Time & Perspective Quote by Dick York

That kind of line only lands if you mean it, and Dick York means it with the blunt physicality actors often reach for when they’re tired of polite critique. “Wanted to vomit” isn’t tasteful; that’s the point. It drags an aesthetic judgment out of the mind and into the body, turning Lux Radio Theatre from mere “not my taste” into something felt as contamination. York isn’t arguing about scripts or performances; he’s staging revulsion.

The likely target is the show’s whole sheen: Lux’s star-studded adaptations, the varnished studio perfection, the cozy ritual of prestige packaged as mass entertainment. For an actor coming up in a business that sold fantasy as hygiene, the metaphor writes itself. Lux was literally sponsored by soap. York’s disgust reads like allergy to the era’s scrubbed, sponsor-friendly culture, where emotion is carefully lit, conflict gets sanded down, and art is always one step from being an ad read. When he says he wanted to vomit, he’s also implying a refusal to ingest what’s being fed.

There’s subtext about class and credibility, too. Radio drama was both high-profile and constrained: glamorous voices, rigid formulas, gatekept opportunities. York’s line suggests resentment at a system that prized polish over pulse. Coming from an actor later associated with an everyman persona, it’s a small act of iconoclasm: the star machine isn’t aspirational, it’s nauseating. The bite is that he doesn’t moralize; he just retches. That’s how you make a cultural critique stick.