Read Twitch Upon a Star Online
Authors: Herbie J. Pilato
Twitch Upon a Star (60 page)
Asner later combined his voice, refreshing self-deprecating humor, compassion for his fellow man, and keen sense of priorities to do good work. And although he and Lizzie clearly came from very different backgrounds, they attained an equally successful footing in Hollywood, while retaining the same strong sense of integrity, if not always aware that they were on the same side.
Asner, a liberal and political advocate like Lizzie, had appeared alongside her at many charity functions, while also playing opposite her on game shows like
Password
. Oddly enough, Asner had no idea that Elizabeth was a liberal; he thought she may have followed in the footsteps of her conservative-minded father. He explains:
The fact that she was the daughter of
Mr. Republican
was intimidating to me. He was the tuxedo-and-top-hat-and-tie type. I was never offended by anything he said or did that I can recall, but in those days he represented the
other side
. I never approached politics with her. I never got familiar with her other than as Bob Foxworth's wife. The fact that she was married to Bob had to indicate something. He certainly was a liberal, but we never really exchanged familiarities. I certainly enjoyed her (performances) and was terribly depressed at her demise. Heartbreaking! And I thought she was a fine upstanding woman. But I did not identify the liberal (in her), although she certainly didn't get in the way of her liberal husband. From what I've now learned about her, I deeply regret not having been able to exchange some warmth with her, now knowing exactly who she was (as a human being). But she was not forthcoming.
Lizzie's shy behavior struck again, but her heart, as usual, was in the right place. Knowing Lizzie, she may have been just as intimidated by Asner as he was of her. But certainly she must have respected his integrity and the sacrifices he made in his life and career due to his liberal beliefs, specifically when his political views once cost him his job. Asner explains further:
There were times when I spoke up for causes. I was lucky that some of those times I hadn't done sufficient background (research) but I was still correct in my positions. When I came to New York, being a member of both SAG and AFTRA, I had signed the Stockholm Peace Pledge. And I wondered ⦠I had heard of people being denied because of signing.
When I had to fill out my Loyalty Oath for clearance with the networks and I only filled out one, evidently that applied across the board. I wondered if they'd catch me up on signing this Stockholm Peace Pledge. That's how fearful I was. It didn't reflect on me. Most of those years until I came out to speak up on Central America, El Salvador, I kept my mouth shut, not willing to be identified, not willing to be tagged.
And when I spoke out on El Salvadorâspeaking out on what I consider to be a humanist position, not liberal, it produced a maelstrom of opposition that led to the cancellation of
Lou Grant
. And when I did speak out, we went to Washington to announce the initial contribution of aid to El Salvador. There was a large press conference and the second questioner at the table, and he said, “Are you for free elections in El Salvador? What if those elections turn out a Communist Government?” It's like a freight train hit me in the face. And I gave some wimpy answer and I went on to the third questioner, but I was troubled with what I had answered. I gave some cockamamie answer and I went back to the second questioner.
In my mind, I'm saying, “I've come all this way for this, all this distance? And I'm gonna waffle?” Not here! And I said I wasn't satisfied with my initial answers: “All I can say to you is if it's the Government the people of El Salvador choose ⦠then let them have it!” And with that, I felt I was signing the end of my career. I felt that it would rebound. There was rebounding but it wasn't over that specific answer, but I'm sure it was the provocation that led to all the attacks. I was labeled a
commie
and this and that and the
Lou Grant
series got cancelled!
Although it's been nearly three decades since Grant's cancellation, Asner has never stopped working or fighting the good fight. Lizzie would have been proud.
Had it not been for the loyal original following of Trekkers and Trekkies, the original
Star Trek
series, broadcast on NBC from 1966 to 1969 (and one of Lizzie's favorite shows), may not have made it past its first season. One particular episode, “Plato's Stepchildren,” involved the virile
Captain Kirk
, as played by Caucasian William Shatner, under alien mind control, forced to kiss
Lt. Uhura
, portrayed by African-American Nichelle Nichols. It was the first time a scripted TV series presented an interracial intimate moment between characters, however contrived within a sci-fi/fantasy storyline. Even more significant was that the segment was broadcast November 22, 1968âthe fifth anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination, which was also the anniversary of the day rehearsals began for the
Bewitched
pilot.
In 1977, Lizzie starred in
A Killing Affair
, a CBS TV-movie co-starring African-American athlete turned actor turned controversial public figure O. J. Simpson. They were big city detectives who were partners on the street and at home, locked in a heated romance that included one water-downed bedroom scene with Simpson stationed just above her, to one side.
According to the article, “TV Breaks Old Taboos with New Morality,” published in
Jet Magazine
, a progressively mainstream African-American publication, December 1, 1977, Lizzie rallied for additional scenes in the bedroom, but CBS censors rejected her suggestions. So, she had to settle for what she could get or the scenes, and potentially the entire film, would have been shelved. But even the subtle sequence that did manage to make the cut was considered cutting edge television. As
Jet
worded it, “Black skin lovingly pressed against white skin on television screens is a delicacy rarely seen.”
It took
A Killing Affair
to pull back the covers on this sensitive and usually avoided interracial material, which was then one of TV's most inflexible taboos. But the audience was not repelled. Instead, the film was embraced by its viewers. Broadcast on Wednesday, September 21, 1977 it garnered a 29 percent Nielson rating share. Although it ranked behind the popular and quite tame
Charlie's Angels
on ABC,
Killing
toppled
The Oregon Trail
on NBC by four points.
