Comedian and actor Dick Van Dyke danced across rooftops more than 60 years ago in Mary Poppins . And he danced barefoot across his backyard last year in "All My Love," 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 Bye Bye Birdie , 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."

Birdie got mixed reviews,

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