Dick Van Dyke was born a Century Ago Today in West Plains, MO!

 

by Pa Rock

West Plains Resident 

Entertainment legend Dick Van Dyke turns one hundred years old today, undoubtedly celebrating in the company of family and friends at his home in the foothills of Los Angeles, California.    But the actor and comedian (and singer and dancer) was not always a resident of the Hollywood scene.  He was born in the small, very rural burg of West Plains, Missouri, and his family relocated soon after to their hometown of Danville, Illinois, where Dick and his also famous younger brother, Jerry, grew up.  

Van Dyke joined the US Armed Forces in 1944 during his senior year in high school.   He hoped to become a pilot but was instead assigned to Special Services where he served as a singer and dancer entertaining troops overseas and in the continental United States.  It was during his military service that the young soldier was once again reunited with the Missouri Ozarks.  Van Dyke spent part of his enlistment at Camp Crowder (the largest inland military base in America at the time) near Neosho, Missouri, less than two hundred miles from his birthplace in West Plains.  Van Dyke's time at Camp Crowder was mentioned several times and even depicted on occasion on his hit television series, "The Dick Van Dyke Show," in the 1960's.

Dick Van Dyke was a struggling actor when he landed the lead in the 1960 Broadway production of "Bye Bye Birdie," a role for which he won a Tony Award.   He took a week off from that Broadway hit to audition for a new televison show that Carl Reiner was producing, and landed the leading role.  "The Dick Van Dyke Show" premiered on CBS in 1961, and the young actor was soon a household name.   He won three Prime Time Emmy Awards from his work on that show.    The versatile entertainer even won a Grammy Award in 1965 for Best Children's Album.  Some of Van Dyke's better known movies include "Mary Poppins," "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," and "Bye Bye Birdie."

Dick Van Dyke was still working in 2023 when he appeared in four episodes of the daytime television drama, "Days of Our Lives," and his voice was featured in an episode of "The Simpsons" that same year.  

The circumstances of Dick Van Dyke's birth are an interesting commentary on the social mores of life in the United States a century ago.  The entertainer reportedly said on "The Tonight Show" twenty years or so ago that  his mother, who was pregnant with him and unwed, was sent from her home in Danville, Illinois, to stay with relatives in West Plains until the baby was born.  The common version of the story in West Plains is that his father was a salesman who was working in West Palins at the time of his son's birth, and the family returned to Danville soon after the arrival of the baby.

There is a story on the front page of today's West Plains Quill which was informed by Dick's sister-in-law, Shirley, Jerry Van Dyke's widow.  According to Shirley Van Dyke's account Hazel McCord, a young stenographer, met Loren "Cookie" Van Dyke, a saxophonist and dancer at a lawn party where he was performing in Danville, Illinois.  They were married in Danville in June of 1925 and immediately hit the road in his vehicle headed for California where the groom hoped to become famous as a Hollywood star.  They made it as far as West Plains, MO, where, according to Dick, they must have run out of gas.   Hazel had been "in the family way" when they married, and after the baby was born in West Plains, the young family packed up and went back to Danville.

Whatever the circumstances, it is certainly an honor to know that someone as famous and influential as Dick Van Dyke drew his first breath right here in the hills and vales of West Plains and the beautiful Missouri Ozarks.

Happy birthday, sir!  May they keep getting better and better!