Twitch Upon a Star

by Herbie J. Pilato

  For the moment there were only ups and downs, as the newlywed Cammanns lived in the New York apartment above the space Dunne shared with his mother, who one night hosted a party to celebrate Late’s success. Dunne claimed that he and his mother were good friends with Lizzie, as he had served as an usher at her wedding to Cammann, a fellow stage manager on Presents. Both Dunne and his wife Lenny were so close to Lizzie that, after the birth of his first child (actor Griffin Dunne), she would often babysit, a fact which Dominick said his son to this day takes delight in revealing. Yet those intimate proximities would soon contract and fade.

  In time, the Dunnes moved to a larger apartment on East 76th Street, Lizzie disengaged Cammann in Vegas, and on December 28, 1956, in that same fast-paced, high-living Nevada city, she wed Gig Young of whom her father was not the least bit fond. As Dunne told Headliners & Legends in 2001, “Bob Montgomery hated Gig Young, and was … distressed” about Lizzie’s romance with the older actor. “I think that put the first strain on their father-daughter relationship.”

  In the interim, the Youngs moved to Los Angeles, and Cammann married again (to Nora Franke) in yet a second ceremony for which Dunne served as an usher.

  By the time all of this transpired, Lizzie’s old friends, like Bud Baker, had lost track of her. She extricated herself from him and others as she had from Sally Kemp. Occasionally, after she married Young, Baker, for one, would run into her at waving distance in some mob scene when she and Gig were on the East Coast. But other than that, she was a no-show. She turned the page. Seemingly, with each new relationship came a new crop of friends, and a new era was born for the actress who liked to draw. A fresh canvas awaited her at each new brush with fame.

  When Elizabeth was living with Gig Young in their rented furnished New York apartment, she fell in love with a white dishtowel decorated with blue butterflies. As writer Arnold Hano observed in the TV Guide article, “Rough, Tough and Delightful,” May 19, 1967, “This was no doubt a climax in the life of Liz Montgomery. When she wiped something, it turned out to be with an item totally domestic, albeit festooned with butterflies.”

  In that same article, Hano made note of a poem Elizabeth composed when she was only in third grade:

  Creepy, crawly caterpillar

  You are very funny.

  You will be a butterfly

  When the days are sunny.

  When Hano asked her about that poem, and which animal she most identified with, the caterpillar or the butterfly, she replied, indignantly, “Goodness, surely not the butterfly!” Meanwhile, her marriage with Young was at times like living in a cocoon.

  She first met the actor, twice married and divorced, after he had recently ended an engagement to actress Elaine Stritch and began hosting the anthology TV series Warner Brothers Presents. According to George Eells’ biography of Young, Final Gig: The Man Behind the Murder (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991), Gig’s show was filming on the same Warner’s lot that Lizzie was shooting her first motion picture, The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell.

  To celebrate signing contracts for Gig’s new series, Warner Bros. staged a dinner at the Beverly Hilton Hotel at which studio executive Gary Stevens requested the actor’s presence. Gig consented but was uncertain about his potential escort. Since she was on the lot, Stevens suggested Lizzie who was then all of twenty-two. Gig was born November 4, 1913, which made him forty-two, approximately, because like Lizzie he was known to tally his age with a minus-five-year span that was left open to the imagination.

  In either case, Gig was apprehensive about the potential date. He simply did not want to give the impression that he was too old to be dating a young starlet. Assured by Stevens that such would not be the case, Gig invited Lizzie to join him for the studio dinner. As it turned out, she was excited about the idea. Apparently, she had seen one of his recent film performances and said to anyone who would listen, “I think he’s the most attractive man on the screen and I intend to marry him.”

  While most shrugged off the remark, fate seemed to play against Lizzie’s hopes for a romance, let alone a marriage. At the time of her first date with Gig, she was scheduled to return to New York shortly to begin rehearsing a play. More importantly, she was not totally legally free from her marriage to Fred Cammann.

