Early Life
Born Richard Allen York in Fort Wayne, Indiana, York grew up in Chicago, where a Catholic nun first recognized his vocal promise. He began his career at age 15 as the star of the CBS radio program That Brewster Boy. 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. He performed with stars including Paul Muni and Joanne Woodward in live television broadcasts and with Janet Leigh, Jack Lemmon and Glenn Ford in movies, including My Sister Eileen, and Cowboy.
It was while filming the 1959 movie They Came to Cordura with Gary Cooper and Rita Hayworth that York would receive a permanently disabling back injury. In York's own words: "Gary Cooper and I were propelling a handcar carrying several 'wounded' men down railroad track. I was on the bottom stroke of this sort of teeter-totter mechanism that made the handcar run. I was just lifting the handle up as the director yelled 'cut!' and one of the 'wounded' cast members reached up and grabbed the handle. I was suddenly, jarringly, lifting his entire weight off the flatbed—one hundred and eighty pounds or so. The muscles along the right side of my back tore. They just snapped and let loose. And that was the start of it all: the pain, the painkillers, the addiction, the lost career."
In 1960, he played the role of Bertram Cates (modelled on John Thomas Scopes, of "Monkey Trial" fame) in the film version of Inherit the Wind.
York went on to star with Gene Kelly as Tom Colwell in the ABC television comedy/drama Going My Way, and to appear in dozens of episodes of now-classic television series, including Justice, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Wagon Train, and CBS's The Twilight Zone and Route 66.
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