A Less-Than-Magical Time For Dick Sargent

The Phil Silvers Show with Sgt. Bilko was a huge hit. “I know!” said someone. “Let’s do Bilko except move it from the Army to the Navy.” Thus begat McHale’s Navy. “I know!” said someone. “Let’s do McHale, except make it female instead of male.” Thus begat Broadside.

The show accomplished one thing—it proved you can go to the well only so many times.

One of the cast members was Dick Sargent. I suspect when you see his name, this is not the sitcom you associate with him. But even before Broadside Sargent was the star of another TV comedy. One Happy Family was a 1960-61 mid-season replacement with a cast that included Jack Kirkwood and Cheerio Meredith. Broadside was on the air for 32 episodes. One Happy Family was ousted by ABC after 15.

One of the wire services caught up with Sargent to talk about his new series in a story published Jan. 8, 1961.

HATES HORSES, ACTOR FORCED INTO COMEDY
Dick Sargent Born to Horsey Set but Fears Steeds
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) — When Dick Sargent quit Stanford University in 1951 to become an actor he simply had to become a comedian—there's not too much of a market for tragedians these days and Sargent can't stand horses.
Sargent, who begins a television series "One Happy Family" Jan. 13, came from a long-time family of horsemen, but even the thought of climbing aboard one makes him break out in a sweat.
"You can see this made things a little rough trying to break into Hollywood in 1951," said the tall, good looking 30-year-old Sargent. "Almost everything that was being produced involved at least one horse."
Sargent said his agent got him one role in which he had to drive a two-horse team, together with several other teams.
"I don't why but just getting behind the horses seemed to make me tighten my grip on one side and my team went racing out of the camera angle away from the others," he said.
"For the next year I didn't get a part."
During his break-in period in Hollywood Sargent was endowed with an asset most prospective actors do not have—money.
"This trust fund kept me eating," he said. "During that one year without work I moved to a little town in the interior of Mexico," then—it kind of crept up on me—the trust fund ran out. All I had left was $200. I came back to Hollywood."
Sargent said his next contact with a horse was in the TV show "Wichita Town."
"They had a couple of scenes with horses but the director had to use a double," he said. "Believe me, producers don't like this because it costs money."
Sargent blames his fear of horses on his grandfather, John MacNaughton.
"When I was about five or six, grandfather gave me a hobby horse," he said. "I promptly got on and just as promptly fell off."
"Grandfather MacNaughton, incidentally, was the first horse-racing commissioner in the State of California."
Sargent's father, Elmer Fox, died when he was 12. He owned a large horse breeding ranch at Carmel, Cal., the Central California resort city Sargent still calls "home" although he owns his own home near the ocean not far from Hollywood. He's still a bachelor.
In his role in "One Happy Family" Sargent portrays a meteorologist who marries into a family of zany characters whose operation is somewhat different than his scientific thinking. It involves the humorous situations that could and do develop with three generations living under one roof.

Audiences may not have been happy with One Happy Family but producers were happy enough with Sargent. He worked steadily in films and got another crack at TV stardom in 1964. One of his publicity stops was in Dayton, Ohio, which resulted in this feature story published September 14.

Dick Sargent: An Actor Who Can't Tell a Lie
By GREGORY FAYRE, Daily News Sunday Editor
With his thick-lensed glasses, receding hairline and professorial manner, Dick Sargent, actor, could have passed for a refugee from "Mr. Novak," or "Our Miss Brooks," or "The Blackboard Jungle."
He was, in fact, absent with leave from something called "Broadside," a new television series described by its creators, or by their public voices, as a "female McHale's Navy." (It will be seen on Ch. 2 Sunday nights.)
It features, naturally, broads, if you will pardon the word, who join the Navy to see the world, or something like that.
In addition to Sargent, the show stars Kathy Nolan, who swapped her flower-sack dresses in "The Real McCoys" for bell-bottomed trousers, and Eddie Andrews, who usually is a guest star.
Dayton was one of the numerous stops Dick was making in the line of duty during what he laughingly called, "my vacation."
Over a dinner of swordfish, French fries and raspberry sherbet, (at 6-2, 173, he doesn't have to sweat his weight), he discussed his life, his career and his current vehicle, quite candidly. “I am one of those people who really loved his parents," Dick said. "You know there are so many actors and actresses who say. 'I lived in the slums and I hated them' or 'They gave me everything and I hated them.' Not me. I loved them."
Dick's father, to hear him tell it, was a combination of Errol Flynn, Rudolph Valentino, George Raft and Lionel Barrymore.
"He was fantastic," he says proudly and loudly for a soft spoken man. "He was many things ... a prohibition agent and a rum runner at the same time; a real estate man: an actor; an actor’s agent; a publicity man; many things. I was never able to top him."
He Headed for Mexico
After his father died when he was 12, Dick says he "became extremely introverted. I couldn’t talk to anyone for six years. I lived in a shell. My grandfather, who wanted me to grow up to be a businessman, sent me off to military school."
Finally, a more outward Dick Sargent emerged. He enrolled at Stanford, gained a group of friends, started acting and soon became "the human being I am today, whatever kind of human being that is."
He left college in his third year, hired an agent and landed two movie jobs quickly.
"I figured that it was a cinch that I would be working all the time."
Then, wham! He was out of work.
So he packed his bags along with a small trust fund and headed for Mexico and the export-import business.
"Somebody forgot to tell me that the trust fund would run out."
He went busted and latched on to odd job after odd job—selling silver door-to-door, trimming trees, digging ditches, anything to keep food in the cupboard and shelter over the head.
You've Gotta Have Faith
Then came a break and he soon had roles in "Bernadine," "Operation Petticoat," "The Great Imposter." "That Touch of Mink,” "For Love or Money," a few other movies, a few TV spots, and this series.
Dick lives by himself in one of two houses he owns. He is divorced.
He doesn't date actresses. "I dated every Susan Oliver in town," he said. "But when you sit and talk with an actress it's like talking to a man.
"They are worried about their careers. They say, 'I'm going to get that part from that woman. I'm going to knock on doors and land that part, etc.' I have enough to worry about with my own career."
Dick Sargent is a man who is doing what he wants to do.
"I am billed as one of the three stars in "Broadside." That is important. Not because I want the star billing, but because it means the studio recognizes me."
It means he has arrived, it means lean days in Mexico and peddling silver on the streets are behind him.
It means, as he says, "If you have faith in yourself and confidence in your ability, you will make it."
He doesn't know how to knock on doors, to push for a job, to step on other people, he says. He should, but he doesn't.
"I can't tell a lie on any level above little white lies."
Can "Broadside" make the team in the rating games?
"I think it can," Dick answered. "Frankly, I may sound cocky, but I don't think our competition is so tough."
In most cities the show goes against the last half of "Ed Sullivan" and "The Bill Dana Show."
As Dick Sargent said, he has faith in himself and in his series.

Faith in the series tuned out to be unfounded, but Sargent had reason to have faith in himself. That’s even though his next regular role was on The Tammy Grimes Show, which was pulled after four episodes. He jumped into a proven winner, replacing the pain-ridden Dick York on the sixth season of Bewitched. The series petered out after the eighth season but his performances as the mortal Darrin Stephens live on in reruns—along with a seemingly-immortal debate about which one played the role better.