Twitch Upon a Star

by Herbie J. Pilato

  Others on the Tibbles party circuit included the iconic Elizabeth Taylor and Alan Ladd. It was Ladd who starred in the classic 1953 feature film, Shane, which as Bill Asher explained in The Bewitched Book, was the basis of the “Shane Theory”:

  Shane was a gunslinger who only used his weapons as a last resort; first he would address the issues at hand with his wit, his intelligence, even his humor. When all else failed, then he would bring out the big guns and save the day. That’s how Bill explained the power of the twitch to Lizzie who was initially impatient with Samantha holding back her witchcraft. She should not overuse the twitch, Asher cautioned. “You’re Shane!” he told her. “You don’t twitch until the audience wants you to.”

  Doug Tibbles, meanwhile, was not holding anything back, and his perspective as a child and teenager growing up in Hollywood was always clear. Except occasionally … as when he’d confuse Lizzie’s father Robert Montgomery with George Montgomery, both of whom frequently visited the home of early film idol Van Johnson, where Doug and his family attended parties.

  Doug recalls one party in particular at the home and pool of Dean Martin, Lizzie’s co-star from Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed? Standing by the pool at Martin’s home, Tibbles was approached by none other than actress Janet Leigh. “Doug,” she began to ask, “would you like a drink?”

  “Want a drink?” he reiterates today. “I don’t even know how she knew my name?!”

  However, everyone at the party certainly knew Leigh’s identity. She was a respected actress, who became best known for two creations, both of which are connected to Lizzie: Leigh’s shower-stealing performance as Marion Crane in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1960 film, Psycho, which starred Anthony Perkins, who was good friends with Bewitched’s Dick York; and Jamie Lee Curtis, Leigh’s daughter with actor Tony Curtis, who also fathered David and Greg Lawrence (though not with Leigh), the twins who played Darrin and Samantha’s son Adam in the last three seasons of Bewitched.

  Also, too, of course, Martin was a member of the Rat Pack, which included Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, and Frank Sinatra, all of whom knew Lizzie…. and Doug Tibbles. He remembers visiting Sinatra’s home:

  We knew his daughter Nancy, and Dean Martin’s kids, too. We knew all of them. You see, to grow up in L.A. at that time, if you were our age, and went to our high school (Hollywood High), you would have gone to Sinatra’s house, too.

  At one point, Doug had also befriended Jim Mitchum, younger brother to classic screen idol Robert Mitchum. As he recalls:

  Bob Mitchum called my house and spoke to my Mother, as I was standing right next to her. He wanted to take me to Greece with the Mitchum family. But I didn’t want to go, and I told my Mother that. I knew they just wanted me to keep Jim busy, and I didn’t feel like playing babysitter to Jim Mitchum.

  On yet another occasion, Doug had made contact with another legendary actor. He explains:

  Marlon Brando was having a meeting with director Walter Lang. But we didn’t even look at him. It was no big deal to me and my friends. We grew up with movie stars’ kids. By that time, we were teenagers, and all we cared about was looking at pretty girls. Other than that, we really didn’t give a shit. I was numb and desensitized to the whole celebrity game.

  Flash-forward a decade or so to Bewitched: From Tibbles’ perspective, he had known and grown up with A-list movie stars. So when he arrived on the Samantha series, he explains, he still felt the glitter and glamour of the big screen, and television was a step down for him. But he was still impressed with the small screen charisma of the stars of Bewitched, namely, Lizzie and Dick York.

  “Dick was a nice guy,” he says, “… a gentleman,” while he remembers Lizzie as “not the least bit arrogant.” In fact, Doug continues, “she was one of the kindest people in the entire business, along with Andy Griffith and Dean Martin” (both with whom he had collaborated on various projects). “She was always lady-like, always polite and down to earth. And she was always very nice to me.”

  So nice, in fact, it used to rile Bill Asher, especially one day, when Lizzie approached Doug and said, “We think you’re marvelous!” She was referring to herself and Asher, who was standing beside her. But according to Doug, “Bill didn’t seem to take that too well. He just seemed like a jealous husband. It was seemingly a rough time in their marriage … he was very on edge.”

