Here’s What Happened to Dick York Before, During and After Playing Darrin Stephens on ‘Bewitched’

On the personal side of things, Dick had met young actress Joan Alt while working on the Armstrong show, the two of them dating throughout high school. Things were getting serious and they had begun talking about getting married when that show ended its run and Dick suddenly found it difficult to get work. In response, the decision was made that he would go to New York, find a job and then have Joan (who he called “Joey”) join him there, though — decided they’d waited long enough — they would end up getting married on November 17, 1951. His time in the Big Apple began with him living in a YMCA while making the rounds to find work.

“You audition for anybody and everybody that’ll hear you,” he told Radio TV Mirror magazine in 1953 of those early days, “and every day is a little worse until you get discouraged and almost sick. But you do your show, take your check and go home and wait for the phone to ring. And always you keep on trying.” By 1953, it was beginning to pay off as he found himself a performer on numerous daytime radio dramas like This is Nora Drake and Rosemary.

That same magazine did a nice job of setting up the Yorks’ situation at that moment in time: “The young Yorks [along with their 8-and-a-half-month-old daughter Kimberly Ann] live in Kew Gardens now, and Joan’s chief problem is how she’s ever going to see Dick once Tea and Sympathy opens. Tea and Sympathy is the Broadway show he’s to be featured in, and he got his part in a roundabout way. He’d played an insane banjo player in a Michael Shayne show — the Michael Shayne writer was excited by what Dick had done with the part and, when Tea and Sympathy was casting, he, the writer, sent Dick to an agent who could send him to Eliza Kazan, who was directing the play. Kazan hired Dick.”

In the 1950s, Dick starred in the Broadway productions Tea and Sympathy (1953 to 1955), Bus Stop (1955 to 1956) and Night of the Auk (1956). During the production of Bus Stop, the New York Daily News did a profile of him, commenting in part, “In Levis and pulling on his cowboy boots backstage, York looks about 17. Actually, he’s 10 years older than that and the father of two girls, Kim (2 ½) and Amanda (13 months). ‘We’ve another one on the way,’ he says. ‘That air out in Kew Gardens is fine for raising kids.’”

The next phase of Dick’s career actually began in 1954 when he left Tea and Sympathy to travel to Hollywood to film the movie My Sister Eileen. During its making, noted The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, “He proved such a hit in rushes of the film that Columbia has signed him to a long-term contract for his exclusive services in motion pictures.” His other film credits during that time included Three Stripes in the Sun (1955), Operation Mad Ball (1957), Cowboy (1958), The Last Blitzkrieg (1959), They Came to Cordura (1959, more on this one later) and Inherit the Wind (1960).

Proving himself to be an in-demand actor, Dick quickly found a place on live and anthology TV series, among them Goodyear Television Playhouse, The Philco Television Playhouse, Kraft Television Theatre (three episodes), Studio One (three episodes), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (he did six of those!), Playhouse 90 (four episodes) and The Twilight Zone (“The Purple Testament” and “A Penny for Your Thoughts”).

He also received critical acclaim for many of the guest star appearances he made on episodic television, including The Untouchables, Dr. Kildare, two episodes of Clint Eastwood’s Rawhide (one of which costarred a pre-I Dream of Jeannie Barbara Eden), three episodes of Wagon Train, Route 66 and The Virginian.

Although Bewitched was coming down the pike at that turn, it’s necessary to look at his 1960 Western They Came to Cordura. In 1959 the Valley Times of North Hollywood said of its production, “Dick York and Michael Callan were really wrapped up in their roles. York had his ear shot off in the film and enacted a good part of his role with his head swathed in bandages, while Callan contracted typhoid fever during a desert trek and was covered with heavy blankets.”

In reality, that was the least of it, with bewitched.net quoting Dick as saying, “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 the 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.”

