Twitch Upon a Star (21 page)
Read Twitch Upon a Star Online
Authors: Herbie J. Pilato
It was good to see Elizabeth (in her interviews) looking lovely and warm and charming. She seemed to be at ease in spite of confessing to nerves. But that's what we do. Not just as actors, but for the backgrounds we were both from. You try to make your guests (or interviewers) feel at home.
If anything, it's pleasing to see Lizzie interact so honestly and joyfully with her father and her best friend. The latter dynamic, unfortunately, would later change.
In the days before she met and married Fred Cammann, Lizzie's friendship with Sally was solid enough for Robert Montgomery to consider Kemp a member of the family. “He treated me as though I were his other daughter,” she says. “I absolutely adored him and his (second) wife Buffy. From the day Elizabeth and I met, she didn't live with her father. And he and Buffy had the most beautiful duplex penthouse on East 72nd Street, not far from Fifth Avenue.”
Lizzie lived with her mother during the week and would visit her father for regular weekend trips in the country, and Sally tagged along. The Montgomery East Hampton abode “was always very impressive,” she says in recalling a playful interchange that usually transpired between the two prior to such excursions:
The phone would ring. My mother would answer, and this voice on the other line would say, “This is Robert Montgomery's secretary. I'm calling for Mr. Montgomery. Can Miss Kemp come out to play in the country for the weekend?”
It was Lizzie, of course, on the other end of the line, disguising her voice.
Sally's mother was always frustrated that she never had the chance to meet Robert Montgomery, but gave her consent: “Well, of course Sally can go to the country.”
“I practically lived with them when I wasn't at home,” Sally recalls of the Montgomery visits, which periodically expanded into trips abroad.
After Lizzie married Fred Cammann, her father and Buffy would go sailing, or take summer European excursions. Along for the ride would be Annie, Buffy's daughter from a previous marriage, and a random classmate of Annie's. Both were about 18.
Then in 1954, when Lizzie and Sally were both 21, the Montgomerys planned a trip to Europe that ultimately proved a milestone in their relationship. According to Sally, Lizzie called her and said, “Daddy and Buffy are leaving for Europe and they're having a bon voyage party on this huge ship. Let's go to the party.'”
Sally had never traveled on a great ocean liner, although she was supposed to have done so on an earlier trip with her mother and stepfather that never transpired. “So, I went with the Montgomerys,” she explains. “I adore the old luxury liners. But not those great big things like the new Queen Mary or the Queen Elizabeth. They're too big. But the old ones are heavenly.”
Sally arrived on this one particular classic luxury liner, the kind of which she was so fond, and there were the Montgomerys “in their beautiful suite, with champagne and lots of elegant people and some press standing around.” She and Lizzie remained over in one corner, taking all of it in, hoping, “Someday, we'll get to do this, too.” Much to the surprise of both young ladies, that day and moment had arrivedâwhen Robert, minutes later, walked up to Sally, startled her, and asked if she was 21.
“Yes. I just had a birthday a few months ago.”
“And do you have some money of your own?”
“Yes.”
“All right, then ⦠why don't you fly to London and join us and come on the trip?”
Upon viewing this interchange between Kemp and her father, Lizzie naturally assumed that she, too, would be joining her parents and her best friend on the trip. “Oh, Daddy,” she said. “What a divine idea!”
At which point Robert looked at her and said, point-blank, “Elizabethâyou just got married a few months ago. You are
not
coming with us to Europe for six weeks. You're going to stay with your husband.” Lizzie was stunned into silence. Sally, however, was putting a call into her parents who were out of town.
“Mommy ⦠may I go to Europe with the Montgomerys?”
“Of course, Darling, but what are you going to wear?”
When it came time to depart, Sally made certain to find the proper attire, then packed it all into a suitcase, and flew to London. Her plane landed in the U.K., and the Montgomerys, who arrived beforehand, sent a customs official to greet Sally before any passenger was allowed to exit the aircraft. A man dressed in uniform approached her, and said, “Miss Kemp ⦠I've come to escort you through customs.”
As the two deplaned, Sally was carrying her mother's treasured Elizabeth Arden alligator make-up case. She and the customs representative made their way across the walkway, where Robert and Buffy Montgomery were waiting at the entrance. Upon running to greet them, she triggered loose the handle on her mother's make-up case, and out onto the ground rolled various crystals and other cherished items. “I was so embarrassed,” she recalls. “I tried to pick them up and fit them into the hem of my skirt. It was terrible.” That is, until she reached the Montgomerys, who eased any minor mortification. “Never mind,” Robert told her. “We'll get another make-up case for you.”
“They were just lovely,” Sally recalls of Lizzie's parents, who were waiting for her in a Rolls Royce, driven by a chauffeur wearing a uniform with boots, a tunic, and a cap. They drove the long way in order for Sally to see Buckingham Palace and places like the Connaught, one of the great, elegant London hotels which, though reasonably small is still her favorite.
And it was at the Connaught she stayed, along with Buffy's daughter Anna and her friend Jillâall expenses paid by the Montgomerys, another gift, this time as a gesture to encourage a sense of freedom for three young girls on an exciting trip abroad. Sally remembers:
We went all over Europe. And everywhere we'd go, everybody knew who Bob was. We had dinner with people like the American Ambassador of Paris, and attended parties where we were the only people who did not have
titles
. We went to Sutherland and saw the incredible mansion of the Duke of Sutherland, which was later purchased by J. Paul Getty. And I had the great opportunity to be there when the Duke was home. It was an extraordinary time.