  Shortly after Lizzie complimented Doug, he met with Asher and Michaels to discuss one of his scripts. Bill asked Doug to rewrite a few pages of dialogue. Doug agreed, but apparently, not to Bill’s immediate or complete satisfaction. “Okay, Bill,” he said, “but I’m not going to fake it and pretend that I can come up with a few lines now; let me go home and think it over.”

  Asher went ballistic, and screamed, “You’re a professional, Doug! And you should be able to come up with something on the spot!”

  Taken aback by Asher’s response, Doug thought, “What is wrong with him?” Upon hearing Asher’s tantrum, Doug didn’t know what to think and he had a knee-jerk reaction. But in time, he saw the big picture. He explains:

  I got so mad, that I took the script—which was not bound, and threw it in the air; and it came fluttering down all over the floor, and I left. Young and impetuous, I was saying things like, “[Forget] this! I’m not doing this shit!” And I ran out the door and out onto the Screen Gems lot. It was Richard Michaels who then chased after me, running outside into that lot. I just remember him saying, “Doug, please come back.” And I may be wrong about this, but I thought something was going on then between Richard and Elizabeth, and I don’t know how well known it was. There was definite tension in the offices, not so much on the set. But you could feel it in the offices, especially with Asher. I mean, here I am a young guy, and Elizabeth was saying I was marvelous, and I’m not making myself out to be Rock Hudson. All I’m saying is that when she paid the slightest bit of attention to someone else in any way, it seemed to bother him.

  When asked why Asher didn’t fire Michaels if he knew about the affair with Lizzie at this stage of the game, Doug replied:

  But that’s just it. I don’t think he knew. That’s my guess. He might not have believed it. It’s like after we all found out none of us could believe that she would do that. I’m not saying that she wouldn’t have done it out of fear of Bill Asher, but that she didn’t seem like the kind of “fooling-around” girl. I mean, the way she looked, she didn’t seem like the kind that would go sneaking-around. That’s just my perception today.

  In further retrospect, Doug finds it ironic that it was Michaels who chased him down on the Columbia studio lot to reconcile with Asher after their confrontation. He explains further:

  Dick Michaels was a really nice guy and very level-headed no matter what happened. And to clarify, I had no idea what exactly was going on. I just noticed a jealous man in Bill Asher. And only later did I piece things together. But you wouldn’t have pictured Dick Michaels in an affair with Elizabeth, and you wouldn’t have pictured her in an affair with anyone. And I hate to say this, but either way, I really didn’t give a shit. I was like, “Just get me out of here!”

  Today, Tibbles is living his musical dream. With songwriter wife Barbara Keith and stepson John Tibbles, they headline the respected trio, The Stone Coyotes, based in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Barbara is on the electric guitar and vocals, John plays bass, and Doug plays drums.

  In Tibbles’ Bewitched episode “To Twitch Or Not To Twitch,” which aired in the show’s fourth season, Samantha and her ad-man husband Darrin bicker over the use of witchcraft. It’s an especially dicey disagreement this time, because her not doing so ultimately causes him embarrassment at a client’s dinner party.

  Whether or not certain impediments had developed behind the scenes in previous seasons, by the show’s eight and final year, 1971–1972, all hell broke loose. Lizzie was growing if not tired of Bewitched, at least slightly weary of the notoriety that came along with the “nose job.” She was also hurt. Her marriage to Bill As
her was in trouble. As Asher told A&E’s Biography in 1999, “The show itself was not as strong as it had been. And that bothered her, and so she said, ‘I don’t want to do it anymore.’”

  Sixteen

  Temperatures Rising

  “We enjoy each other. Our interests are the same; I think our temperaments go together.”

  —Elizabeth, describing her relationship with Bill Asher, two years before they separated, Modern Screen Magazine, July 1970

  According to The Schenectady Gazette, in the fall of 1971, Bill Asher had noticed an attractive professional ice skater–turned–New York actress in a toothpaste commercial. She was the perfect fit for the role of a female expert skater he was seeking to cast for the Bewitched episode “Samantha on Thin Ice.” Upon his invitation, Nancy Fox flew to the West Coast, on her dime, for an interview. Charming and talented, Fox could act and skate at the same time, and she won the role, Asher’s heart, and a regular spot on a new series he was developing.