Between 1962 and 1963, Dick costarred with Gene Kelly in Going My Way, a TV series based on the 1944 Bing Crosby film of the same name. It was during production of this show where he started to realize how severe his back injury actually was. “My back flared up about 25 shows into the Going My Way season,” he told Filmfax magazine. “Terrible spell, and all the shots and therapy didn’t seem to work. Operations were recommended, all the way from fusion to removal of several vertebrae. You know how that kind of scare thing goes. Anyway, when I reported back to work after seeing the doctor, all the sets had ramps built on them and places for me to ease myself into position. Gene Kelly was not only the star of the series, he was also the producer. Never a word was spoken.”

Premiering on ABC in the fall of 1964, Bewitched stars Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha Stephens, a witch who happens to be married to human advertising executive Darrin Stephen, played by Dick York for seasons 1 through 5 and Dick Sargent in seasons 6 through 8. The humor came from this “mixed” marriage, and Samantha’s eccentric relatives, from her mother Endora (Agnes Moorehead) to prankster Uncle Arthur (Paul Lynde). It was a massive hit, though that was somewhat unexpected. Pop culture historian Geoffrey Mark, author of The Lucy Book: A Complete Guide to Her Five Decades on Television and friends with Bewitched executive producer and director (and Elizabeth Montgomery’s husband) William Asher, details how Dick came to be involved with the show.

“Dick York,” he offers, “was an extraordinarily talented actor. He had done a few big films and done all sorts of wonderful episodic television prior to Bewitched. He wasn’t classically handsome, but he had a certain boyish sex appeal that made him both attractive and available. He wasn’t the kind of guy that people were afraid to walk up to when they were originally doing Bewitched.”

Continues Geoffrey, “The show had actually been written for Tammy Grimes, the Broadway star, who wanted to go on television after making her mark on Broadway. So the basic idea was there, but the script was terrible. Tammy turned the show down. They next brought in Elizabeth Montgomery, who had been in a couple of big movies and they felt this was a good idea. Bill Asher sat down and kind of rewrote it. Bill came up with the names Samantha and Endora and a lot of the culture of the witches, which did not come from the original creator, Sol Saks.

“Many people were auditioned for the part of Darrin, and it was (ironically) narrowed down to Dick York and Dick Sargent. That’s why Dick Sargent was there later, because he was there in the beginning. Interestingly, Dick Sargent ended up doing the Tammy Grimes show, which failed.”

As Geoffrey recounts it from what was told to him by William Asher, there were problems from the start. “The first day,” he explains, “Dick didn’t show up. Concerned, Bill called the security guards at the gate to the studio and said, ‘When Mr. York shows up, will you please let us know immediately?’ The security guard said, ‘He showed up hours ago. He signed in.’ So Bill went out and looked for him, finding him in his car, passed out. Bill revived him and it was then that Dick told Bill that he had a back injury causing him to need medication, and that sometimes this happened. Bill and Liz then had a conversation: Do we fire this guy? Do we recast this or do we deal with the problem? And Liz felt that Dick was so talented, that he brought such charm to Darrin, that they would be foolish to try and recast. They hoped that the first day would just be an anomaly. Dick could play the broad comedy this show called for and he was able to handle the dramatic moments as well. Unfortunately, the problem didn’t just go away. Bill Asher said that Dick York was addicted to pills.”

He muses, “Whether that addiction started with having a bad back or whether Dick had the disease of drug addiction and the bad back was a good excuse, I cannot speak to that as a recovering alcoholic and drug addict myself. I can tell you that, quite often, people who get addicted to do these things have the disease and there may be an outside influence that sets it off, but the disease is already there. As the show progressed, more and more problems began to show up.”

Not that the audience suspected anything, and Dick certainly wasn’t letting anyone in on what was going on. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, things were going great. In 1964, the Alton Evening Telegraph was on set, reporting, “After every take, the actress steps from the set into the tender embrace of director William Asher, her husband. ‘We have a rather unusual triangle here,’ smiled Elizabeth. ‘The funniest part of it, though, was when we made the pilot. Dick didn’t know we were married. And he’s so sweet and gentle that it bothered him to have a director tell him, ‘You have to be strong with her in this scene. Boss her around. Don’t be afraid to raise your voice.’

