Book Review
Title: My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business
Author: Dick Van Dyke
Publisher: Three Rivers Press (May 15, 2012)
Dick Van Dyke’s autobiography My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business provides a delightful retrospective of the charmed life of a brilliant talent. Van Dyke takes us through his struggling years, through early breaks, rise to the top, and his enduring successes throughout his life. During his story we meet a lot of other brilliant talents, as he worked with many of the greatest actors and comedians in the industry.
Van Dyke had many film and TV successes: Mary Poppins, Bye Bye Birdie, TV variety shows, a hugely successful primetime show “Diagnosis Murder,” among others. The centerpiece of his career was, of course, the Dick Van Dyke show in the early 1960s. This is also where Mary Tyler Moore got her start in show business. The most colorful character on that show might’ve been Morey Amsterdam. He was an all-around entertainer who came up through vaudeville and reportedly memorized at least 100,000 jokes for any occasion. Anecdotes of Morey provide an extra dose of fun in the life story.
Dick Van Dyke appreciated earlier actors and comedians from whom he had learned. He especially admired the ones who worked the hardest and made it look the easiest. For example, he said of Stan Laurel (of the Laurel and Hardy comedy duo), about the artistic effort in his work: “Stan took care to hide it, to conceal the hours of hard creative work that went into his movies. He didn’t want you to see that—he just wanted you to laugh, and you did!” The same can truly be said of Dick Van Dyke.
He had his share of heartbreaks, but the overall experience reading the book is positive, full of bright optimism and joy in life. He had a lot to be thankful for. He also embodied the old saying, “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it” (unknown).