Read Twitch Upon a Star Online
Authors: Herbie J. Pilato
Twitch Upon a Star (6 page)
Lizzie failed to win an Emmy for playing a witch on
Bewitched
(for which she was nominated five times, with a total of nine nominations throughout her career); her father failed to ace any formal acting award for playing a seraph (or a psycho).
In 1945, legendary film director John Ford became ill on the set of
They
Were Expendable
, and Robert stepped in as his replacement, making his first mark as a director. After receiving this initial tech credit, he turned out an unusual, controversial production titled
Lady in the Lake
(1947), a Raymond Chandler mystery thriller told in the first person through tricky subjective camera angles (much like Lizzie's
Missing Pieces
1983 TV-movie). Playing the hero (private eye
Philip Marlowe
), he was seen on the screen only twiceâonce in the prologue, then within the body of the film, when he briefly crossed in front of a mirror. All other scenes were shown from his point of view, as if seen though his eyes. Robert went on to direct and star in several other films that received varied response before retiring from the big screen, and turned his attention to politics, TV, and the stage.
On Broadway in 1955, he won a Tony Award for best director for the play
The Desperate Hours
. He later formed Cagney-Montgomery Productions with early screen idol James Cagney to produce
The Gallant Hours
(1960), his final effort as a film director. Cagney was fond of Lizzie, and later became a mentor of sorts, maybe something even closer.
As she told Ronald Haver for the 1991 laserdisc release of
Here Comes Mr. Jordan
, Cagney was one of her dad's closest friends who was like a second father to her, and it never occurred to her that Cagney was a big star.
Another larger-than-life celebrity who both Elizabeth and Robert Montgomery befriended was film legend Bette Davis. Lizzie would later take the lead in the 1976 TV-movie,
Dark Victory
, a remake of Davis' 1939 motion picture; Bette had co-starred with Robert in 1948's
June Bride
(directed by Bretaigne Windust). In time, Lizzie and Bette became closer friends than Bette and Robert, and he became jealous; not so much of Bette, but of Lizzie. But as Bette recalled to author Charlotte Chandler in
Bette Davis: A Personal BiographyâThe Girl Who Walked Home Alone
(Simon and Schuster, 2006), Robert left little to be desired or envied. She even went as far as to describe him as “a male Miriam Hopkins,” a reference to her arch rival on the big screen.
Actress Hopkins had well-publicized arguments with Davis (who reportedly had an affair with Hopkins' then-husband, Anatole Litvak) when they co-starred in the films
The Old Maid
(1939) and
Old Acquaintance
(1943). Davis admitted to very much enjoying a scene in the latter movie in which her character forcefully shakes Hopkins' character. There were even press photos taken with both divas in boxing rings with gloves up and
Old Acquaintance's
director Vincent Sherman standing between the two.
Davis never came to such blows with Robert Montgomery on the set of
June Bride
, but she came close. She explained in Chandler's book:
He was an excellent actor, but addicted to scene stealing. He would add business in his close-ups which didn't match mine, so that there would only be one way to cut the filmâhis way. Mr. Montgomery understood films. (Director) Windust, who was not a film man at all, never noticed, and I couldn't have cared less. Montgomery was welcome to all the close-ups he wanted. I act with my whole body.
In 1991, Elizabeth told Ronald Haver that her father and Davis didn't get along. After Lizzie had moved out of the Montgomery homestead, Robert would call and invite her to dinner.
“I can't,” she'd reply. “I'm going over to Bette's.”
“Oh,” he'd say, and hang up.
After meeting at various social events in New York, Davis became somewhat of a mentor for the young ingénue. In fact, while only in her late teens, Lizzie was invited by Davis to her home in Maine on a street named, “appropriately enough,” Elizabeth said, “Witch Way.” That name represented Davis' reputation and not
Bewitched
, which was years from creation. But for the moment, the
witch
reference seemed to fit Davis and, as Lizzie told Haver, “She knew that.”
One weekend on Witch Way, Lizzie and Bette picked beans from Davis' garden and later strung them inside the house, while sitting in front of her fireplace. Shortly after, an argument ensued between the two, Davis stalked out of the room, and then stopped in her tracks. She turned to face Lizzie and said, “
Betty
âwhen they do the story of my life, you should play me, and I'm not sure that's a compliment.” Lizzie thought that was funny; Bette Davis was the only person Elizabeth Montgomery ever allowed to call her “Betty.”
According to James Pylant's
Bewitching Family Tree
:
Elizabeth Montgomery's death certificate gives her mother's maiden name as Elizabeth Allen, a Kentucky native. The 1930 federal census of Los Angeles County, California, shows Robert Montgomery, age twenty-five, born in New York,
Actor, Motion Pictures
, and wife Elizabeth A., also twenty-five, born in Kentucky, and a fifty-year-old servant lived on Black-wood Drive in Los Angeles. The
age at first married
for both was twenty-three. The couple had married on 14 April 1928 in New York, and the following year they moved to Hollywood when Robert signed a contract with M-G-M. Elizabeth was the couple's second child. Tragically, their first born, Martha Bryan Montgomery, died at age fourteen months in 1931.
In May 1965,
Movie TV Secrets
magazine published the article, “Witches Are People Too,” by Jackie Thomas. It explained how Robert was devastated by the loss; how tiny Martha's death left him in a state of severe depression that immobilized him for months. A friend who knew the Montgomerys described his condition:
I don't think I've ever seen anyone as shaken as Bob. All his life seemed to be invested in that child; when she died something in him died with her. I don't think he has ever really recovered. Something inside him was twisted and destroyed by Martha's death.
