Twitch Upon a Star (64 page)
Read Twitch Upon a Star Online
Authors: Herbie J. Pilato
As to how all of this to relates to Elizabeth's performance on
Bewitched
, Robertson believes it's
kind of an
apples and oranges
comparison. The subject matter of Lizzie Borden is much darker and more disturbing than anything she'd done on
Bewitched
. Which goes back to my earlier point: It appears she was looking for projects that would challenge her as an actress, as
The Legend of Lizzie Borden
certainly did. Given that the movie portrays Borden as having committed the murders [the case, though closer to closures, remains unsolved, even after all these years], it was Elizabeth's job to somehow make this cold, calculating, mercurial woman evoke sympathy from the viewers, even though she committed these heinous acts. To her credit, I think she did.
I'm sure some (of her fans) were shocked, especially those who may have been clinging to her wholesome image as
Samantha
. But I'm just as sure that those who loved her as an actress, taking into her account her body of work prior to and after
Bewitched
, were pleased and mesmerized by her performance.
When the Circus Came to Town
at least offered a glimmer of the comedic sparkle Lizzie presented on
Bewitched
. The 1981 movie was made in association with her production company, Entheos Unlimited Productions. According to Roland L. Smith's book,
Sweethearts of '60s TV
(S.P.I. Books, 1993), Lizzie had signed a deal with CBS in 1979 that paid her $275,000 per film, an amount that would increase over the years. Add to that the shrewd investments and stellar profts from
Bewitched
(of which she and Bill Asher were part owners) and her annual income became substantial.
However, as Smith observed, retaining her integrity and remaining visible in pertinent television films wasn't always easy, “sometimes even the most determined efforts were in vain.”
Plainly stated, it was challenging for Lizzie to find a good script. By 1981, she had one more movie left in the CBS deal, and she was considering several ideas, one of which was a comedy, but nothing was a lock. But then the
Circus Came to Town
which, as Tom McCartney says, Lizzie viewed as “a romantic comedy,” the first such lighter concept she would consider since
Bewitched
.
The idea for
Circus
was generated by one sentence from Doug Chapin, who produced her previous film,
Belle Starr
. She was ready to drop the project altogether until writer Larry Grusin impressed her with his script, which McCartney says CBS executive William Self was initially apprehensive about sending her way. It was then her manager Barry Krost, Chapin's business partner, who then suggested she read it.
She did so, and subsequently hired director Boris Sagal, who besides guiding her through
A Case of Rape
and
The Awakening Land
, had also directed the 1980 TV-movie edition of
The Diary of Anne Frank
with Melissa Gilbert (of
Little House on the Prairie
fame), and would soon helm 1981's
Masada
mini-series (with Peter O'Toole and Peter Strauss, of
Rich Man, Poor Man
).
Krost had played an interconnecting role in Lizzie's post-
Bewitched
life and career, protecting and guiding both her personal and professional decisions. She trusted him implicitly (it was in his apartment where Lizzie and Bob Foxworth secretly tied the knot on January 28, 1993), and Krost had enormous respect for her as a client and as a human being.
In 1999, author Michael Anketell published,
Heavenly Bodies: Remembering Hollywood and Fashion's Favorite AIDS Benefit
(Taylor, 1999). In the book, producer Doug Chapin, Krost's business partner, explains how in 1986 Lizzie and actor Roddy McDowall (who died of lung cancer in 1998) were the first two celebrities to lend their support to the initial Los Angeles fashion-show (displaying the 1930s Hollywood designes of Adrian) to benefits HIV/AIDS awareness. According to what Chapin told Anketell, Elizabeth attended every one of their events up until the time of her death.
Other celebrities who attended the Adrian function, included Carol Kane, Brenda Vaccaro, Bess Armstrong, JoBeth Williams, and Jackie Collins. Anketell writes:
Had it not been for the valiant efforts of a few of Hollywood's favorite stars and their managers, Barry Krost and Doug Chapin, who encouraged them, neither Hollywood nor the fashion world would have taken any but passing notice of our efforts. Without stars, there would have been little press coverage and our message would not get out. But on the night of the Adrian show, the stars did come.
Anketell went on to explain how Lizzie was a stand-out participant:
Possibly our most popular star that evening was Elizabeth Montgomery, the beloved
Samantha
of
Bewitched
. Elizabeth was the daughter of film star Robert Montgomery and the wife of actors Gig Young and Robert Foxworth. She had starred in a couple of dozen TV movies in which she was often a victimized woman who would find her personal strength, though she also portrayed Western bandit Belle Starr and parent-hacker Lizzie Borden.
Krost then talked about Lizzie's personal involvement in bringing awareness to AIDS and other causes:
Elizabeth became very political and very caring and yet, at the same time, always was strangely shy for a lady who had all her life been around press and Hollywood. She protected her private life and she found the spotlight, at times, very uncomfortable, unless it was about a specific projectâa movie or a cause she believed in. She was one of the first public people to get involved in the very early days of the fight against HIV.
I think Elizabeth was on the side of anybody, any group of people that she thought was being treated inappropriately. But she was still shy. I remember when we arrived that first year at the Adrian event. There was a press line outside and she suggested we stop the car, get out and go in the side entrance. I said, “It sort of defeats the point of your being here.“And she said, “Oh, yes, you're right,” and she went in the front way, through the press.
In 1999, on
Bewitched: The E! True Hollywood Story
, Krost said: “If she was your friend she was there, good times, bad times. She was there. And if she was in your life, somehow you went to bed at night and the world was just a little bit safer. And very few people have that effect on you.”
