If you are suddenly craving a Caesar salad, it might be a sign that you are old. The original Caesar salad dressing that I remember from restaurants was made with raw egg yolks, Worcestershire sauce, and anchovies, and typically mixed and tossed right at the table. I understand that anchovies were added later and weren’t part of the original recipe. My wife has learned to make it the way I remember, if anyone wants the recipe. We have it all the time. As a result, I am still enjoying my salad days.
My brother, Jerry, who is six years younger than me, has a slightly different take, partially because he is naturally funny and sees life through a comedic lens. But he has also battled health problems for nearly two decades, from knee replacements (due to his Rafael Nadal–like zeal for chasing down balls on the tennis court) to a liver transplant (while he was on the waiting list, I changed my will to say he could have my liver if I died, and every day he called me to see whether I was still alive). Understandably, those events have taken a toll.
I saw it when he and his wife, Shirley, stayed with us for a couple of months starting last Christmas. While I scooted in and out of the house in my bare feet, as I am known to do (a friend once dubbed me the Barefoot Prince of Malibu), Jerry got around with a cane, the result of a painful back surgery the previous year that had not yet fully healed. It was hard for me to see. I know it was harder for him. One afternoon he landed on the sofa with a heavy sigh.
“How’re you doing today?” I asked.
“Terrible,” he said.
“What’s bothering you?”
“Same thing as yesterday—I’m eighty-three years old!”
“Jer, is there anything good about getting older?” I asked.
“No.”
“What about the lessons you’ve learned?”
“I’m very sorry to say there aren’t any.”
“Do you have any advice for people who are getting older, who are entering their sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties?
“Don’t do it.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Don’t get older.”
What my brother meant was don’t slow down, don’t give up the things you like to do, don’t pay attention to the calendar. In other words, keep moving, stay active, and continue to pursue the interests and activities that keep your spirit young. Jerry is a perfect example. Like me, he blew past sixty-five without thinking of retirement (at the time, he was still playing Luther on the sitcom Coach). He’s continued to work into his eighties, slowing only when his health refused to cooperate. A couple of years ago he was booked at a club in Palm Springs.
There was just one problem: he hadn’t done his stand-up act in a while and couldn’t remember his material. A day or two before, he called from his home in Arkansas, asking whether I remembered any of the jokes.
“From twenty-five years ago?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“There’s nothing written down?”
“No.”
He went on anyway. A few days later I ran into Gary Mule Deer, the veteran comedian and musician, who had been at the show. He said my brother had the audience laughing nonstop. According to Gary, there wasn’t a person in the theater who didn’t have a good time. Though not surprised, I called my brother and asked how he’d managed without his act.
“Shirley,” he said, referring to his wife, “remembered my act.”
“And you?”
“Not a clue.”
“What’d you do?”
“She was just offstage, and I kept yelling to her, ‘What do I do now?’ Right in the middle of a song too.”
Most recently Jerry has had a recurring role on The Middle, an ABC comedy about a middle-class Indiana family. He plays actress Patricia Heaton’s cantankerous father. Over the Christmas break, while at our house, Jerry pitched the show’s executive producers on having me guest star with him on an episode. We shot it a couple of months later, as soon as they finished writing it. We played feuding brothers trying to mend fences before it’s too late. But when I show up to visit, my energy and agility piss him off—which is similar to our real-life relationship.
For years he’s said that people stop him in airports and restaurants and say, “Hey, Jerry, we loved you on Coach. Honey, come here. It’s Dick Van Dyke’s brother.”
Growing up, I didn’t make it easy on him. I was a good student (I could have done better, but I was too busy being social), a performer (I starred in most of the school plays: I was taller than the girls and could be heard in the back row), and student body president and then a DJ at the local radio station before going out on the road as one half of a musical-comedy pantomime act. At sixteen, Jerry visited me in Los Angeles, where I was working nightclubs. Impressed, he returned home to Danville and began doing my act. As he says, “I stole the whole thing, went back and made a fortune—at least $25.”
He still has a letter I sent him following that visit, saying I couldn’t wait to get back to Danville to see his act—“the act you stole from me!” In it I also advised him to get out of nightclubs. “If you stay in nightclubs, you’re going to meet a lot of lousy jerks and die broke. The coming thing is television. We should try to get into television because it should be going great guns.”
I was so gung ho about this new device that I took a correspondence course in television repair as a backup in case show business didn’t work out for me. I urged Jerry to do the same. But he refused to consider a backup plan. “I was afraid if I had one, I would back into it,” he recently explained to me.
And now? Any regrets? “It is what it is,” he said with a shrug. “I’m still here.” And still waxing philosophic about the lessons he learned along the way, starting with this one: “People worry too much about things that don’t matter.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Stuff—the stuff we think other people are going to notice or talk about. As it turns out, nobody gives a crap.”
“That’s one of the advantages of age,” I said. “You don’t worry about what other people think. There’s more honesty as the years go by.”
Jerry nodded. “That’s why I don’t understand plastic surgery,” he said. “All my friends are getting work done. They come up to me and ask, ‘How do I look?’ I say, ‘I don’t know. Who are you?’ You can only go so far. People have this idea that they can fix everything. But they only fix what they see, and as you get older, it’s the parts you can’t see that need to be fixed—like your ass. Never mind your face. Your face is fine. As you get older, it’s your ass that disappears. And you don’t know that until one day you can’t get up and realize you’re sitting on your back.”
Ladies and gentlemen: my brother.
For me, it is all about how I feel on the inside. These days most of us seventy-, eighty-, and ninety-year-olds feel younger than we are, and the new reality is more like a new honesty: it doesn’t matter what we look like on the outside—whether we have gray hair, no hair, less hair, hearing aids, bifocals or trifocals, stooped shoulders, or orthopedic shoes instead of Florsheims or Ferragamos. Our reflections barely matter. After a certain point age doesn’t matter. Why even count? For that matter, why even look in the mirror with a critical eye?
You get to that place where you are like a favorite old flannel shirt—well worn, faded, thin in places, but so perfectly comfortable you love it more than anything else in the closet. Like that old shirt, you want to feel great. The outside doesn’t matter as much as the texture and touch, all the memories and miles, and, of course, the fact that it still does its job!
At seventy-five, I thought about entering the Senior Olympics. I had been a high jumper in high school, and I felt as good as I did back then. I still ran about a twelve-second hundred-meter and knew I could beat most guys in my age group. If I hadn’t taken a job instead, I might have a gold medal on my mantel.
With the right attitude, age is immaterial. At eighty-nine, I became the executive creative producer of the Malibu Playhouse. The opportunity was unexpe
cted, but I thought, “Why not try?” The playhouse is small: a stage, no curtain, just the bare bones of a theater. But ask anyone who works in theater, and they’ll tell you there’s no limit to the imagination. I have ideas for a sing-along night, a salute to Broadway, and I have spoken to Shirley Jones, Lou Gossett Jr., and others in the neighborhood. Ed Asner, at age eighty-five, recently finished a show. I know many talented people still eager to work. I am going to sign them up.
Only my brother has been skeptical of this new position, and I know that if his back weren’t killing him, he’d be pitching me on the two of us doing The Sunshine Boys again. In 2011 we costarred in the Neil Simon classic to raise funds for the theater, and then we took the play on the road for a few nights. We had a blast.
I remember walking into a scene one night, hunched over, and my brother whispered, “Dick, you don’t have to play old anymore.”
It broke me up. It also began a conversation between the two of us that we recently continued:
“Jer, at what age did you begin to think of yourself as old?”
“This age.”
“Really?”
“It was just like, ‘Oh, shit, I can’t be eighty-three. I can’t be.’”
“What happened that made you feel that way? Your knees? Your back?”
“No, it was that my phone stopped ringing. I used to be on the phone constantly. I had a lot of friends. Then all of a sudden . . .”
“Do you remember our mother saying the same thing? She complained that everyone was gone. She had no one with whom she could talk about the past. I know what she meant. I had to have all my suits taken in because I’m shrinking. I have the same tailor as George Hamilton. I ran into him at a banquet dinner and asked, ‘How’s our tailor?’ He said, ‘He’s dead.’”
“It’s been like that since I came out here. Everybody I have asked about, I find out they’re dead.” Jerry paused. “On the bright side, they are, and I’m not.”
The two of us fell silent and sipped our coffee. I thought about my good fortune at still being able to sing, dance, travel, and do nearly everything else I have enjoyed my entire life. I adore my wife, four kids, seven grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Jerry, too, despite his recent physical problems, has had a long, happy marriage and a full life. Pretty good for two guys with a combined age of 172 years.
“Jer, I have one more question,” I said.
“Shoot.”
“How do you know when you’re old?”
“If I shut my eyes, I still feel twenty-five,” he said. “Does that tell you something?”
It did. Then I told him about a dream I have frequently, usually just before I wake up. In the dream I am running through an open field, running like a deer—free and fast and wide open without ever getting tired. I dream that a lot, probably because I can’t run like that anymore. It is a spectacular dream: therapeutic, thrilling, energizing, and fun. Then I wake up feeling—”
“Like a kid,” Jerry said.
“Yes, exactly like I did as a kid.”
“And are you disappointed when you get up and look in the mirror?”
I shook my head. It is wonderful to remember the feeling of being young, but if you ask me, it’s much more important to revel in what you still have.
That Old Senility
These are lyrics I rewrote to the classic Disney song “The Bare Necessities” by Terry Gilkyson from the 1967 movie The Jungle Book. I hope you enjoy singing them as much as I do.
I’ve got that old senility,
that simple old senility.
Forgot about my trouble and my strife.
I mean that old senility.
I lost my old ability
to recognize my neighbors or my wife.
Wherever I wander,
wherever I roam
I go too far yonder
and can’t find my way home.
My glasses may be on my head.
I look everywhere else instead.
And then I look behind the door
and find the pair that I lost before.
That old senility
will come to you.
Mr. Vandy Dances Again
“I almost died.” This is something you hear older people say on occasion—the lucky ones, obviously. Count me as one of the lucky ones.
