“Cowardice got me into showbiz,” Dick Van Dyke said recently. As hard as he tried to get into the military, he had a change of heart when he heard that he was likely to be assigned a tail gunner role in a B-24 Liberator. These were massive bombers, and as such massive targets for German fighter planes. The Aviation History Online Museum notes that on March 6, 1944 — around the time young Dick Van Dyke was enlisting — 68 B-24s were shot down in one day over Berlin.
Van Dyke loved the country, but certain death wasn’t the way he wanted to express it. When he heard an officer mention that airmen with special talents could be given non-combat roles, Van Dyke had an epiphany. The lanky teen could sing decently well and tap dance: surely that counted as a special talent? His officers agreed, and soon Van Dyke was in the USO, dancing and entertaining the troops overseas. The role suited him so well that he never stopped. As of 2022, IMDb still shows him making movies.
