Tom McNally knew actor David Richards as “Mr. Crack-Up,” though he thought his friend was most accomplished at dramatic roles.
“He was one of the funniest men I have ever met in my life, but he will be remembered most for his generous spirit and extraordinary wit,” said McNally, artistic director of the Little Theatre of the Rockies in Greeley.
“Everyone in Denver theater knew him.”
Richards died Thursday in Burbank, Calif., of heart complications from leukemia. He would have been 63 on Friday.
“Today our very bright world has dimmed,” McNally said.
Richards performed at the Country Dinner Playhouse from 1979 to 1995 and at many other area theaters before leaving for Los Angeles, where he played fashion agent Sid Garber on “The Young and the Restless” for nearly four years.
He also played the hillbilly narrator on the E! Network’s “The Simple Life.”
Richards last appeared on a Colorado stage in the Little Theatre’s “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” in 2005.
He came home regularly to perform in 29 shows for the Greeley company as a professional guest artist alongside University of Northern Colorado theater students.
“And he was very, very helpful to many UNCers when it was time for them to move to L.A.,” McNally said. “He was like the mayor of L.A.”
Richards was born June 12, 1946, and graduated from Arvada High School.
He is most remembered for roles such as FDR in Country Dinner Playhouse’s “Annie,” Matthew Harrison Brady in the Arvada Center’s “Inherit the Wind” and in a series of Agatha Christie mysteries at the Country Dinner Playhouse.
“He had no patience with folks who worked in an abstract way,” said director Jeremy Cole.
“To David, acting was the same as any other job: a series of skills you used to create an end product. In other words, you learn your lines, you learn your blocking, you don’t let anyone else upstage you and voila . . . you’re acting.”
Richards was adopted, both in life and in the theater community. He took great pride in overcoming his alcoholism and became a sponsor to many others battling the disease. Country Dinner Playhouse producer Bill McHale fired Richards during his job there in 1979 but hired him back two years later.
“He asked me to take a chance on him; I did, and he was wonderful,” McHale said.
He said Richards “loved to tell funny stories. . . . I’m just not sure whether they were all true or not.”
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