As an item from The Daily Star reported in 1974, Burroughs’ noble words and heartfelt wish did not prove prescient.
Bewitched actress Elizabeth Montgomery has divorced her husband of 10 years, director William Asher. The reason for the divorce is unknown at present. In the divorce settlement, Liz was given the house and full sole custody of their three children, William, 10, Robert, 9, and Rebecca Elizabeth, 4. William Asher was given full unlimited access to their children. Elizabeth does not wish to discuss her divorce. All she will say is, “I had to divorce Bill. It was too painful to continue, and I think our children would be better off with two separate parents than one unhappy pair trying to hide their marital troubles from them. I do have my children to consider. They are so young, especially Rebecca. I have to think of what’s best for them.”
Lizzie was always thinking what was best for everyone. And whatever personal or professional relationships she established by way of Bewitched, whether with Bill Asher, Agnes Moorehead, Dick York, Dick Sargent, David White, Paul Lynde, Richard Michaels, or any number of the cast and crew, she made a lasting impression on each of them. As R. Robert Rosenbaum, one of the show’s directors, explained in The Bewitched Book:
Elizabeth was a very caring person. She was one of the most loved actors in our business. It was fun working on Bewitched, and she helped make that happen. The whole crew adored her. She was sincerely interested in the welfare of everyone and their families.
In that same publication, Michaels added:
Liz was the darling of the Bewitched set. She was just as friendly with the gofer as she was with the director. She immediately disarmed people, and not everyone is like that, especially in the entertainment industry. She was a dream come true.
Actor Art Metrano (Joanie Loves Chachi, Baretta) was featured in several Bewitched episodes, initially, “Samantha’s Wedding Present,” which aired in the fifth season. In 1990, he summarized his years on the series, as well as the show’s series of events:
Bewitched was the second show of my Hollywood career. Bill Asher became a big supporter of my career. He hired me in early 1970 to play a garbage man on my very first Bewitched show. I kiddingly said to him, “Please let me know when this will air so I can call my mom in Brooklyn.” Bill did let me know when it would air and hired me for many other episodes of Bewitched. I would say it was Burt Metcalfe who cast the show, and Bill Asher who directed, got my career started in Hollywood. From that show at the Columbia lot, I was hired to do many other TV shows. Elizabeth was always nice to guests on the show and years later her daughter Rebecca and my daughter Roxanne became friends during their high school years. I remember Dick York as always being in pain and David White and Dick Sargent as being two terrific guys.
In the end, the rise and fall of Bewitched, as well as the Montgomery/Asher marriage, was a learning experience for all, especially Lizzie. As she explained at length in 1989:
I learned a lot from being on Bewitched … People were so willing to let you in on their secrets or their not-so-secret likes and dislikes about what they were doing … from props to the gaffer … to lighting … to cinematography. It’s not like it was this closed kind of shop where they didn’t want to share their expertise. They enjoyed telling other people how good they were and what they did, and they had a damn good right to be proud of what they did because everybody did it so well. I have fond memories of these people and the reason is because we shared so much. It’s not like we were isolated. You’d be hard-put to be isolated from anybody you’d worked with for eight years unless you’re a total do-do.
I always thought it was like going to college. It really was like taking a course, and I learned an enormous amount on every level. And I don’t think I ever missed a day. And the thing I found most amazing, was that any member of any crew at any given time is infinitely more important than the actors on the set, because they are so expert in what they’re doing. If you ask them, 90 percent of them are more than willing to help, to tell you that this is that … and that is what that plug is … and that’s what that light does.
It’s a fascinating business, and what I found so rewarding is that I was never bored … never … for one minute. And a lot of people can sit around and be bored (on any set). I’ve noticed that. But there’s never any reason to sit around and be bored because there’s a whole lot of other stuff you can be doing. I think being bored is extremely boring and unproductive. There’s just no excuse for it …
I learned about special effects. I learned a whole lot about a whole lot of stuff. I learned about things that I never even thought existed before. It’s just a revelation to me. It’s just so much more fun. And it makes you appreciate what everyone else is doing. And that the crew is the most important (group of) people on the set. They are what make it come together. It’s everybody’s production. The harder you work together and the closer you get—the better it’s gonna be …
Nobody was afraid of making an ass of themselves, particularly me. I figured that’s what I’m here for. And it’s always nice to have people around who are that secure … who will trust. We had a company that really trusted each other … that worked that well together. You knew that nobody was out to get you … or how to hurt you. And that whatever happened happened because that was what the other person was really feeling should happen. And no one was out to upstage anybody, or snarl at anyone. It was amazing.
Seventeen
Post Serial
“The scenes were pretty much traumatic, and I would find myself feeling depressed afterwards.”
—Elizabeth Montgomery, expressing the emotional and psychological strain that resulted from filming A Case of Rape (People Magazine, March 1974)
When Bewitched debuted in the fall of 1964 its main commercial sponsors were Chevrolet and Quaker Oats cereal. After Lizzie ended the series in the spring of 1972, she would appear in various other television productions with all new sponsors. Namely, her TV-movies, which she addressed in summary in 1989:
All of them have been different from each other, except perhaps Act of Violence and A Case of Rape. They’ve all had different kinds of “feels” to them, and that’s one of the reasons that I’ve done them. I get letters from people saying, “The wonderful thing that we like about what [you do] since you left Bewitched is that we never know what you’re going to do next.” … [The movies] are all strange. (I’m) not being pigeonholed, which is good. And being afforded the luxury to do that is nice, to be able to pick and choose and only do what you want to do. Audiences really like that.