  But he was on thin ice with Lizzie. Their days were numbered and by the summer of 1972, they separated. Hollywood columnist Marilyn Beck confirmed the news, August 4, 1972:

  [While the] Elizabeth Montgomery–Bill Asher estrangement continues, Asher is managing to snap out of the blues a bit with the help of actress Nancy Fox. She is the young cutie who portrays the nervous student nurse in Asher’s new Temperatures Rising ABC series. His attentions on and off the set are making her feel much less nervous about her first shot at stardom.

  And this from The Los Angeles Times, August 30, 1972:

  Now Nancy Fox, who plays the nurse in Temperatures Rising, is said to be helping raise Asher’s temperature lately.

  He was working overtime on Rising, developing another sitcom, The Paul Lynde Show, and allowing his marriage to Lizzie to fizzle. Consequently, it was now clear that she had found at least a measure of comfort in the arms of Asher’s Bewitched protégé Richard Michaels, who explained it all to Entertainment Tonight (E.T.) in 2006. By the eighth and final year of Bewitched, his and Lizzie’s friendship had developed in a “deeper way,” he said. It was something they both tried to “repress. But as the year went on, it became more and more compelling.”

  So they moved into a one-bedroom apartment in West Los Angeles and kept their affair hidden. Reports in the press suggested she had retired and moved to Europe. But Michaels said such was not the case. Lizzie simply did not want to be hounded by the tabloid media. So they kept their relationship a secret.

  By 1986, Asher hired Michaels to direct an episode of his CBS drama series Kay O’Brien. According to what Michaels conveyed in 2006 on E.T., any animosity that may have existed between the two men had dissolved. “That was then,” Asher told him. “This is now.”

  Michaels said he and Lizzie were friendly until the end. It proved challenging, but “anytime something like this happens, it’s always tough on the principals,” he said, as if they were actors performing in a play. “It was tough saying good-bye. But absolutely we were on good terms when it broke.”

  It’s been nearly five decades since he and Lizzie were together, but as Michaels told E.T., he still thinks of her as Samantha, even though he knew her as Elizabeth all those years before. “I don’t think any of us can forget the sweet lady who could twitch her nose and make everything okay in the world,” he said.

  Michaels, who retired from directing in 1994, lives in Maui, Hawaii. Ironically, his daughter, Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum, shared a love of horses with Elizabeth, as she was the first woman to be ranked Number One in the world in equestrian show jumping.

  In time—if not just in time—Bill Asher realized his liaison with Fox was a mistake and blamed himself for his divorce from Lizzie. In 1999, he appeared on A&E’s Biography and admitted that “… the whole thing was my fault. I was going to work every morning and she was doing nothing. And it got to her. And she finally took off. I was very angry that she left. So I left.”

  Apparently with Fox, and then Lizzie divorced him in 1974. But in 1976, Fox was out of the picture and Asher married actress Joyce Bulifant, who subsequently divorced him in 1993. Since 1998, he’s been married to Meredith Asher.

  Through it all, Lizzie had found a “fox” of her own—Robert Fox-worth—whom she met on the set of Mrs. Sundance in 1973. He became the only other man in her life, the one she frequently referred to as the love of her life.

  Nancy Fox, a childhood friend of Charlie’s Angels star Jaclyn Smith, would continue acting, at least through the 1980s, when she’d appear in films like, ironically enough, Warlock, released in 1989. It was in 1982 that she appeared in what is arguably her largest role: the lead for The Sonja Henie Story, a feature film based on the life of the Norwegian blonde Olympic star and ice-skating movie queen of the 1940s.

  Beyond that, she was never heard from again, at least publicly. She now leads a quiet life in New York, which is how she always wanted it. In November 1977, she repeated to The Youngstown Vindicator almost exactly what Lizzie said to Look magazine in 1965: “I don’t care about being a big star. I don’t even think I’d like that. I just want to stay well-adjusted and happy.”