“York,” the newspaper elaborated, “walked in and she waved him over with a ‘Let Dick tell it!’ and mentioned the subject to him. ‘When Asher wanted me to snarl a bit, I complained, ‘I hate to yell at Elizabeth, because there’s something about her that reminds me of my own wife, Joan. I was feeling protective toward Elizabeth and had no idea that it was her own husband who was directing me to stop being so tender with her. It was a big joke on me when everybody found out … especially to Agnes Moorehead. Her sense of humor rivals her acting talent, both fantastic.’”

Flash forward to 1967 and the feeling that Darrin Stephens was something of a “jellyfish” due to his loss of control with Endora and his boss, Larry Tate. “I’m a victim of witchcraft, not women,” Dick told The Kingston Daily Freeman. “The audience is on my side, because they realize no mortal can wage successful warfare against that setup. When I tangle with Endora, men in the audience cheer me on, because most of them attribute evil powers to their own mothers-in-law. At the office, where I really get the chance to assert manhood and integrity, I figure a lot of guys caught in the office rat race look on me as sort of a Sir Galahad. I can oppose the boss, threaten to kill him and even quit the job, and all those fellows in the rat race sit back and smile, because they know Samantha’s witchcraft will make me the hero and the boss the dope.”

All of this sounds like fun.

Geoffrey details, “As the show progressed, more and more problems showed up. Dick was the teeniest bit chubby in the beginning, and he began to lose weight. There were episodes where they had to limit what he was doing, because he was too stoned on pills to really function well. When the show went to color, they had to heavily make him up, because he looked ill. He was pale, losing weight, getting lines in his face and they began to have to use a bronzer on him to make his face look healthy. They had to supplement the suits he was wearing, because he was still losing weight and not looking well. He even began to slouch. Rehearsals became problematic because Dick was out of it. Elizabeth and Bill really loved Dick and felt that as long as they were able to continue working with him and producing the show on time, he was worth the trouble. Elizabeth liked him personally as a human being and she loved working with him.”

By season 4 of Bewitched, there began to be episodes where Darrin was out of town and Dick York does not appear, because, says Geoffrey, those were weeks where he just couldn’t perform properly. “They were able to cover it up,” he opines, “because it made sense that Darrin might be out of town for advertising purposes, and they had such a large group of wonderful costars on this show that they were able to cover for him. For a while. By the fifth season, it’s obvious that something is wrong if you watch the show. Even Dick’s suits had to be padded so that he didn’t look too skinny and his face was getting drawn. Then, Elizabeth Montgomery got pregnant again and they were going to write the pregnancy into the show. They wrote an episode for her to tell Darrin she was pregnant, but in the midst of shooting it, Dick had a seizure. Bill Asher put him in the hospital, but the only way they could get him to go to the hospital was if Bill guaranteed him he wasn’t going to lose his job.”

Unfortunately, this was one promise that could be kept. Explains Geoffrey, “Elizabeth said to Bill, ‘I can’t deal with this anymore.’ Even she had had enough. As long as he was doing his job, they wanted to keep and help him. Elizabeth said, ‘We have Erin Murphy on the set, a child who should not be exposed to this. If our children show up on a set, they should not be exposed to this. And I don’t think we’re doing him any big favors. He also has his own children and by pretending there’s no problem, we’re not helping him or his problem.’ So Liz put her foot down and said he’s out. They rewrote the last few episodes of the season so that Samantha tells Darren she’s pregnant over the phone, and then they threw in a non-pregnancy episode or two at the end of the season, filming around Dick. Well, what do you do now? They decided that they were simply going to bring in Dick Sargent, who was available and who had tested so well for Darrin to begin with.”

In March of 1969, Dick York gave a simple comment to explain his departure from the show to The Sacramento Bee: “Five years as Liz’s husband on Bewitched; there are no hard feelings. I just want a chance to do other stage and movie roles.”

