Twitch Upon a Star

by Herbie J. Pilato

  Politically minded and theatrically gifted, she never ignored her ability to communicate, but always made certain to share a laugh amidst the probable pangs of losing Emmys to her peers, pangs she may have hidden with a Pagliacci smile. Whether engaged in a game of darts on The Mike Douglas Show or a home tennis match with Bill Asher or Bob Foxworth, her true victory was never spoiled.

  Whether riding colts on her family’s sprawling properties stateside or in the English countryside, or rushing to play the mares at the Santa Anita or Hollywood Park Race Track, for Lizzie it was never about winning the horse race; it was about the human race to live, work, and play.

  The essence of that playful spirit was thoughtfully reiterated by family members and friends on January 4, 2008 at the Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony that cemented her star.

  Liz “Dizzie” Sheridan approached the podium. She described the first day she met Lizzie through a mutual friend (writer William Blast, The Legend of Lizzie Borden), shortly after moving to Los Angeles, how they played croquet, and became fast friends.

  The next day Lizzie called Dizzie and wondered what kind of shampoo she used and if she’d like to go the race track, all in the same breath. Lizzie also insisted that Dizzie stay in her guesthouse, which Sheridan proceeded to do until she found a place of her own. At which time Lizzie lent Dizzie the required down payment. A few weeks later Sheridan paid her back on their way to the race track … in Elizabeth’s chauffeur-driven limousine. Upon seeing the cash, Lizzie screamed and playfully tossed the money all over the car, the chauffer, Sheridan, everything. From there, they journeyed on to the track and proceeded to spend the extra loot.

  As it turned out, Dizzie was one of the few people who ever paid Lizzie back for her generosity, a true and loyal friend indeed. Elizabeth could not have cared less if Sheridan ever paid her back, but the fact that she did earned Dizzie high marks in Lizzie’s highly selective realm of friendship.

  Actor David Knell played Elizabeth’s son, Ed Reed, when she took the lead in the 1980 TV-movie Western, Belle Starr. This film was the second professional acting job Knell had won upon moving to Los Angeles only a short time before. The first production he appeared in was for a segment of Great Performances, called “Life on the Mississippi” in which he played Mark Twain. Two weeks into the performance Knell broke his arm and his role had to be recast, all of which somehow later led to his being cast in the ground-breaking (and ironically titled) 1979 feature film Breaking Away.

  At the time, Knell was only in his late teens, and because he was just starting out in the business, had little free cash to spread around. He didn’t even own a car, only a bicycle, which he’d ride to various auditions, location shoots, and/or rehearsals.

  One day, shortly before Belle Starr began filming, Lizzie hosted a first read-through of the script at her home in Beverly Hills, which Knell defined as “interesting.” It had dialogue that he defines today as “very stylized and not modern at all.” At any rate, those present at the reading were the film’s entire main cast and crew, including the movie’s director John Alonzo, as well as Robert Foxworth, whom Knell remembers as “a nice guy.”

  Knell, who lived in Laurel Canyon at the time, says he took the “longest route possible” to Elizabeth’s home. “It was very scenic and wonderful.” But when he arrived at Lizzie’s door, it was very comedic and hilarious, for it was at this point that he was introduced to her trademark sense of humor. “She was very playful!” he says.

  Indeed, upon first seeing Knell at her door, alongside his bike, Lizzie mused, “What time yesterday did you leave?”

  Knell laughed, and from that moment on, enjoyed working on Starr with Lizzie, whom he called “great,” particularly when it came to mounting horses during filming. “She rode very well,” he recalls. Little wonder, of course, because Lizzie had been riding since she was three.

  The exterior scenes for Starr added to the movie’s realism. It was filmed on location in Agoura Hills, California, which is now a modern, developed area. But in 1980, the cast was in awe of its then-wilderness. Having just completed filming for “Life on the Mississippi,” another production filmed on location in a hinterland setting, Knell in particular was “very much into authenticity” when it came to acting. So much so that when he was cast to play Lizzie’s son Ed of the Old West in Starr, he decided not to wash his hair because “nobody did back then, and it seemed like it would be weird if I did.” Instead, while filming one Starr moment, it became “weird” for Lizzie that he did not.