Lizzie was interviewed for that same article. She addressed her father's strict reign over her youth, one that seemingly increased with time, as if in gradual reaction and retaliation to her infant sister's death, a young sibling she never knew. Little by little, her father's stern rule nibbled away at her self-esteem until the day she died in 1995. But thirty years before in May 1965, it was a different story.
She said she was too sure of a great many things. Being the daughter of a star had its effect on her. Not that her father went out of his way to make things easier for her, because he didn't. In fact, she said, at times he bent over backwards to go in the opposite direction. “Maybe that was his problem,” she thought. “He gave me the best of everythingâclothes, education, things like that, but he demanded a lot, too. Dad is a very complex man. I don't think I've ever been able to come up to Martha in his eyes.”
However, five months prior to that she told
TV Radio Mirror
:
I never replaced Martha in his heart, but I did help to soothe his grief.
As was explained in Richard Lamparski's book,
Whatever Became Of � Volume III
, between 1928 and 1950, Robert Montgomery was married to “actress Elizabeth Allan” (with an “a”), an actress best known for her pairing with Ronald Coleman in the 1935 film,
A Tale of Two Cities
. But this Elizabeth Allan, born British in Skegness, England, in 1908, was not Lizzie's mother, nor was she ever married to Robert.
A little over two decades later, the American actress Elizabeth Allen (with an “e”) was born “Elizabeth Ellen Gillease” on January 25, 1929 in Jersey City, New Jersey. In 1972, she co-starred on ABC's
The Paul Lynde Show
, playing Lynde's on-screen wife in this series that was executive produced by
Bewitched's
Harry Ackerman, and William Asher and Elizabeth Montgomery under their banner production company, Ashmont Productions. But this Elizabeth Allen was not Lizzie's mother either, nor was she ever married or related to Robert Montgomery.
However, a second American actress named Elizabeth Allen (with an “e”) arrived on the scene before Gillease. James Pylant provides the details in his
Bewitching
article:
Elizabeth Daniel Allen was born on 26 December 1904 in Louisville, Jefferson County, Kentucky, to Bryan Hunt Allen and the former Rebecca Lowry Daniel. Elizabeth Montgomery's maternal grandparentsâlike her paternal grandparentsâwere newlyweds at the time of the 1900 federal census enumeration. Fifty-seven-year-old widow Ellen W. Daniel, born in Indiana in February of 1843, owned a house on Brook Street in Louisville, Kentucky, which she shared with daughter Lizzie W., age twenty-five; son William A., age thirty-five, daughter-in-law Mollie, age thirty-six, and daughter Rebecca Allen, age twenty. Except for Ellen Daniel, all were born in Kentucky. Rebecca Allen's marital status is given as married, with
0
given for the number of years married. Bryan H. Allen is listed elsewhere in Louisville, although his marital status is recorded as single. An inspector for a gas company, he was born in November of 1877 in Kentucky to a Missouri father and a Kentucky mother. Rebecca Lowry Daniel AllenâElizabeth Montgomery's beloved
Becca
âwas born in June of 1879 in Kentucky (as per the 1900 census), but her death certificate gives 5 June 1886 as her birth date. Her death certificate also identifies her mother's maiden name as Wright. Daniel family genealogists show that Ellen Wright was the wife of Coleman Spencer Daniel, who died in Louisville on 8 June 1898, two years before Mrs. Ellen W. Daniel is shown on the rolls of the twelfth federal census as a widow. Daniel family records show Ellen Wright Daniel died two years later on 7 June 1902. The same record gives 16 February 1843 as her birth date, which agrees with what is found on the 1900 census. Coleman S. Daniel and Ellen Wright wedded in the bride's native Switzerland County, Indiana, on 20 May 1864. The daughter of John W. Wright, who represented Switzerland County in the state legislature, Ellen Wright was only six months old when her mother, Ellen (Lowry) Wright, died at age 36. Her father remarried the following year to Rebecca D. Saunders. Clearly, when Ellen (Wright) Daniel named her daughter Rebecca Lowry Daniel, she did so in honor of her mother and stepmother.
It was Lizzie's grandmother Becca with whom she formed a special bond (and who eventually introduced her to the potentially lighter side of life, like horse racing and gambling.)
Becca moved with her daughters Elizabeth Allen and Martha-Bryan to New York City in the early 1920s where Martha-Bryan had a role in the Broadway play,
He Who Gets Slapped
, which played at the Garrick Theater. In all, Martha-Bryan, mother to Lizzie's first cousin, Amanda (a.k.a. “Panda,” a childhood playmate), was in two dozen plays at one point before she met her husband-to-be Arthur Cushman.
Into this mix, Elizabeth Allen also performed in several live stage productions until she married Robert Montgomery on April 14, 1928. She received superb reviews for many of these plays, such as with
Revolt
, of which
The New York Times
said, “The lovely Miss Allen is poised for leading lady status anytime soon. She always brings freshness to her roles.”
Allen and Robert were married at the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration also known as “The Little Church Around the Corner” on 29th Street between Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue. The church was also the home of the Episcopal Actors' Guild, of which she and Robert were members.
She retired almost immediately at Robert's request for her to concentrate only on being his wife. Lizzie chatted about Elizabeth Allen to
Modern Screen
in May 1965: