Twitch Upon a Star (56 page)
Read Twitch Upon a Star Online
Authors: Herbie J. Pilato
Besides that challenging day when the wives of a few crew members visited the
Bewitched
set and called Lizzie “fat,” she was usually cool when kids or adults visited a set. According to Montgomery curator Thomas McCartney, the cast and crew who worked with her from her 1985 CBS TV-movie
Amos
were impressed with her informal persona: “She was around the set a lot and liked to watch everyone work. She was always very sweet, and many specifically remembered her eyes and the way they smiled at whoever she was talking to. In fact, they sparkled and smiled. She was a little bashful, but kind, considerate, and very much a down-to-earth.”
Apparently, there was one particular crew member on
Amos
who had more directly experienced Lizzie's kind heart. He had recently lost his wife and infant son in childbirth and fortunately had a honey-eyed four-year-old daughter to help soothe his grief. For a time, however, he was unable to find a regular babysitter and a few makeup girls from the set volunteered. But when shooting fell behind schedule, the makeup team was unable to pinch-hit, and the little girl's father went into panic mode. Who would babysit his daughter now? Of course, the answer was none other than Lizzie Montgomery.
According to McCartney, Lizzie actually volunteered for the job. “And the little girl's father was just astonished,” McCartney declares. “He couldn't comprehend that Elizabeth Montgomery was actually babysitting his child. It was all pretty humorous.”
Equally charming and surprising was how Lizzie responded to a reference to her age, a topic of which she was quite protective and sensitive. At one point during this adventure in babysitting, she and the little girl were playing a game. “And they looked really cute together,” McCartney explains. So cute, that someone on the set turned to Lizzie and said, “Oh, how sweet. She looks like she could be your daughter.”
To which Lizzie laughed and replied, with her acerbic humor intact, “You mean my
granddaughter
. I'm a little long in the tooth to have a four-year-old.”
McCartney deciphers:
She was just an incredibly modest lady, and treated that little girl with such respect. Some mornings, the little girl would come in looking all disheveled and Elizabeth would just shake her head, and try to make the child presentable, but in a non-obstructive way. She'd laugh and say to the little girl, “Your father dressed you this morning, didn't he, kiddo?” But she would also tell everyone how polite she was, and how refreshing it was to encounter such a well-mannered child. She constantly complimented the girl, and her father, on her manners. She would play games with the child like hop-scotch. She even got on the floor in her nurse's white (costume) to teach her how to play jacks, and apparently, that was quite a sight.
Lizzie even grew concerned whenever the little girl's father made not-so-wise moves. One day the child fell asleep on the set and curled up in a fetal ball. She immediately covered her with a blanket or towel of some sort, then approached the father and politely explained: “When children
curl up
, they're usually cold and too tired to do or say anything.” According to McCartney, the father looked at Lizzie as if she was Moses giving a sermon from Mount Sinai. “I doubt he forgot whatever it is she told him that day.”
Similarly, it's not likely that Sally Kemp and Rebecca Asher will ever forget what happened the day Kemp's little grandson apparently had an encounter with Elizabeth's playful, carefree spirit, literally. Elizabeth once professed to
TV Photo Story
magazine that she had seen a ghost in England. Billy Clift, her former hairstylist, talked extensively about his encounters with her spirit in his fascinating book,
Everything Is Going to Be Just Fine: The Ramblings of a Mad Hairdresser
. And now, Lizzie “transparently” materialized to Kemp's youngest relative. Sally explains:
Elizabeth's daughter, Rebecca Asher, came to visit with friends of ours. And my grandson, I think he was three or four, asked Rebecca how her mother was, and [said] that she (Elizabeth) had
visited
him. Rebecca and all of us were surprised, but couldn't get any more out of him. He was busy playing with his trains. Small children can very often see spirits and accept them. I guess Elizabeth just decided to
pop in
to see us since Rebecca was visiting too. Good timing on Elizabeth's part since she had never met my grandson and my daughter, who I was staying with in L.A. when this happened. Pity it couldn't have happened in life. But it didn't surprise me. It's something Elizabeth
would
do.
Twenty
“I hope to continue to live my life so that [my children] will be proud of me. I don't mean as an actress, but as a mother, and as a human being.”
âElizabeth Montgomery,
Screen Stars Magazine
, August 1967
In many of her post-
Samantha
interviews, Lizzie frequently related working on
Bewitched
to taking an eight-year college course in the entertainment industry.
However, as do many from all walks of life, she attempted to learn something from
every
experience. She was an intelligent, open-minded individual, ever-willing to consider perspectives and opinions on any topic. She was shy, but that just made her a good listener. She was a dedicated worker, daughter, and wife, even when her father and a few of her husbands weren't all that supportive or encouraging. She was a loyal friend to many in her close circle who loved her dearly and, as far as her children were concerned, Elizabeth was an outstanding parent who cared a great deal about not only her immediate family, but the family of humanity. As Billy Asher, Jr. relayed on MSNBC's
Headliners & Legends
in 2001, she was “a great influence and ⦠role model.”
Despite being raised in the self-absorbed community of Hollywood, West or East Coast divisions, Elizabeth always had a solid grasp on priorities. She appreciated diversity and possessed integrity. Although reserved, she would speak her mind when discussing the importance and power that accompanies ignoring differences among peoples and nations, and instead concentrating on what makes everyone the same. As she explained in 1989:
I've never liked the exclusivity of other people because they are of another race, another religion, another whatever. If you don't like somebody, don't come to me and say, “I don't like that person because he's black”; that's not an excuse; or “I don't like that person because he's Italian”; that doesn't make any sense to me. But if you say, “I don't like that person because he's rude and kicks dogs,” well, then, I'd say, “You're probably right.”
