TV icon Dick Van Dyke tells ALL in no-holds-barred memoir!
If TV icon Dick Van Dyke, 83, had followed his original calling, he’d now be giving sermons. He wanted to be a Presbyterian minister!
That’s just one of the surprising revelations Van Dyke shares in a memoir scheduled to be released in fall 2010, publishing insiders tell The ENQUIRER.
Although he’s known for the ’60s TV hit The Dick Van Dyke Show and his much-praised roles in films such as Mary Poppins and Bye Bye Birdie, Dick, a devout Presbyterian, had originally wanted a career as a minister.
Dick also reveals the tragic story of how he lost his first child – when ex-wife, high school sweetheart Marjorie Willett, suffered a miscarriage in 1949, a year after they married and were dirt poor.
"Margie was pregnant," Dick writes, according to an insider. "She lost the baby. And she came home from the hospital to find we’d been evicted."
After years of struggling to break into show business, Dick finally struck gold with The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Despite his success, Dick "secretly hated himself for being ‘a people-pleasing pushover’ who couldn’t say no to anyone…and turned to booze because of it," according to the insider.
"The stress of a sudden hit television sitcom was difficult for Dick to handle without a martini or two or three when he got home from the studio at night.
"His addiction had taken control of him and was destroying his family and marriage."
Even though, Dick’s career was at its peak, his "crippling, self-destructive alcoholism" plunged him into deeper depression, says the insider.
