My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business by Dick Van Dyke

Author:Dick Van Dyke [Dyke, Dick Van]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780307592262
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-03T05:00:00+00:00

16

UPSETS AND GOOD-BYES

In the spring of 1965, I made Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N., a silly Disney movie about a Navy pilot who ends up on a deserted island with a native girl and a space program–trained chimp for companionship. The picture was pure family fun—and a good time for me personally for a reason I never expected: I fell into a deep friendship with the chimp.

We shot a good portion of the movie in Kauai and made a family vacation out of it. Walt and his wife, Lillian, came over, too. We stayed at a hotel whose accommodations looked like grass-covered huts. Walt and Lilly had the room above ours, and I heard him hacking and coughing all night. Yet after dinner, as we told stories in the bar, he smoked like a chimney, and drank pretty well, too, as did I in those days.

My partner and manager, Byron Paul, was directing the movie, and before shooting on the first day, my costar Nancy Kwan, a beautiful actress originally trained as a classical ballerina, took him aside and asked, “Mr. Van Dyke is not going to bother me, is he?” Evidently she had been in another project where someone had spent the entire production chasing after her.

“No, Mr. Van Dyke is safe,” Byron told her.

She needn’t have worried, as Mr. Van Dyke was occupied with his other costar. A jungle set was built near the beach, and on the first morning of work, as I walked onto the set holding a Styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other, I was greeted by Dinky, the 130-pound chimp who was the real star of the movie. Seated in his personal director’s chair, which was near mine, he crooked his index finger and motioned me toward him.

“Hello, how are you?” I said.

Apparently he felt the same way I did. After a slight roll of his eyes, he reached for my coffee and cigarette, then drank the coffee and smoked the cigarette. I looked at his trainer.

“He shouldn’t smoke,” I said.

“Neither should you,” the trainer said.

From then on, I brought Dinky a cup of coffee every morning and lit a cigarette for him. I might as well have asked him how he slept, as we started our days so similarly. It was as if we could actually talk to each other. Soon Dinky and I started to have lunch together. He ate with a fork and used a napkin. For a chimp, his manners were impeccable. So was his sense of humor.

One day I saw him resting cross-legged on a log. I noticed he had taken off the chain that was normally around his ankle and put it around the leg of his trainer, Stewart. I swear he caught my eye and gave me a look that said, Don’t tell. All of a sudden he took off and ran up a tree, then beat his chest and laughed.

I don’t know any other way to describe it, but Dinky was chuckling at his own joke.

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