DICK VAN DYKE
MISTAKES AT 94, THE BELOVED PERFORMER HAS MADE PEACE WITH THE OF HIS PAST
At 94, the beloved performer recounts the missteps and heartaches of his private love life and explains why he’s so happy today.
Dick Van Dyke would have liked to play Willie Wonka. Or the scarecrow in
The Wizard of
Oz. “My wife said, ‘Did you try out for it?’ I said, ‘No, I was 12 years old!’” the actor tells Closer with a laugh.
At 94, Dick has conquered the worlds of theater, television, film and even music — and has very few career regrets. “I didn’t know I was going to be so lucky,” he insists. “I just hoped to make a living.” Yet in his personal life, the genial performer rode out several private storms including an affair that ended his first marriage. “I was writhing with guilt,” he confessed in his 2015 memoir, Keep Moving.
“I needed to be honest.”
He learned the lesson of staying true to himself as a child growing up in Danville, Ill. Young Dick watched his charming, outgoing father, who had enjoyed an early career in minor league baseball, work a soul-crushing sales job to support their family. “Years later, when I saw Death of a Salesman, I was depressed for a month. It was Dad’s story,” confides Dick.
Unlike his father, Dick didn’t let marriage to his hometown sweetheart Margie Willett in 1948 derail his showbiz dreams. When their four children, Christian, Barry, Stacy and Carrie Beth, came along, it lit a fire in Dick to succeed. “I’m not a self-starter [but] the fear of having your first kid is something,” Dick tells Closer. “I was like a lot of guys from the Depression who said, ‘My kids are going to have it better than I did.’ ”
So after getting his start in radio, Dick developed a nightclub act that incorporated skits, mime and music. He landed on Broadway in 1959 and won his first Tony in 1961 for Bye Bye Birdie. “I went to New York and saw him in Bye
Bye Birdie and he just mesmerized me,” Carl
Reiner, creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show,
told Closer, adding that Dick is “without a doubt the most singly talented human being I know.”
Dick appreciated that the series, which ran from 1961 to 1966, allowed him to be a dad. “I was home every night with the kids and it was just like having a regular job,” says the star. He often sneaked his children onto the studio back lot so that they could shoot home movies together. “I’ve always liked to play,” he says.
Yet even as he doted on his children, Dick and Margie grew apart. A down-to-earth Midwesterner, Margie “was shunted aside at showbiz events by people wanting to chat to me,” Dick recalls. She wasn’t glamorous and never fit in