Read Twitch Upon a Star Online
Authors: Herbie J. Pilato
Twitch Upon a Star (8 page)
However, in August 1967, Jacqueline Starr wrote in
Screen Stars
magazine:
Robert Montgomery tried everything in his power to keep his daughter from confusing the Robert Montgomeryâsuave movie heroâwith Daddy, the loving gentle man who was, nevertheless, human and capable of error. But Liz saw only a bigger-than-life father, the one on the screen. And when he tried to tell her about all the everyday problems of being an actor she just wouldn't listen. She was convinced that everything Daddy did was perfect and she intended to follow suit herself. That's when she ran into genuine trouble.
However wonderful or not so wonderful Robert Montgomery was, he could not prevent his legal detachment from Lizzie's mother Elizabeth Allen. In turn Lizzie, like other children of dysfunctional households from any era, was forced to become what was then referred to as a “product of a broken home.”
Her parents divorced on December 5, 1950 after Robert had an affair with yet another Elizabeth in the fray, this one Elizabeth “Buffy” Grant Harkness, who was married to William Harkness, one of the wealthiest socialites in New York City. Buffy was also heiress to the Standard Oil fortune and she married Robert on December 9, 1950, a mere four days after his divorce from Elizabeth Allen.
At the time, it was noted that not only did the second Mrs. Montgomery have the same first name as her predecessor but she bore a striking resemblance to her as well. But according to the January 1965 edition of
TV Radio Mirror
, the first Mrs. Montgomery's only comment about her former husband's new marriage was:
Moving East wasn't the best. Usually, Hollywood gets the blame for divorces, but in this case, it was the reverse. I had hoped we could work out our differences, but now I realize it can't be.
In the same article, Lizzie insisted:
I felt no bitterness when my parents parted. There was no spite or name-calling. There was no open quarreling that I knew of. They separated with the same dignity and mutual respect I had come to expect from them.
Yet, how could she feel anything but devastated by her parents' dissolve? At this early stage in their relationship, she had worshipped her father and the divorce most probably contributed to the wedge between them; and feeling worse for her mother didn't much help matters. She and her brother Skip may have moved to Manhattan with Mrs. Montgomery to help ease the traumatic transition, but Lizzie continued to put up a less traumatized front to cover her disillusionment.
“When you think everything's fine, this comes as a blow,” Elizabeth admitted to
Modern Screen
in May 1965. “But we saw Dad all the time.”
She was proud that her parents had remained together for so long. Childhood friend Billie Banks explained as much to MSNBC's
Headliners & Legends
in 2001. The sense of united family was “extremely important” to her, Banks said.
As Lizzie herself told
TV Guide
in 1961, her “wonderful feeling of security” had stemmed from her mother and father. In describing her and Skip's relationship with them, she unabashedly added: “Our parents protected us from too much Hollywood stuff, but it seeped through.”
How could it not? Robert Montgomery expected a great deal from those in his inner personal and professional circles and, as time marched on, Lizzie fit into both those categories. On a subconscious level, she may not have even allowed herself to fully grieve her parents' divorce, which could have added to the emotional burden of it all, further widening the already significant gap between them.
As Liz “Dizzie” Sheridan revealed to
Headliners & Legends
in 2001, Elizabeth once told her, “I don't think my father liked me very much.” On that same program,
Bewitched
director Richard Michaels claimed Elizabeth wanted praise from her father more than anyone else in the world, but it wasn't as forthcoming as she desired, at any stage of the game.
Five years later, Michaels appeared on
Entertainment Tonight
and dropped a bombshell: he and Elizabeth had an affair, one that ultimately contributed to the end of
Bewitched
in 1972 and, in 1974, the end of her marriage to Bill Asher, Michaels' mentor.
For Lizzie three times was not the charm in the marriage department, at least not as she had once hoped. Although her nuptials with Asher at first seemed ideal, she disengaged from him, sadly, just as she had from Fred Cammann and Gig Young. But she remained loyal to Asher, partially in respect of his talent, but mostly because of their three children.
It was the same sense of loyalty she retained for her parents when
they
divorced, despite her distress at the disintegration of what she viewed as the perfect family. She still kept a stoic upper lip during their separation proceedings and decades later mourned their demise. When Robert Montgomery passed away at age seventy-seven in 1981 in Manhattan, she refused to speak with the press, especially the tabloid press.
“I hate those magazines,” she said in 1989, one of which contacted her not more than two days after her father died, asking, “How does it feel, now that your father's dead? You never agreed with him anyway. We'd like your comments because we know you never got along with him politically.”
She hung up without dignifying the call with a response. “And that was the last time I spoke to that magazine,” she acknowledged, “and haven't since.”
