Comedy legend Dick Van Dyke turns 100 years old today. With a career spanning eight decades, Van Dyke has given us an incredible body of work to reflect on, from his groundbreaking sitcom The Dick Van Dyke Show to the Night at the Museum movies. One thing that we feel he can never get enough credit for, however, is his inimitable gift for physical comedy. A lot of people have attempted similar things over the years, but what he did, particularly on the Dick Van Dyke Show, feels like a lost art. In other words, anybody can get a laugh by walking into a wall; it’s another thing entirely to do something impressive and funny at the same time.
For that reason, we’ve put together a selection of clips showcasing some of the more noteworthy examples of his one-of-a-kind visual gags. Watch along with us below as we celebrate his milestone 100th birthday.
THE DRUNK UNCLE BIT
In the very first episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, Rob (Van Dyke) and Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) attend a party at Rob’s boss’s house. Laura wants to leave early, but before they go, Rob performs a routine where he does an impression of Laura’s uncle coming home drunk from a party. The recurring gag is that he’s stumbling around and almost falling over, except for when his wife—played by Rose Marie—enters the room, at which point he straightens up immediately to try and fool her. Eventually, he sits down to go through some mail, and as his wife exits the scene, Rob slides out of the chair like a real-life cartoon character:
THE HEADLESS (HORSELESS) MAN
Rob has to explain to his son’s classmates what he does for a living in the Season 1 episode “Father of the Week.” At around the 21-minute mark in the video below, we fade in on a shot of Rob in the classroom. He’s shown from behind and appears to be standing there without a head. It’s such an unexpected moment that some audience members actually gasped a little. He then turns around to reveal that he had his head safely tucked down between his shoulders the entire time. Jim Carrey later paid homage to the gag in Sonic the Hedgehog.
THE INVISIBLE CHAIR
In Season 2’s “The Sam Pomerantz Scandals,” Rob and his friend Sam do a skit imitating Laurel & Hardy. At the beginning of the scene, Rob (as Stan Laurel) walks over to a table where Sam is seated and sits down on a non-existent chair. And we don’t mean he squats down next to the table; that’s child’s play. No, he hovers there cross-legged with one knee draped over the other—until he’s informed that he isn’t actually sitting on anything, that is:
THE HISTORY OF SLAPSTICK
Van Dyke did several variations of his history of slapstick routine, including on his sitcom. In this lesser-known version, he slides off a desk, slams his face on it for good measure, and gets his foot stuck in a garbage can before taking a fall down the steps that would make a WWE wrestler wince:
AND, OF COURSE, THAT DAMN OTTOMAN
No list would be complete without Van Dyke tripping over the ottoman in the famous intro to his show. They actually filmed three different versions of this sequence so that the audience wouldn’t know which one they were getting each week. There’s one where he sidesteps the ottoman, another where he almost falls and then trips a little while walking around it, and then there was arguably the most iconic fall in television history:
Happy 100th birthday, Dick!
The post Dick Van Dyke at 100: Showcasing a Master of Physical Comedy appeared first on VICE.