  That said, and as Eells explained in his book, it was obvious to many that Gig’s appearance and mannerisms were oddly similar to those of Robert Montgomery. The two had met when Gig guest-starred in an episode of Robert Montgomery Presents called “The Sunday Punch,” which aired October 19, 1953:

  One-time fighter Tony Marino (Young) is on his way down the boxing ladder but can still throw a mean “Sunday punch.” After his manager (played by Frank Wilson) attempts to bribe him to “take a dive” in a fight with up-and-comer Kid Walker, Tony becomes infuriated and almost wins the fight, but then suffers a dangerous head injury that may have lasting repercussions.

  Three years after Punch aired, and approximately twelve months after Lizzie met Gig, she performed in an episode of his show, Warner Brothers Presents, titled “Siege,” which aired on February 14, Valentine’s Day, 1956. On camera, she played a country schoolteacher whose class is held captive by an escaped convict. Off-camera, her young heart was held captive by Gig and the two were married the following December 28, and her father Robert Montgomery was nowhere in sight. He would not attend his daughter’s second marriage.

  Meanwhile, Lizzie and Gig decided they wanted to have children of their own, immediately, if possible. But to alleviate certain health issues he had had a vasectomy when he was only twenty-five. He would later reverse the procedure but his relationship with Lizzie, which lasted six years, still did not prove fertile.

  What it did produce was a lot of turmoil, largely due to the fact that Gig was a chronic alcoholic. What’s more, it was challenging for him get over the loss of his second wife. In 1949 he and his first wife, Sheila Stapler, were divorced after nine years of marriage. In 1951, he wed drama coach Sophia Rosenstein, who died of cancer one year later.

  Number three was up when Gig met Lizzie. He was immediately hypnotized by her sophisticated ways and flattered by the attention she showered on him. When she returned to Broadway to replace the ingénue in The Loud Red Patrick, they were constantly on the phone.

  After finishing his stint on Warner Brothers Presents, Gig received an offer to go into the legendary Jean Dalrymple’s revival of The Teahouse of the August Moon at the New York City Center. He wasn’t as impressed with Dalrymple as he was with Lizzie. So, he leapt at the opportunity to be near the future Bewitched star. The Moon revival didn’t spark any interest, but his romance with Lizzie was set afire.

  Charismatic and confident, her charms were evident wherever she went. As author Eells uncovered in his book on Young, the actor found Lizzie alluring but somewhat intimidating. But she helped to fill a void and loosened him up socially. At times they were like two little kids, according to Bob Douglas, a mutual bystander and friend to the couple.

  One weekend, for example, Lizzie took Gig and Douglas to her family’s attractive country home in Patterson, New York. Upon arrival there, and after several drinks, Gig blurted out, “What about dinner?”

  At which point, Lizzie ventured into the kitchen, returned and said, “Well, we really don’t have much of anything.” They discussed going to a restaurant, but apparently that wasn’t an option. After a time, she appeared with three plates, on which were three hamburgers. Everyone tasted them, and Gig said,

  “Mmmmmm, don’t think much of these.”

  “What?” Lizzie wondered. “I don’t think much of these,” Gig repeated.

  As Douglas recalled, the meat patties were “absolutely filthy.” Lizzie had made them out of dog food!

  Out of such shocking hijinks as this their romance increased and became serious. According to Douglas and his wife Sue, it was Lizzie who pushed to be married, but Gig was uncertain. Sharing the secret of his 1938 vasectomy with her was not easy. His wife Sheila h
ad resigned to the information calmly and rarely made reference to it. With his wife Sophie, it wasn’t an issue at all, since she had undergone a hysterectomy before they married. Elaine Stritch had assured him they would be together even it was not possible for him to father children. But with Lizzie, Young felt old. He became increasingly concerned about his masculinity which, as he viewed it, was diminished by the vasectomy. But he finally told her the truth, and she didn’t care. They would breed dogs, she said. Sue Douglas in Final Gig:

  She went into the marriage with her eyes wide open. She was so nuts about him. I don’t think anything would have made any difference. I think he was a little scared of the marriage, but not Liz. She adored animals and in some way believed they would take the place of children, which, of course, is ridiculous thinking.

