Van Dyke's maternal grandmother, as a student of the University of Alabama, was escorted to Hollywood by western star Johnny Mack Brown for a screen test as a finalist in the nationwide search for the character of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind. Her grandfather and his brother, sons of a once penniless Hungarian Jewish immigrant, started the University of Alabama Crimson Tide football program as the original boosters and, at the end of their lives, hired legendary coach Bear Bryant.