In 2001, on MSNBC's
Headliners & Legends
, he added: “When HIV came along, not only in a charitable sense, raising money and awareness ⦠but also one-on-one with people; she spent an awful lot of time that way.” She cherished her private life with, for example, her children of whom, as Krost explained, she cared a great deal. “It's a very delicate balance between being a star and what happened in the house. And I think she really protected that and felt very vulnerable.”
Lizzie's son Billy Asher, Jr. relayed on the same show: “She felt a responsibility with her life and her career as being a celebrity ⦠to use that at times to make other people aware of issues that she felt were important.”
In all, there are those who are critical of celebrities, specifically, actors, intermingling their public personas with politics, believing that the twain should never meet. But during his appearance at the Los Angeles Festival of Books on April 22, 2012, Steven J. Ross, the author of
Hollywood Left and Right
, explained it this way:
I would say yes, you can have celebrities divorced from politics if you have business leaders divorced from politics, if you have all the CEOs in America divorced and if you have every other American divorced. They are citizens first. They are actors second. Why should we single out actors? And the reason why most people don't like it is nobody wants their dream factory burst. We all have our celebrity images. We all have our belief of who they are, and as early as 1918 you had people like Sid Grauman, who founded the famous Grauman's Chinese Theatre where we have all the handprints and the footprints, telling actors to keep your mouths shut when it comes to politics, because the moment you open your mouth you alienate half your audience.
Certainly, there was little sign of audience alienation when Lizzie's fans turned out by the droves when she, if posthumously, received her star at the Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony, January 4, 2008. Her fans, coworkers, and family, including her three beloved children, were there to partake in the honor.
Today, Billy Asher, Jr. is the proprietor of a highly successful and respected music business (Asher Guitars). Rebecca Asher is a renowned TV script supervisor (
Raising Hope, Mad Men, Samantha Who?
), and Robert Asher is an artisan of many talents and crafts who at times works with his brother Billy (as does Bob Foxworth's son Bo). In one way or another, they each have followed in their parents' professional footsteps.
In looking back at the development of Lizzie's character, she evidently believed in at least some form of positive higher-consciousness that somehow guided her decision-making process with her life and career. It may not have always been a consistent belief, but it was a belief nonetheless. And although she may have enjoyed pulling Agnes Moorehead's religious leg during their
Bewitched
era, it was clear she was no slouch in the spiritual department, even in the most basic or sporadic way.
When she and her brother Skip were children, their grandmother Becca instructed them to pray when their parents were away. It was a solid, traditional way to handle a child's temporary, if intensely emotional feelings. But as Lizzie explained in the February 1970 edition of
TV Radio Mirror
magazine, she and Skip never said nightly prayers, nor did they attend church on a regular basis. “I suppose we believed in God,” she acknowledged, but “⦠in our own way.” She and Skip apparently did at least attend Sunday school and looked forward to going. But to her the Bible stories were more like fairytales. She didn't really take them seriously.
And by 1970, that seemed to fit. She was no longer a child of a star, but a star herself, many times over. She was also a mature adult, on her third marriage, with three children of her own. Her childhood days with Skip were long gone, and even though her child-like manner remained, she now faced adult decisions, and was responsible for leading the way for three little people who would one day become adults themselves.
By this time, she had become disillusioned with the way many parents of the day instilled the mortal fear of a condemning God who took pleasure in punishing bad children. “Using fright to teach religion seems to me to be very unhealthy,” she said. “After all, if we can't base our beliefs in a Supreme Being on love, that how can any of us truly believe?” Lizzie also believed that many people turned to religion out of a deep need, and thought it was productive that they employed their faith to help deal with the turmoil of Vietnam and the race riots. Her three children, including Rebecca, just born in 1969, were then too young to ask about God. If they had wondered, Lizzie hadn't a clue as to how she would have replied. But she did want her kids to attend Sunday school like she and Skip had when they were young. “I feel that it is a good foundation for any child,” she said. “After all, even as a piece of literature alone, there is so much that is fine and wonderful in the Bible.”
“I think of God as the beauty in life,” she concluded, “⦠it's loving and being loved. It's feeling good inside because you are living the life of a good person. Maybe it's a good idea to try new ways of looking at the subject.”
It was a fresh perspective that helped to close an age-old generation gap between her and her conservative-minded parents. Years before, when she was only twenty, they had been pleased with her decision to at least be baptized if only shortly before her marriage to Fred Cammann, and even though that union ended in divorce.
In May of 1970, she addressed it all with reporter Nancy Winelander of
TV Picture Life
magazine. The conversation mixed religion, her marriages to Asher as well as Gig Young, and again, raising her children. The article described Lizzie as Episcopalian. Young was a Protestant; Asher, Jewish. As she intoned, both she and Asher “love our religion. Bill isn't the most religious man in the world. He doesn't go for a lot of the ritual, but he believes deeply in his Jewish religion and cultural heritage. I really haven't been a practicing anything for years. Still, I don't want to divorce myself from my heritage either.”
Yet, she was surprised at how “meddlesome people can be,” when it came to raising a family under one particular faith or the other. “After all,” she added, “whose business is it how our children are raised?” But at the time, it was an issue, one that she had not confronted before. As Winelander explained, Lizzie had no children by the much older Young. If they had had kids, apparently, there would not have been any religious quandary with the Protestant Young. [Note: All Episcopalians are Protestants but not all Protestants are Episcopalians. Protestants include virtually all Christian sects outside of Roman Catholicism: Episcopalians, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, etc.] Lizzie told Winelander: