Dick York

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, who spent his declining years redistributing surplus goods to the homeless through his Acting for Life program, died Thursday at Blodgett Memorial Medical Center in Grand Rapids, near his home in Rockford, Mich. A former three-pack-a-day smoker, York had suffered for years with emphysema.

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, who spent his declining years redistributing surplus goods to the homeless through his Acting for Life program, died Thursday at Blodgett Memorial Medical Center in Grand Rapids, near his home in Rockford, Mich. A former three-pack-a-day smoker, York had suffered for years with emphysema.

In the make-believe world that made Dick York famous, his troubles would have been magically swept away with the twitch of a nose or the wave of a wand. But no television sitcom medicine can cure what ails York, who played Darrin Stephens, the harried, mortal husband of the comely witch, Samantha, in the hit series "Bewitched" more than two decades ago.

In the make-believe world that made Dick York famous, his troubles would have been magically swept away with the twitch of a nose or the wave of a wand. But no television sitcom medicine can cure what ails York, who played Darrin Stephens, the harried, mortal husband of the comely witch, Samantha, in the hit series "Bewitched" more than two decades ago.

Elizabeth Montgomery, the mischievous witch with the nasal twitch who brought her enchanting whimsy into America's living rooms for eight years, died Thursday morning. The star of "Bewitched," who later forsook her single-dimensional character and became one of the best known and diverse actors in made-for-TV movies, was 57, according to her family, but several film anthologies list her birth year as 1933. She died after a long struggle with cancer, said her agent and spokesman Howard Bragman.

It isn't easy to work up a lot of sympathy for the victims on Alfred Hitchcock Presents. They usually deserve what they get, whether it's death by leg of lamb or poisonous snake, or just a wicked dose of irony. If comedy-rich Nick at Nite is going to add some ghoulish crimes, Hitchcock is the perfect one to be perpetrating them. (His victims even include the sponsors, at whom he frequently takes stabs.

Growing up in the 1960s, Herbie J Pilato knew why he was a fan of the ABC sitcom "Bewitched." He loved Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery), the perky, nose-twitching witch who was married to a mortal, Darren (Dick York, Dick Sargent). "It was a real guy thing," says Pilato, who is the author of the recently published guide to the series, "The Bewitched Book: The Cosmic Companion to TV's Most Magical Supernatural Situation Comedy" (Delta, $14). "We wanted a perfect woman. It was like, 'Wow!'

Sol Saks, a veteran television writer and playwright who created the classic 1960s sitcom "Bewitched," has died. He was 100. Saks, a longtime Sherman Oaks resident, died Saturday of respiratory failure as a result of pneumonia at Sherman Oaks Hospital, said his wife, Sandra. Although Saks wrote the pilot script for the sitcom "Bewitched," he never penned another episode of the popular series about a witch married to a mortal. It ran on ABC from 1964 to 1972 and starred Elizabeth Montgomery and, originally, Dick York.