Read Twitch Upon a Star Online
Authors: Herbie J. Pilato
Twitch Upon a Star (45 page)
As writer K.V. Burroughs expressed in
Movieland and TV Time
magazine, September 1972:
If I were to repeat rumors of reasons the Ashers may have decided to call it a day, it would be talking about something I simply know nothing about and refuse to pass along. It really isn't important and is between Liz and Bill. It is sad and obviously must be painful to both of them. Divorces are very painful and create a sense of failure in both parties. There are always the questions,
Where did we go wrong? We were so much in love. How could it be gone? Was it my fault?
Sometimes there just are not good answers to any of these questions, but they still torture the two who are going through the death of their love. It is even worse if love is still strong in one of the parties and not in the other. At any rate, no divorce comes about overnight. It takes years of marriage erosion to cause two wonderful people like the Ashers to decide to call it a day. It takes a lot of intolerable living to be convinced that the children would be better off with two separate parents than one unhappy pair trying to hide their marital trouble from the eyes of their little children. If it is true that they have decided to divorce, it is a great tragedy for them and we are sorry to hear it. Liz would not be the first wife to deny trouble in her marriage right up to the last minute. There have been cases in Hollywood where stars denied splitting even on the day they filed for divorce. So far as we know, Elizabeth is resting after a long run in a very popular TV series. The Ashers should have no money problems because the series has made them wealthy. It is a time for resting and thinking and reviewing their lives. Perhaps in the more relaxed atmosphere they will decide to go on together. We'll all know soon enough. Meantime keep your fingers crossed. I am.
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 â¦
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 getâthe better it's gonna be â¦
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
“The scenes were pretty much traumatic, and I would find myself feeling depressed afterwards.”
âElizabeth 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 Yorkâbased 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 2010â2011 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 surprise 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, 1963â1966, 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.