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Biography - Born 12/13/1925
After a long apprenticeship as a television emcee, this lanky, likable, multi-talented American comedian and leading man achieved stardom on stage in musical comedy and as the star of the highly successful "The Dick Van Dyke Show" (CBS, 1961-66), a program significant in helping refine the genre of sitcoms. As television writer and family man Rob Petrie, Van Dyke combined a flair for light, sophisticated, domestic comedy with a clown's aptitude for pratfall farce. Buoyed by the writing finesse of Carl Reiner and featuring the memorable support of Mary Tyler Moore, Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie, "The Dick Van Dyke Show" remains the peak of its star's career.
Ending the series after 157 episodes "while we're proud of it", Van Dyke then concentrated on a feature film career, but met with only limited success. In 1963, he repeated his Tony-winning Broadway role of Albert (songwriter/English teacher on Broadway, songwriter/chemistry whiz in film), in "Bye, Bye Birdie". Things seemed promising after his very pleasing, if musically modest, turn as a chimney sweep opposite Julie Andrews' "Mary Poppins" (1964), but his later vehicles generally showed Van Dyke straining to impress with his versatility and never sustaining a consistent level of charm. "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" (1968) has become a children's favorite and "Cold Turkey" (1971), about a town whose inhabitants will be rich is they can break the smoking habit, does evoke laughter amid the rampant frenzy, but "The Comic" (1969), modeled after Van Dyke's idol, Stan Laurel, never quite attained the heights of silent comedy magic its makers had hoped for, nor did it find an audience.
Returning to series TV, he enjoyed a measure of success with "The New Dick Van Dyke Show" (CBS, 1971-74), its more mellow comedy sparked by the rapport between Van Dyke and co-star Hope Lange. He scored a personal triumph in a rare dramatic role as an alcoholic in "The Morning After" (ABC, 1974) but later efforts, however, were short-lived. He joined "The Carol Burnett Show" as a regular in 1978, but lasted half-a-season as the chemistry between the two was not right. Van Dyke's career in TV, features and on the stage stalled for a time in the late 70s and early 80s in films like "The Runner Stumbles" (1979), a variety series "Van Dyke and Company" (NBC, 1975-76) and a stage revival of "The Music Man" (1980). Things began to pick up with modestly successful forays into television drama ("Drop-Out Father" CBS 1982; "Arthur Hailey's 'Strong Medicine'" syndicated 1986), characterized by a saturnine quality not present in his earlier work. Typical in this respect was his most successful series in years, "Diagnosis Murder" (CBS, 1993-2001) with the star cast as a doctor who gets caught up in weekly mysteries, joining the parade of older sleuths who cropped up after the success of "Murder, She Wrote".
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