Dick Van Dyke has had an illustrious career for nearly eight decades, one that continues well into his 90s. The actor is just months away from turning 100.
Before making it big on TV with The Dick Van Dyke Show and his thriving movie career with '60s classics like Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, he was Broadway's Albert F. Peterson.
Dick originated the role for the debut Broadway production of Bye Bye Birdie in 1960 opposite Chita Rivera, just a year after making his own Broadway debut.
The performance earned him his first taste of stardom in the entertainment industry as well as a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. His story, along with several other theater greats', was documented in a new New York Magazine Broadway special.
"I'd always been limber and loose, but I'd never danced before," he recalled to the publication about being on the stage. "When I auditioned for Gower Champion, I did 'Once in Love With Amy,' the Ray Bolger song, and I did a little soft-shoe, which is all I knew."
© Getty Images"And he came up and said, 'You have the part.' I said, 'Sir, I don't dance.' He said, 'I'll show you.' And he did. I couldn't stand there and do pirouettes for an hour, but I could certainly get levitation and cross the stage fast. It was like learning to fly," saying once he got the hang of it, he "couldn't stop."
The Hollywood icon recalled the initial Philadelphia tryouts for the show, which received rave reviews but not for his turn. "Dick Van Dyke is adequate," he remembered several appraisals at the time saying. However, thanks to the late Chita, he was given a shot.
© Getty Images"One day, they came down with a new song they'd written for Chita. And bless her heart, she said, 'You know, Dick doesn't have much to do in the first act. Why don't we let him do it?' It was 'Put on a Happy Face.' And that's what won me the Tony. She just handed me that song," he gushed.
Looking back further on his time with the production, he injected a bit of drama into it when thinking of a time when he accidentally was caught on a harness up in the air, so much so that he panicked about gravely injuring himself or someone below.
© Getty Images"Audiences love to see mistakes," Dick recalled. "There was a dance number called 'One Hundred Ways,' a ballet where the dancers hand me a lily and put a thing on me and I go up. And I just hung there till the number was over."
"One night, I'm hanging there and, ping, one of the wires breaks and I'm hanging by one wire. I started to turn. I thought, I'm either going to kill myself or a dancer, and it held. When they let me down, I was so dizzy I fell on my face."
© Getty ImagesThe terrifying incident did nothing to dampen his spirit, though, and he continued on with the show. Soon after it wrapped, he moved to Los Angeles to begin work on his eponymous sitcom when news of a Tony came calling. "I didn't know I had won. They sent me a telegram, which the guy stuck under the welcome mat. It was days before I saw it."