  According to an early studio bio, Lizzie and Gig did at least own a collie, which they named Willie Grogan, in honor of the principle character he played in 1962 Elvis Presley feature film Kid Galahad. They also had a goat named Mary Chess, which happened to be a trade name for a then-line of perfumes. At the time, they lived in Sunset Plaza, a fashionable mountain-side residential area above Sunset Strip, where Lizzie maintained her green thumb … for mint, which she grew in her backyard.

  The two-page bio also went on to explain her principal hobby was painting. She had sold watercolor works of art and was working on an assignment to illustrate a children’s book. She was a collector of antiques and had “no particular liking for modern art, although she respects it.”

  As Eells explained in Final Gig, a band of “loosely connected couples” from the entertainment industry surrounded Lizzie and Young in Manhattan, including the Dunnes, Howard and Lou Erskine, Betsy Von Furstenberg and Guy Vincent, and Bill and Fay Harbach.

  Husband and wife actors William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett were also part of that group. Married for over fifty years, Bartlett and Daniels had known Lizzie and Gig from their days in New York when they performed in guest-star roles on Robert Montgomery Presents. Although Lizzie made frequent appearances on her father’s show, none were with Daniels and Bartlett. The two would not work with her until years later. Daniels, best known to classic TV fans for his regular stints on St. Elsewhere (NBC, 1982– 1988) and Boy Meets World (ABC, 1993–2000), as well as being the voice of K.I.T.T. on the cult car show, Knight Rider (NBC, 1982–1986), appeared with Lizzie in her 1974 NBC TV-movie, A Case of Rape. Bartlett, a heralded actress in her own right with countless TV and film appearances under her belt, worked with Elizabeth in her 1975 TV-movie for ABC, The Legend of Lizzie Borden. “So Bill and I just happened to be in two of her biggest hits,” Bartlett says.

  Decades before, Elizabeth and Gig visited Daniels and Bartlett in their New York apartment:

  “Gig was a rather elegant and charming gentleman,” Bartlett recalls. “But he drank too much. Everybody drank too much. They were both drinking a lot, but I never saw her drunk, while he was pretty hopeless. She was good to get away from him.”

  Actor/author J. Anthony Russo had chronicled in his book, Creativity or Madness, that Dean Martin believed Lizzie to be intoxicated on the set of Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed?, and now Bartlett remembers Lizzie once revealing that her mother “drank a lot.” “She had a nice way of saying it, so it wasn’t coarse,” Bartlett explains, “but she said, ‘I told Mother I was going to cut her off at the bar.’ And I believe at this point, her mother lived with her. She adored her mother.”

  Upon hearing this, Sally Kemp, has an epiphany: “My mother, I realize now, like Elizabeth’s, was an alcoholic.”

  But while studies have shown that alcoholism is both a disease and hereditary, Sally questions if Lizzie had a substance abuse problem:

  Elizabeth and I usually sat next to each other in classes at the Academy and always had lunch together. I never smelled alcohol on her and would have known instantly. I was very wary and conscious of it. I wasn’t aware of her drinking much until she was trying to extricate Gig from Elaine Stritch. She had a tremendous crush on him and there was a big age difference between them … I don’t know how many years … and [her father] was against the match. I saw less of her by then since I was pursuing my own life. I saw them occasionally once they were married and they seemed happy. Gig was very charming until he’d had too much, then he’d kind of blur. I think Elizabeth did try to keep up with him, partly to lessen the age difference. I think she was far more intelligent than he was. He had a suave, sleek surface, but I’ve no idea what was beneath it, or even if there was a beneath. If she was unhappy or becoming unhappy, she never shared it and once they moved to L.A. all contact ceased and I know nothing of hers or their life together. When I heard the horror story of Gig’s death, I was deeply grateful she was well out of it. I don’t know about her life from then on except that she and Bill Asher had three children, which must have made her very happy … she always had a lovely childlike ability to create fun. I heard rumors of [her] drinking with [Bob] Foxworth, but they were only rumors and there are always rumors about celebrities. I knew as an actress myself that she couldn’t keep up her work schedule, raise three children, and look beautiful if she was incapacitated by booze. I wish our lives hadn’t gone apart, that’s all I can say.

  Biographer George Eells in Final Gig:

  If the Young-Stritch affair played itself out as a bittersweet Neil Simon, then Gig and Liz’s mad marriage radiated Noel Coward savoir faire: communal dashes to the martini fountain after screenings, croquet matches and other games. To those who knew them both, it seemed that Liz was intent on matching Gig’s capacity for drink, as though it were some kind of contest.

  Agent Martin Baum represented both Lizzie and Gig while they were together. Baum to Euell in Final Gig:

  As a couple, Gig and Liz were a delight. There was a childlike innocence about him that was totally refreshing. There was little guile, no jealousy or resentment of others who were doing well. A dear person. Of course, that was the surface Gig. I noticed when we were out on an evening socially, he drank excessively by my standards, and Liz was drinking right along with him. But they seemed happy.

  In late summer of 2011, Lizzie’s good friend Cliff Robertson described her relationship with Gig as “very warm and passionate,” adding:

  They seemed to get along very well. He was a charming fellow and a good actor. I would see them out on the West Coast for a while, when she was spending most of her time out there. But then she and Gig split up and she called me in New York, where I was still living at the time. She’d call every once and a while [to] say, “Are you coming to town?” And I’d tell her when and we’d often meet at a restaurant to catch up. She would tell me about her latest exploits and what not. But I never had any indication of whether or not there was trouble in the marriage. And when they did split I was sorry to hear that. I knew that they had been very happy, though clearly not for a long period of time.

  Loyal until the end, Robertson believed Lizzie handled every circumstance throughout her life with “grace and charm. She showed a lot of spunk for a girl who was brought up with creature comforts.” Once more, it was Lizzie’s unaffected demeanor that marked her appeal, specifically with Gig. “That was probably one of the main things that he saw in her,” Robertson surmised. “That she was so well-grounded.”

  Montgomery archivist Thomas McCartney:

  Her background helped to ground her, especially in that industry, which allowed her to survive where as so many others within it perished, literally. Her inner strength allowed her to continue to focus on her work when all around her crashed and burned in her personal life, this again came from being fundamentally strong, stable, and secure within herself and who she was as a human being. She was able to float with ease from one to any other social interaction, no matter if it was a lunch-bucket crew member or someone with high social standing to the point of royalty itself. She mainly drank with Gig to be able to be close to him on an emotional level so he would not shut her out, this being to keep l
oneliness at bay and to make Gig emotionally available, otherwise he shut down emotionally and shut her out. All addicts like company and pressure those around them to take part in their addiction. In this case, the pressure to do so came from Liz herself to retain access to Gig, so he would take her along on his magic carpet rides rather than leave her behind. Drinking like they did, as with Liz’s mother, was the norm then; in those days, no one would bat an eye at someone who drank a half a dozen hard drinks a day. Point being that the way Liz and her mother drank then was not noticeable. That’s what people did and society almost expected [it] of one. It was the norm. Now, we know better, but then they did not, nor would they be aware that their actions would be taken with anything more than a shrug of the shoulders.

  McCartney makes a valid observation: In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, on-screen and off, daily alcohol consumption was considered socially acceptable and cool, as was smoking. But the devastating health ravages of such vices were not yet fully calculated.

  As with many dramas and sitcoms in the 1960s, specifically, Bewitched, characters were frequently seen drinking or inebriated. Certainly, whenever Darrin felt overwhelmed by his wife’s witchcraft, he made himself a double or a triple, once even asking Sam to fix him a quadruple (in the fifth season episode, “I Don’t Want to Be a Toad; I Want to Be a Butterfly,” where he says, “Make it a quadruple and finish the story after I pass out”). In fact, actor Dick Wilson, better known as Mr. Whipple from the famous Charmin bath tissue commercials, was considered nearly a semi-regular on Bewitched due to his more than fifteen appearances as a drunkard, either at Darrin’s favorite bar, trying to pick up Samantha outside a restaurant (while Darrin fetched the car in “If They Never Met”), or as a neighborhood bum who thought Endora’s down-sized version of Darrin was a leprechaun (in “Samantha’s Wedding Present”).