In the past, 100 year old people are crumpled in the corner of a care home, mouth agape, perhaps revealing buoyant, roaming dentures. For their 100th birthday party a wig may appear. For a short time, Viz had readers send in photos from local papers of people in this situation “having a whale of a time”. I suspect the subject matter was deemed too cruel to continue, which is fair enough I think.
Times have changed. We still have Macca, Mick, Keef, Cliff, Rod, William Shatner and BRIAN BLESSED for that matter still out there with no real signs of retiring and there’s plenty more where they come from.
I had far too many Christmas beers on Thursday with a man who started his insurance career in 1965. He is 78, runs half-marathons and is far more active and curious about his work and his local community than I’ll ever be. I was nursing my head on Friday morning, he was having an early morning jog around the waterfront.
So I’d like to get the old harp out, do a glissando and imagine a credible band of 100 year old musicians in 2040 ish. It’s only 16 years away.
I think Macca, Ringo, Mick and Keef could do a show where acoustic guitars are strummed and anecdotes shared. Full-on musical numbers of their big hits could be performed by talented young people, with them watching on approvingly. I’d go to see that.
He has apologised for that accent, I don’t think I’d ever heard a cockney when I first saw the film so I’d nothing to judge it against, what really annoyed me in the film was the substitution with an American robin in place of a European robin.
“In 2017, Van Dyke learned that he would receive the Britannia award from BAFTA for excellence in television. Speaking afterwards, he said: “I appreciate this opportunity to apologize to the members of BAFTA for inflicting on them the most atrocious cockney accent in the history of cinema.”
“People in the UK love to rib me about my accent, I will never live it down,” he said. “They ask what part of England I was meant to be from and I say it was a little shire in the north where most of the people were from Ohio.”
Although Van Dyke considers this the best film he has appeared in, he nevertheless maintains to this day that he was somewhat miscast as Bert. He has suggested that either Jim Dale or Ron Moody would have played the part better. He also said he was completely unaware during the shoot that anything was wrong with his attempted cockney accent. “I was working with an entire English cast and nobody said a word, not Julie [Andrews], not anybody said I needed to work on it so I thought I was alright.” Van Dyke stated that his vocal coach was Lancashire-born actor J. Pat O’Malley, who had an even worse cockney accent. (IMDb/The Guardian)”
Happy Birthday, Dick Van Dyke!
In Chitty Chitty Bang Bang he was excellent again as Caractacus Potts – adopting his own accent rather than trying to do another English one.
I think the trickiest role to fill will be that of vocalist. It’s true that some voices mature, sometimes substance-assisted, but by and large vocal frailty prevails.
By and large, voices get lower, so, by 100, Leonard Cohen would only be audible to creatures with ears opposite to dogs.
I think an acoustic section of gentle songs suiting an older voice might work. Johnny Cash’s “old” voice was rather lovely, I thought.
He has nothing to apologise for.
I was 9, the film was out and doing well and my mum took us to the Drake cinema to see it one afternoon. At the time I’d never been east of Exeter and knew nothing of accents beyond Devon, apart from that of my pal Sean who came from Youghal. I was perfectly prepared to believe that people in London either spoke plummy RP or Joe Brown ‘Henery The 8th’ exaggerated cor-blimey. I only knew RP from the Home Service and cor-blimey from comedians on The Good Old Days.
Flying by means of umbrella was a mind-blower, learning how to spell and say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious took ages, and live action mixed with animation was properly state-of-the-art cinematic genius. I left the cinema hoping that our sweep would be coming soon to do the chimney in the front room, and that I could shake his hand and get a big dollop of good luck; maybe I’d get that Corgi car-transporter set that I wanted for Christmas, after all.
Many happy returns, Mr. Van Dyke!
Absolutely. He was brilliant and I feel like watching it now.
Funny how a man’s 80 year career can be reduced to a poor accent in one film.
The Dick Van Dyke show was brilliant and pioneering, still very watchable today. You can find it streaming on a number of services
I’m sure he’ll be devastated when he reads this thread.
He put his longevity down to never bearing a grudge.
‘Chitty’ remains one of my favourite films. And one of the very few I’ve been to the cinema to see. I wish I still had my Corgi Toys car. I can do a very good Baron Bomburst, though. Or at least whoever did Gert Fröbe‘s spoken parts. Possibly Michael Collins? Not Gertan ‘King Penguin’ Klauber.
It appears the dubbing of Gert in CCBB was by American sitcom star Roger C. Camel not listed in IMDB unlike Phil Collins who also appeared in it uncredited.
I bet Roger has the hump about that.
I’ve just read that when filming CCBB Dick Van Dyke was six months older than Lionel Jeffrey’s who was playing his father.
Jeffries bloody spellcheck.
Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch are both 84, and Brian Bennett is 85. I can imagine them knocking out Apache in 16 years time, although possibly without the Shadows walk. They’ve seen off a few bass players in their time, but I’d happily stand in.
There onetime lead singer is still available too, I gather.
I never saw Mary Poppins as a child. Watching it out of curiosity a few years back I came to the conclusion that it’s not a very good film. I think that the (completely understandable) childhood wonder and associated nostalgia that comes with it has swayed many to be kinder to it than it deserves. I wish I did have the same view but I just don’t.
Anyhoo, many happy returns Mr. Van Dyke.
I read the books as a kid, too. People forget they were written by Ian Fleming.
Strewth, did anyone ever tell P. L. Travers she was really Ian Fleming? Methinks your comment went in the wrong place in this thread!
Ah yes! *Face plant*
I think it’s wonderful and I loved the sequel/reboot a few years ago, which also featured DVD. Ok I was probably 6 or something when I first saw it
I liked his loose-limbed style of dancing in MP. And the mix of live action and animation was quite amazing for it’s time.
Those old-school showbiz types who could sing a bit, dance a bit and act as well are pretty much an extinct species now.
I seem to recall he had quite a serious tussle with the bottle many years back, so he did well to reach 99 years of age.
Try watching it with a spoonful of sugar.
100 – will there be a hamper?
One of my earliest TV memories.
On a melancholy note, Carl Reiner created the show drawing on his own experiences as a TV writer for an egotistic comic, who went home every night to a normal suburban life. Dick van Dyke’s family in the show were supposed to be loosely based on his own at the time, including Rob.
Yes, I was thinking about this. DVD and MTM’s son in the show, Ritchie, would be representing a younger Rob. Reiner lived in New Rochelle where the family are based.
About 35 years ago, I went to a Reggae Sunsplash at the Brixton Academy with my chums Craig and Gillian, who were living in Ilford at the time. We saw the likes of Toots and Jimmy Cliff.
The air was thick, heavy fragrant, and green. I think we were were the only white people in the place, and we were the only people buying pints at the bar.
On the train back from Liverpool St to Ilford, I acted out scenes from Mary Poppins with Gilly, bouncing off the seats during our penguin dance. My Cockerney chimney sweep DVD impression earned a fit of giggles from Craig. We were all strangely very hungry when we got back to Ilford and went for a kebab on the walk back to their house.
I think the peanuts must have been off.