Dick Van Dyke has had quite the illustrious career, often crossing paths and rubbing elbows with a number of famous faces.
“I live with a lifted spirit, and my purpose on earth has been to lift the spirits of my fellow humans,” Van Dyke wrote in his 100 Rules of Living to 100 memoir, released Tuesday, November 14. “I’ve made it to 100, in no small part, because I have stubbornly refused to give in to the bad stuff in life.”
In 100 Rules of Living to 100, published ahead of Van Dyke’s milestone 100th birthday, the iconic actor shared his best life advice and Hollywood memories in an autobiographical collection of short essays.
Keep scrolling for Van Dyke’s biggest book reveals about other celebrities:
Chita Rivera
Van Dyke starred opposite Rivera, who died in 2024, in the 1960 Broadway production of Bye Bye Birdie.
“Chita came to the show with the wind in her sails, and I felt like a stowaway,” he wrote of the actors’ different levels of theatrical training. “But boy, did she have a way of making me feel like I belonged on board from the get-go.”
According to Van Dyke, who played Albert to Rivera’s Rosie in the musical, the pair had “real chemistry and trust.”
“[It] gave us the freedom in our scenes and numbers together to experiment, surprise one another, make each moment crackly and fresh,” he noted.
Van Dyke and Rivera reunited nearly 60 years later at the 2021 Kennedy Center Honors, when he received the recognition at age 96. (Rivera, who was 88 at the time, had been honored two decades prior.)
“We talked a lot about performance in general,” Van Dyke recalled in his book, remembering that Rivera told him they both would “be here forever.” They also concocted a “rough plan” to team up for a musical revue.
“I don’t know about Chita, but it really felt like the excitement was mutual,” he wrote. “I’m still sad that we never did that show, but as far as ‘next chapters’ go, that conversation was darn near perfect.”
Lucille Ball
Van Dyke met the acclaimed I Love Lucy star during production on his eponymous series, The Dick Van Dyke Show. The program was filmed at Desilu-Cahuenga Studios, which Ball co-owned with her former costar and ex-husband, Desi Arnaz.
“Lucy made a point of making the rounds and keeping up with the goings-on at the various shows filming at her studios,” Van Dyke wrote. “We were always having fun on that set, and when Lucy came by, she seemed to enjoy getting in on the fun even if it was just for a minute.”
According to Van Dyke, he was especially keen to impress Ball, so he “tried extra hard to be funny” during her set visits. At one point, Van Dyke created a “rather obvious gag” where Ball was the landlady of a dilapidated building to his disgruntled tenant. To Van Dyke’s surprise, Ball played along.
“From there, Lucy and I fell into a long friendship, with much improvement in our shared comedy,” he added.
Ball appeared on Van Dyke’s Van Dyke and Company variety series a decade later, where they sang, danced and delivered additional physical comedic bits.
Cary Grant
Van Dyke also had a storied friendship with Grant, stemming from An Affair to Remember actor visiting his Bye Bye Birdie dressing room and complimenting his dress sense.
Later, in the early 1960s, Van Dyke received a phone call from Grant “out of the blue” to discuss the latter’s experience taking LSD.
“Along with other Hollywood folks at the time, Cary had been doing guided LSD trips as a psychiatric treatment for years, and he’d been quite public about how much they’d helped,” Van Dyke wrote. “I remember he sounded a bit metaphysical, talking about how we are all connected by the particles that make us up.”
While Van Dyke acknowledged that he still doesn’t know “what’s in Cary’s head,” the Mary Poppins star is glad that the phone call seemingly helped Grant work through his struggles. Grant, who ultimately died in 1986, started calling Van Dyke regularly to chat. According to Van Dyke, their calls would range from movie-star gossip to advice requests and more.
“I was mostly silent, offering my bits of advice if there was a pause mostly, again, listening for what he wasn’t saying,” he wrote. “At times, it sounded like Cary was thinking of us as kindred spirits, which was touching.”
Mary Tyler Moore
Van Dyke and his former costar filmed a 1961 commercial for Kent Cigarettes, but they both “felt total horror” when it aired on TV.
“We had put our names and images on an ad for cigarettes,” he said. “This was our first season, so we were more beholden to our sponsors.”
Van Dyke and Moore eventually informed the network that they made a “grave error” in agreeing to film the ad, requesting to have the footage removed from broadcast.
“We were celebrities now and that came with responsibility,” he recalled. “After that Mary and I took that responsibility very seriously.”
Drake Hogestyn
Van Dyke met the Days of Our Lives mainstay at their mutual gym, calling him a “rock-solid gym buddy.”
“Every now and then, between sets at the gym, I would give Drake a little half rib/half pitch: ‘Don’t they ever hire any old people on that show? Come on!’” Van Dyke wrote. “Unbeknownst to me, Drake took me seriously [and] talked to the show’s producers.”
Van Dyke portrayed Hogestyn’s onscreen father in a four-episode arc in 2023, which won a Daytime Emmy Award.
Less than a year after Van Dyke’s Days debut, Hogestyn died at 70 after battling pancreatic cancer. Their soap costar Bill Hayes also died in 2024 at the age of 98.
Gene Hackman
Hackman grew up in Van Dyke’s hometown and was the younger cousin of Van Dyke’s close friend. Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, both died in February 2025 as Van Dyke was writing 100 Rules.
“He and I had grown up together,” Van Dyke recalled of his childhood friendship with Hackman. “We’d be telling our jokes and doing our pranks, going way over the top, and Gene would just be along for the ride, not saying much, just quietly observing us. Every time I saw him in a movie, I thought the same thing about his performance. He had so much internal power.”
Van Dyke further noted “it was agony” thinking about the circumstances surrounding Hackman and Arakawa’s death.
‘The Masked Singer’
Van Dyke performed as Gnome on the reality TV competition in 2023 when he was 97 years old. As he wrote in the book, he “always turned [producers] down” when they offered him a singing slot on multiple seasons.
By 2023, The Masked Singer “offered so much money that [Arlene Silver, my wife and I] couldn’t say no.” Despite fears of looking foolish, Van Dyke ended up having “the most bizarre performance of [his] life.”
“I owe much of my success to wardrobe,” he gushed of his time on the musical competition series. “The thing I’d dreaded the most ended up being my best friend.”
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