Dick Van Dyke keeps moving at 90

Entertainer is part of a vocal quartet

Dick Van Dyke has five Emmys, a Tony and a Grammy, but the way the 90-year-old entertainer gleefully laughs when you mention his first-ever viral video? He’s absolutely living in the present where some wonderful new thing might always be just around the corner.

“We got a new thing going: flash mob singing!” Van Dyke says of the video that flew around the internet recently of him and his singing group serenading diners at a Santa Monica Denny’s restaurant with an impromptu take on the theme song from the movie “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”

“We had been on Channel 11 that morning and we just got off the air so we stopped for breakfast,” he says. “There was a table with several little kids in there, and as they started to leave I said, ‘You wanna hear a song?’

“They said, ‘Sure!’ And by the time we were finished, everybody in Denny’s was singing with us. It really was great. It’s something we ought to do more often.”

Van Dyke is a member of the vocal quartet Dick Van Dyke and the Vantastix founded in 2000, according to information at www. vantastix.com.

Van Dyke and the three singers in the Vantastix typically perform a mix of songs associated with the actor’s movies — beloved films such as “Mary Poppins,” “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” and “Bye Bye Birdie” — as well as jazz standards and other tunes from the stage and screen.

“We have quite a repertoire now,” Van Dyke says. “Sometimes we play it by ear with the audience. If we get a lot of kids, we do more of the Disney stuff. If there’s older people, we might change it

around.

“But we do about 90 minutes, and it usually ends up like a party,” he says. “Hardly anything is set. We go in there loose and ready to go with the flow, so we never know exactly how it’s going to come out. But audiences always love it, and go away happy.”

Performing at 90 remains a joy, Van Dyke says.

“I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t,” he says. “I love harmony. I love to sing harmony, and I’ve got three young guys who are absolutely great. I have such fun doing it.”

With a career that runs from nightclub shows to Broadway, a pair of hit TV series in “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and “Diagnosis: Murder,” and a handful of classic films, Van Dyke is an all-around performer the likes of which there really aren’t many left.

But it’s working with a live audience that remains his favorite aspect of life in the spotlight.

“I need an audience,” Van Dyke says. “It’s really not much fun without an audience, especially if you’re doing comedy, where you need them to do their half of the work and provide the rhythm.

“That was one thing about the ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show,’ it had an audience we could play to. I’ve done guest shots on onecamera sitcoms. It’s just absolutely deadly. They put the canned laughter in later. Your timing is up to Dick Van Dyke & the Vantastix, from left, are Bryan Chadima, Van Dyke, Mike Mendyke and Eric Bradley. “the editor.”

For that classic show created by Carl Reiner in the early 1960s, which starred Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie, each episode was done almost like theater.

“We used to do it straight through, from beginning to end, like a play,” Van Dyke says. “Oh God, it worked like a charm!”

It’s clear the show that carried his name might be the most fun he ever had on television, not so much work as play.

“Morey used to say, ‘It’s like coming to a party every day,’ “Van Dyke says. “Carl was so good about the script. Nothing was written in stone. Everybody got to contribute during the week. And we just couldn’t wait to show it to the audiences.

“Mary and I got to the place where they could just throw us an idea and we could improv on it,” he says. “It was like reading each others’ minds.

“Without a doubt the most fun I ever had. I’d still be doing it if they let me.”

That said, the Disney classic “Mary Poppins” in which he starred as Bert the chimney sweep with Julie Andrews in the title role, also figures prominently in his heart, too.

“You do a lot of movies where day to day you don’t know how it’s coming out,” Van Dyke says. “You shoot a few scenes, you have no feeling about it.

“But this movie, everyone felt there was something going on,” he says. “Something magical. We couldn’t wait to get to work, as hard as we were working, there was something about it that we just knew. Every song we just loved to sing, and I loved to dance it.

“Walt (Disney) was around a lot. And there was just a spirit about it. Everyone had the feeling that something special was going on, and “sure enough it was.”

Van Dyke mentions he’s heard rumors of a “Mary Poppins” sequel — Walt Disney Pictures announced earlier this year plans to do so with actress Emily Blunt and “Hamilton” creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda in the lead roles — and says he’s not sold on the idea yet.

“You know, without Walt, without the Sherman Brothers’ music, it worries me,” he says. “Tell ‘em Bert’s

dead!”

Van Dyke himself, though, is full of life, so much so that Weinstein Books pitched him a year or so ago to write a book that arrived last fall as “Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths About Aging.”

“You know what I wanted to call it: ‘What To Do While Circling the Drain,’ “Van Dyke jokes. “Publishers have no sense of humor!

“They came to me about that book and I said, ‘Keep Moving,’ that’s the book, I don’t know what else to say,” Van Dyke says, riffing on the idea that the title tells anyone all they need to do. “But once I sat down and started writing, I realized there was a lot to say. There’s a lot more to staying healthy and alert.

“Attitude is the main thing,” he says. “What I stressed in particular was open-mindedness. I have so many contemporaries who haven’t changed their mind about anything in 50 years.

“I was out with Bernie Sanders and the turnouts at every rally were primarily young people, millennials, who aren’t scared by the word ‘socialism.’ But people my age, ‘Ahh!’ they’re scared of it. They just won’t hear it.”

His parts in the “Night at the Museum” film series have brought Van Dyke in front of younger audiences in recent years, but he says he’s increasingly getting fan mail from young people whose parents have shown them “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and his classic movies, work he says endures because it was good then and remains so now.

“There was an authenticity and a credibility about the comedy that I don’t see today,” he says. “I get scripts, you know, but they’re not doing my kind of thing anymore. I made a commitment to keeping it tasteful and some of that stuff is so bad.

“That’s why I didn’t get rich. I had to be too picky about what I was doing!” he jokes. “The right script comes along, I’d be happy to do it.”

PHOTO BY LARISSA UNDERWOOD