  While Lizzie and Nancy may have had more in common than either may have realized, Bewitched co-star Irene Vernon felt left out in the cold, pushed to the curb. She had played Louise Tate on the show before she was replaced by Kasey Rogers or, as Vernon said in 1988, “I was fired!”

  Apparently, it was because of her friendship with Danny Arnold, the show’s original producer. According to Vernon, Bill and Lizzie were not at all fond of Arnold. So, they let her go in the spring of 1966, the end of the second season. “Devastated,” Vernon then left Hollywood, geographically and figuratively, and gravitated towards a more successful career, in real estate, in Beverly Hills.

  In the big scheme of things, some actors are willing to do whatever it takes to make it in Hollywood. Others, like Fox and Vernon, vote against a no-holds-barred approach and leave show business behind, savoring their lives and their sanity in the process.

  Performers like Elvis and Michael Jackson, for example, were not so lucky. They didn’t know when to stop. They succumbed to the intoxicating environment the entertainment industry provides, almost like a drug; and in some cases, exactly like a drug. There’s so much opportunity, so much potential to succeed, and when that success arrives, it simply becomes too much to handle.

  Fortunately, in Lizzie’s case, she was never forced to choose between a career and personal happiness. She was born into wealth and status that stabilized her life, at least financially. Although her father was demanding and she for many years lived in his shadow, Elizabeth would later carve out her own brand of stardom that allowed her the luxury to pick and choose to work as she pleased. In short, even with her various issues, she had her head on straight.

  Entertainment curator Rob Ray explains it all:

  One type of performer is the tenacious, career-is-all person with the determination to succeed at all costs. They will succeed at anything they strive hard enough to do because nothing else in their life matters. Most classic stars like Bette Davis, John Wayne, and Lucille Ball fall into this category … today, maybe even George Clooney, Tom Cruise, and Oprah Winfrey, certainly. Another type is the person who has the drive but can’t cope with the pressures of the business. As a result, they crash and burn with their life ending in tragedy. Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland and now, unfortunately, Whitney Houston, are classic examples of vulnerable souls who couldn’t handle the pressures. But most people fall into a third category. They have the desire to make it, but whether they succeed or not, once they realize what sacrifices and struggles a career entails, they decide for their own personal happiness and survival to leave the table. Their survival instinct impels them to move on. Greta Garbo is the ultimate example from the classic film era, and I suspect Irene Vernon and Nancy Fox, and even Elizabeth herself, to a certain extent, fell into this third category, too. For most people, career isn’t everything. Personal happine
ss and fulfillment is. For that group, life is too short to deal with the stress of show business day in and day out, and Elizabeth knew that.

  Cliff Robertson was Lizzie’s good friend in the early, pre-Bewitched portion of her career. Other than that, he didn’t know much about, for one, her relationship with Bill Asher, because as he said, “I didn’t know him. But I do know he was very possessive, and a rather domineering figure, although he was a little fellow. And maybe because he was so short a fellow, he had a complex?”

  During the Bewitched years, Robertson didn’t see much of Lizzie, whom he affectionately referred to as “Lizbel” (as if she needed yet another nickname!). “She went into an envelope,” he says and the closest he came to her in those days was through mutual friends whom he’d periodically stop and ask, “Have you seen Lizbel?”

  One day, however, at a restaurant in Santa Monica, he finally ran into her, walking out the door with Asher. By that time, Robertson was set to marry his second wife, Cynthia Stone, who was by his side. “I wanted to introduce Elizabeth to my new bride-to-be,” he said. When his Lizbel caught sight of him, much to Asher’s displeasure, she shrieked, “Oh, Cliff! It is so great to see you!”

  “We hugged,” Robertson recalled, “I guess, in what would be perceived as a typical Hollywood encounter. I don’t think Bill was too pleased. He seemed a little bit impatient with her as if to say, ‘Quit talking to this silly actor.’ But I didn’t give a damn, because I was just seeing an old friend.” From this brief encounter, and from what he heard through the Hollywood grapevine, Robertson perceived that Asher was exerting a “certain control” over Lizzie. “He was very protective of her in that way. From a professional standpoint, at least from what I can gather, it proved beneficial for her. From a personal standpoint, I don’t think he ever had it so good.”