Dick York

Dick York
Dick York
Born	Richard Allen York September 4, 1928(1928-09-04) Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.
Died	February 20, 1992(1992-02-20) (aged 63) East Grand Rapids, Michigan, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1947–84
Spouse	Joan Alt (1951–92) (his death)

Richard Allen "Dick" York (September 4, 1928 – February 20, 1992) was an American actor. He is best remembered for his role as the first Darrin Stephens on the ABC television fantasy sitcom Bewitched. His best known motion picture role was as teacher Bertram Cates in the 1960 film Inherit The Wind.

Early life

Born Richard Allen York in Fort Wayne, Indiana, York grew up in Chicago, where a Catholic nun first recognized his vocal promise. He began his career at age 15 as the star of the CBS radio program That Brewster Boy. He also appeared in hundreds of other radio shows and instructional films before heading to New York City, where he acted on Broadway in Tea and Sympathy and Bus Stop. He performed with stars including Paul Muni and Joanne Woodward in live television broadcasts and with Janet Leigh, Jack Lemmon, and Glenn Ford in movies, including My Sister Eileen, and Cowboy.

It was while filming the 1959 movie They Came to Cordura with Gary Cooper and Rita Hayworth that York would receive a permanently 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. I was suddenly, jarringly, lifting his entire weight off the flatbed—one hundred and eighty 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."

In 1960 he played the role of Bertram Cates (modelled on John Thomas Scopes, of "Monkey Trial" fame) in the film version of Inherit the Wind.^[1]

York went on to star with Gene Kelly as Tom Colwell in the ABC television comedy/drama Going My Way, and to appear in dozens of episodes of now-classic TV shows, including Justice, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Wagon Train, and CBS's The Twilight Zone and Route 66.

Bewitched

York is best known as the first actor to play Darrin Stephens in the 1960s sitcom Bewitched. The show was a huge success and York was nominated for an Emmy in 1968. Because of his back injury, which sometimes caused him to seize up in debilitating pain in later years, the scripts for some of his final episodes on Bewitched were written around his being in bed or on the couch for the entire episode. One day, during the fifth season of the sitcom: "I was too sick to go on. I had a temperature of one hundred and five, full of strong antibiotics, for almost ten days. I went to work that day but I was sick. I lay in my dressing room after being in make-up, waiting to be called on the set. They knew I was feeling pretty rotten, and they tried to give me time to rest. I kept having chills. This was the middle of the summer and I was wearing a sheepskin jacket and I was chilling. I was shaking all over." Then, 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 that I was suppose^{[clarification needed]} 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, 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."^{[attribution needed]}

From his hospital bed, director Bill Asher asked him what he wanted to do. "Do you want to quit?" "I said 'If it's all right with you, Billy.'" With that, York resigned from the show to devote himself to recovery. From season 6 onwards (until the series ended in 1972), the Darrin Stephens role was played by actor Dick Sargent. Dick Sargent was offered the role of Darrin in the beginning, but turned it down to do a short-lived sitcom called Broadside.^[2]

Later years

Dick York in 1983 on an episode of Simon and Simon.

Largely bedridden, York battled not only his back pain but an addiction to prescription pain killers.

In his memoir, The Seesaw Girl and Me, published posthumously, he describes the struggle to break his addiction and to 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 tried to revive his career. He appeared on several prime-time TV shows including Simon and Simon and Fantasy Island.

York, once a heavy smoker, spent his final years battling emphysema. While bedridden in his Rockford, Michigan, home, he founded Acting for Life, a private charity to help the homeless and others in need. Using his telephone as his pulpit, York motivated politicians, business people, and the general public to contribute supplies and money.^[3]

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."^[4]

York died from complications of emphysema at Blodgett Hospital in East Grand Rapids on February 20, 1992. He was 63 years old.

York is buried in Plainfield Cemetery in Belmont, Michigan.^[5]

Filmography

Awards and nominations

Emmy Awards

• 1968: Nominated, "Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series" - Bewitched

References

4. The Seesaw Girl and Me, by Dick York, pgs. 15-16, 100-105

External links

Biography portal

• Dick York at the Internet Movie Database
• Dick York at AllRovi
• Dick York at the Internet Broadway Database
• Dick York at Find a Grave