Look, I’m as surprised as you that a guy with the nickname “The Human Waterfall” has lived to be 100 years old. If you’re known for falling down, even gracefully, longevity does not seem like it would be part of your destiny. Maybe the everflowing stream that is Dick Van Dyke’s life isn’t one of those harrowing, acrophobia-inducing falls like Niagara. Maybe it’s more like a purling brook in a secluded wood with a few stair-step drops marking the water’s descent. Risky to cross, but not fatal if you slip. Van Dyke knows the importance of falling, though. The fourth chapter in the book is “Learn to fall,” and he uses it to relate the story of how he sought out Buster Keaton to learn how to tuck and roll safely. Keaton told him he’d broken most of the bones in his body, including his neck, over the years. Van Dyke doesn’t share the number of bones he’s broken, so it’s likely that Keaton’s advice proved helpful.
So I mentioned that the fourth chapter, or rule, in the book is “learn to fall,” but I only know that because it shows up early in the text and I could count to it without losing track. You’d think a book like this one would have numbered chapters or at least a Table of Contents that would make it easy for a reader to find a particular rule. Not so fast. Chapter two is “Make your own rules.” He takes his own advice and tells us that if we are to count all of the rules in the book, we will come up short of 100. See, he’s making his own rules, even if they violate the promise made by the book’s title. For the record, there are 75 rules in the book. You will not feel shortchanged in the least.
You also won’t be subject to relentless positive affirmations, despite the book’s subtitle. I was a little worried that “an optimist’s guide to a happy life” would be dull and trite. Like, of course a celebrity is an optimist. (I know that’s an oversimplification.) My misgivings have more to do with the fact that self-help or self-improvement books are not my cup of tea. What could I possibly learn from a beloved actor that I couldn’t learn from someone in my day-to-day life? Plenty, it seems. The advice, rules, and suggestions in the book are not for everyone, but there were more than a few times that I felt myself thinking “Wow, that’s actually interesting / helpful / clarifying.” Plus, it’s not like Van Dyke was born into fame. He tells of shoveling coal into the furnace in the basement of his house in Danville, Illinois, as a child so his baby brother and his mom could enjoy the heat. Not too many TV or movie stars had to grow up with that kind of grunt work as part of their daily routine, which means that there are many lessons Van Dyke has learned that are not dependent upon his role as a household name.
Beyond its genuinely helpful moments, there are also many funny stories to be found in these pages. Prior to taking on the role of Rob Petrie, Van Dyke was traveling with his wife and two children in the car for a vacation. He explains how they would change their children’s diapers while in the car. Imagine the scene. Van Dyke is driving, holding up the legs of one of his kids while his wife changes the diaper. The risk alone makes this story wild. He makes it sound like this was a common occurrence. That’s not the point of the story, though. One time, while in the desert, the diaper’s stench was too much for those in the car to bear. So, thinking of the quickest possible solution, Van Dyke chucks the offending receptacle out his window. Much to his surprise, there was another car on the road even though they were in the middle of the desert. Yes, the car was trying to pass them on the left. Yes, the full diaper hit the windshield dead center at a high velocity. Yes, the other car screeched to a halt. No, Van Dyke did not. “I froze for a second and thought: Should I stop? Instead, I floorboarded it and just kept going” (p. 50). Diabolical. There’s someone out there who was on the receiving end of a soiled diaper that a pre-fame Dick Van Dyke threw out of a car window in the middle of the desert and they never knew he was the culprit. The rule here? “Don’t litter: Tips for safety and hygiene on family road trips in the 1950s.”
Fast forward a couple decades and Van Dyke tells us of how his current wife, Arlene, helps him organize his days. He says she got him an iPad but he never uses it. She helps to coordinate his daily life, along with his assistant Jimmy. Careful readers will notice before Van Dyke points it out that Jimmy uses they/them pronouns. When Van Dyke directly addresses this aspect of Jimmy’s identity, he admits that it took a little bit of getting used to, and that “these kids keep us on their toes, don’t they?” (p. 211). That’s all. No big deal. If someone born in 1925 can understand queerness and transness that easily, then there’s no excuse for the bigotry behind getting upset over someone’s pronouns or identity. In addition to the wisdom he’s accrued with age, Van Dyke also prides himself on not using his iPad to “text or shop or browse for hours on end. Think of all the dopamine I’ve stored up!” (p. 12) So maybe there is something to be said for unplugging from devices to help keep our minds sharp and our hearts open as we age.
There are sweet moments, too. I learned from the dust jacket that Van Dyke is an Oscar short of EGOT status, so I puzzled over the “Win an Oscar” chapter. He explains that the cast of Mary Poppins created a scrap metal award statuette for his contributions to the film. It’s not much to look at, but it means a lot coming from the cast and crew of that show. It’s dear enough to him that it is given first priority when he has to evacuate his Malibu home due to wildfires. And, as special as it is that Julie Andrews won one for her role in that film, “eighty-six actors and seventy-nine actresses have that exact same one. Mine is one of a kind” (p. 90).
Other parts that made me laugh included the chapter where he tells the story of his appearance on The Masked Singer. The story itself is fine, but it’s in his relating of Arlene trying to convince him to do the show that I burst out laughing. She runs down the outfits that Gladys Knight and three of the Brady boys wore. And, “according to Arlene, Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols (don’t ask me who that is) wore a horned, tartan ‘jester’ outfit that could have spawned a horror franchise” (p. 259). I’m sorry but that aside is the funniest part of this book. Imagine that you are 97 years old, it is 2023 and your wife is telling you about The SEX PISTOLS in an offhand way like you should know who Johnny Rotten is. How aware was Van Dyke of punk when the first wave hit in the ‘70s? He would have already been in his late fifties. There’s no reason to think he would have been interested in contemporary music, given that he loves show tunes and jazz. The idea of him being unaware for over 40 years of a band with the name of The SEX PISTOLS and then having to process that information in the context of his wife selling him on appearing on a show where celebrities dress up in elaborate costumes to sing to a panel of judges… it’s incredible.
The advice I’ll take to heart is to “Write it down” (189). In this chapter, Van Dyke explains how Marge Mullen, the script supervisor of The Dick Van Dyke Show, kept a notebook titled “SOS,” which stood for “some other show.” Ideas the writers had that couldn’t quite work or needed more polish or might have been too small for a full episode were stashed in this notebook for later. Their time wasn’t right, but they weren’t worth discarding either. Most people don’t write scripts for successful sitcoms, but we can still learn better habits of keeping our fleeting thoughts from escaping forever. Being better at more consistently recording those thoughts is reason enough for me to feel optimistic at this point in the year.
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