Most people know Dick Van Patten as a genial sitcom star famous for his long running role as Tom Bradley in the TV show Eight is Enough.

“I went from one play to another,” says Van Patten about his Broadway days.   “I was never out of work from age seven on.”

Van Patten got his start through the efforts of his mother, a high school physical education teacher, who loved the theater. She also guided Van Patten's sister, Joyce, into a stage career starting at age seven (the starting age of both these stars is no coincidence, at the time seven was when children could first begin acting).   But even before the Van Patten children became stars, theater was an important part of the household. Van Patten's father, a furniture salesman, and his wife would take the subway every Friday night to see a different play and when her children were old enough, their mother determined they'd be in those plays.

“My mother was a real stage mother,” says Van Patten. “She used to take me up and down Broadway to all the casting directors, producers and agents. And she finally got me a reading for this play that they were going to do — they needed a seven-year-old boy who looked a little like Melvyn Douglas. He was blond then and so was I.”

Van Patten read for the part and got it. Unfortunately the play wasn't a hit, running for only eight weeks.

For the next three decades Van Patten worked in the theater. During those years he performed in Oh Mistress Mine, carrying the longest juvenile part ever written and spending two years on Broadway and two years on tour performing the play with Lunt and Fontanne. It was the part he'd bested from Brando.

“They auditioned 80 kids at the Schubert Theater in New York and they told three of us to come back and read again that afternoon for Ms. Fontane,” recalls Van Patten. “The three that came back were Roddy McDowell, myself and Marlon Brando. Roddy was a good friend of mine and he used to tease me about it all his life. He said that he should have gotten that part. He was an English boy and so was the character and he was always upset that he didn't get it. But I never met Marlon Brando, so I never had a chance to rub it in.”

After winning the part, Lunt and Fontanne asked Van Patten to come and stay at Ten Chimneys, which   has recently been opened to the public.

“I lived there at Ten Chimneys for two weeks and rehearsed every day, just the three of us because it was such a big part and I was only 16,” says Van Patten. “I lived in Helen Hayes' bedroom.” Noel Coward was one of the guests.

“He was very sophisticated and very witty and whatever you said he would always come back with a quip-a little sarcastic and his humor was very dry, but a real, true wit. He couldn't just answer a question plain, he would have to say something sarcastically funny.”

Despite the grueling stage schedule, Van Patten found time, at age 17, to work in the newest entertainment medium — television — playing the son of actress Peggy Wood in the top rated I Remember Mama. Besides introducing him to viewers across the nation, Van Patten also was reintroduced to a young girl he'd sat next to during both the 7th and 8th grades at the Professional Children's School — a place where school age actors and actresses received their education.

The young girl was Pat Poole, who with her brother, was one of the youngest ballroom dancers in the country and who was then one of the June Taylor Dancers on The Jackie Gleason Show. Poole was rehearsing in the same studio as the young star of I Remember Mama.

“We were childhood sweethearts,” says Van Patten. “I had a crush on her but it was hard because I'd go out on the road with a show.”

After reconnecting, it didn't take long for the two to marry and then, shortly after that, produce three sons, Nels, Jimmy and Vincent. Pat Poole, now Van Patten, did some work but found that it was too difficult to juggle children and career and opted to stay home with her children. That decision may have had huge payoffs. The family is extremely close. One of the Van Patten boys lives next door, the other in a house adjoining the backyard. Dick and his sons are all avid tennis players and frequently meet up for a daily game.

“I play tennis every morning,” says Van Patten. “And when I come home from work, there's always someone around to pick up another game with.”

Though 75 now, Van Patten still continues to act having recently appeared with on The Bonnie Hunt Show and in Seventh Heaven. His resume is impressive — he's appeared on 600 radio shows, in 24 feature films and starred in seven television series.

But besides acting, Van Patten has become a pet food magnate.

Natural Balance Pet Foods®

“I started the business in 1989,” says Van Patten about his company Natural Balance Pet Foods. “I was a guest on the John Davidson Show and he had a band and at lunch time I sat next to his drummer and we started to talk. The drummer told me how he rescues dogs and cats and I told him when I was a kid I had a complete menagerie. I had snakes, alligators, and every kind of animal you could imagine. I had like my own pet shop. Anyway we talked some more and he had an idea of making a health food for dogs and I said that I played tennis with a woman vet and I could ask her about it. Well, I did and her eyes lit up and she said I could make up a food with nothing bad in it and I asked her what that meant and she said no filler, no wheat, no corn, no soy and no by-products.”

At first the new company lost money, but then slowly, as they expanded their markets, things picked up.

  “Then all of a sudden we got into Petco,” says Van Patten, “and they put it in 625 Petcos and now it's going through the ceiling. Now we're in Korea and Germany. It's a real Cinderella story. People come up to me everyday and say oh Mr. Van Patten, my dog was the finickiest eater and now I switched to your food and he gobbles it up.”

Next Step: Natural Balance Zoological Formulas®

Meeting a need that had long been ignored, Natural Balance Zoological Formulas developed food for lions, tigers, cheetahs, polar bears, snakes and carnivorous birds. The Zoological Formulas are designed to meet specific dietary needs for a variety of exotic animals and are sold to zoos worldwide. "We're feeding all the zoos in the country." All meat in Natural Balance is human-grade USDA approved, and all ingredients are grown in the United States of America and all grains used in the food are certified free from genetically modified organisms.

Entering the 69th year of his career, Van Patten seems content and fulfilled with a life based on family and fun (call his home and the voice mail has his joke of the week) as well as a commitment to work whether it be acting or pet foods.

“My mom was a real stage mother,” he says. “She pushed me into acting. And I'm glad she did because that's the reason I've had such a good life. It never would have happened without my mother.”