Actor and funny man Dick Van Dyke, best known for breathing life into the roles of Bert the chimney sweep in Disney’s Mary Poppins (1964) alongside actress Julie Andrews and Rob Petrie in The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966) alongside the talented Mary Tyler Moore, has spent the majority of his lifetime in front of a camera.
Beginning in 1947, Van Dyke and his partner performed a comedy pantomime act. The duo called themselves the Merry Mutes. Throughout much of the 1950s, he appeared on game shows and variety shows on television, but in 1959, his Broadway debut took him to the next step in his career, ultimately serving as his springboard to success. Van Dyke was cast in the Broadway revue The Girls Against the Boys before finally winning the lead role as Albert Peterson in the musical Bye Bye Birdie–a role he played from 1960 to 1961.
Van Dyke’s success with Bye Bye Birdie led to his being cast as comedy writer Rob Petrie in the comedy series The Dick Van Dyke Show, created by Carl Reiner. The show received 15 Emmy Awards, and Van Dyke’s performance garnered three of them (1964–66). It remained popular in syndication, and the character of Rob Petrie is perhaps the role with which Van Dyke is most associated.
Dick Van Dyke’s career only continued to grow from there. Today, the beloved actor is 97 years old and has a huge following among fans, both young and old. Earlier this year, Van Dyke made a special appearance on The Masked Singer, delighting fans and bringing one judge to tears.
For all his talents and abilities, Van Dyke has amassed a massive $50 million fortune. And he has no plans to try to take it with him. Instead, he’s blowing the money as fast as he can in the time he still has left.
Van Dyke is the patriarch of a big family that includes his much younger wife, Arlene, who’s 46 years his junior–something that really worried him in the months before he married her. He also has four children from his 36-year marriage to his first wife, Margie, who passed away nearly 40 years ago. He also boasts eight grandkids and eight great-grandkids. And those who know him best say Dick Van Dyke is doling out his dough–his $50 million nest egg–among them all.
“All it takes is for them to say they want anything, and it’s theirs,” said an insider during an interview.
But Van Dyke, who will turn 100 years old in 2025, isn’t reserving his funds for family only. His “geriatric generosity” has been witnessed by others as well who say Van Dyke has a benevolent heart for others.
In 2022, the famed funny man was seen handing out cash to the homeless in California near his Malibu home.
“He’s got more than enough money and he’d rather share it while he’s alive,” the insider added.
In March 2023, news of Van Dyke’s involvement in a car crash in Malibu, California, made the rounds–but not until nearly one week after the accident. Officers were reportedly called to the scene of the crash, and when they arrived, they discovered a silver Lexus had collided with a gate. Behind the wheel was the veteran Mary Poppins (1964) and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) actor Dick Van Dyke.
A spokesperson with the Malibu Police Department confirmed that Van Dyke suffered injuries as a result of the accident, though they were reportedly minor. Following the crash, the famed actor’s wife of more than a decade, Arlene Silver, was reportedly forced to make the difficult decision to take the beloved actors’ keys from him for good.
But the award-winning actor hasn’t let his age stop him, and according to RadarOnline, Van Dyke continually ignores others’ warnings about taking it easy and slowing down at his age.
Van Dyke is “determined to maintain his independence,” snitched the source, who also claimed the actor is allegedly saying that “everyone needs to butt out and leave him to enjoy the time he has left however he wants,” and, apparently, the actor feels the same way about blowing his fortune.