In 1993, she told journalist Bart Mills in short, “I can wait to do another series. I’m happy doing movies for television.”
As research has shown, Lizzie became the Queen of TV-Movies … by retaining a high Television Quotient Rating, or TV-Q. In fact, according to Ronny Cox, her friend and co-star in the small screen movies, A Case of Rape and With Murder in Mind, she had the “highest TV-Q of anybody.”
TV-Q scores are a research product of New York–based business, Marketing Evaluations. Qs, as they are now known, were originally developed in the early 1960s for television programmers to calculate awareness of and favorability toward those public personalities on or associated with The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Over time, the panel survey was extended to include all broadcast and cable network shows and stars, sports celebrities, products and brands. In each case, the key factor was the likeability quotient, with collected data analyzed and summarized by the various perceptions accumulated on and by consumers into a single measurement.
For example, Tom Hanks topped the charts as the most likeable overall actor since 1995 and his TV-Q score has consistently been at least double the score for the average thespian in any medium. As another example, the CBS drama series, NCIS finished the 2010–2011 season as the top-rated scripted show on network television. When the latest TV-Q ratings of the most popular actors in prime time were released on August 4, 2011, it came as little su
rprise that a NCIS cast member or two ranked high on the list.
Pauley Perrette, who plays the “gothic” forensic scientist Abby Sciuto, earned the top spot on the survey; followed by Cote de Pablo, who came in second; Mark Harmon in fourth place; and David McCallum (originally known on TV from The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) in fifth place. The only non-NCIS-actor in TV-Q’s top five for that season was Jim Parsons, who plays Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory, another CBS show (this one, a comedy).
While Marketing Evaluations believes the Q popularity measurement is a better indication of viewers’ fondness for a show versus more traditional methods like TV ratings, networks are able to barter their compounded Qs to charge higher ad rates during their programs.
In short, TV-Qs, which are conducted twice annually, calculate how much the general public likes or dislikes a particular TV star. With specific regard to Lizzie’s reign on television, author Michael McWilliams stated it another way in his book TV Sirens (Perigee, 1987): “Montgomery is to the tube what [Greta] Garbo is to the cinema. She’s as emblematic of TV actress as Garbo is of movie actress.”
Despite those small screen calculations which could have projected wide screen margins, post-Samantha, Lizzie shied away from feature film work beyond her narration of the controversial documentaries Cover Up (1988) and The Panama Deception (1992), and for many, this was a disappointment.
Bewitched writer John L. Green, who created My Favorite Martian (CBS, 1963–1966, a show that once included a “twitch” reference), once compared her special brand of TV quality to journalist Jane Pauley. “You can just see the intelligence in her eyes,” he said.
And Lizzie stayed with television because she enjoyed it, she wasn’t overly ambitious with regard to her career, and there were few big screen parts available for women.
In 1988, Bewitched writer Richard Baer said of Lizzie, “I think she wanted to be Jane Fonda. She sure looked like her, but it wasn’t meant to be. Bewitched came along and, though she never admitted it, I think she was tired of doing the show after the first few years.”
In 1978, Elizabeth went on a promotional tour for her NBC mini-series, The Awakening Land. While she believed the film-TV comparison was an odd thing, she never really thought in those terms. She left that up to network and studio executives. She continued working because she loved her job. And she was in a position to pick and choose projects at will. She was frequently granted first choice on various projects and many times rejected significant offers for both television and film. She went by her instincts and never regretted any decisions for TV or the big screen.
With regard to feature films in particular, she welcomed opportunities when they presented themselves, but she was never compelled to do one. In 1988, Columbia Pictures approached Sol Saks about doing a Bewitched feature film. The studio approached Elizabeth about the idea, and Saks said she was “intrigued.” But as it turned out, Saks owned the TV rights, but not the motion picture rights. Consequently, thirteen years later, a very different Bewitched feature film hit theatres, a movie that got a lukewarm reception by critics, but which nonetheless paid loving tribute to Lizzie’s memory.
Back on the small screen, between 1972 and 1993, Elizabeth was satisfied with the work at hand. For her, the quality of television movies was closing in on theatrical motion pictures. Her success from Bewitched had allowed her to work as she pleased, even on a limited basis, doing two TV-movies a year. For her, money was never a concern and she never felt underpaid.
Instead, all that mattered was the quality of the script and production. An astute judge of material, and a severe critic of what she managed to have and not have produced, Lizzie thought television executives never gave enough credit to the home audiences, whom she believed craved sophisticated programming like PBS’ once-popular and somewhat suggestive British series, I, Claudius. But airing such risqué programming on any mainstream American network in 1977—and for a few years to come— wasn’t going to happen, and she knew it.
Truth be told, Lizzie constructed a solid career in television because she was talented, charismatic, and female, and because audiences had separate perceptions of the small and big screens. At the time, TV projects were not usually given the green light unless there was significant indication of a solid female interest. In fact, many TV-movies of today, specifically for networks like The Hallmark Channel or Lifetime, are still geared specifically toward a female audience.
In Elizabeth’s core TV-movie era, the mainstream target audience for feature films was, with few exceptions, young adults with limited female appeal. At the same time, television proved to be an extraordinary challenge because of its boundaries, and although she never felt too confined by the small screen’s size, she particularly embraced daring subject matters, which she viewed as strategic career moves.
In 1961, she may have once dubbed TV a “mediocre medium,” but by 1994, when she chatted with reporter Ed Bark and The Dallas Morning News, she had clearly changed her mind:
I love television. I like the pressure. I like the lack of wasting time. I would love to do a feature, but that’s a whole other animal. I’m lucky to be able to kind of hang in there and wait a bit for really good scripts. I like to try to pick something a little unlike anything I’ve done before.
Certainly, her first post-Samantha screen performance in the 1972 ABC TV-movie, The Victim, a nerve-wracking thriller, reflected that decision:
A wealthy Kate Wainwright is trapped on a rainy night at the home of her sister, Susan Chappel (Jess Walton), whom she soon discovers has been murdered and stuffed in the basement. And Kate may the next victim.
The Victim debuted in what would have been Lizzie’s ninth year on Bewitched had she agreed to her extended contract with the series. Instead, twitch-fans were treated to her take on Kate, who looked like Samantha Stephens and dressed like Samantha Stephens, but who wasn’t Samantha Stephens. Not by a long shot. Lizzie’s hair as Kate was as it was styled in the final season of Bewitched, but the happy, chipper Samantha persona, although subdued in that last year, was nowhere to be seen when Lizzie played The Victim. Her break from Bewitched was loud and clear, and she wanted Samantha fans to hear her cry of freedom.
In 1977, Leonard Nimoy, star of the original Star Trek—one of Lizzie’s favorite TV shows—authored I Am Not Spock which he hoped would send a message of independence to “Trekkers” the world over. With The Victim Lizzie followed suit, as if to say, “I Am Not Samantha”; it’s considered one of her best movie portrayals since her big screen debut in 1955’s The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell.
But in playing The Victim, she may have frightened more than a few viewers in the Bible Belt, which certain studio and network executives thought she had already done with Bewitched.
Although the violent themes and scenes of The Victim are considered mild by today’s standards, there are still some solid scares in the film, which offers a strong supporting cast. Besides Jess Walton as Lizzie’s on-screen sister, George Maharis (Route 66) played her brother-in-law, Ben Chappel, and veteran actress Eileen Heckert was a slightly sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Hawkes.
Through it all, the entire cast and crew enjoyed near-perfect weather conditions, as the movie was shot on location on the Monterey Peninsula in California. But that didn’t help the film’s premise, which was centered around a treacherous rain storm. Lizzie explained to The Florence Morning News on March 2, 1974:
“The lack of rain meant that we had to create our own deluge. Over 100,000 gallons of water (was) used on the location and each time they set up the rain towers it was an expensive job. My major concern was the problems that would result if re-takes were necessary. My hair would have to be re-done, the wardrobe dried and the area re-dressed. I’ve always tried to be a one-take actress,” she said, “but with this film that objective proved especially challenging. I felt easy coming back to drama after so many years, but there were special problems that made this the toughest story I have ever done. The technical work was the best
I have ever seen, but it was so complex that the crew and I had to have absolute perfect timing to make everything work properly.”
When it was all said and done, irony refused to take a holiday. Only seven days after The Victim completed production, near-monsoon-like rains flooded the area.
But rain or shine, working on the movie boosted Lizzie’s performance stamina, while her career received a breath of fresh air. In 1964, she was playing Samantha; in 1974, she decided that television drama in particular was “as good or better than it was ten years ago. The advances in the technical areas are almost staggering. I saw some of them on Bewitched, but on this film I saw how new cameras and lenses can be a tool of both the director and the actor.”
Between Bewitched, The Victim, and her other 1970s TV-movies, she was still approached about resurrecting Samantha in some way, even as a supporting character on a short-lived ABC spin-off called Tabitha, the pilot for which debuted on May 7, 1977. The show was about Samantha and Darrin’s now grown-up magical daughter, and it featured future Knots Landing star and aspiring singer Lisa Hartman (today married to country crooner Clint Black). William Asher had directed a previous Tabatha (with an “a”) pilot segment starring Liberty Williams, which aired on April 24, 1976. This edition was actually more mystical than Bewitched, but it didn’t sell. However, a second pilot with Hartman caught ABC’s fancy and it went to series. Asher set the stage, premise, and the theme of the spin-off, but was not hands-on involved following his work on the first pilot. He later directed a few episodes of the series (in which Bewitched originals Sandra Gould, George Tobias, and Bernard Fox reprised their Gladys, Abner Kravitz, and Dr. Bombay roles), but other than that, Asher only became an advisor on the show.
Twitch Upon a Star Page 29