  The scene was in Ed’s bedroom on the farm he shared with Belle, shortly before a great fire in the barn, which is ignited by vigilantes who seek to rid the county of Belle and her band. Knell as Ed is sitting on the bed and the script calls for Lizzie as Belle to run her hands through his hair. Upon noticing that his locks were somewhat hygienically challenged, Knell muses, “Lizzie let out a big ‘Yick!’” As to just how “authentic” Lizzie’s hair was during the shoot, Knell sustains, “I think she probably washed hers and just made it look dirty.”

  In all, Knell says his time with Lizzie on Starr was well-spent. “It was just a joy working with her. I think the one particular scene that I remember the most [is the one] where I almost got to kiss her, which was great, but they changed the script and we never got to do it.” Just as well the kissing scene never took place. Having such a moment between Belle and her son, no matter how troubled they were, would likely have been too ambiguous an endeavor for the network censors. However, as Knell concludes, “It definitely would have added an additional layer to [their] already complicated relationship.”

  While network officials continued to censor scenes from Lizzie’s fictional films, she, of course, was no stranger to complicated relationships in real life. Yet, again, her playful nature, like a good portion of her very real character, was inspired by her grandmother Becca.

  As Elizabeth expressed to TV Radio Mirror in April 1970, Becca …

  … made games of everything. You asked the meaning of a word, she’d say, “What do you think it means?” And, when you came up with your childish’ explanation: “That’s marvelous, Elizabeth; now let’s look it up and see what the people say it means.” In short, the dictionary. And often [after] we found out, she’d say, “But I like your definition much better.”

  As Bob Foxworth had expressed on A&E’s Biography, it was Becca who had also inspired Elizabeth’s obsession with the race track. In fact, one day in her dressing room while filming Bewitched, she was sprawled out on the floor with a copy of the racing form.

  As was explained in TV Radio Mirror, November 1969, a publicist walked in on her and howled in protest. Lizzie looked up from her scratch-sheet, pencil-clenched in teeth, and wondered what was wrong. “If you ever want to ruin your image,” said the publicist, “this sort of thing will do it.”

  Elizabeth didn’t give it a thought and continued on in her carefree way. It was an effervescence that today might be described as “emotional intelligence.” But she had developed that part of her being years before science came up with a name for it, particularly when she was a young lass playing on the Montgomery family compound in Patterson, New York, with her cousin Panda and friend Sally Kemp. “Of course we all enjoyed playing together as children,” Kemp recalls, “and Panda had the same little exquisite face as Elizabeth. But Elizabeth had that intellectual curiosity; her intelligence, her interest in being alive in the moment. I don’t think she had any aspirations about being a classical actress.”

  Whereas Sally, on the other hand, is still eager to act in, for example, a live stage production of Trojan Women, the Greek tragedy by playwright Euripides (that was once made into a 1971 feature film starring Katharine Hepburn). She wants to play Hephzibah, and she wants do it in an amphitheater “in Greece somewhere,” and she doesn’t care if “anyone ever sees it.”

  Conversely, she believes Elizabeth “never gave a hoot about any of that. Life was fun for her and she wanted it to be that way.”


  As reporter Rose Perlberg assessed in TV Picture Life, October 1965, “Fun was the word that cropped up most constantly in our conversation with Liz. To her, work is fun … the idea of having … babies is fun, and being married seems to be the most fun of all.”

  Lizzie herself admitted as much to Modern Screen magazine in May 1965. “I’m not riddled with ambition,” she said. “Acting is something I’ve done because it’s fun and hard work. I enjoy hard work. But a career with me is about as close to last as second can get. First is my life: love, children, and a home.”

  In January that year, she added in TV Radio Mirror:

  When women choose a life of competition with men in the marketplace, it is usually due to circumstances beyond their control … like sickness in the family or some inner drive for success that’s caused by a childhood frustration. Most women try to walk the tightrope between home and office, and some of them manage to do surprisingly well at it. In my case, the problem is much the same for both Samantha and me. For the sake of home and husband, she’d like to kick the witchcraft habit, but finds it too hard to do. I’d like to concentrate all my heart and soul on my private life, but I find it impossible to forsake acting. I grew up in the actor’s world of make-believe, and it’s become part of my living tissue. My great hope is that, like Samantha, when I pursue my special brand of witchery, it will not offend my husband but make me more intriguing to him.

  Of course, none of that was easy in 1965 when Bewitched was a massive hit and she was married to Bill Asher. It was difficult before she worked on the show, and remained a challenge after she ended the series. Lizzie may have pursed acting, but she never pined after economic success. She was born into that. However, she hungered for other forms of success, in romance, friendship, and family. She never gave up on love in any of its forms, even if she sometimes found too much of it, too soon.

  At twenty, she married socialite Fred Cammann, and divorced him one year later. At twenty-three, she wed actor Gig Young and after six years, divorced him, too. Shortly after that, she fell in love with Bill Asher and their honeymoon lasted approximately eleven years. It was her twenty-year romance with Bob Foxworth, whom she finally married approximately twenty-eight months before she died, that was her lengthiest relationship.

  Over the years, she endured personal disappointments throughout the long, grueling professional hours, beginning with Robert Montgomery Presents, and followed by numerous TV guest star appearances, feature films, Bewitched, and then later, her TV-movies. She survived the heartache of her personal life with the backbone she sustained by way of her strict upbringing. She viewed herself as a Hollywood product, and she was okay with that. She pegged the glamour and glitz for what it was worth, well-aware of the countless actresses who looked to their careers for happiness because they lacked inner peace within themselves. For Lizzie, acting was a normal, natural thing.

  Her parents had talent and performing was something she did. It was “fun” to do. It was not something for which she compromised her life. And she knew that from the onset of Bewitched’s popularity, and most probably before, as she relayed to Modern Screen in 1965:

  It’s wonderful and gratifying to know that people are enjoying the idea that you enjoy … bringing them something that gives pleasure. But if you’re lucky enough to have success with a series, it’s something that you really can’t think of as being your own. You should be grateful, of course, and you have a responsibility to the people who are watching, but success itself is something just loaned to you. Once it’s gone, if you felt you’d lost something then the other part of your life, your basic personal life, would not be completed. That’s not right! I’ve always felt that way.

  In 2004, New Path Press published The Seesaw Girl and Me: A Memoir by Dick York, who appreciated Lizzie’s playful spirit. As is explained in this very honest book, there were moments in Bewitched when he and Lizzie:

  … really did develop a close personal relationship above and beyond the characters, but necessary to the characters (of Darrin and Samantha). I mean, we did play games. Liz was a game player and a crossword puzzle fan, and we invented all kinds of guessing games and word games …

  Her TV-movie co-star, veteran actor Ronny Cox, agrees with that.

  Cox is best known in classic TV history for his short-lived role as the father on Apple’s Way, created by Earl Hamner as a contemporary take on his mega-hit family period piece, The Waltons (which was set in the Depression). The liberal-minded Cox is also known for iconic feature films like 1972’s Deliverance, in which he co-starred with Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, and Jon Voight (father to Angelina Jolie).

  Farrah Fawcett, in one of her first pre-Charlie’s Angels TV roles, made a guest appearance on Apple’s Way, and would later star in NBC’s acclaimed 1984 TV-movie, The Burning Bed—a film that shared many similarities with the network’s 1974 TV-movie, A Case of Rape, in which Cox had co-starred with Lizzie (both movies featured iconic blonde stars who played characters that were physically assaulted and mentally abused). Cox also worked with Lizzie in her 1992 TV-movie, With Murder in Mind. But it was on Rape where they met and bonded, mostly due to her approachable personality, their shared political ideals, and because they both enjoying playing games. Real games. Not head games. Cox explains:

  I grew up poor in New Mexico, really poor. All we had was a radio and a deck of cards and dominoes. So I knew every card game known to man and I played those kinds of games my whole life. Plus, those were the kinds of things that you could do that didn’t cost money.

  Like Cox, Lizzie enjoyed such everyday games, he thinks, because she craved a certain amount of normalcy in her life. “She came from a world of acting and the theatre,” he says, where there’s such “vicious competition. And I don’t discount for a second Lizzie’s competitiveness.”

  But Lizzie’s love for games, be it Gin, Scrabble, Charades, or Backgammon, the last which was all the rage when Lizzie and Cox met, were outlets for her “competitive nature,” says Cox, who classifies himself as a “real competitor.” So much so, he used to have a tennis court on his property and on every day that he didn’t work (which was rare, because he’s not stopped working since A Case of Rape), he enjoyed playing tennis. And if it came down to who wanted to win more, he or Lizzie, Cox says,

  … it would be me. Most people I know of who are as fiercely competitive are also not the best losers in the world. But whether I win or lose, I don’t lord it over people. And I think that’s a rare thing, and that was also Lizzie’s quality. And the thing about Lizzie is that she was never a prima donna in any sense of the word. Working on [A Case of Rape] was one of the smoothest sets I’ve ever been on, and that was mostly because of her. We connected more on a personal level. It was not that I was knocked out by her stardom or [that] she was knocked out by me. We just immediately hit it off.

  Time and again, Lizzie earned the veneration of her peers, at least in word, if not always in deed. According to Kasey Rogers, who replaced Irene Vernon as Louise Tate on Bewitched, she was “a very gifted actress. She excelled at whatever she did, be it drama or comedy. And when she appeared on Bewitched, she played Samantha with the same sensitivity and love that she possessed in real life.”

  Rarely, however, did such praise transfer to actual public acknowledgement in any formal award, at least when it came to television. For example, she was recognized on several occasions for her theatrical craft on the New York stage, as when she received the “Daniel Blum Theatre World Award for Most Promising Newcomer”—for Late Love in 1953–1954 (which was also Cliff Robertson’s debut). Past recipients of the award included James Dean, Eva Marie Saint, and director Leo Penn (Sean’s father).

  The television world, however, was a whole other ballgame. Although she received a total of nine Emmy nominations, five of which were for Bewitched, Elizabeth never won. Her non-Samantha nominations were for non-Samantha performances: The self-centered Rusty Heller on The Untouchables (“The Rusty Heller Story,” ABC, October 13
, 1960); the abused housewife Ellen Harrod in A Case of Rape (NBC, February 20, 1974); the vile ax murderess in The Legend of Lizzie Borden (ABC, February 10, 1975); the pioneer woman Sayward Luckett in The Awakening Land (NBC, February 19, 20, 21, 1978).

  Still, an Emmy victory eluded her—“a bridesmaid, but never a bride.” Why?

  According to what Richard Michaels said in 1988:

  That’s just the way this town is. They [the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences] just didn’t want to give it to her. And I think she was a little hurt. But she was also an adult. Even though the Emmy is a major form of acknowledgement, it’s not the only form of acknowledgement in the world. Audiences adore her today, just as much as they did in the 1960s. No one will ever forget her or the show. When people find out that I directed the show, especially little kids, who by the way, weren’t even born when the show initially aired, the first question I hear is, “What is Elizabeth Montgomery really like?” or “How did she twitch her nose?” That, more than anything, proves her mainstay in television history … In the motion picture and television industries, personalities are involved in the awards, and you have to consider winners and losers in the context of their times. Elizabeth was a very private person, and she was never a socialite. She’d never go to a Hollywood party just to be seen. Maybe if she [had] rubbed more elbows, she would have won. But that wasn’t her style.