My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business

February 28, 2011
In this intimate, honest memoir by TV's favorite Mr. Nice Guy, good husband, and loving father, we discover that though his persona was not an act, Van Dyke battled alcohol addiction and left a long-term marriage while struggling to maintain his image as a man of principle and values. Growing up in the Midwest, healthy and happy, Van Dyke founds his niche early with radio, then as a nightclub comedian in L.A. With no acting or dance or music training, he landed a role in Broadway's Bye Bye, Birdie and later on in the film (he provides some fun stories about Ann-Margret, Paul Lynde, and Maureen Stapleton). It was Carl Reiner who made him a household name with The Dick Van Dyke Show—which was based on reality, with many scenarios from the actors' actual lives. Along the road to success with such films as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Mary Poppins, Van Dyke discusses his social drinking as a problem, and treatment, which he ultimately revealed at a D.C. press conference with other high-profile recovering alcoholics. He reminds us there are happy clowns and sad clowns: "The public saw a smiling, nimble-footed performer while my family and friends were served up a more contemplative loner, a man who many said was hard to know."

February 15, 2011

A song and dance man of the first order looks back.

Van Dyke breezily recounts his adventures as a straight-down-the-middle "square" and family man navigating the vicissitudes of show business in this slight memoir, which highlights the strengths and pitfalls of the performer's signature amiability. The author is unfailingly pleasant company on the page, and his low-stakes anecdotes and fond remembrances go down easily. But his unwillingness or inability to confront the uglier aspects of life (and particularly life in Hollywood) ultimately makes for a rather bland repast. It's not as if Van Dyke lacked material; his well-publicized battle with alcoholism and the dissolution of his longtime marriage would seem ripe for serious introspection, but this is not the author's style. He addresses the issues forthrightly but with a scrupulous lack of salaciousness or soul-searching or anything approaching a strong emotional response. Van Dyke is clearly happiest relating amusing anecdotes about his Midwestern boyhood, struggling early days in show business and his successes in such classic examples of all-American family entertainment as Bye Bye Birdie, Mary Poppins and the deathless Dick Van Dyke Show, still a high-water mark in the history of TV comedy. Van Dyke heaps love and praise on collaborators like Carl Reiner and Mary Tyler Moore, who surely deserve it, but the unremitting niceness becomes numbing, to the extent that a couple of bawdy incidents involving actress Maureen Stapleton stand out as Caligula-like descents into depravity by comparison. The author's earnest, boyish persona anchored his astounding gifts as a physical performer—his rubber-limbed pratfalls, fleet dancing and instinctive genius with bits of comedy "business" are justly revered—but absent this physical dimension, Van Dyke here is earnestly, boyishly...dull.

Perfectly pleasant, mildly diverting and forgettable—kind of like an episode of Diagnosis: Murder.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 15, 2011

Fans who like Van Dyke's affable, self-deprecating characters will enjoy this first memoir, because his prose is as easygoing and comical as he appears on-screen. At the outset, Van Dyke warns readers that he is not going to dish the dirt, and he doesn't, but he will still engage celebrity watchers with inside stories of The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mary Poppins, and other parts of his career. From the Midwest, he describes his parents and childhood as pretty unspectacular. He began in local radio, but a pairing with a friend to form a novelty act was his entry into show business. He moved from variety show to variety show and finally landed the lead in Bye Bye Birdie. He includes lots of anecdotes about Carl Reiner (his idol), Julie Andrews (a lady, first and foremost), Mary Tyler Moore (he had a crush on her), and Cloris Leachman (even more of a character offscreen), among others. VERDICT Celebrity watchers will not be disappointed by this matter-of-fact but heartwarming, long-awaited memoir by a beloved entertainer. [See Prepub Alert, 11/15/10.]--Rosellen Brewer, Sno-Isle Libs., Marysville, WA

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2011
Popular entertainer Van Dyke takes us through his eventful life. In his late teens, he was deejaying a radio show in his hometown, Danville, Illinois. Ten years later, he was signed to a seven-year contract with CBS, which had him, among other assignments, emceeing test episodes of a new game show, The Price Is Right. Then, in fairly rapid succession came Bye Bye Birdie, the stage musical for which Van Dyke won a Tony Award; The Dick Van Dyke Show, for which he won Emmys in three succeeding years; and Mary Poppins, the Disney film that made him a star around the world. He is frank about his postDick Van Dyke Show years, during which he struggled to find a new direction for his career and came to terms with his alcoholism. He says he set out to write the kind of book I think people want from me, and hes done just that. Its a celebrity memoir that reminds us of why we like the man so much and why well always stay tuned for another rerun of the The Dick Van Dyke Show.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)