How Dick Van Dyke’s career reflected the evolution of television

Armed with razor sharp comedy instincts, a legendary talent for physical comedy and a good guy reputation that spilled over into his characters, Dick Van Dyke is one of Hollywood’s most beloved legends, marking a career which spans over eight decades.

But even as he celebrates his 100th birthday this month, Van Dyke’s passion and persistence brought another achievement: A performing life that spans the very existence of television, with his personal milestones in the industry reflecting major changes in the medium.

As a nimble performer with no formal training in dance, singing or acting, Van Dyke himself often shrugged off his evolutions as a performer—telling an interviewer in a clip from Starring Dick Van Dyke that “I never had a career plan…I just [fell into] what came.”

But a look at Van Dyke’s career path reveals something more: A dedicated performer who would often challenge himself to evolve for new opportunities, constantly tackling new projects until he landed in something that clicked with the public—often because it also matched a new trend in the TV industry.

Along the way, he built a career that serves as a history lesson of sorts, outlining the growth of television, in particular, and show business overall.

The radio and nightclub years

Like a lot of performers, Richard Wayne Van Dyke got his start in radio. But he was particularly young when it happened—at age 16 or so, he was hired to work as a DJ and announcer in his hometown of Danville, Illinois during World War II, when older workers had been drafted. It was in radio where he learned a facility with funny voices and humor, developing a nightclub act with a partner years later, called The Merry Mutes, which featured the pair miming along with slapstick-level gestures and facial expressions to records.

The late 1940s and early ‘50s, was a time of serious transition in the TV industry. Television sets were just beginning to spread into American homes and producers creating content for this new medium were often taking performers from the stage and nightclubs and plopping them in front of a camera with few changes.

Indeed, Van Dyke’s early career mirrored the fits and starts of the early TV industry. Signed to a seven-year-deal by CBS before his 30th birthday, he was plugged into several program ideas—acting alongside cartoons, hosting a variety show and even co-hosting the CBS morning news alongside a traditional anchor brought in to help him handle the job, a guy named Walter Cronkite.

Through it all, there was a sense that this fledgling medium didn’t know quite what to do with a performer like Van Dyke. He was too lanky and angular to be a traditional hero, too good looking to seem like a misfit comic, excellent at elevating material he was given—but not exactly a writer—and gifted with an easygoing charisma that reached through the camera lens.

Still, it wasn’t clear where he might fit in on television. Until a little program came along called “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

The making of a classic sitcom star

Back in the early 1960s, Carl Reiner and his partner Sheldon Leonard were among a crop of upstart TV producers looking to make a mark (by 1965, Leonard would create the first network TV drama co-starring a Black performer, “I Spy,” with up-and-coming comic Bill Cosby).

Leonard had seen Van Dyke on Broadway in his Tony-winning turn as Albert J. Peterson in “Bye Bye Birdie.” So when Reiner agreed to recast a sitcom pilot he had originally written for himself, Leonard convinced him to hire Van Dyke as put-upon TV writer, husband and father Rob Petrie.

Though “The Dick Van Dyke Show” may seem tame by modern TV standards, in 1961 it stood out. Van Dyke and his onscreen partner Mary Tyler Moore were both highly attractive and played their roles like a couple still in love with each other (despite the separate, twin beds in the bedroom).

And one landmark episode in 1963, “That’s My Boy??”, pushed boundaries by flashing back to the birth of their son Ritchie, when Van Dyke’s Rob Petrie became convinced they took the wrong baby home from the hospital—until he meets the other family who left at the same time, and realizes they are African American.

The reveal is played for laughs, with future “Mission Impossible” co-star Greg Morris playing the bemused husband from the other couple. Gentle as the joke might seem today, the episode landed at a time when most TV sitcoms were overwhelmingly white and escapist, avoiding racial issues by rarely featuring non-white characters—a habit upstart producers like Reiner and Leonard were already finding ways to challenge and upend.

Telling the truth about alcoholism

After five years on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and starring roles in two films which established the classic, family-friendly Disney formula—“Mary Poppins” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”—Van Dyke hit a rough patch in the early 1970s with a string of movies and TV shows which didn’t prove popular as his past efforts.

So it made a certain kind of sense that he would try something very different—a role in a 1974 TV movie as a successful public relations executive secretly struggling with a drinking problem, called “The Morning After.” Once the film aired—earning him an Emmy nomination—Van Dyke revealed he had struggled with drinking issues over 25 years in real life.

Van Dyke’s role fit several trends in TV at the time. Thanks to the success of producers like Norman Lear, programs were becoming more realistic and willing to tackle contemporary social issues. A few years after Van Dyke’s movie, in 1977, the miniseries “Roots” would break viewership records by casting beloved TV stars as villains, including Robert Reed from “The Brady Bunch” and Ralph Waite from “The Waltons.”

In fact, lots of established stars at the time were tackling meaty roles in TV movies focused on contemporary social issues, including Linda Blair and Mark Hamill in NBC’s 1975 movie “Sarah T— Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic” and Eve Plumb from “The Brady Bunch” in NBC’s 1976 film “Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway.”

Celebrities were also beginning to speak out on their own personal problems in public forums aimed at helping other people who might have similar issues. Most notably, former First Lady Betty Ford admitted in 1978 that she was addicted to alcohol and prescription drugs, seeking treatment two years after she and President Gerald Ford left the White House.

But Van Dyke’s film appeared before any of these incidents, placing a performer known for family-friendly sitcoms and comic films into a story which ends with the lead character hapless and drunk on a deserted beach.

Riding the TV mystery revival

Starring in a variety of TV and film roles through the 1980s, Van Dyke landed the role of crime-solving physician Mark Sloan on an episode of William Conrad’s legal drama for CBS, “Jake and the Fatman.”

Such episodes back then were often used as “backdoor pilots”—a way to introduce new characters to the audience of an already-successful show. So the episode of “Jake and the Fatman” led CBS to create a series of TV movies starring Dr. Sloan under the franchise title “Diagnosis: Murder,” eventually debuting the program as a series in 1993.

The show eventually ran for eight seasons, allowing Van Dyke to show even more versatility as a performer—leading a series typically formulated as a dramatic mystery, but capable of featuring lots of humor and other shadings.

Once again, Van Dyke was involved in another TV trend—shows featuring performers beloved by older audiences in murder mysteries aimed at older viewers, like Andy Griffith on “Matlock,” Tom Bosley on “Father Dowling Mysteries,” and Angela Lansbury on “Murder, She Wrote.”

Van Dyke’s work in TV continued into his 90s, with appearances on shows like “The Masked Singer” and “Days of Our Lives”—where he became the oldest person to be nominated for and win a Daytime Emmy Award, in 2024 at age 98.

Such accolades highlight how Van Dyke’s career has followed and mirrored the rise of television itself—a gifted performer continually finding ways to take advantage of new trends and bring his talent to audiences in new ways.

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