On screen, Dick Van Dyke has been rescued from untimely death by flying cars and magical nannies. Off screen, the veteran star of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Mary Poppins had to rely on the help of a pod of porpoises after apparently dozing off aboard his surfboard. “I’m not kidding,” he said afterwards.
Van Dyke’s ordeal began during an ill-fated trip to his local beach. “I woke up out of sight of land,” the 84-year-old actor told reporters. “I started paddling with the swells and I started seeing fins swimming around me and I thought ‘I’m dead!'”
Van Dyke was wrong. “They turned out to be porpoises,” he said. “And they pushed me all the way to shore.” The porpoises were unavailable for comment.
I hate to be a skeptic, but this story smells a little fishy. I mean, surfing at 84!!!
Q: Why didn’t Natalie Wood use the restroom on the sailboat?
A: She wanted to wash up on shore.
He was referring to the “big board” days of surfing in the ’60s. He wasn’t 84 at the time.
Didn’t this character once have a drink problem?
Falling asleep on a surfboard?
Might well be true, but, then I didn’t find his ‘cockney’ accent very convincing either in Mary Poppins.
Brits can’t do American accents either just as American Irish is about as convincing as Porpoises guiding surfboards are (to sober people I mean), or for that matter, Obama’s usually unconvincing try at rhetoric using other people’s borrowed/stolen quotes (inaccurately usually). Original speechwriters are, these days, as rare as honest bankers it seems.
Porpoise probably pushed him out there when he fell asleep, just to see the expression on his face when he woke.
Plenty of old-timers surf here on the north end of Monterey Bay, CA….
call me jaded..
its eitherpublicity stunt, or it did in fact happen and since Dick seems to have not been blackballed by the industry completely..he’s eeking out another “15 minutes”
fwiw: the historical record is replete with dolphins and the like saving humans.
-s
For some reason dolphins tend to shove people to shore.
I don’t know if the story is true but as for the industry blackballing him. It black balls vertically everybody past forty. He lasted a heck of lot longer than most before becoming a person of no interest.
He originally told this story last week on the Late Late Show with Craig Fergusson. I watched the show. Yes, it was in the 1960s when this incident happened according to the story.
Blackballed? A quick check of IMDB shows this octogenarian has made 16 TV appearances and movies since 2000. He has four production credits in that same time frame and performed on four soundtracks. Ending in 2001 he completed 8 seasons of a popular TV series with 178 episodes. I bet that;s still bringing him a fortune in residuals. Sounds more like an active retirement than being blackballed.
sooooooooooooooo
the porpoises purposely pushed him back to shore??? nyuck nyuck nyuck…
Of course in these modern days of political correctness, he has to be referred to as **** van ****.
#11
Nah we just call him DVD.
Sadly DVD will be gone soon.
Cursor_
“Porpoise probably pushed him out there when he fell asleep, just to see the expression on his face when he woke.”
You would too, if you were a super-intelligent marine mammal species with a LOT of time on your hands, er, flippers.
The reason porpoises push people back to shore is because they don’t want them out there, messing up their nice ocean.
I wonder if they did it on PORPOISE?
Didn’t Elian Gonzalaz (that Cuban kid who washed up in Florida in the 1990’s) also get saved by dolphins?
“Ooohh Rob!” Laura Petrie