I didn’t know I almost died until afterward, of course, when my wife told me. Someone else always has to tell you. If they didn’t say something, if they didn’t fill you in on the horrific details (“Oh, there were tubes, and beeping machines, you didn’t move, and the doctors couldn’t answer any of my questions—it wasn’t good”), there would be no way of knowing how close you came to following the proverbial white light to that special place where there are no middle seats, no flat tires, and no extra-long hairs growing out of your ears.
Having said that, I can’t vouch for the details of the afterlife. I made up the part about no middle seats, no long hairs growing out of your ears, and so on. Everyone has their own version of an afterlife without mortal inconveniences. According to what I have read, though, we do seem to sail into an all-encompassing bright light when we leave this life, and it is reported to be a comforting experience, like a loving hug from your mother after you’ve been gone the whole day. But none of that happened to me when I was down. My body was present, but I was gone. When I try to think of what that was like, I hit a blank spot. The words that come to mind are gray, cardboard, empty, and dull. Not bright. Not white. Not light.
It was February 2014, and my wife, Arlene, and I were in Vancouver, where I was working on Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, the third installment in this fun, family-oriented series of adventure movies. I was in perfect health when I got up there. Like every actor, I took a physical before the job for insurance purposes. I passed with flying colors.
“I wish I felt as good,” the doctor said as he shook my hand.
On the set I worked with Ben Stiller and Mickey Rooney. We were scheduled for a two-day shoot on location in an assisted-living facility, a place that would have, in a less politically correct time, been called an old folks’ home. I was supposed to dance a salsa with three ladies from a local dance school. None of them were professional dancers, and to be candid, I am a fake. People think I am a trained dancer—I’m not. I am best when I freestyle, when I can go with the way the music makes me feel.
How do I explain Bye Bye Birdie and Mary Poppins? Easy: I was fortunate to work with Gower Champion and Mark and Dee Dee Wood, brilliant choreographers who crafted dance numbers around what I could do. This is one of the reasons I say no to Dancing with the Stars every time they call—and they have called several times. The physical undertaking aside, I would have to learn a new dance every week, and I would have trouble doing that at the level I would expect of myself.
For the “Step in Time” number in Mary Poppins, we rehearsed for six weeks. On Night at the Museum, I only had one day to learn to salsa. It wasn’t enough for the dance to sink in and become second nature. I should also mention that I can’t lead. Well, I can—but I shouldn’t. On the set we did numerous takes, and I could tell the dance wasn’t coming off the way everyone hoped.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Shawn Levy, the director, quietly pulling at his hair, frustrated, while over in the wings, Ben Stiller waited, and waited, and waited for his cue to walk into the scene. But we never got to that point.
Finally Arlene stepped onto the set and said what we all were thinking: “This isn’t working.” She suggested I give up the salsa and freestyle instead. The director agreed, though I needed more persuasion before I released the awkward hold on my dance partner. I didn’t want to disappoint my dance partners or the people who had worked on the dance itself.
“What about the choreography?” I asked.
Arlene shook her head. “I don’t think they care as much about the specific steps as they do about seeing you dance in your style.”
I looked around. The director, the c
horeographer, and my fellow actors were nodding in agreement. Arlene suggested that the soundman cue up the hit “Blurred Lines,” and as soon as the opening bars played over the loud speakers, the director looked at me and said, “Just let yourself go.”
I did—and the rest happened in a single take.
Ben Stiller was impressed. “What the hell do you do?” he said. “Is it vitamins? Did you make a pact with the Devil? What is it? I can’t get over that you’re eighty-eight years old and still jumping around!”
I did not plan to slow down either. After that scene wrapped, Arlene and I were looking forward to another week in Vancouver. Then I was scheduled to begin work on the new Hallmark TV series Signed, Sealed, Delivered. But two days later I was fighting for my life. That’s how quickly and unexpectedly things can change. It’s also a reminder of why today is always more important than tomorrow.
Here’s what happened: Arlene and I spent the morning touring the city and stopped for lunch at the Old Spaghetti Factory in Vancouver’s historic Gastown District. On the walk back to the hotel I grew weak and winded. I thought it might be because we were going up a slight hill. Then the slight hill felt like a mountain. Several times I stopped to catch my breath. I thought, “My God, I’m not going to make it.”
By nighttime I was quite ill. I was running a fever and did not have the energy to get out of bed. How could this be, when two days earlier I had danced for hours on the movie set? Arlene summoned a local doctor, who gave me medicine to reduce my temperature. The second I took it, though, I was knocked out. From what Arlene later told me, I was down the rest of that night and the entire next day.
Two days later I opened my eyes again and saw my wife sitting at my bedside, coaxing me back to the world of the living. I am convinced that I would have died if Arlene hadn’t been taking care of me that whole time.
The following day I was able to sit up in bed and get to the bathroom on my own. Those little things were suddenly significant achievements. Later that week I was supposed to begin work on Signed, Sealed, Delivered, but Arlene informed the production company that I was ill. They sent a doctor to the hotel. After a few more days in bed, I relapsed, not dramatically, but to the point that Arlene took me to the ER, where I was diagnosed with pneumonia.
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