my brother, Jerry, reprised his role, too).
TV critics were kind and respectful, but most called it average and urged fans to revisit the original. I agreed with that assessment, too.
The show was just all right. But my attitude was this: If Carl, in his mid-eighties, wanted to tidy things up, I was going to help. At seventy-nine, I was still Rob Petrie, just like Mary was still the only one who fans wanted to hear say, “Oh, Rob!” As long as we were able to enjoy ourselves, we had to do it. Rosie said it was like a conversation we had picked up forty years later, and she was right. We had waited long enough.
All in all, I was glad we took the curtain call.
I liked to joke that I kept in shape to avoid assisted living, but I maintained a pace that would have had people half my age hiring an assistant. I made three detective movies for the Hallmark Channel and then I put my limber limbs to work on Night at the Museum, an innovative family-oriented movie that came about when its star, Ben Stiller, and director, Shawn Levy, called and said they not only wanted me but needed me as well. I was beyond flattered—and ready.
In the movie, which starred Ben, Carla Gugino, and Robin Williams, I played a security guard trying to acquire the secret that enabled the museum’s creatures to come to life. He was supposed to be the bad guy, but I played him as if he was misunderstood. Who wouldn’t want eternal life? But after I did a dance scene, Ben began referring to me as “Dorian Van Dyke.” The crew also joked that I must have found the secret to eternal youth when I insisted on doing all my own stunts—except for one that would have required me to fly on wires, stop myself against a wall, and drop down.
Having done that kind of stuff in Mary Poppins, I knew better. But by doing as much as I did, I surprised myself, and better still, I impressed the picture’s young stuntmen, who cheered me on.
Awesome!
Would you look at that guy!
Did you see what that eighty-year-old dude just did?
They saw the part of me that only performers really understand. It was the part that came alive when the cameras were on and the director yelled, Action. Without a microphone, a camera, or a stage of some sort, without an audience to entertain, I withdrew into a place where I was more comfortable and recharged. I was aware that others saw me as private. On an A&E Biography, I was called a loner. People said that I was tough to know. If this was true—and I am not denying anything—it was not by design, not anything I did consciously. It’s just that I have always been like Stan Laurel and Buster Keaton—very shy and wary of exposing too