This is one of those double birthdays that can keep your head swiveling.
On Saturday (Dec. 13), Dick Van Dyke (shown here) turns 100 … and Taylor Swift turns 36.
It’s kind of like “Barbieheimer,” when the “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” movies opened the same day, right? Now you don’t know what to put on the birthday cake. “Van Swift?” “Swift Dick?” Maybe not.
To complicate things further, both will be featured Friday through Sunday on TV, cable and streaming. (See box at the end.)
These are two tall, talented people. For this story, we’ll focus on Van Dyke.
He’s an amiable chap who started out as a radio disc jockey in his home town of Danville, Ill. Then he joined “The Merry Mutes,” a duo that performed in nightclubs, on local TV in Atlanta and even on network TV.
Yes, a wordless act — two guys lip-syncing to records — was considered entertainment in the early ’50s. A clip on a PBS’ special Friday shows Van Dyke making splendid use of his elastic face and body.
CBS was impressed with the guy, signed him to a seven-year contract … then had trouble finding a good spot for him.
Van Dyke hosted a kids’ cartoon show. He hosted one show call “Mother’s Day” — challenges included hard-boiling an egg and choosing a four-pound steak — and another called “Laugh Line.”
He was an opening-day panelist on both “Pantomime Quiz” and “To Tell the Truth,” a guest host on “The Gary Moore Show,” a guest panelist on many others. He even hosted the CBS morning show.
He had splended colleagues — Nichols and May on “Laugh Line,” Walter Cronkite (really) in the mornings. Nothing worked, including a comedy pilot called “The Trouble With Richard.”
And then he had one of the cleverest shows on TV — against all odds.
This was not a prestige time for CBS. James Aubrey ran the network from 1959 to ’65, packing it with low-brow shows. His era brought “Beverly Hillbillies,” “Petticoat Junction,” “My Favorite Martian,” “My Living Doll,” “Mister Ed” and, of course, “Gilligan’s Island.”
Still, some quality slipped through. “There were exceptions to the usual run of pap Aubrey fed the public,” Robert Metz wrote in “CBS: Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye” (Playboy Press, 1975). “The Dick Van Dyke series is still regarded as landmark comedy.”
Aubrey listened to advertisers and to strong producers. And Sheldon Leonard — already producer of the Danny Thomas and Andy Griffith shows — was pushing a new one.
“The new project was the creation of Carl Reiner, who had written and produced a pilot starring himself and Barbara Britton,” Grant Tinker wrote in “Tinker in Television” (Simon & Schuster, 1994), “It hadn’t sold, but Carl had holed up for the summer at Fire Island and written another dozen episodes.”
Procter & Gamble — then TV’s leading advertiser — agreed to finance a second pilot … with someone other than Reiner starring. As Tinker wrote:
“The project was moribund until the male lead was found, A dispirited Sheldon Leonard left my office to get ready for an evening at the theater.
“He called the next morning in a much-improved mood, ‘I’ve found our guy,’ he announced.
Leonard had just seen “Bye Bye Birdie” on Broadway. Van Dyke — untrained in song and dance, but with puppy-dog enthusiasm — had dazzled.
“The Dick Van Dyke Show” debuted in 1961 in an odd timeslot, wedged between “Marshal Dillon” and “Dobie Gillis.” The quality was high, the ratings were so-so … and it was cancelled.
Instead of judging the show’s quality and potential, Tinker wrote, “CBS had opted to read the Nielsen numbers and just give up.”
But Sheldon Leonard wasn’t the give-up twice. Proctor & Gamble was still ready to take half the show and he quickly found someone else for the other half. CBS relented and put it back on the schedule.
In a better timeslot, it soared. It was No. 9 in the Nielsen ratings that year, then No. 3, No. 7 and No. 16. In each of those four years, it won the Emmy for best comedy series and Van Dyke won for best actor.
He went on to movies, one of them great (“Mary Poppins,” shown here), one ambitious (“Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”), most kind of pleasant. He did some more TV — variety specials, a variety show, a comedy series, a mystery series. He did serious movies and confessed his own longtime struggles with alcoholism.
He persisted — and danced in “Mary Poppins Returns” when he was 93. Now, seven years later, it’s time for his (and Taylor Swift’s) birthday.
Dick Van Dyke
— “American Masters,” 9 p.m. Friday, PBS
— “Dick Van Dyke Show” marathon, 10 p.m. ET Friday to 2 a.m. ET Monday on Catchy Comedy. That’s a digital sub-channel carried by some stations and some cable systems and streaming on Philo, Frndly TV and Fubo TV; check www.catchycomedy.com.
— Movie musicals, Saturday on Turner Classic Movies. It’s “Bye Bye Birdie” (1963) at noon ET, “Mary Poppins” (1964) at 2, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” (1968) at 4:30.
Taylor Swift
— On Disney+: Debuting Friday are a concert film (“The Eras Tour — The Final Show”) and the start of a six-part backstage documentary (“The End of an Era”).
— On ABC: At 8 p.m. Friday is the first episode of “End of an Era.” At 9 is a sampling of the concert film.
— On CW: A documentary, “Taylor,” is 8-10 p.m. Saturday.