Twitch Upon a Star

by Herbie J. Pilato

  As reporter Blecha explained, even the weather in New Salem complied with the production as warm, summer breezes and lush flora and fauna surfaced for the filming of Part 1: The Trees, while brisk autumn air and changing colors were there for Part 2: The Fields, and dark, dismal winter cold, even with a day of snow, showed up for Part 3: The Town (all of which were consecutively broadcast on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights).

  According to what Lizzie remembered in 1978, the country was “absolutely beautiful there, but whatever the territory offered, we got … viruses, poison oak, bees, mosquitoes, varmints, nettles. It gave us a vague idea of what it must have been like.”

  She herself contracted a bad case of poison ivy and the shoot overall was physically exhausting (especially on the days in the fields behind oxen and plow). But for Lizzie the most challenging part of portraying Sayward was the aging process, learning how to slow down, physically and psychologically.

  Despite those challenges, Lizzie gave her usual 100 percent and had great respect for the character:

  Sayward wasn’t stupid, just uneducated. Her instincts were extraordinary. She didn’t say much, but when she did she made a lot of sense. She had a tremendous amount of fortitude. If it wasn’t for people like her, you and I wouldn’t be here today.

  However, Lizzie admitted that the 1880s in the Ohio River held no personal appeal for her. And even though she was a pioneer woman in television, off screen, she had no desire claim the western frontier edition of that title. “No, I definitely would not have liked to have lived then. No one in their right mind would make that choice.”

  For a live online chat on December 12, 2002, Montgomery archivist Tom McCartney asked Awakening costar Jane Seymour, what it was like to work with Lizzie. She replied:

  Elizabeth Montgomery was a wonderful woman and very supportive to me. She was the first, indeed only, star to invite me into her trailer. I remember this as being a very special treat and vowed that if I ever had a trailer, I would share it with younger actresses. It set a precedent for me, one I follow to this day.

  Etta Place from Mrs. Sundance, Belle Starr, and The Awakening Land’s Sayward could be described as pioneering female roles for Lizzie (or any other actress) to portray. These were parts for her in particular that fueled ambition, expanded career opportunities, and strengthened artistic muscles. Each of these characters fit into what became her very strategic objective to work with daring projects. And if a network executive or producer objected to a particularly questionable script that may have held her interest, she was further ignited to bring the idea to fruition. “That’s the kind of stuff I want to do,” she told Entertainment Tonight in 1994.

  “I think television has grown up,” she said to Tonight reporter Scott Osborne in 1985, but she believed those “running it” were afraid of doing just that. “I don’t know why.” At this point, Lizzie was still open to performing in a comedy film, which she believed were “a lot harder [to do] than drama.” And such properties were also “very hard to find,” she said, partially because “on television there is so much censorship that it’s tough to do really sophisticated comedy” that the Standards and Practices divisions at the networks will approve.

  While network executives may not have met Lizzie’s standards and practices, she dealt with her own challenges head-on, namely her shyness, which she overcame, at least on camera, whenever she assumed a dramatic role in one of her post-Samantha TV-movies.

  By the time The Awakening Land premiered in 1978, Bewitched had been off the air six years and she was still mostly known as Samantha, the Queen of the TV Witches. Now, she had added a new twist to the title: “Lizzie— Queen of the TV-Movies,” a crown that would later be bestowed on Valerie Bertinelli (then just exiting the sitcom One Day at a Time, today starring in TV Land’s Hot in Cleveland) and on Jane Seymour (Lizzie’s co-star in Awakening, who later starred in the family medical western, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, a female TV pioneer in her own right).

  Due to Awakening’s success, Lizzie was in a position to command the highest price of any TV star and had her choice of roles. Her acquired wealth from Bewitched secured the already stable financial arsenal she amassed by way of her father’s inheritance.

  Through it all, she not only retained an unaffected demeanor, but remained devoted to her three children. She had it all, and she knew it. But she didn’t flaunt it. She didn’t have to because everyone else in the industry knew it, too. Long gone were the days when she butted heads with the likes of Screen Gems executive Jackie Cooper at the dawn of Bewitched. She was no longer demanding, but in demand. Her success commanded attention. No one could turn away from her, and no one could turn her away.

  The Victim, her first TV-movie since leaving Bewitched, had attracted a large enough audience for ABC in 1972 that her services were requested for a second film with the network: Mrs. Sundance, which premiered in 1974. She was on a hot streak, and the groundwork for her royal TV-movie status was in place.

  The free spirit was now a free agent, no longer tied down to one series, one character, or one network. When ratings for NBC’s A Case of Rape went through the roof and delivered with it her first Emmy nomination since Samantha, there was no stopping Lizzie. She was a bona fide legend by the time she’d play yet another one: in ABC’s 1975 film, The Legend of Lizzie Borden.

  After that, came the remake of Dark Victory in 1976 on NBC, which also presented the indiscriminate A Killing Affair in 1977—all of which garnered upwards of 35 percent of the audience. Today, network suits and producers would kill for such ratings. In the era of The Awakening Land, those were the kind of stats they worshipped.

  The grungy, gnarled locks, and weathered look of Sayward Luckett in The Awakening Land are light-years away from Samantha on Bewitched. Although her age was not yet an issue off-screen, in Awakening Lizzie was transformed from a young girl to an elderly woman. Bewitched makeup artist Rolf Miller was Emmy-nominated for gracefully aging her (and Dick Sargent) in the December 3, 1970 episode, “Samantha’s Old Man,” which was directed by her friend Richard Michaels.

  But now it came time for a dramatic turn, under the insisting guidance of Boris Sagal, who helmed Awakening and who, according to Tom Mc-Cartney, she once called “an extraordinary man” and said she would not have done the film without him.

  Lin Bolen Wendkos is the widow of director Paul Wendkos, a versatile talent who among other productions guided the Sandra Dee/Gidget films. According to The Los Angeles Times, he died November 12, 2009 of a lung infection. His career spanned fifty years and covered more than 100 films and television shows, including several episodes of I Spy, The Untouchables, and the acclaimed 1978 TV-movie, A Woman Called Moses, starring Cicely Tyson. He was one of Lizzie’s choice directors dating back to the Playhouse 90 segment “Bitter Heritage” from 1958 through to 1975’s The Legend of Lizzie Borden, and Act of Violence in 1979. Bolen Wendkos has a theory as to why Lizzie took such a dramatic departure with her later work:

  I think she earned the opportunity to do so by playing a very commercial part as Samantha on Bewitched. In her mind, she may have wanted to give something more of the talent that she was holding back. For example, to play a strong female lead as she did in Act of Violence, in which her character (Catherine McSweeney) was forced to defend herself.

  From 1971 to 1978, Lin served as the first female vice president of a television network when she worked for NBC’s daytime operations, bringing the “peacock” network from number three to number one within a two-and-a-half year period when such positions were held mostly by men. Suffice it to say, she knows all too well of what she speaks. As with Act of Violence, Bolen Wendkos says Lizzie’s 1974 NBC TV-movie, A Case of Rape, aired at a time when “women weren’t being allowed to tell the truth, or to talk about their inner fears, or to challenge people who treated them in a way that was inappropriate. So Elizabeth was challenging the system and saying ‘I am much more than you think and I have something to say, and these characters are
going to say it for me.’”

  Lin explains how her husband’s perspective on Borden jibed with Lizzie’s theatrical abilities:

