Twitch Upon a Star (51 page)
Read Twitch Upon a Star Online
Authors: Herbie J. Pilato
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 vulnerableâjust 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 other 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 oneâI'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.
Upon meeting Lizzie in 1979,
TV Guide's
Tabitha Chance said:
[She had an] air of quiet command and cool amiability. She seemed infinitely unknowable; it is unimaginable to think she might ever be sloppy or have bad breath. At 46 [and marking her birth year as 1933] and easily looking a full sixteen years younger, Elizabeth is smooth of face and perfect of figure. Were one to come upon her suddenly in Saks Fifth Avenue [which she frequented], the conclusion would be that this woman had never done anything more than slice a catered chateaubriand ⦠[She was] as carefully nurtured as any rich man's privileged daughter. And yet, breeding, private schooling, riches, looks, and derivative fame were not enough.
Robert Montgomery's shadowy presence still lingered, blurring Lizzie's own identity. But as Chance explained, Lizzie contributed to that stigma. She was no doubt grateful to her father for jump-starting her career. Although she enjoyed drawing and painting pictures, whenever Lizzie said things like, “My art belongs to Daddy,” she was talking about her inherited theatrical craft ⦠a lucrative craft, one that certainly materialized in a big way via
Samantha's
witchcraft, as well as other performances.
By 1979, Lizzie had negotiated an exclusive contract with CBS to craft two TV-movies a year for the following three years, for which she received more than 1.5 million dollars. That would buy a truckload of art supplies today, let alone over three decades ago.
Of the scripts offered to her in that period, she selected
Act of Violence
. From the minute she agreed to do the movie, Lizzie wanted it shot as written or, as Chance wrote in
TV Guide
, as “sexy, violent; rough in word and deed.” While she may have looked like “a tea rose,” Chance pointed out, Lizzie was ready to fight network executives, if need be, to keep that approach. “If somebody says no and it's important, you argue,” Lizzie said. “But I prefer the word
negotiate
.”
Such was the case with
Rape
in 1974, when NBC executives were nervous about a scene involving Lizzie's character,
Ellen Harrod
, and her examination in a doctor's office. “I didn't like doing that scene,” she told Chance, “but we fought for it and it stayed in and we were right.”
Chance then explained, “Well brought-up women usually don't discuss their private lives with anyone but their mothers, best friends, and hairdressers,” and while Elizabeth was willing to bare her soul on camera, she was no exception to that rule, further confirming her intense need for privacy.
She was by this time living happily with Bob Foxworth and felt no need to share with anyone, the press or friends alike, the soap-operatic details of her failed marriages to Fred Cammann, Gig Young, and Bill Asher. But she did enjoy sharing with pals her hilarious, complicated plot recapitulations of daytime TV soap operas.
As she told
TV Guide
, she would indeed “forget” to return phone calls, but she also still wondered if her “Daddy” was proud of her. She remained down-to-earth, but drove a Mercedes, albeit a ten-year-old Mercedes (which was adorned with a “Lizzy” license plate, a misspelling of her favorite nickname). As during her days on
Bewitched
, Lizzie was never late to the set of any of her TV-movies and she was always professional. She readily convinced the crew to adore her by acting like what Chance called “a normal nice person, telling jokes and joining in with the four-letter word patois rampant in Hollywood sets.”
“If that bawdiness may seem a strange paradox for the queenly Elizabeth,” Chance concluded, “it isn't. A lady always puts everyone at ease ⦔ as opposed to the heartless woman Lizzie portrayed in the 1991 CBS TV-movie,
Sins of the Mother
. Based on the book,
Son
, by Jack Olsen,
Sins
was written for television by Richard Fiedler, and directed by John D. Patterson:
As a public figure,
Ruth Coe
(Lizzie) is a prestigious socialite. In private, she abuses her adult son, the charismatic Real Estate agent,
Kevin Coe
(Dale Midkiff). The consequences are devastating, when his most recent ladylove realizes he's the serial rapist that has decimated their community.
An especially harsh review of this film appeared in
The Hollywood Reporter
, February 19, 1991:
Montgomery turns in a peculiarly mannered performance and appears not to have been directed to her best advantage. Though her lines seethe with vitriol and need, she seems disconnected from any emotional underpinning at all, as though she's reading the lines off the page ⦠CBS' best shot may be to market it to fans of Elizabeth Montgomery who want to see her play a witch again.
