It also had to be real.
He would tell the writers, “I don’t care how ridiculous a situation is as long as it could really happen. It has to be believable.” And, of course, above all else, the shows were funny. A
1963
President Kennedy was assassinated. I was doing The Dick Van Dyke Show. I was at work that day, November 22. I walked in from lunch and saw the assistant director, John Chulay, standing in front of the television, with tears streaming down his face. He turned and said, “Kennedy was shot.” I had to record an album that night, Songs I Like, by Dick Van Dyke. We’d already rented the studio; the musicians in the orchestra cried the entire night. It was so tragic. F
1963–1964
Color TV became the new standard. Although a handful of shows were broadcast in color in the fifties, color TV was not widely available until the early sixties. The network approached Carl Reiner about doing The Dick Van Dyke Show in color, but we stayed in black and white. Around this same time I bought my family’s first color TV, an RCA. But I began seeing movies that shouldn’t have been in color, such as Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. It took a while before the industry appreciated that those were so beautiful in black and white. A
1964
With four children, including two girls, Beatlemania hit hard in our house. I am pretty sure the Beatles’ Sunday night appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show was must-see TV for all of us, including me. Unlike Elvis and Bill Haley, I was impressed by the group’s musicality. They were more sophisticated than anyone else. The next month my daughters, Carrie Beth and Stacy, were with me in England, where I was working on Mary Poppins, and we crossed paths with the Fab Four at Twickenham Studios.
We were working on the “Jolly Holiday” number, and John, Paul, George, and Ringo were finishing A Hard Day’s Night. They invited all of us to a party, and we had a great time. But here’s the best part: months later we were at a fundraiser somewhere, a garden party, and they came up to my daughters and said, “Hi, Stacy. Hi, Carrie. How are you?”
My daughters were blown away that the Beatles remembered their names. They probably still haven’t gotten over it. The guys were nice young men, and I thought their music was very good. A
Mary Poppins was released. I knew this was a special project the day Walt Disney first showed me all the scenes beautifully painted as storyboards. They were tacked to the wall. It was like being in an art gallery. Then I sat and listened to the Sherman brothers play the score. That cinched it. I knew I had to be in that movie. Looking back, the magic was the music and Walt’s touch. He just had it. There was a great spirit the whole time we made it, and I think it shows onscreen. A+
1965
On March 25 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led thousands of civil rights demonstrators on a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. This followed a terrible display a few weeks earlier when police beat marchers as they attempted to peacefully cross the bridge on their way to the state capitol. The violence had been televised. Americans had seen peaceful citizens bloodied by police. That the demonstrators were black and the police white made it even uglier.
In the interim Dr. King urged religious leaders of all faiths to join his march. I wanted to go. A year earlier I had attended a rally at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum where Dr. King spoke. I had lived in Atlanta as a younger man and had seen—and in fact been shocked and disturbed by—the way black people were treated. I thought it was important to go to Selma. But The Dick Van Dyke Show was in production, and the studio wouldn’t shut it down. But I give Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement an A.
1969
Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. I was glued to the TV the whole time. In addition to the image of Armstrong climbing out of the lunar module, the other thing I can still picture is CBS anchor Walter Cronkite counting down the touchdown and then finally taking off his glasses and shaking his head in amazement. He was wiped out, as we all were, though I also remember thinking that the whole thing was a fake. Some people believed that it was all acted out in a soundstage. It reminded me of when I was a kid and the disappointment I felt when I learned there were no aliens on the moon. A
1971
The New Dick Van Dyke Show premiered. I reunited with Carl Reiner on this new CBS sitcom, which costarred Hope Lange as my wife. It was a solid show, but it never took off because viewers wouldn’t accept me with another woman. One day a lady came up to me in the supermarket, hit me with her purse, and said, “How could you leave that wonderful Laura?” I learned a lesson: thou shall not cheat—even on your TV wife. B
1972
Watergate consumed the country in so many ways. Among the most serious and long-lasting harm—at least to me—was the sense of mistrust the incident seemed to ignite in all aspects of American life. It was a wake-up call: What do you mean we can’t trust the president? What do you mean he ordered a break-in? In 1974, two years after the break-in was uncovered, Nixon resigned. We are still paying a price. F
1975
With the fall of Saigon, the Vietnam War finally ended, and it was many years too late, as far as I was concerned. I was against the war from the beginning. I thought it was based on paranoia. Just like the Korean conflict, we didn’t manage to do anything in Vietnam except lose a lot of lives. We got out by the skin of our teeth, as evidenced by those indelible images of Americans being hastily evacuated from rooftops as the North Vietnamese took over the southern capital. F
1980
Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States. I thought back to when I first met him in the early 1960s. Actor Don DeFore was a neighbor of mine, and he invited my wife, Margie, and me to a dinner party. It was Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, Ron and Nancy, and my wife and I. We were the only liberals at the table. But I kept my mouth shut. Ron talked that night about getting rid of the unions and the right-to-work issue. A short time later he served two terms as California’s governor. Five years later he ran for president of the United States and was elected twice to what was, without question, his greatest role. Even though we differed politically, as a fellow actor, I will respectfully give him top marks: A
1984
The Summer Olympics were in Los Angeles, and I went for the whole thing. As a former track guy (I was a high jumper and ran the 220 in high school; I never had the stamina for the 440), I loved it. The city came together; it was a two-week celebration and showed the potential for people from all over to get along. A
1990
In February Nelson Mandela was released from jail after being in prison for thirty years. Four years later he was elected president of South Africa, the first black president in that country’s history. Apartheid ended, and it seemed like a victory for the entire world. But I remember seeing Mandela on the news around then and noticing the look in his eyes. It was full of character and strength and, impressively, a depth of humanity that I had seen before—in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was the kind of look that gave me faith that right does eventually triumph. A
1993
Diagnosis Murder premiered. As I mentioned earlier, producer Fred Silverman wanted me to star in a spinoff from Jake and the Fatman. “Freddy, I’m ninety-five years old. I can’t do an hour series,” I said. In truth, I was sixty-five, but I thought I was done.
He said, “Just do the spinoff. Then you don’t have to do anything.”
I did, and then one movie of the week turned into three movies of the week, and so on, and that went on for ten years. It wasn’t a cool show, but I did push the fact that there was no violence and no bad language. And as I worked well into my seventies, I think I helped show that older folks are still employable. For that reason alone: A
2001
September 11. Terrorists attacked the United States in New York City, Washington DC, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It’s one of those days that none of us will ever forget. I woke up, turned on the television, and saw the World Trade Center on fire. Like everyone else, I had trouble compreh
ending what I saw, especially when the second plane crashed into the building and then the towers fell . . . it was incredible in the sense that I didn’t believe something like that could be real. It was like a movie. But it was real, and it brought back memories of the bombings of London in 1939 and the kamikaze pilots in World War II who were willing to die. The world is still feeling the impact of those attacks. F
2008
Barack Obama won the election for the forty-fourth president of the United States, becoming the country’s first black president. I never ever thought I would see that in my lifetime. I thought I might see flying cars before I saw the first black president. But regardless of opinions about his performance, his election, like his campaign slogan, “Hope,” made the future look much brighter. A
2014
Same-sex marriage became legal in about two-thirds of the country. By the end of the year thirty-five states allowed same-sex marriage, which I think is more than good—it’s inevitable. I remember in the sixties and seventies, when people thought the institution was dead. I guess people were wrong. If one thing is clear from the dawn of human history, nothing is more powerful than love. Love is here to stay. A
COMMENTS
Like every era of history, the years I have witnessed have been filled with all kinds of violence, prejudice, and stupidity, and yet every day someone is born who will discover a vaccine, invent new technology, write a song, find a peaceful way to battle injustice, conquer ignorance, and make a decision that will keep us human beings moving forward. How do I know? I have seen it happen. So as I think about a time when I will no longer be around to see what happens next, I have hope that future generations will continue to do better, to keep us moving in the direction where every generation will have the nourishment of hope.
Let’s Hear It for Neighborliness
Recently Arlene and I went out to dinner in Beverly Hills and then saw Jane Lynch in her one-woman show. The next morning I realized I had lost my wallet. Here is the letter to the editor of our local newspaper I wrote a few days after my wallet mysteriously turned up in a neighbor’s yard.
I moved to Malibu in 1986 when I was sixty-one years old. I’m closing in on ninety now. It’s been a beautiful three decades, and I think it’s time I expressed a little appreciation. As the years have piled on, some of my faculties began taking a hike: you know, misplacing the car key, my glasses, grocery lists—that sort of thing.
Once, I dropped my wallet on the sidewalk in front of the bank. Before I could miss it, a call came from the restaurant next door, Marmalade. Someone had dropped it off, knowing I go there a lot. I believe Ralph’s Supermarket keeps a special drawer for the collection of credit cards I leave there on a regular basis, always neatly bound up in a rubber band.
Last week a good neighbor called to say she found my wallet in her front yard. How did it get over there? She didn’t know. I don’t know. None of us will ever know. But it got back to me.
Short of a nursing home, this neighborhood is the closest there is to assisted living I could get. Thanks to you all for looking after me so well.
When you get over the hill, I will do the same for you.
What a town!
The Dreams of an Old Man
This is really all about ordering a teepee. But you’re going to have to wait before I get to that part.
When I was fourteen years old, Wendell Willkie came through Danville on a whistle-stop tour. The liberal Republican was drumming up support for his presidential run against FDR. My grandfather took me to the train station to hear him speak. This was a big event in our small town, and hundreds of people turned out. I had a hard time grasping his criticisms of the New Deal, but his notion of a One World government struck me as something novel. To a boy my age, that was a big wow!
We went home, and sometime later I saw my great-grandmother. She was a memorable character. As a young woman, one of her hands had been cut off in a thrasher, but that didn’t stop her from doing anything. She raised a family, cooked, and knitted up a warehouse-worth of sweaters, scarves, and blankets. She was a hillbilly—tough stock. She sat on the back porch and smoked an old clay pipe and spouted off on things in a peculiar jargon. For instance, to her, junk food was “truck.”
I can still hear her say, “Dickie, don’t eat that truck.”
Sitting in her chair, puffing on her pipe, she listened to me talk about Willkie and his One World idea, and then, when I finished, she widened her eyes, leaned forward, and, in her Southern Illinois accent, said, “When I was a little girl, long about your age, my dad took me to the train station to hear Abraham Lincoln. He was also running for president.” Though we lived in the land of Lincoln, I could not imagine anyone, let alone my great-grandmother, having actually seen this American icon, the president who freed the slaves. I was impressed.
But not as impressed as I am today—a hundred and fifty years after Lincoln was assassinated in Ford’s Theatre—knowing that my great-great-grandfather and great-grandmother listened to his speech and, in some minute, tangential manner, provided me with a direct link to that chapter in history. It is so long ago, almost unfathomably long ago, yet I can clearly remember the sound of my great-grandmother’s voice as she said his name.
Over the years I have met my share of US presidents. Lyndon Johnson was the first. It was Columbus Day, and Julie Andrews and I were in a parade in San Francisco. We ended up at a lectern in Golden Gate Park, where Johnson was supposed to give a speech. But he was late; word came that he was stuck in Long Beach. “He’s on his way,” an official assured us, though he didn’t know when the president would arrive.
As I stared out at the forty thousand people in the crowd, I saw an opportunity. I went to the microphone and pretended to give a campaign-type speech. “If I were president . . .” I then listed off the things I’d do: Get us out of Vietnam, promote civil rights, women’s rights, environmental rights. . . . I was so far to the left that all I talked about was rights. As you can imagine, it went over big with that crowd.
Johnson eventually showed up with his hand wrapped in bandages. We were told his skin had been rubbed raw from shaking so many hands. After he spoke, I waited in line to present him a plaque from the Fellowship of Christians and Jews. Just ahead of me was a Boy Scout presenting another award. As they shook hands, Johnson spotted something out of the corner of his eye and suddenly said, “Goddamnit, I said no pictures!” He was reputed to be a salty curmudgeon, and apparently he really was.
I met Richard Nixon at a restaurant in Beverly Hills, and I shook hands with his more genial successor, Gerald Ford, at a fundraiser that was memorable for the waltz I did with his wife, Betty. At the time she was not yet sober. I don’t know what she was taking or drinking, but she was on it. When we danced, I took hold of her with a vice-like grip and did not let go until the music ended. I was not going to lose the First Lady in front of all those people.
As unsteady as she was on her feet, her smile never wavered. Nor did her poise or pleasantness. I liked her. Her goodness and moral centeredness were apparent, despite the private demons she battled. Politically she was always on my side of issues like equal rights, abortion, and gun control. Personally she became an inspiration to me and many others when she got sober, following an intervention from her family. She was sixty years old at the time.
Four years later, in 1982, she founded the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California. And in 1999, at age eighty-one, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. Her candor, courage, and determination to help people transformed and saved countless lives, and she did much of that vital work in the senior years of her life. She kept moving.
Bill Clinton lived up to advance billing. He ignored me when we met in the Oval Office. Instead, he walked in, looked directly at Michelle, and said, “At last we meet.” She was a tough one who had met everyone—and she melted. He gave her a hug and spoke only to her. I was wallpaper. He never even said hello to me, and Michelle was fine with that. So was I
.
As many have noted, the man is the best speaker I’ve ever heard. FDR was a great orator and Reagan knew how to deliver a message, but Clinton had the ability to stand in front of any sized audience and speak to just one person.
Sometimes he did exactly that. After Carl Reiner received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2000, he and his wife, Estelle, spent the night in the Lincoln bedroom at the White House. At about 1 A.M. they heard a knock on the door. In walked Bill Clinton, wearing a sweatshirt. He sat and talked to them through the night about world issues, American history, anything Carl brought up. My friend was blown away. I would vote to reelect him again—I think he was that good at the job.
Obama, also impressive, drives me crazy. But I am a fan. I voted for him twice and thanked him once after he straightened my tie following a 2010 Fourth of July celebration in Washington, DC, where I performed with my a cappella group the Vantastix at Ford’s Theatre. Which brings me back to Abraham Lincoln, a president who sits in a whole other realm from the others I have mentioned. My slender link to him resonates even more powerfully with me now, at age ninety. When I think about the future, my own and the years ahead that will not include me, I understand how intricately it is shaped by the past and how important it is to share the good things we had so we don’t lose them.
I think this was a defining characteristic of my generation. We got through the Great Depression and pulled through World War II. We fought to defend the freedom others had died for in the past and to preserve it for future generations. We made tough decisions and learned and grew from them. I think we made the world a better place. Have subsequent generations done the same?
To me, the biggest deficiency today is trust. I would very much like to see trust make a comeback. I’ll tell you something that made a lifelong impression on me. When I was a kid, in the middle of the Great Depression, there were a lot of homeless people on the street. “They aren’t all bums,” I remember hearing. “They’re just down on their luck.” People regularly knocked on our back door asking for food, which my mom always gave them. Everybody helped out if they could. I remember seeing a mark on the fence behind our house and others nearby. It meant that a softy lived in that house. Ours had a big X. Times were hard, and there was a sense that we all had to help each other get through it.
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