From the Archive: Dick Van Dyke — 100 and Counting

—From “Dick Van Dyke Does It All, but in His Own Way” by Joseph N. Bell, March 1, 1973, and “The Serious Side of Dick Van Dyke” by Sally Saunders, January 1982

“I still get fan mail from it,” Dick Van Dyke said. He is surprised by the staying power of the old, black-and- white show, which came to life October 3, 1961, on CBS. It lasted until Van Dyke and troupe called it quits five years later after consistently earning top spots in the Nielsen ratings and winning almost every major award offered by the television industry.

In 1973, when he was nearing 50, Dick says he is “more comfortable with myself, with my wife and family, and with my life than I’ve ever been.”

He recalled his hard, early years.

“My wife and I were living in a little apartment and she was pregnant. I came home one day, and she’d started to miscarry. I took her to the hospital, for which I didn’t have any money, left her, and came home to find my belongings in the street. I’d been evicted for nonpayment of rent. That was the day I said, ‘I think I’ll go home to Mommy and Daddy.’”

But he stayed on the road, still carefree in his attitude toward work, until faced with the responsibility of fatherhood. “When my son was born, my partner and I were working in a cocktail lounge in Atlanta from five to eight. I took a job as an early-morning disc jockey from six to noon five days a week and a late-night job at a nightclub. I worked three jobs for eight months. I nearly killed myself, I was so panicked.

“I don’t think I’d be 21 again for anything. There was a lot of internal suffering then. To live through it once is wonderful — but once is enough.”

At the time of the interview, it had been years since the Dick Van Dyke Show. He’d appeared only sporadically on TV or in film, so when it was announced he’d star in a new series, people were surprised.

“If people don’t see you on television,” he said, “they think you’re dead.”

This article is featured in the September/October 2025 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.