'Bewitched' TV Actor Dick Sargent, 64, Dies By DAVID E. BRADY, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Saturday, July 9, 1994 Dick Sargent, the affable actor best remembered as Elizabeth Montgomery's second television husband on the sitcom "Bewitched," died Friday. He was 64. Ron Wise, a spokesman for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said Sargent had been admitted Wednesday and died there of prostate cancer that was diagnosed in 1989. In 1969, after parts on several failed sitcoms, Sargent replaced the late Dick York in the role of Darrin Stephens on ABC's "Bewitched." York, who left after five seasons because of a debilitating back injury and an addiction to painkillers, died in 1992 at age 63 of emphysema and a degenerative spinal condition. As husband to Montgomery's Samantha, a winsome witch who could work magic with a twitch of her nose, Stephens tried vainly to juggle the pressures of his ad agency job along with the escapades of his wife and disapproving mother-in-law, usually with little success. Sargent, the son of a World War I hero and a former silent film actress, was born Richard Cox. After a childhood spent in Carmel, Calif., he briefly attended Stanford University, where he appeared in several school plays before dropping out to pursue an acting career. As Dick Sargent, he began on the big screen in the late 1950s with roles in such forgettable films as "Bernardine" and "Mardi Gras." In 1959, he was seen with Cary Grant and Tony Curtis in the wartime comedy "Operation Petticoat." Later movies included "That Touch of Mink," "Captain Newman M.D.," "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken," "The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell" and "Hardcore." | |
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