Welcome back to Ancient Wisdom, our Sunday series in which writers over 70 tell us how they are aging gracefully. Starting next week, Ancient Wisdom will be included in our Weekend Press on Saturday mornings. If you still want to receive the column directly in your inbox every week, sign up here.
This week, Dick Van Dyke—yes, Dick Van Dyke!—explains why he’s still dancing, singing, and loving life a week from his 100th birthday.
Remember the old man in Mary Poppins?
Mr. Dawes, Senior, is the greedy, heartless bank president who’s the film’s only real villain. He’s half bald, bearded, hunched over, and wheezy, sporting a shawl around his shoulders to fight a chill and a cane to fight gravity. At the slightest imbalance, he teeters and topples. The man is ancient.
To this day, if you ask who played old Mr. Dawes, an awful lot of people would come up blank. But there’s a clue in the credits, where the actor is listed as “Navckid Keyd.”
