Actors - Dick Van Dyke

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	Actors - Dick Van Dyke

Richard Wayne Van Dyke (born December 13, 1925 in West Plains, Missouri), usually credited as Dick Van Dyke, is a famous American television and movie actor. He is most famous for his starring roles on The Dick Van Dyke Show (with Mary Tyler Moore) in the 1960s and Diagnosis: Murder as Dr. Sloan in the 1990s.

Early days

Van Dyke's first major role was on stage in Bye Bye Birdie
in 1960, for which he won a Tony Award. He then starred in his own highly-rated and critically acclaimed sitcom, The Dick Van Dyke Show, about a staff of writers for The Alan Brady Show, a fictional TV variety show conceptually based on the 1950s hit, Your Show of Shows. The show divided its time between office and home, giving young supporting player Mary Tyler Moore a good deal of exposure. The Dick Van Dyke Show ran for five seasons. The series was created by Carl Reiner, who had played Rob Petrie in the original pilot, then realized that he was all wrong to play what was essentially a version of himself. Reiner instead opted to play Alan Brady, the role loosely based on Sid Caesar. In the lead role of Rob Petrie, Van Dyke won three Emmy Awards.

In 1971, Van Dyke starred with Hope Lange in The New Dick Van Dyke Show, a sitcom not connected in any way with the earlier show.

Movies

Van Dyke slowly transitioned out of television into movie acting in Bye Bye Birdie
(1963), What a Way to Go! (1964) and, most notably, Walt Disney's Mary Poppins (1964), in which he played Bert, a Cockney chimney sweep, and also, in heavy disguise, the elderly owner of the bank. His attempt at a Cockney accent (and his tendency to lapse into and out of it) was widely ridiculed (especially in the UK), but the very popular and innovative film also showed his versatility as a singer and dancer. One of his showcase songs, "Chim Chim Cheree", won the Oscar for the film's songwriting team.

Van Dyke made several fairly memorable comedy movies during this period, including The Art of Love with James Garner, Never A Dull Moment in 1967 with Edward G. Robinson, and Divorce American Style with Debbie Reynolds and Jason Robards, Jr..

After the mid-1960s, Van Dyke was in a number of relatively unsuccessful movies, though one, a children's film called Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
, is still well-known, especially with the recent stage musical.

In later years, Van Dyke would complain, "I never made a good movie."

Dramatic roles and career comeback

In 1974 Van Dyke uncharacteristically appeared in his first dramatic role, as an alcoholic businessman in the television movie The Morning After (1974). He received wide acclaim and an Emmy nomination. Regarded by many as the most realistic television film ever made dealing with alcoholism, it is sometimes shown at treatment centers. The final scene in particular is regarded by many as chilling and unforgettable. It was at this time that Van Dyke admitted he had recently overcome a real-life drinking problem.

His career seemed essentially over by 1989 when Dick Van Dyke started a career comeback. First, he took a guest starring role on NBC's hit TV series The Golden Girls (a role that earned him his first Emmy nomination since 1977). The next year in 1990, Van Dyke, whose usual role had been the amiable hero, took a small, but villainous turn as the crooked D.A Fletcher in Warren Beatty's movie Dick Tracy. Though his role in the movie was very small, he received positive reviews. In truth, it was not the first time Van Dyke had taken a villainous role. In 1975, he played a murdering photographer in a TV movie of the popular series Columbo, and in 1986, he starred in the first episode of the TV series Matlock starring Andy Griffith (who had also tried to break his good guy image by playing villains in both crime dramas, and TV movies). In that episode, Van Dyke played a man who murdered his wife and then presided over her murder trial. The reviews he received for Tracy led him to star in a series of TV movies on CBS that became the foundation for his popular television drama, Diagnosis: Murder, which ran from 1993 to 2001.

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