Geoffrey emphasizes that Bill Asher always felt guilty that after giving Dick his promise that he wouldn’t lose his job, he had to fire him. “They were able to keep all of this out of the press,” he says, “but ABC had to know what was going on. You can’t just turn to the network and say, ‘By the way, we’re replacing one of the two leads of the show.’ So ABC helped keep Dick York’s problems out of the press. People didn’t know there were problems until Dick himself, many, many years later, went on television saying, ‘I’m a sick old man and I’m broke. I’ve had these back problems,’ and then he got emphysema for years and couldn’t work anymore. That’s when people began to understand that maybe there was more to this at the time.”

“Bill said when they took Dick away — it almost sounds like a Judy Garland story — they went into his dressing room and found pills sewn into the tufts of his pants, hidden under makeup, hidden behind pillows. Everywhere in his dressing room was filled with pills. Everybody on the show loved Dick and felt bad for this talented and nice man. That needs to be emphasized: Dick was a nice man who was losing his grip because of drug addiction. And, sadly, he never worked again outside of an episode of Simon & Simon and Fantasy Island.”

In 1980 Dick believed he was coming back to the industry, only this time as a writer/producer. Speaking to the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester, New York, he claimed to have written five complete screenplays and formulated a total of 20 other projects. He’d also gone into partnership with producer Edward Shaw. “I did not want to go back into acting so much that I let myself get fat,” he revealed. “I gained 126 pounds — a whole other person. I grew a beard. I was disguising myself. Things got totally out of hand.” Unfortunately, nothing would come out of his partnership with Shaw.

But in that same interview, he added that after his seizure on the set of Bewitched and seeing his wife’s reaction in his hospital room, he realized that he needed to get out of Hollywood. “I made a decision,” he said. “It’s an emotional thing, turning to your wife and saying, ‘OK, honey, can you live with the fact that we won’t have as much money coming in, that we won’t be able to buy fancy cars or send our kids to special schools?’ She told me, ‘I’ll live in a cave as long as you’re alright.’ My wife is my life. We’ve been through so much together. I just don’t know what I’d do without her.”

The next five years, he noted, were a time of emotional examination and re-evaluation: “There were periods of six or eight months at a time of just looking out the window, flat on my back.”

Moving back to where we started, 1989, and the situation has grown dire for Dick. While fighting to bring awareness to the homeless crisis, emphysema, coupled with his back injury, severely limited his life. Financially, he and Joan had moved from California to Michigan when she inherited her parents’ home, the two of them living off of social security and a small pension from the Screen Actor’s Guild.  But to the public, there was no negativity, as he expressed to Filmfax, “I’ve been blessed. I have no complaints. I’ve been surrounded by people in radio, on stage and motion pictures and television who love me. The things that have gone wrong have been simply physical things.”

Dick York’s struggles came to an end on February 20, 1992, at the age of only 63. He was survived by his wife, Joan; five children, 13 grandchildren and a sister.

While so much of his story gets lost to the sands of time, the one thing that does not was the impact that Dick made as Darrin Stephens on Bewitched, a show that continues in reruns to this day. In the pages of Herbie J Pilato’s Dashing, Daring and Debonair: TV’s Top Make Icons from the 50s, 60 and 70s, Dick’s son, Chris York, shared his feelings on what connected his dad to the audience on Bewitched.

“First and foremost,” he offered, “because it was a love story between a man and a woman; a woman who had some extraordinary baggage, number one being a meddling mother. The magic was almost secondary to the mother’s influence on their lives. He knew he was a reactionary character on the show and how he handled each situation would dictate the success or the failure of each episode. That came from his theater training, knowing that you only have a limited time on stage and you better give your best performance each and every time. Darrin needed to have an understandable irritated reaction to things that happened to him, but the audience had to know that, no matter what predicament he was put in, at the end of the day he would still be deeply in love with Samantha.”