Dick Van Patten

Born in New York, NY, Richard Vincent Van Patten spent his earliest years in a family enamored with the theater. Every Friday night the family would make a subway pilgrimage from their home in Brooklyn into Manhattan to see Broadway plays. Mother, Josephine, Van Patten recalled, entered him in a "beautiful child" competition, which earned him an MGM screen test in Hollywood. He did not win a studio contract, but, upon returning to New York, his mother persistently secured meetings with agents and producers. It paid off when, at age seven, he was cast in the play "Tapestry in Gray" as the son of lead Melvyn Douglas, who would go on to win a Tony and two Academy Awards for his work. It began an impressive Broadway career that would see "Dickie Van Patten" - as he was oft-billed - cut his teeth on stages with such luminaries as Sam Jaff, Fredric March, William Bendix and Tallulah Bankhead. Throughout these years, he went to school at the Professional Children's School on New York's Upper West Side, also attended by his sister Joyce and a fellow child actor Sidney Lumet, the future Oscar-winning film director. Dickie and Joyce together won parts on a radio play called "Reg'lar Fellers," which was made into a movie in 1941 starring Our Gang star Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer - their first (albeit brief) big screen time. Another imminent Oscar-winner, Elia Kazan, directed Dickie in Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy "The Skin of Our Teeth" in 1942. His co-star in the play, the tempestuous and irrepressible Bankhead, disliked working with children but famously said she liked Dickie because he could read her The Daily Racing Form. In 1946, he won a major role in "Oh Mistress Mine" over two teen up-and-comers, Marlon Brando and Roddy McDowell, and spent more than a year with the show on Broadway and two more in the touring production. In 1948, he starred alongside Henry Fonda in the Pulitzer-winning play "Mr. Roberts," playing Ensign Pulver, the role for which Jack Lemmon would win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in the 1955 film version. After spending most of his childhood and teen years in live theater, Van Patten was cast as the eldest son, Nels, in what would become the prototype family comedy/drama, "Mama" (CBS, 1949-1957). The show became the most lasting iteration of what had become a proto-media franchise based on the Kathryn Forbes memoir Mama's Bank Account, which had inspired a Broadway play and 1948 movie under the name "I Remember Mama." As with much early television, the show was initially broadcast live, apropos to Van Patten's stage training (but leaving few recordings of the episodes to posterity), and he became a familiar face to Americans through his twenties, the show consistently rating in the Top 20. During "Mama," he also reacquainted himself with one of his old schoolmates, Pat Poole, now performing with the famed June Taylor Dancers on another CBS offering, "The Jackie Gleason Show" (1952-70). The two married in 1954 and the next year named their first-born son, Nels. When "Mama" ended production, Van Patten stayed busy with TV guest appearances and a few film roles, as well as returning to live theater. His movie roles ranged from the low-budget proto-slasher flick "Violent Midnight" (1963) to the Academy Award-winning "Charly" (1968); from B-grade horror camp like "Beware! The Blob" (1972) and fluffy Disney live-action fare like "The Strongest Man in the World" (1975) to the sci-fi classics "Westworld" (1973) and "Soylent Green" (1973). He returned to series TV in the Don Adams cop comedy "The Partners" (NBC, 1971-72) and, when the network canceled that program, he landed a role in "The New Dick Van Dyke Show" (CBS, 1972-74). In the meantime, he became ubiquitous as a guest-star, doing one-offs on such period staples as "I Dream of Jeannie" NBC, 1965-1970), "Sanford & Son" (NBC, 1972-77), "The Doris Day Show" (CBS, 1968-1973), "McMillan & Wife" (NBC, 1971-77), "Love, American Style" (ABC, 1969-1974), "Adam-12" (NBC, 1968-1975), and "The Six Million Dollar Man" (ABC, 1974-78) - just to name a handful. Curiously, he shared the latter credit with as his son Vince, who briefly became the young cyborg protégé of Steve Austin in a special "Six Million" two-hour TV movie dubbed "The Bionic Boy" (ABC, 1976) - just one outcrop of a growing Van Patten family infestation of the American visual entertainment. The mid-1970s would usher Van Patten to two projects that would thereafter characterize him in the public eye. First, in 1975, he began his professional association with Mel Brooks. Both were avid tennis players and established a fast friendship, which no doubt led to Brooks casting Van Patten in his off-the-wall treatment of the Robin Hood legend, "When Things Were Rotten" (ABC, 1975). The show built on the topical satire that had informed Brooks' previous TV hit, "Get Smart" (NBC, 1965-1970) - which had starred Van Patten's former co-star, and poker partner, Don Adams. Later, The Douglas S. Cramer Company cast Van Patten in a two-hour TV movie for ABC called "The Love Boat" (1976), a "comedy" that would track varied vignettes of cruise-ship guests and their amorous couplings. Van Patten played the ship's doctor, Adam O'Neill. ABC was set to greenlight the movie series into a regular hourly sitcom of the same name (1977-1986), but with his friend Bernie Kopell as the doctor. This allowed Van Patten to go on to anchor his own show - "Eight Is Enough" (1977-81). The show premiered mid-season in March 1977. Sadly, Diana Hyland, who played Bradford's wife Joan, died suddenly of cancer after filming only four episodes. Her character was "away" for the rest of the first season. Joan Bradford's death was written into the show in Season 2, and Van Patten would get a new love interest in Abby, played by Betty Buckley. The show finished at No. 12 overall in the 1979-80 season, and it hit No. 1 one week on the strength of a double episode featuring two of the Bradford children getting married in one ceremony. "Eight is Enough" dropped to a still respectable No. 18 the next year, but at season's end ABC execs pulled the plug on the show. Free of his most famous role, Van Patten returned to his familiar pattern of frequent guest-star and supporting film roles, including a total of six guest spots on "The Love Boat." He reunited with Mel Brooks in 1987, playing the hapless King Roland in Brooks' spoof of the Star Wars trilogy, "Space Balls." That same year, NBC called Van Patten back for "Eight is Enough : A Family Reunion" (1987), then again for "An Eight is Enough Wedding" (1989). He joined the ensemble drama "WIOU" (CBS, 1990-91) for its one-season run, then teamed up with Brooks again in 1993 for "Robin Hood: Men in Tights." Though timed to send up two recent big-screen Robin Hood retreatments - foremost Kevin Costner's "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" (1991) - "Men in Tights" came off as an even hammier, but still joyously stupid, iteration. In ensuing years, Van Patten spiced up his regular guest and supporting regime with some creative veers off the beaten path. In 1999, he made a brief, hilariously untoward cameo on Fox's "Family Guy" (1999-), voicing an animated version of himself as Tom Bradford. The next year Van Patten had a role in the raw indie film, "The Price of Air" (2000). In January 2006, Van Patten, who had Type 2 diabetes, suffered a diabetic stroke, though he subsequently made a full recovery. Returning to the screen, Van Patten guested in episodes of "The Sarah Silverman Program" (Comedy Central 2007-2010) and "Hot In Cleveland" (TVLand 2010-15), and had a supporting role in the family comedy "Opposite Day" (2009). Dick Van Patten died of complications from diabetes on June 23, 2015, at the age of 86.