Flexible limbs, fantasy accents, and crackling sexual chemistry: Dick Van Dyke turns 100 | Dick Van Dyke

AAll Hollywood stars grow old and die, except perhaps for one of them – Dick Van Dyke – who turns 100 today. The real world Peter Pan who used to stumble upon the ottoman on The Dick Van Dyke Show is still standing. The man who impersonated the wind-up toy in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang hasn’t given up yet. He has outlived mentors, co-stars, romantic partners, and many studios. He has outlived the jokes about his performance in Mary Poppins. These days, his distorted Cockney accent is viewed with more affection than disdain. It is seen as one of the great classic movie charms of 1964, along with the carousel chase or the cartoon dancing penguins.

Charm is the magic ingredient of every famous artist, and few had it in such abundance as Van Dyke, the poor son of a cake salesman who dropped out of high school and taught himself in the movies. His Broadway co-star, Chita Rivera, once said, “His job in life is to make the world a happier place,” which may explain his stubborn refusal to quit, not when times are tough and he feels audiences still need cheer.

Naturally, his work rate has slowed down now, but in the past few years he has starred in the TV show The Masked Singer, starred in a Coldplay video, and was a Bernie Sanders enthusiast. Van Dyke simply could not understand why America’s older citizens were so resistant to Sanders’ democratic socialist local policies. “I want to urge my generation to go out and vote for him, please,” he said.

As it reached triple digits, it became a piece of living history: a walking, talking record of the American entertainment business itself. Van Dyke began his career performing for troops in World War II and proceeded to rub shoulders with the likes of Phil Silvers and Walt Disney. He had one foot in music hall slapstick and the other in screwball comedy, probably with splayed toes in his Midwestern hometown of Danville, Illinois.

By bridging these worlds, he perfected an outward-facing public image that was one part Stan Laurel, two parts Jimmy Stewart: a talkative buffoon who was decent, honest, and smarter than he first appeared. While he was already approaching 40 when The Dick Van Dyke Show and Mary Poppins made him an international star, the actor remained irrepressibly boyish. In 1968’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, he played Caractacus Boots, a mad inventor who dreams of a flying car, while Lionel Jeffries – six months his junior – played Boots’ eccentric father.

Van Dyck largely stayed away from dark films. Famously, he turned down the lead role in The Omen and insisted he played mostly a version of himself. “Helpful,” he says. “A good boy in every way.” And that’s true so far, though it’s probably only half the story, because Van Dyck’s explanation conveniently sidesteps a 25-year struggle with alcoholism that spanned the height of his career. It’s also likely to mask the mischievous — even brutal — dance atmosphere that animates his more family-friendly shows.

Or to put it more bluntly, Van Dyke may have been mainstream, but he never felt conservative, nor even comfortable, entirely. He brought a lot of energy to the room. It was as if he had just come in from outside and wasn’t completely tied to the house. The Dick Van Dyke Show – a regular 1960s family sitcom – features the raw sexual chemistry and mutual respect that Van Dyke cooked up with his co-star Mary Tyler Moore.

Caractacus Boots, for his part, is the ultimate cliche dad: loving, sexy, and likely to forget every birthday and dentist appointment. Then there’s Bert, the Mary Poppins character who saunters across the rooftops of London like an urbane disc jockey on Book Hill. The evidence suggests that Bert is not a Cockney at all. He is a fearsome, strange and mercurial spirit of nature, and gamely tries to pass himself off as one of the locals.

Van Dyke is 100 years old, so he no longer looks like Peter Pan. He seems, if anything, a platonic ideal of aging, with his laugh lines and bushy white beard, the fickle embodiment of a life well lived. In his later years, he got so used to people asking him for health advice that he sat down and included it all in the book (100 Rules for Living to 100).

Man is so self-conscious that he cannot present himself as a model of the good life. Instead, he attributes his longevity to a little everyday magic — a combination of good genes, strong friendships and a positive mental outlook. “My life has been a wonderful indulgence,” he says. “I was able to do what I love and share it with the world.”

It’s an arrangement he’s maintained for an entire century on this planet. It has fueled a career so rewarding and enjoyable that it barely feels like work at all. Van Dyke began his career as a cliche show business neophyte, a controlled explosion of floppy limbs and a rubber double-face, before gradually maturing into Hollywood’s glittering patriarch time. It is ancient but evergreen, respected and appreciated. And he’s just as lucky as lucky can be.