Dick York spent the next 18 months bedridden and battling an addiction to pain killers, and this would ultimately be the last major role he would play.
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One of the more sad Hollywood stories out there.
Dick York was rather "elemental" to the Bewitched series in the beginning. He'd been been around as rather odd looking actor in movies like "Cowboy" and "Inherit the Wind" and hit paydirt as Darren. I think a lot of us noted that he seemed far too much the dork in face AND behavior to have landed gorgeous Liz Montgomery as a wife --- its that sitcom casting of the 90s (Everybody Loves Raymond, The King of Queens) a few decades too early.
And boy did he MUG ..indeed, not only some resemblance to Jim Carrey(who was more handsome, actually, and fit) and a whole lotta MUGGING in his role.
But a variety of physical ailments (including a very bad back) brought him down and Dick Sargent famously took over Darren(and actually PROVED Dick York's value in the role -- a more traditionally handsome and bland Darren took the comedy right out of the show.)
I recall two suprising "decades later" reappearances of Dick York on screen:
ONE: An episode of the private detective brothers show called "Simon and Simon" -- in the MID-EIGHTIES -- in which York took a straight role as a bad guy in a construction company(I recall he played the part with a hardhat much of the time.) I was shocked -- where had HE been all these years? And how did he land THIS part? And...he looked and sounded pretty much the same.
TWO: A "real life" segment on "Entertainment Tonight," I think, where York was visited in his later years -- largely wheelchair bound with oxygen(years of smoking) and "hanging on " as many Americans do on a fixed income in their later years. It was a sad piece..but York also came off as an American survivor, making it into his later years with dignity and a life to live.
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