Lizzie's common human charm contributed to an across-the-board allure that remains today. She appeals to a variety of people for different reasons in a multitude of roles, on screen and off. She was the kind of person you could approach at parties. And according to the June 1965 issue of
TV Radio Mirror
, that's exactly what happened at one festive first-season gathering on the set of
Bewitched
. A gentleman advanced toward her and said, “Miss Montgomery ⦠you not only play the part of a witch to perfection, you
are
that witch.”
Whereupon she responded, “Why, isn't everybody?”
Not really. Liz Sheridan believed the role of
Samantha
fit Lizzie like a glove. As Sheridan expressed to MSNBC's
Headliners & Legends
, “She
was
that person. She was so much like that lady that I guess it was not like acting to her. She [had the] chance to be herself.”
Ironically, it was advice from Robert Montgomery that helped his daughter “be”
Samantha
. In doing so, she became more popular with this one character on TV than he ever was with several roles he portrayed in various mediums. As was explained in
Cosmopolitan Magazine
, July 1954, he once reminded Elizabeth that every time she walked onto to a stage, she must bring something of herself with her. She couldn't just depend on scenery and lines. He had instructed her to bring the audience some special essence of herself, no matter how small; something that wasn't there before she stepped out from behind the curtain. He didn't care whether it was sadness or “an air of being afraid of somebody or a feeling of slapstick comedy,” just something that would make the audience “sit up and notice” her. “All good actors do that,” he added, thinking Elizabeth had that quality. “She enters a scene with an air of authority, making a strong, positive contribution.”
As Lizzie told Ronald Haver in 1991, “It's every actor's dream to bring originality and part of what you are to every part you play, if you can, or else delve deeply into all sorts of research.” In more directly connecting the dots between playing
Samantha
, the sensitive issue of age, and maintaining a balance of priorities between home and career, Elizabeth offered a unique perspective to
TV Radio Mirror
in June 1965:
“I'm very much like
Samantha
in some respects,” she said, but in one particular way, “I can never be like her.
Samantha
, being a witch, can remain young, beautiful and charming, indefinitely. I'm only a woman and can hold on to my attractions for a limited period of time. Nothing is sadder to me than to see a woman who rolled along on her sex appeal when she was in her twenties suddenly wake up to the fact that she has reached forty. The beauty and cuteness that were once thought so attractive have gone, and it is a revolting sight to see a fortyish female trying to be a sex kitten. This is why I am trying to base my own life on more substantial and longer-lasting qualities; a home, a loving husband, fine children, longer-lasting things. A happy home is as valuable to you at fifty as it was in your twenties. And to be loved and admired by a husband and children, whom you love and admire in return, grows better as time wears on. It's a much better investment in happiness than playing the social butterfly ⦔
She didn't define herself as an ambitious career woman. She thoroughly enjoyed acting, but not to the degree where it became a compulsion that dominated her life. She didn't have to work to be content, but if she found a part that fascinated her, one that she perceived as entertaining or significant, then she was happy going to work. This was reportedly one of the reasons why she never signed a long-term contract before agreeing to do
Bewitched
; she envisioned playing
Samantha
as a challenge and signed on in a heartbeat.
She didn't always agree with her agents, who often urged her to take large roles that she classified in June 1965 as too “showy.” Such parts were rejected if she sensed “something false to myself in them.” At which point, she'd agree to take on more modest characterizations.
By the time she settled in as
Samantha
, Elizabeth sought to at least temporarily distance herself from nonconformist characters. “I'm not comfortable in such parts. But give me a normal young woman to do, and I'll play it for all I'm worth.”
Strangely, the twitch-witch
Samantha
was one of her most “normal” roles. Others, like the prostitute
Rusty Heller
from
The Untouchables
or axmurderess
Lizzie Borden
certainly cannot be classified as normal, at least not within the “likability” mode of America's mainstream. But somehow, as she did with
Samantha
, Lizzie's talent so captivated her audience that she allowed them to identify with even the most unlikable characters, mostly because her
performance
was likable.
When she played characters like the compassionate, but stubborn pale-ontologist
Dr. Diana Firestone
in 1990's
Face to Face
, as with
Samantha
, both the character and the performance were likable. In such instances, as with the plight of wildlife, Lizzie somehow utilized that combination for a good cause, off-screen, just as she had allowed
Samantha's
struggle for acceptance in the mortal world to represent the quest for equality among all people in the real world.
On January 24, 1990, Lizzie appeared on
CBS This Morning
to promote Hallmark Hall of Fame's
Face to Face
TV-movie. At first,
Morning
host Kathleen Kennedy asked her to talk about the movie, which was shot on location in Kenya, Africa. When Kennedy then wondered if Lizzie learned anything while working on the movie, Elizabeth went on to speak in support of wildlife conservation on the resplendent African continent. She had always wanted to travel to Africa, performing in
Face to Face
provided the ideal opportunity for her to do so, and she was happy to get paid for it in the process. She also expressed how pleased she was to be working for Hallmark, how the entire journey to Africa was a “great wonderful” educational experience.
However, she added, “Not to be morbid, but we better get pretty interested very fast in the conditions there about the poaching. It has gotten so outrageously out of hand. And it's scary to think that if it keeps up, Africa just may not be there as we know it. It is Eden is what it is, and it should be left that way.”