Dick York

Remembering the life of Dick York for his Birthday! Gangly actor best known as Darren Stephens, the befuddled husband of nose-twitching witch Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery) on the long-running TV comedy, Bewitched. York began his career as a child actor on radio in Chicago, most notably as Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy. York was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Bernard York, a salesman and Betty, a seamstress. By the mid-1950s he had appeared on Broadway in Tea and Sympathy and Bus Stop and became a frequent guest performer on TV series such as The Twilight Zone, Father Knows Best, Playhouse 90, The Untouchables. Wagon Train and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He made his film debut in the sci-fi horror film Them (1954), which he followed with roles in My Sister Eileen (1955), Operation Mad Ball (1957) and Cowboy (1958) all three co-starring Jack Lemmon. While filming the movie They Came to Cordura (1959) with Gary Cooper and Rita Hayworth, he suffered a permanent, disabling back injury. In York's own words, "Gary Cooper and I were propelling a handcar carrying several 'wounded' men down [the] railroad track. I was on the bottom stroke of this sort of teeter-totter mechanism that made the handcar run. I was just lifting the handle up as the director yelled 'cut!' and one of the 'wounded' cast members reached up and grabbed the handle. Now, instead of lifting the expected weight, I was suddenly, jarringly, lifting his entire weight off the flatbed-180 pounds or so. The muscles along the right side of my back tore. They just snapped and let loose. And that was the start of it all: the pain, the painkillers, the addiction, the lost career." York's injury did not immediately end his career. In 1960, a year after York's injury, he played Bertram Cates (modeled on John Thomas Scopes, of "Monkey Trial" fame) in the film version of Inherit the Wind. York went on to star with Gene Kelly and Leo G. Carroll in the ABC comedy-drama Going My Way (1962). York was cast in the series, which lasted one season, as Tom Colwell, who operates a secular youth center. York was cast as Darrin Stephens in the 1960s sitcom Bewitched as Samantha's (Elizabeth Montgomery) mortal husband. The show was a huge success and York was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1968. The crew built York a slanted wall for him to lean on in between scenes, which, during the first two seasons, allowed York to manage his back injury with little difficulty. Halfway through the third season, York's back injury was aggravated into a painful degenerative spine condition, frequently causing shooting delays while York required assistance to walk around. Sometimes, York would seize up in debilitating pain, so the scripts for some of his later episodes on Bewitched were written around his being in bed or on the couch for the entire episode. York did not appear in a handful of seasons-three and four episodes, and his departure from the show over two thirds into filming season five, caused the series to produce more episodes focusing on Samantha and other members of her family, with mentions that Darrin was away on business. While filming the fifth-season episode "Daddy Does His Thing", York fell ill. "While sitting on a scaffolding with Maurice Evans, being lit for a special-effects scene: They were setting an inky – that's a little tiny spot[light] that was supposed to be just flickering over my eyes. That flickering, flickering, flickering made me feel weird. And I'm sitting on this platform up in the air...and I turned to Gibby (Evans), who was just down below, and I said, 'Gibby, I think I have to get down.' He started to help me down and that's the last thing I remember until I woke up on the floor. That's about all I remember of the incident...and I'd managed to bite a very large hole in the side of my tongue before they could pry my teeth apart." From York's hospital bed, director William Asher and he discussed York's future. "Do you want to quit?" Asher asked. "If it's all right with you, Billy," York replied. With that, York left the sitcom to devote himself to recovery, never to return. Dick Sargent replaced York in the role of Darrin Stephens, taking over the role at the start of the series' sixth season (1969-1970) and continuing in the part until the series ended after its eighth season (1971-1972). Sargent was originally offered the role of Darrin in 1964, but turned it down to do a short-lived sitcom called Broadside. For the next 18 months, York was largely bed-ridden in a haze of prescription painkillers. In his memoir, The Seesaw Girl and Me, published posthumously, he describes the struggle to break his addiction and come to grips with the loss of his career. The book is in large part a love letter to his wife, Joan (née Alt), the seesaw girl of the title, who stuck with him through the hard times. York eventually beat his addiction, and in the early 1980s tried to revive his career. His last two credits were on two primetime television series, Simon & Simon and Fantasy Island. Afterward he stopped receiving calls when his agent failed to register with the Screen Actors Guild on his behalf, and he retired from show business. Despite his suffering, York said, "I've been blessed. I have no complaints. I've been surrounded by people in radio, on stage, and in motion pictures and television who love me. The things that have gone wrong have been simply physical things" York died of complications from emphysema at Blodgett Hospital in East Grand Rapids, Michigan, on February 20, 1992, at age 63.