Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 22, 1992 TAG: 9202220152
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
`BEWITCHED' ACTOR DICK YORK, 63, DIES
Dick York, the actor who created the role of Darrin Stephens, husband to Elizabeth Montgomery's witchy wife Samantha on the television series "Bewitched," has died. He was 63.York had spent his declining years redistributing surplus goods to the homeless through his Acting for Life program. He died near his home in Rockford, Mich.
A former three-pack-a-day smoker, York had suffered for years from emphysema. He also battled a degenerative spine, first injured in 1958 while shooting the Gary Cooper film "They Came to Cordova."
That injury prompted an addiction to muscle relaxants, codeine and sleeping pills that eventually cost him his role in "Bewitched." The Emmy nominee had originated the role of the hapless mortal husband and was with the show during its most popular early years, 1964-69.
Raised in Depression-era Chicago, York claimed he began acting as a child when he pretended not to know his Christmas toys were secondhand. At 15 he won the starring role on the NBC radio show "That Brewster Boy."
At the studio he met a 12-year-old radio performer named Joan Alt. Years later the girl he called "Joey" became his wife and the mother of his five children, Kim, Amanda, Stacie, Chris and Matthew, who survive him.
After roles on Broadway, York was signed to a movie contract by Columbia, and held his own with such stars as Gene Kelly and Spencer Tracy in "Inherit the Wind" in 1960, among other films.
The lucrative role on "Bewitched" proved to be the end as York well as the capstone of any meaningful career.
Eighteen months after he was replaced by Dick Sargent, York decided to quit painkillers and other drugs cold turkey. He moved in temporarily with his mother in Buena Park, Calif., so his wife and children would not have to see the torment caused by his withdrawal.
By 1976, the Yorks were on welfare. They survived for a decade on welfare and unemployment checks and TV bit parts.
With his characteristic good humor, York discussed his Acting for Life program with the Los Angeles Times in 1989, while tethered to an oxygen tank. "I feel wonderful," he said. "It's just my body that's dying."
He began his efforts for the homeless by reading up on the McKinney Act, an underused federal law that was supposed to set up government surplus giveaway programs. He badgered government workers by phone to find out what was in storage and get it sent to appropriate shelters.
The effort pried loose 15,000 outfits from Army surplus, thousands of mattresses and blankets, thousands of pairs of panty hose and 5,000 cans of orange juice in 1988 alone.