Surely you are one of those who used to turn on the TV and let yourself be carried away by the magic of programming. If you remember enjoying “My Beautiful Genius”, starring Bárbara Eden, you may not have forgotten another mystical program that enchanted the small screen of the 60s: “Bewitched”, with Elizabeth Montgomery (Samantha) Y Dick York (darrin).
The happy couple in fiction fell in love with the audience with their great charisma. However, the off-camera reality was different, especially for York, whose death resulted in painful and slow agony; in addition to giving rise to what is now known as the Darrin Syndrome.
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A replacement and a tragic farewell
Before reaching “Bewitched” (as it was titled in English), Dick York suffered an accident during the filming of “They came to Sanity”, a 1959 western film. This impasse left him with severe back pain, for which he received great support from the team of “Bewitched” to cope with their health problems.
But the real problem came during the show’s fifth season, when an aneurysm landed him in the hospital. The pain and his growing addiction to painkillers prompted him to leave the show after 170 episodes.
Thus, they decided to replace him with the actor Dick Sargentin the period between 1969 and 1972. This fact, that is, changing the interpreter of a main character, had not been seen before, for which Hollywood baptized this kind of ‘phenomenon’ as “Darrin Syndrome”.
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The sad end of a star
Of course, the dramatic panorama did not stop there. York gained weight, lost his teeth, and plunged into unexpected bankruptcy. Although at one point he wanted to get his career off the ground, he didn’t make it.
In 1989, the LA Times interviewed the actor, who was living his final years bedridden, living on a $650 monthly salary from the Screen Actors Guild and slowly wasting away with emphysema, a lung condition that ultimately won him the fight on 20 December. February 1992, when he was 63 years old.
“I feel great… it’s just my body that is dying“, said York in dialogue with the aforementioned medium, one of the last to see him alive before his tragic end.
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