“Fortunately, no one saw us in the corner of Dan Tana’s or any of our other nighttime haunts. Michelle and I would talk throughout the day,” he writes. “She loved show business and wanted to hear about what had happened on the set, the bits that worked and those that did not work, who the guests were, and all that stuff. She had ideas and opinions and understood my ambitions and frustrations.”
Wracked with guilt, the formerly faithful “good boy” tried to focus on his new show, Van Dyke and Company. “I worked harder going back and forth between my two worlds than I did on the show,” he recalls. “I lost seven pounds in the first two months. I told people it was the work. In truth, it was the stress of dividing my time between two extremely strong, attractive women.”
Van Dyke eventually came clean to Margie, and they finally amicably divorced in 1984. (Van Dyke was by her side when she died in 2008.) Now happy and open with Michelle, he finally stopped drinking for good in 1985, after being disgusted by a sip of wine. “Over the years, people would ask how I stopped and I would shrug, as mystified and curious as anyone,” he writes. “It was as if my body did what my mind couldn’t: It said, ‘Enough!’”
Dorian Van Dyke
Dick Van Dyke’s longevity has become the stuff of legend. When his brother Jerry needed a kidney, Van Dyke offered to give him one if he died. “Jerry called me every single day,” Van Dyke writes. “What a guy, right? Then, as soon as I answered the phone, he said, ‘Oh, you’re still alive.’”
After the deaths of Margie in 2008 and Michelle in 2009, one feels Van Dyke was given a new perspective on life, and became a more open person, eager to embrace the people he loves. Van Dyke (who married 40-year-old Arlene Silver in 2012) describes his love of volunteering, creating CGI animation for his kids and grandkids, and singing with his a cappella group, the Vantastix. Recalling one show, he writes:
When I noticed that women in their sixties and up comprised most of the audience, I turned to the other guys in my group, all at least half my age, and warned them that these were my groupies. Sure enough, after the show, the women rushed the stage, albeit slowly and politely. We had to make a run for it.
Van Dyke has also kept his sense of humor and timing. In 1993, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “When Hollywood’s honorary mayor, Johnny Grant, finally unveiled it, there was an unexpected silence, followed by a clap of laughter,” Van Dyke recalls. “My name was misspelled. It read Dick Vandyck. Embarrassed, Johnny quickly handed me a Sharpie, and I drew a line where there should have been a space and told him not to worry. It had happened before.”
Now 98, Van Dyke appears to have fully embraced his lucky, lucky life. “My life has been a magnificent indulgence,” he writes. “I’ve been able to do what I love and share it. Who would want to quit?”
