Dick York

            On Saturday morning I worked out the chords for the first two verses of “Ghetto Blaster” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the second of four sessions. 

            I weighed 86.3 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I rode down to No Frills where all but one bag of grapes were too squishy. I bought a pack of figs, a pack or raspberries, bananas, a pack of chicken legs, ravioli stuffed with cheese and spinach, four artisan naan, mouthwash, sandwich bags, Bolognese sauce, two jugs of orange juice, two containers of skyr, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips. 

            When I got home I went back out to the liquor store to buy a six-pack of Creemore.

            I weighed 86.7 kilos before lunch. I had a slice of toasted Bavarian sandwich bread with pumpkin butter, five-year-old cheddar and a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I only wore one scarf and didn’t need my gloves. 

            I weighed 86.3 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:35. 

            I continued to re-read the novel Pearl and to write down relevant quotes. 

            For dinner I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching the series premier of Bewitched. 

            It begins with Samantha and Darrin constantly and literally bumping into one another. It happens so often they decide to sit down and discuss it. This leads to romance and finally marriage. It is their wedding night in the honeymoon suite of a fine hotel and Samantha is preparing for her first night with Darrin. She levitates a hair brush across the room and the narrator informs us that Samantha is a witch. Suddenly Samantha’s mother Endora appears and says she knows she got married. At first she thinks her daughter is under the spell of a warlock but is even more disappointed when she learns that Darrin is human. Darrin is about to enter the bedroom when Endora transports him in his dressing gown to the hotel lobby. Darrin thinks he’s had too much champagne and goes back to the room. Samantha tries to use magic on her mother to make her go away but Endora is too powerful to be affected. She sends Darrin back to the lobby. Samantha tells her mother she is going to tell Darrin she is a witch and so Endora is satisfied that will be the end of their marriage and so she leaves. Samantha tells Darrin they have to talk before they begin their first night together. She informs him she’s a witch but he doesn’t believe her. Then he believes she thinks she’s a witch and compares her to his aunt who thinks she’s a lighthouse. Samantha suggests that maybe his aunt really is a lighthouse. Samantha starts demonstrating her magic by moving things around. Finally Darrin says he wishes he had a drink and when she makes one appear in his hand he realizes she’s a witch. After some soul searching for a day Darrin decides he can’t give Samantha up but makes her promise to stop using witchcraft. 

            The next day when Darrin is at the ad agency where he is employed, his rich ex-girlfriend Sheila comes by. He tells her he’s married and she says she knows. She has come to invite Darrin and his bride to a casual party she’s throwing that night. But it’s a trick it seems to embarrass Samantha as she shows up casual and it turns out it’s formal. Sheila keeps referring to Samantha as Darrin’s “little bride”. She says she’s going to get Samantha a good dressmaker, a hairdresser, and a plastic surgeon for her nose. Sheila is being such an asshole but Samantha is trying to keep her promise. However, as the night wears on and Sheila continues to be subtly insulting towards her, Samantha gives in. She begins by causing Sheila’s perfect coiffure to spring out of control in places. Then she conjures a leaf of spinach over one of Sheila’s front teeth. Then she moves Sheilah’s soup so she puts her elbow into it. She makes Sheila sneeze violently, then the back of her dress comes open, then she causes the maid to drop food all over her. Then she makes the wind blow away Sheila’s hairpiece. When they get home Darrin admits Sheila deserved it but tells Samantha she broke her promise. He wants her to come to bed but she has to clean the kitchen. She breaks her promise again and uses magic, but thinks she can taper off. 

            Darrin Stephens was played for the first four or five seasons by Dick York. From the 40s to the early 50s he worked as a radio actor. He starred in That Brewster Boy and co-starred on Jack Armstrong: All American Boy. In 1953 he made his Broadway debut in Tea and Sympathy and his performance led to a motion picture deal. In 1959 while filming They Came to Cordura he sustained a serious back injury in a railway hand car accident that plagued him for the rest of his life. He became addicted to painkillers. In 1960 he co-starred in Inherit the Wind, playing a schoolteacher who goes on trial for teaching the theory of evolution. It was his last film role and from then on he focused on television acting. He co-starred in the short lived sitcom Going My Way. By 1969 his back pain was so bad that he collapsed on the set of Bewitched and couldn’t go on. He was much closer with Agnes Moorehead than with Elizabeth Mongomery. He smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and by the 80s he developed emphysema. His autobiography was entitled The Seesaw Girl and Me. Near the end of his life, while confined to his home by ill health, he started a charity called Acting for Life to help out the homeless and spent his days on the phone.