In a strange twist of TV fate in 2001, Mary Tyler Moore, Lizzie's contemporary classic TV female star of the 1960s (via
The Dick Van Dyke Show
), took the lead in the similarly-themed and titled TV-movie,
Like Mother, Like Son: The Strange Story of Sante and Kenny Kimes
.
Just as some
Bewitched
fans may have been taken aback by Lizzie's portrayal in
Sins of the Mother
, Moore's admirers (by way of her happy character portrayals of
Laura Petrie
on
Van Dyke
and
Mary Richards
on
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
) may have been just as stunned when she played
Sante Kimes
in
Like Mother, Like Son
.
Sante's
childhood abuse and exploitation leaves a legacy of amorality that she passes on to her son
Kenny
(with a “K” played by Gabriel Olds), just as Lizzie's
Ruth Coe's
sins were instilled in her son
Kevin
(also with a “K”; played by Dale Midkiff).
What may prove to be further compelling, and a little confusing, is that Lizzie later played a similar role in 1993 CBS TV-movie,
The Black Widow
Murders: The Blanche Taylor Moore Story
(the subtitle of which is similar to Mary Tyler Moore's real name).
To top it all off, Lizzie and Mary's hair styles are very similar (and the same color) in
Sins of the Mother
and
Like Mother, Like Son
, while all three films are, sadly, based on true stories.
While it may be fascinating how it all worked out, in 1993, journalist Bart Mills delineated the premise of
Black Widow Murders
in particular, and Lizzie's subsequent participation, taking the lead role of
Blanche Taylor Moore
:
Life was placid in shabby-genteel central North Carolina, where
Blanche Taylor Moore
worked in a grocery store, lived in a trailer park, went faithfully to church, raised her daughters well, gossiped with her friends, and poisoned every man who went to bed with her. When the police finally confronted her with her crimes, she was flabbergasted. How dare they accuse an innocent woman, even though everyone close to her seemed to wind up in the cemetery, stuffed with arsenic? Elizabeth Montgomery is apt casting for this sly, chilling look at psychopathy. Elusive, elliptical, more likely to smile enigmatically than explain exhaustively, Montgomery gets behind the formality of
Moore's
way of speaking and offers convincing hints of the innocence of evil.
Today, Blanche Moore, who told authorities she was sexually abused as a child, has terminal cancer and is on North Carolina's Death Row, convicted of the murder of her long-time lover. Her first husband, her mother, and her father are others whose exhumed bodies revealed large concentrations of arsenic. Her second husband, a minister, who nearly died of arsenic poisoning, testified against her at her trial in 1990.
As Lizzie explained to Mills in 1993:
Blanche was very lucky. Thirty or forty years ago, she would have sizzled by now. I don't believe they will wind up executing her. She's appealing at the moment. I think she doesn't feel she did anything terribly wrong. It was something she had to do, particularly to the second husband, who was an ordained minister ⦠Blanche truly believes she is innocent. No, I mean, she truly believes she is an innocent. She didn't think what she did was wrong, because of the sexual abuse she said she suffered as a child. People have different ways of dealing with their problems. Once she started on her way, there was no going back.
In 2012, classic TV curator and author, Ed Robertson, host of the popular radio show,
TV Confidential
, put it this way:
Once
Bewitched
ended she was looking for projects that would allow her to grow as an actress, and further develop her dramatic skills, which she was not always able to do as
Samantha
, particularly in the last couple years of the show. I don't think she was necessarily trying to “shed” her image as
Samantha,
but I do believe she wanted to show audiences (and for that matter, casting directors and the like) that she could do much more than
Samantha.
That's why I think she did
A Case of Rape
, which had aired the year before in 1974, and I think that's what may have attracted her to doing
The Legend of Lizzie Borden
. That, plus the project itself had a strong pedigree. Paul Wendkos had already established himself as an excellent director, plus Fritz Weaver, through his work on such shows as
Twilight Zone
, was an accomplished, respected stage actor. I don't know whether Fritz worked with her father, but I imagine Elizabeth would have relished the opportunity to work with someone like him.
She also embraced the chance to work with screen legend Kirk Douglas in the 1985 CBS TV-movie,
Amos
, which also starred Pat Morita, best known as
Arnold
from TV's
Happy Days
and later as
Mr. Miyagi
in the original
Karate Kid
movies. This time, Lizzie not only played a heartless character, but a seemingly soulless one as well: