Early Life and Career
Born in San Diego, California, Van Dyke was a child actor on the vaudeville circuit. His early adult years were unsettled, and he moved from career to career until arriving in Hollywood. His first movie assignment was as an assistant director on the D. W. Griffith feature motion picture Intolerance (1916). That same year he was cast as Charles Dickens in the now lost 1916 film Oliver Twist. He also was one of the assistant directors on the film. During the silent era he learned his craft and by the advent of the talkies was one of MGM's most reliable directors.
Read more about this topic: W. S. Van Dyke
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the child’s life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of play—that embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“Our life dreams the Utopia. Our death achieves the Ideal.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)