Actor/comedian Dick Van Dyke, who earlier this year presented Mary Tyler Moore with the Screen Actors Guild’s Lifetime Achievement Award, will receive the honor himself at next year’s ceremony, the guild announced today.
“Dick is the consummate entertainer— an enormously talented performer whose work has crossed nearly every major category of entertainment,” said SAG-AFTRA co-president Ken Howard. “From his career-changing Broadway turn in `Bye Bye Birdie’ and his deadpan humor in the Emmy winning `Dick Van Dyke Show,’ to his unforgettable performance as Bert in `Mary Poppins,’ he sets a high bar for actors.
“Stage, big screen, small screen, literally everywhere he has worked he has inspired millions of fans and has had a tremendously positive impact on the industry and the world,” Howard said. “He is so deserving of this honor and I congratulate him.”
Van Dyke, 86, will receive the award during the 19th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on Jan. 27.
He presented Moore —who played his TV wife Laura Petrie on “The Dick Van Dyke Show”—with SAG’s Lifetime Achievement Award in January, hailing her as “one of the few performers, women, who could do a flat-out comedy scene, slapstick, and still be beautiful and feminine and adorable.”
A native of Missouri who grew up in Illinois, Van Dyke won three Emmy awards for “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and collected another one in 1977 for the variety series “Van Dyke and Company.” He also won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1984 for children’s programming for an episode of “CBS Library.”
Van Dyke began his career in stage and radio shows before landing some television hosting jobs. He made his Broadway debut in 1959, but hit it big the following year with his casting in “Bye Bye Birdie,” which earned him a Tony Award. It also earned him a job opposite Moore on “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” which ran for five seasons.
In the midst of the show’s run, he starred with Julie Andrews in “Mary Poppins,” a film that won five Oscars.
His other film credits include “Chitty Chitty Bang-Bang,” “Divorce American Style,” “Fitzwilly,” “Some Kind of a Nut,” “The Comic” and
`Cold Turkey.”
He returned to television in the early 1970s in “The New Dick Van Dyke Show” and made guest spots on shows such as “The Bill Cosby Show,” “Columbo” and “Lola!” He appeared in a string of made-for-television movies in the 1980s and 1990s, before returning to series television in “Diagnosis: Murder,” which co-starred his son Barry.
Van Dyke has also been active in helping the homeless, supporting the Midnight Mission in downtown Los Angeles and appearing regularly at Thanksgiving and Christmas meals.
He has four children from his marriage to the late Marjorie Willet Van Dyke, and seven grandchildren. Earlier this year, he married make-up artist Arlene Silver. (CNS)