In the long term, Lizzie was proud of her ancestry, as was evidenced by the names she and Bill Asher would later bestow upon their children. As
Bewitching
genealogist James Pylant chronicled:
Their third child was named Rebecca Elizabeth Asher.
I knew ⦠another Becca had arrived
, the actress said when she gave birth to her daughter. Rebecca Lowry Daniel Allen died in 1964, just as her actress-granddaughter launched the first season of (
Bewitched
). Elizabeth Montgomery and husband William Asher had given family names to their two older children, with William Allen Asher bearing his father's first name and his maternal grandmother's maiden name, while Robert Deverell Asher carries the first name of his maternal grandfather and the middle name of his great-great-grandmother, Mary A. (Deverell) Barney.
As Lizzie explained to
TV Radio Mirror
magazine in November 1969, she named her daughter in tribute to her grandmother as well as a childhood friend:
With Rebecca Elizabeth, it's been legitimate to call her
Rebel
. I sort of hope that happens. I went to school with a hellion named Rebecca whose nickname was
Reb
ânot
Becky
. If the baby had been a boy he'd have been called
John
. I kind of like Adamâbut
Adam Asher
?! That's too
cutesy pooh
.
The latter distinction never came to fruition, except partially.
On
Bewitched, Darrin
and
Samantha
named their son
Adam
who was born in the sixth season of
Bewitched
(and played by David and Greg Lawrence, who were fathered by Tony Curtis in real life); but Lizzie and Bill Asher never had another child after Rebecca.
Then, after Elizabeth ended
Bewitched
, there was another relative, if distant, who played into the fold: an accused ax murderess whom she portrayed in the 1975 TV-movie
The Legend of Lizzie Borden
, based on the real-life woman who was accused of murdering her father and stepmother in 1893. James Pylant's research revealed that Elizabeth and Borden were sixth cousins once removed, both descending from seventeenth-century Massachusetts resident John Luther.
Author Rhonda R. McClure originally documented the relative connection in her book,
Finding Your Famous (And Infamous) Ancestors
(Cincinnati: Betterway Books: 2003); in which she asked, “I wonder how Elizabeth would have felt if she knew she was playing her own cousin?”
Retro curator Ed Robertson is the host of
TV Confidential
, one of radio's most renowned showcases of nostalgic television talent and discussions. He's also the author of a number of acclaimed classic TV literary companions, including guides to
The Rockford Files
and
The Fugitive
. He weighs in on the Lizzie/Borden relative link: “Whether that's true or not, I don't know. But I'm not sure whether Elizabeth would have taken on the role, or at least allowed Borden to be characterized the way she was in the role, had she known she was in fact playing one of her cousins.”
Years after playing
Borden
, Elizabeth finally learned of her lineage with the character. Entertainment historian Thomas McCartney, who has archived Elizabeth's career since 1994, puts it all in perspective: “She was bemused by the idea, but never said anything else.”
That sounds about right;
no response
was a typical Lizzie response.
Several decades before Elizabeth played
Borden
, her grandmother Becca was born “Rebecca Lowry Daniel Allen” in 1886. Seventy-eight years later, Becca succumbed to cancer in Los Angeles, approximately ten days before
Bewitched
debuted on September 17, 1964.
Lizzie's mother Elizabeth Allen passed away at age eighty-seven on the Montgomery farm in New York, June 28, 1992, the same day Lizzie served as Co-Grand Marshall with her former
Bewitched
co-star Dick Sargent in the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Pride Parade.
Elizabeth Allen's cause of death was never documented, but she had been in poor health for quite some time, then died suddenly and quite unexpectedly. Shortly thereafter, Lizzie's childhood landscape was sold.
In the short period between that time and her own passing in 1995, Elizabeth continued to view the big picture of her parents' influence as she always had, especially the impact made upon her by her father. She followed his pathway to a successful and prestigious career and, in the process, learned to handle the good with the bad, the advantages and the obstacles that went along with being born the child of a star.
Three
“Our hope was that she would turn out to be a good actress and not just the daughter of Montgomery.”
âRobert Montgomery,
TV Radio Mirror Magazine
, January 1965
Rebecca Allen wasn't an actress, but Elizabeth thought she should have been. Next to her parents, Becca was the greatest influence in Lizzie's life; she provided a sense of safety and comfort in her youth. As Lizzie recalled to
Modern Screen
magazine in 1965, “It was a feeling only grandmothers know how to give.”
Whenever Robert Montgomery and Elizabeth Allen were away on business or vacation, Lizzie and her brother Skip never felt rejected. Becca was always there, Lizzie said, to offer encouraging words, to make sure she and Skip held their parents close at heart, and “prayed every night.”
“It was really too bad,” she told
TeleVision Life
magazine in January 1954. “I mean, Mother and Dad being on the road so much and missing my birthdays. But it didn't bother me too much ⦠I wasn't a neglected child.”