American Heritage Center Contributes Footage to Dick Van Dyke Documentary
Published December 12, 2025
Dick Van Dyke performs on the set of the second Dick Van Dyke Special. Dick Van Dyke papers (Coll. 9079)
Working with the production company Crew Neck Productions, the American Heritage Center contributed rare footage of actor and comedian Dick Van Dyke for the upcoming documentary “Starring Dick Van Dyke,” which chronicles Van Dyke’s career and life as a performer.
Crew Neck Productions contacted the AHC in April 2025 for access to the Dick Van Dyke papers, a collection of scripts, sheet music, 35mm slides, photographs, film reels, and broadcast videos of the Dick Van Dyke Show and other productions. At the time, the collection was entirely unprocessed—no description or arrangement existed for it, and AHC archivists didn’t know what materials were in the collection.
Jessica LaBozetta, the A/V Archivist at the AHC, and her aide, Marty Murray, created a preliminary list of the videos, film, and photos in the collection. From that list, Crew Neck Productions determined that the collection contained two rare and unique pieces of footage from early in Van Dyke’s career. One is a closed-circuit audition titled “Dick Van Dyke: A Character Sketch.” The other is titled “Dick Van Dyke Tells a Story.”
The AHC then sent the archival 16mm films to a third-party vendor to be digitized and used by Crew Neck Productions. Some of the footage can be seen in the documentary’s trailer. The clip of Dick Van Dyke opening his eyes at 24 seconds in comes from “Dick Van Dyke Tells a Story”.
“It was a very fun project to work on, and Crew Neck has been such a great production company to work with. However, I would be remiss if I did not mention the hours spent on my hands and knees down in storage inventorying videotapes! Projects like these are always so rewarding, and it was such an honor for Marty and I both to work with archival materials related Dick Van Dyke’s work and legacy. The life of an AV Archivist is always full of surprises!”
“Starring Dick Van Dyke” is a production of Crew Neck Productions and Copper Beeches in association with American Masters Pictures and The Television Academy Foundation. It premieres Friday, December 12 on PBS as part of the “American Masters” series and can be viewed locally, on pbs.org/americanmasters, and on the PBS App.