David Gerber, the movie's producer, explained to
Jet
: “The story started off with a white couple, but we wanted to do something different with the script and turned it around to an interracial couple. CBS had the guts to show it and I think they handled it right.”
Considering the uneasy nature of
Killing's
racially mixed romance, reaction to the movie was generally mild. Neither Lizzie nor Simpson received any significant letters of protest. However, as
Jet
perceived it, America didn't completely sit on its anger. A Chicago television station and newspaper received a few crank calls and letters, and far more seriously, one southern station received a bomb threat convincing enough that the building was momentarily evacuated.
“We all expected such response as an inevitable result,” CBS censor Van Gordon Sauter told the magazine. “The movie featured the kind of relationship many viewers feel uncomfortable with. If there were a proliferation of such programs (depicting interracial relationships) there would probably be a considerable degree of indignation expressed.”
According to a September 1977 edition of
The Abilene Reporter-News
in Texas, Lizzie was at the time visiting a Renaissance Faire in the San Fernando Valley in California when a middle-aged female
Bewitched
fan approached her and asked what she was working on. “I'm doing a television movie with O. J. Simpson,” she replied. “It's a love story between two police detectives.”
The woman's face went blank and she said, “You. O. J. Simpson. A love story? Well!” She then went back into the crowd.
“Oh, I'm sure I'll be getting hate mail and I don't care,” Lizzie told
The Abilene
. “Both O. J. and I realized we would get a strong reaction from the show, but we went ahead and did it. I think it's a good show, though I hate the title.”
According to further reports in
Jet
, and just as
A Killing Affair
aired, a flood of hate mail was credited with destroying the then on-screen love affair between white actor Richard Guthrie's character and his on-screen African-American girlfriend played by Tina Andrews on NBC's daytime serial
Days of Our Lives
. Guthrie had argued that the show's producers “got cold feet on the budding romance” because the story line was unpopular. “The studio had been getting a lot of hate mail from people threatening to stop watching the show,” huffed Andrews at the time, “when they get enough of those letters they respond. One letter said, âI hope you're not going to let that (n-word) marry that white boy.' Apparently they are not. I was canned.”
Why would an America that for the most part tacitly accepted the O. J./Lizzie flame turn against the fledgling Guthrie-Andrews lovelight?
Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Alvin Poussaint took his analysis a bit further. “During the day television is watched mostly by white women,” he observed, who might have then have viewed Tina Andrews' performance as a threat. Whereas in the 9:00 or 10:00 PM time slot of that era you may find a significantly different audience that might observe this: an African-American (like O. J. Simpson who was not at that time the controversial figure he would later become in 1994) having an affair with a white woman, which would fit the stereotype that successful black men desire white women, via what Poussaint called the “guess who's coming to dinner” scenario (in reference to the 1967 Sidney Poitier film of the same name that was remade in 2005 with Will Smith).
Poussaint added:
Plus
A Killing Affair
was a one-shot thing. We don't know what protests might have come if the movie were a continuing series. Soap operas are ongoing and they reflect a slice of real life. The viewer usually lives a fantasy through the characters, which is why Tina Andrews' character may have run into trouble. Then too, TV is still uncomfortable with interracial romances. For
A Killing Affair
they picked a superstar like O. J. Simpson and that may have been why there weren't more protests. Simpson represents a big, virile, handsome cat who seems gentle and non-threatening.
At least that was the perception at the time. Today, the film is almost unwatchable. Not because of the interracial romance between Lizzie's and Simpson's characters, but because of the questions and incriminating circumstances that have since surrounded and assassinated Simpson's real life character (the murder trial after the death of his wife Nicole Simpson, attractive and fair-haired like Lizzie; while the movie's ironic title doesn't much help its case).
Beyond the racial, political, and particular controversies that surrounded the lives of certain performers, Lizzie's involvement with
A Killing Affair
further proved her attempts to push the creative envelope and ultimately allowed televisionâby way of her career choicesâto become an educational platform for narrative mainstream entertainment outside the realm of PBS.
Unlike
Samantha's
singular marriage to two
Darrins
on
Bewitched
, Lizzie was married four times to different men, ultimately to Bob Foxworth. When Lizzie and Foxworth appeared on
The Dennis Miller Show
in 1992, Miller looked at Foxworth and asked, “Which
Darrin
are
you
?”
Foxworth played along with the gag, and replied, “The third one!”
Six years later, and thirty-six months after Lizzie died, Foxworth wed Stacey Thomas, and they remain married today. Before he met Lizzie on the set of
Mrs. Sundance
in 1973, he was with Marilyn McCormick, whom he was married to from 1964 to 1974ânearly the same time Lizzie was married to Bill Asher. Lizzie and Bill divorced in 1974. So did Bob and Marilyn, though not before they had two children, Bo and Kristyn Fox-worth (both actors), who later became step-siblings to Lizzie's three children (with Bill Asher), Rebecca, Robert, and Billy Asher, Jr.
When Lizzie and Bob moved in together, it was like
The Brady Bunch
, combining families from two different marriages, and that kind of fit. Lizzie had attended the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts with
Brady
star Florence Henderson, while Foxworth's curly brown locks and piercing blue eyes resembled
Mr. Brady
actor Robert Reed.
All five children were lights in Lizzie's life, although she was never satisfied with her maternal performance. As she expressed in 1992 to John Tesh on
One on One
, “I will never win any Mother of the Year awards,” but she also believed “parents and kids have to grow up together.”