Yet not so much for Lizzie, who remained back in the States while her parents vacationed in Europe with her best friend. “I don't think Elizabeth ever forgave me for that,” Sally intones. They were still friends, but that vacation slight ever lurched in Lizzie's memory. The two never broached the subject until decades later during what became their final meeting. “The last time I saw Elizabeth was the only time she talked about that trip,” Sally explains of an awkward encounter that took place in Los Angeles sometime in the 1980s.
A decade or so before that landmark day, Sally portrayed
Nurse Ratched
in the 1970 first revival of the play,
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
, directed by Lee Sankowich at the Little Fox Theatre in San Francisco, where it ran for five years. By this time, Sally had divorced her first husband Bob Grant and was now married to actor Paul Jenkins, who was playing
McMurphy
in
Cuckoo's Nest
. A few years passed and a production of the play, with Sankowich back as director, was presented at his proprietorship, the Zephyr Theatre in Los Angeles, where Sally and Jenkins had relocated. Only this time, circa 1980s, the role of
McMurphy
was played by Robert Foxworth, who had been with Lizzie since their meeting in 1973 on the set of the ABC TV-movie
Mrs. Sundance
(which debuted in 1974; Foxworth would perform in 1975 with
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
actor Salome Jens in yet another production of
Cuckoo's Nest
, this one at the Huntington Hartford Theatre in Los Angeles).
Sally never had the chance to see the 1980s edition of
Cuckoo's Nest
, but her husband did. And on closing night after the curtain came down, there was an on-stage party for all present and previous cast members. “But we arrived late,” Sally recalls. “And I found myself walking into this dim theatre, where there wasn't much light. I approached the stage where the party was taking place, and all of sudden, I heard this voice from the shadows saying, âWell, as I live and breathe, it's
Scary
Kemp.'”
That was Lizzie's nickname for Sally, who immediately recognized her old friend's voice. As such, she replied in kind, with a pronounced Southern accent, posing into the dark hall, “Elizabeth Victoria Montgomery? Is that you in the corner?”
They both ran into the middle of the stage, fell into each other's arms, and stood there for what Sally approximated as about 15 to 20 minutes, catching up on the twenty or so odd years since they had last seen each other.
Lizzie opened the chit-chat: “I've had three children.”
“I know. I've heard from your cousin. I only have one. My husband died.”
And on they went, until an awkward pause froze the memories of times gone by.
“We were still holding one another, face to face,” Sally intones. “But then Elizabeth pulled back a little bit and said, âMy father always loved you more than he loved me.'”
Now, it was Sally who was stunned into silence, as was Lizzie decades before, when Robert Montgomery insisted that she remain in the States with her then-new husband Fred Cammann (while her best friend gallivanted throughout Europe with her parents).
“I thought I was going to die,” Sally says, upon hearing Lizzie's statement. She was hurt when Lizzie said that, and protested, “Elizabeth, you are so wrong. Your father adored you. You were so like him in so many ways.”
But such sounds fell on deaf ears, which as Sally explains, was par for the course:
Even though she embraced me that day on the stage, and we ran into one another's arms on that stage, she still resented that I went to Europe all those years before, while she did not. But there were a lot of people who Elizabeth eliminated from her life. She kind of had a way of dropping people. There were no second chances with her. And this also even happened with her cousin Panda, who had grown up with Elizabeth like a sister. I don't know what that was in her. As young girls, we couldn't have been closer. I never really had as close or as loving and supportive a relationship as I had with Elizabeth. That's why it was so strange when she was no longer in my life. I never even heard from her when Gig died, and certainly not when her father died. Nothing. The last conversation we had was when she dropped that bombshell on me about her father, which I called ridiculous, because he did love her so much. And we still loved each other.
While the two women stood face to face on that dark stage in 1980s with their arms wrapped around each other's waists at the after-party for the final curtain call for
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
, the situation was if not
crazy
then certainly strange. “Who's your agent?” Lizzie asked.
“
Oh, Elizabeth
,” Sally thought to herself. “
You don't want my personal phone number? And you won't give me yours. You just want to know how to contact me, should you ever need to
.”
So, instead, she said, “Elizabethâdon't worry about it. We'll see each other again.”
“I suppose so,” Lizzie added.
“We then embraced one last time,” Sally recalls. “And I never saw her again.” In hindsight, it appears Lizzie never stopped loving those whom she had ever cared about, but she was so sensitive a human being that if she felt offended or possibly threatened by someone, even in the slightest, unintended way, a defense mechanism would kick in, ensuring that she would not place herself in that vulnerable position again. “I think, too,” Sally surmises, “it was a little bit of the
out of sight, out of mind
” train of thought. Her life was very busy, especially when she first went out to California and started doing
Bewitched
. Then she had three children. That's an awful lot to deal with and it's certainly understandable that we drifted apart at least for those reasons.”
Meanwhile, Lizzie eventually traveled abroad, if not with her father. Ironically, on May 19, 1967,
TV Guide
later compared her and Bill Asher to world-renowned foreign royalty in explaining the great power they amassed in Hollywood by way of her
Samantha
success. After
TV Guide
reporter Arnold Hano noted, “The Ashers run
Bewitched
,” the studio spokesperson declared, “They are like the crowned heads of Europe!”
Eight
“Are you starting a rumor, or merely repeating one?”
â
Ann Evans
, as played by Elizabeth in “Patterns,”an episode of NBC's
Kraft Television Theatre
, January 12, 1955
Ghosts played an integral role in Lizzie's life, long before she'd encounter them as
Samantha
on
Bewitched
(“
Tabitha's
Cranky Spell,” 3-28-68; “The Ghost Who Made a Spectre of Himself,” 10-27-71). As she explained to
TV Photo Story
magazine reporter Laura Wayne in June 1971, she had apparently seen a real live ghost in a hotel, shortly after arriving in England where she was visiting her parents. Here's how it went: