He also appeared in hundreds of other radio shows and instructional films before heading to New York City, where he acted on Broadway in Tea and Sympathy and Bus Stop.

While filming the movie They Came to Cordura (1959) with Gary Cooper and Rita Hayworth, he suffered a permanent, disabling back injury.

In 1960, a year after York's injury, he played Bertram Cates (modeled on John Thomas Scopes, of "Monkey Trial" fame) in the film version of Inherit the Wind.

York was cast in the series, which lasted one season, as Tom Colwell, who operates a secular youth center.

In 1964, York began playing Darrin Stephens in the sitcom Bewitched as Samantha's (Elizabeth Montgomery) mortal husband.

Halfway through the third season, York's back injury was aggravated into a painful degenerative spine condition, frequently causing shooting delays while he required assistance to walk.

[citation needed] While filming the fifth-season episode "Daddy Does His Thing", York fell ill: "I was too sick to go on.

Then, while sitting on a scaffolding with Maurice Evans, being lit for a special-effects scene: They were setting an inky – that's a little tiny [spotlight] that was supposed to be just flickering over my eyes.

[8] Despite the scripted antagonism between characters Darrin and his mother-in-law Endora, in reality Dick York and Agnes Moorehead enjoyed a very close friendship off screen.

[4] In his memoir, The Seesaw Girl and Me, published posthumously, he describes the struggle to break his addiction and come to grips with the loss of his career.

The book is in large part a love letter to his wife, Joan (née Alt), the seesaw girl of the title, who stuck with him through the hard times.

Afterward he stopped receiving calls when his agent failed to register with the Screen Actors Guild on his behalf, and he retired from show business.

[6] York was a three-pack-a-day smoker for much of his life and often smoked cigarettes on the set of Bewitched; he spent his final years battling emphysema.

Using his telephone as his pulpit, York motivated politicians, business people, and the general public to contribute supplies and money.

"[6] York died of complications from emphysema at Blodgett Hospital in East Grand Rapids, Michigan, on February 20, 1992, at age 63.