If You've Seen One Dick, You've Seen 'Em All.

Dick Sargent
April 19, 1930 - July 08, 1994

The TV series Bewitched always confounded me.

Not because I didn't find it particularly funny, or because it was using a fake laugh track, or that it was recycling the same stories over and over again for years. It's none of these things. It's not even that the show was a complete rip-off of the movie Bell, Book and Candle. I could honestly care less about that. No, my beef is of a different nature. It's one that has been much discussed by obsessive TV viewers for many years.

You just can't completely switch Darrens and not say anything. It wouldn't be tolerated now. Today, Darren would either be killed off or they'd divorce. I would have even accepted it if they'd concocted some story involving magic wherein Darren's appearance completely changed...anything to explain the obvious physical differences of the two actors, but it's not even alluded to. Perhaps Samantha couldn't tell the difference between the two Dicks. I bet Uncle Arthur could.

I'm biased. I prefer Dick York's Darren to Dick Sargent's Darren. It was all about timing and comedic reactions. Sargent was probably a better actor, but York was funny. York had to quit the show in 1969 due to a chronic back injury and Sargent, who was originally offered the role in 1964 but couldn't take it because of his contract with Universal Studios, got the part. Sargent appeared in 84 episodes of Bewitched (as opposed to York's 156) before the show ended in 1972. York never worked again, except for an episode of Simon and Simon and a Love Boat in the early 1980s, but Sargent went on to an illustrious career of b-movie roles and TV crime drama guest-spots and sitcom walk-ons. His most memorable role (to me) was that of Grady Byrd, the Sheriff who filled in for Roscoe P. Coltrane on a few episodes of The Dukes of Hazzard.

Sargent announced he had prostate cancer in 1992 but shortly thereafter confirmed tabloid reports that he was gay and that his cancer was AIDS-related. He died on July 8, 1994. Before researching this I had also heard that Dick York was also gay but I can't find anything to verify this. He was married to the same woman for almost 40 years and there's no smoking gun, or penis, or whatever smokes when you're gay. Perhaps the person who told me this simply got their Dicks mixed up.

By the way, Dick Sargent wasn't his real name. He was born Richard Stanford Cox. Yes, that's right. His real name was Dick Cox.

Seriously.