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Comedian and actor Dick Van Dyke danced across rooftops more than 60 years ago in 

. And he danced barefoot across his backyard last year in 

 a Coldplay video that went viral on his 99th birthday.

As he begins his second century on Saturday, it seems the right moment to remember the way he first came into our lives: in a six-year blaze of multimedia glory that began on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theater on April 14, 1960.

He was second-billed after Chita Rivera in 

, pitching woo to her, and pitching songs to Conrad Birdie, a fictional rock star in the Elvis Presley mode. Also, as would be his habit throughout his career, doing his level best to prompt a smile in the show's biggest hit song, "Put on a Happy Face."

 got mixed reviews, but this lanky, 34-year-old Midwesterner was a hit from the word go. He won a Tony Award as best featured actor in a musical and charmed audiences. And, when he took a week off to audition for a TV sitcom that Carl Reiner was cooking up, he also charmed its producers. So much so, that although he was a near-complete unknown, when no one could come up with a good title for the show, they just named it after him: 

, because he'd based the character on his own experience in 

. But with Van Dyke paired with 24-year-old newcomer Mary Tyler Moore as Laura Petrie, the show wasn't just a workplace comedy — there was heat on the home front.

 Laura and Rob Petrie were sexy together, especially compared to the characters in the Andy Griffith and Danny Thomas sitcoms that were their main competition.

Rob and Laura were also mid-century modern — the sort of contemporary suburbanites you could imagine living down the street — though with a head of the house who, when denied his favorite pillow at bedtime, could do five minutes of broken-neck pantomime.

 started slow in the ratings, but by the second season it was firmly in the prime-time top 20. And it stayed there, even as Van Dyke started doing other projects. He shot the movie version of 

 during the TV show's first summer break. And soon, the Disney folks were nosing around, looking for a chimney sweep to pair with a nanny played by Julie Andrews.

When Van Dyke told an interviewer that he wished there was more quality children's entertainment out there, 

, and called to offer him the part of Bert the chimney sweep in 

Shot during the summer of 1963, the film would take almost 11 months of editing and animation before it was ready for theaters, but that October, just a month after it finished shooting, the cast of 

Morey Amsterdam's Buddy pitched a sketch as

, "How about if Alan comes out dressed as a cockney chimney sweep but he's getting so fat he can't get down the chimneys?" That joke played to near silence, but would've gotten a much bigger laugh a year later, once the audience had met Bert the chimney sweep in 

, Pamela Travers, who wrote the children's books that inspired the film, thought he was all wrong for the part — and she didn't like Julie Andrews either. It's true that Van Dyke had maybe the worst cockney accent ever.

did so well that Disney was able to buy land in Florida for a planned theme park in Orlando

 near the top of the ratings right through the end of its fifth season — 158 episodes — when Reiner decided to stop while they were still on top. It was a bittersweet ending, 

"All of us involved," he told host Peter Sagal, "say 

 was the best five years of our lives. We were like otters at play."

 and dozens of other projects right up through an Emmy-winning guest spot on the soap opera 

, just a couple of years ago at the age of 97.

It's been a full life — nearly all of it spent getting people to put on a happy face — including at the conclusion of his visit to 

, when he delighted the audience by singing the lyrics Morey Amsterdam wrote to 

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Bob Mondello

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In a matter of a few years in the 1960s, Dick Van Dyke became a star on Broadway, television and the silver screen. 

Dick Van Dyke is turning 100! Here’s how he danced into our lives

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