  My husband worked with a lot of interesting actresses and Elizabeth was definitely one of his favorites. She was a magnetic personality to look at. She captured that character in a way that I don’t think anyone else could have. She became that person she was playing. If you look at her face in the movie, she had become that character. How many actresses on TV ever did that? Not many. She gave herself to that murderess spirit, and she did not stop until the end. He controlled the set of every movie he worked on. But what he didn’t do was control the actress. If the cinematographer, the lighting director or the wardrobe assistant or anyone had something to offer, they would have to wait for Paul’s word. But when it came to the actors, he always gave them the opportunity to go on set and do their thing first. Because he knew that’s where the picture was. If the actor didn’t feel secure in allowing their innermost ideas to surface in that first run-through … that first rehearsal … then it was a lost cause. He would say to each actor, “What is your character doing in this scene? Let’s see it!” He wouldn’t just stand there and stare at them. Instead, he’d ride the camera crane, or peer through the camera lens to allow the actor to retain the privacy of their moment. He absolutely believed that the photography was very important, and that [it] would need to be real. That’s what it made a new creation … a real human outline, right there in front of you. He knew the camera had to capture that. So he gave the actors a chance to move around. He didn’t just stage a scene and then instruct an actor to walk through it. He let the actor find their moment before he staged the scene and Elizabeth played into that very well.

  Actress Bonnie Bartlett performed with Lizzie in the Borden film. Although they did not share any scenes together, Bartlett was a fan of her work:

  She was an extraordinary actress. She was a major TV-movie star and she could have done almost anything. She was very serious about her work and an extraordinary professional. Every little detail was important to her. She was also a very cheerful person. She came to work with a good attitude, a really good attitude. She really enjoyed being an actress. And I do know that Paul [Wendkos] adored her, and loved working with her. He had that same kind of enthusiastic spirit that she had. The movie was one of his favorite things that he had ever done.

  Lizzie’s other film with Wendkos was 1979 CBS TV-movie, Act of Violence. Originally airing as part of the network’s Special Movie Presentation, this Emmet G. Lavery production featured Lizzie’s Catherine McSweeney as a television news writer whose liberal beliefs are challenged when she’s brutally attacked by three young gang members, who happen to be Latino. Here’s a closer look at the story:

  Divorced, Catherine lives with her young son in a lower-middle class neighborhood. She is assigned to a crime in the streets news series with Tony Bonelli (James Sloyan), a reporter with zero tolerance for her liberal perspective, so much so, he calls her “ignorant, soft-minded; sheltered.” Then, upon returning from work by taxi, she’s assaulted in the hallway of her apartment building. A short time later at the hospital, a detective looking into the incident is puzzled by her explanations. “I didn’t ask to be mugged,” she protests. “Didn’t you?” he asks, suggesting that she, the victim, is responsible for the crime. In time, Catherine turns increasingly paranoid, flinching involuntarily at the sight of a minority’s face. In effect, she becomes a different person, but not for the better. In the midst of this transformation, Tony convinces her to tell her story on TV. So, in a consequent interview, she bitterly condemns her attackers: “I am a bigot, a racist, a fascist, that’s what they made me, that’s why I hate them.” By the movie’s conclusion, Catherine regains a measure of her former self.

  And Lizzie gains increasing respect as an actress.

  Act of Violence aired on November 10, 1979, the same date TV Guide published the article, “From Bewitched to Besieged,” writer Tabitha Chance deduced that Lizzie:

  had undergone more transformations than Henry the Eighth had wives. But unlike some of Henry’s consorts, she has kept her charming head intact upon her charming neck—and used it to the dedicated, sensible furtherance of her profession. Indeed, she is no longer Somebody’s Daughter—Robert Montgomery’s daughter. She is Somebody. Elizabeth Montgomery.

  She had already proved that, of course, with her stardom from Bewitched (on which Samantha, ironically enough, had missed by a hair the tragic fate of marrying King Henry—in the two-part episode, “How Not to Lose Your Head to King Henry VIII”). It’s safe to say that Lizzie always kept her head in the midst of a storm that frequently encircled the airing of post-Samantha films like Act of Violence.

  Approximately five years before, she appeared in A Case of Rape, which Tabitha Chance described as “a fairly explicit examination of the subject, without a happy ending.” But Lizzie resented any suggestion that there were (and are) obvious similarities between the two films.

  “Comparisons are odious,” she said, a trifle royally. “I can’t worry about things being similar. As far as I’m concerned, they are two very separate kinds of violations and violence.”

  On December 21, 1985, Elizabeth talked about her creative choices with reporter Scott Osbourne for Entertainment Tonight. She found “fun” in “stretching” herself as an actress and “not feeling safe all the time.” She didn’t like to feel safe when she worked and believed that actors did their best work when they don’t feel safe “because [otherwise] they don’t set themselves up for any real challenge.”

  On May 12, 1992, she appeared on CBS This Morning to promote her TV-movie, With Murder in Mind, which in some ways was reminiscent of Act of Violence. She told Morning host Kathleen Sullivan that she liked the “kind of diversity” in each of her TV-movies. “I don’t like doing the same thing over and over again. And I like being a little bit scared … a little teeny bit.”

  By “scared,” Lizzie once again meant “challenged” with performing in what she felt were unique projects. She wasn’t necessarily referring to the fear that some of her characters may have experienced within context of the movies she made or the fear that such films may have instilled in the viewers.

  Either way, many of her TV-movies were and remain similar. When she first began making them, each film was diverse: The Victim. Mrs. Sundance. A Case of Rape. The Legend of Lizzie Borden. The Awakening Land. Jennifer: A Woman’s Story. Second Sight: A Love Story. The Rules of Marriage. When The Circus Came to Town. And even though it was a remake of her friend Bette Davis’ 1939 classic, Dark Victory was also a unique addition on Lizzie’s distinctive resume.

  But the others, not so much: 1985’s Between the Darkness and the Dawn was derivative of 1976’s Dark Victory (albeit with a much happier ending). 1979’s Act of Violence was reminiscent of 1974’s A Case of Rape, 1980’s Belle Starr echoed 1974’s Mrs. Sundance. 1993’s The Black Widow Murders hearkened back to 1975’s Lizzie Borden. And again, 1992’s With Murder in Mind was reminiscent of 1979’s Act of Violence (not to mention the 1955 “Relative Stranger” episode of the CBS anthology series, Appointment with Adventure, in which Lizzie co-starred with William Windom).

  Yet while Lizzie did repeat herself with certain performances, each of her post-Bewitched TV-movies proved to be ratings blockbusters. So Tabitha Chance wondered:

  Could it be that viewers, on some unconscious level, enjoy seeing an elegant, beautiful woman like Elizabeth Montgomery get mucked up and knocked about by deranged sociopaths? Perhaps her audience wants to see Elizabeth suffer in the roles she assumes on TV. That is one theory.

  Psychotherapist Annette Baran shared another with TV Guide:

  [Elizabeth] presents a picture of a haughty, independent, prepossessing woman. One sees her as a woman able to take care of herself. Yet even she is helpless and vulnerable—just like anyone else. Women who might feel some awe of her see her as powerless as they would be in the same circumstances. Men, on the oth
er hand, would have a chance to feel chivalrous and protective.

  In September 1966, Lizzie explained to TV Radio Mirror magazine that she and her cousin Panda were “terribly close”:

  I sometimes don’t see her for a year but that has nothing to do with it. If I ever had a problem, I can’t conceive of having one—I’d call her and there’d be no “why” and “where have you been,” we’re just close and I guess we always will be.

  But according to Sally Kemp, “There was a darkness in Elizabeth’s life,” a shadow that she believes Panda sensed as well:

  She was as caught up in the mystery of Elizabeth as I am. She was never allowed to see Elizabeth’s children. Panda would visit L.A. and they’d have dinner together, but Elizabeth wouldn’t wake her children and let Panda visit with them. And Panda never understood why. It was like Elizabeth was two or three other people all mixed into one.

  In order to play the darker, more textured roles, Lin Bolen Wendkos believes that most actors have “a hidden story”:

  You have to have some kind of experience in your childhood or in your life that was so devastating that you could recall those kinds of feelings. Because, otherwise, how could you play it and how do you become that person? How do you give yourself to a character like that? You’re giving yourself over to an audience in such a way that is so … inner destructive. That is why so many actors shun the public, and maybe why Elizabeth did, too; because they give so much of their inner selves to the world when they’re working that there’s not much left when they’re not working.