Twitch Upon a Star (9 page)

Little Elizabeth didn't see as much of her father as she would have liked, but she and Skip had a nurse for years. She claimed to have “had a wonderful childhood,” but at school, she'd have to watch her words. When classmates mentioned a dinner out with their parents, Lizzie would join in with, “Daddy took me to Romanoff's.” But they'd offer blank stares and, suddenly, she said, “I'd be all alone.”

But Becca was waiting in the wings, ready to pick up the pieces, particularly when it came to her granddaughter's “play-acting.” According to the article, “The Girl Behind the Twitch,” published in
Modern Screen
magazine, May 1965, Becca watched everything performed by Lizzie, who described her grandmother this way:

That never happened. But Lizzie was busy with other endeavors, namely, Billy Asher, Jr., whom she had just given birth to and who she said was “one of the biggest thrills” of Becca's life. “I'm just sorry he's going to miss having her for his audience. She was only the greatest audience I ever had.” And she wasn't kidding.

When she was about eight years old, Lizzie's flair for the dramatic was already in bloom. She and her cousin Amanda “Panda” Cushman would play detective, foreshadowing characters Lizzie would depict in TV-movies like 1983's
Missing Pieces
and the Edna Buchanan films from the mid-1990s (including her final performance in
Deadline for Murder
).

When Panda wasn't available, Lizzie's little brother Skip would pinch-hit. Although his chances for getting the juicy roles were slim to none because his older sister would always win out—even if she was not right for the part.

According to what Elizabeth told
Modern Screen
in 1965, she and Skip once performed in their own edition of Walt Disney's classic animated feature,
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
, released in 1937. The pre-production dialogue went something like this:

“I'll play the king,” Skip would say.

“No,” Lizzie countered. “I'm going to play the king.”

“Then can I be the princess?”

“No, you're a boy. You can't be the princess.”

“Then, I'll be the prince.”

“No, I'm going to be the prince, too.”

“But how can you be the prince, when you're a girl?”

“Well, just because … I'm the director.”

Lizzie ultimately cast Skip as the announcer, hidden
off-stage
in a closeted area, from where he spoke into a wastebasket, which added a grand reverberation to his voice.

Before their first performance, for which Lizzie naturally tapped herself as the lead, she'd tell Skip, “Go out and announce me.”

Ever the loyal young sibling, Skip walked into the middle of the Montgomery living room, their stage, and declared to the audience, only Becca, “I am presenting … Elizabeth Montgomery!”

But Lizzie protested from behind the invisible curtain.

“No, no, Skip,” she interrupted, “the
great
Elizabeth Montgomery.”

“I am presenting the
great
Elizabeth Montgomery,” he then said, adding, “but I don't know what she's going to do!”

“
Don't know what she's going to do?!
” Lizzie yelped from the sidelines. “Of
course
you know what I'm going to do!” Turning to her grandmother, she said, “Clap, Becca, clap!”

Becca consented, and then sat patiently and watched whatever production Lizzie presented (and she'd keep watching through the years).

Elizabeth's creative control of this pubescent
Snow White
production offered telling signs of her early confidence and ambition which diminished over time, while the “presenting” part of Skip's intro foreshadowed the title of their father's TV series,
Robert Montgomery Presents
, on which Lizzie would make her professional debut playing her father's daughter.

According to
Cosmopolitan Magazine
, July 1954, Mr. Montgomery was there, beside Becca, for Lizzie's
Snow White
re-do, somewhere in the proverbial bleachers, cheering her on, at least during the
wishing-well
moment that transpired in Disney's original
White
film. As Robert recalled, his daughter's rendition was somewhat scaled down:

Further investigation identified the echo as Skip's voice, but the father Montgomery was impressed nonetheless:

In 1951, Lizzie made her social debut at New York's Debutante Cotillion and Christmas Ball, and her father kept his promise: that same year, she made her TV acting debut on his show. But she never doubted his word; she believed her parents empathized with aspirations of all shape and color, specifically theatrical endeavors. As she told
Modern Screen
in May 1965, “They certainly understood Skip and me and never ever discouraged either one of us about the theater.”

But her acting bug stung deeper than Skip's. She'd go on to perform in a variety of roles and mediums for fifty years; he appeared in TV westerns for about four years. Then he retired from the entertainment industry, and began working at the Hayden Stone brokerage firm.

Elizabeth was terribly proud of him. As she explained to Ronald Haver in 1991, her father was “very hard on my brother, much more so on him than on me. But I think Skip turned out to be a much better person, maybe in spite of it, I think, because he's a terrific guy. My brother's really neat.”

“There's only a two-year gap between my brother and me,” she said in 1965, this time, in August to
TV Radio Mirror
magazine. “I can't recall an instance of jealousy between us as we grew up. Oh, I guess there were occasions when kid brother got in big sister's way. But jealousy? Not a bit of it.”

“Well,” as
Samantha
might have said, except maybe only once, although the incident had more to do with sexual discrimination than sibling rivalry.

“A Second Baby, A Special Problem” was published by
TV Radio Mirror
in November 1966 which profiled the birth of Lizzie's second son, Robert, named for her father—and her brother. In the article, Lizzie recalled a childhood moment when Skip was allowed to cross the street by himself whereas she wasn't.

“Why can't I do that?” she asked her mother.

“Don't forget,” she replied. “Skip is a boy.”

That seemed most discriminatory to Lizzie, but she kept her mouth shut:

Certain restrictions may have inhibited Skip's career in acting aspirations, but not his life in general. Lizzie was right. He was a “neat” person.

According to Montgomery archivist Tom McCartney,
www.bobsbewitchingdaughter.com
, and
www.earlofhollywood.com
, Skip was born Robert Montgomery, Jr., in Los Angeles on February 15, 1936. Although his birth year has been incorrectly reported as 1930, Skip was actually three years younger than Elizabeth and six years younger than their late sister Martha Bryan.

Though Lizzie and Skip were raised in Hollywood, they enjoyed their summers at the Montgomery country estate in Patterson, New York or in the U.K. where their father worked in films.

In 1939, Skip became the youngest Lifetime Honorary Member of the Screen Actors Guild, over which his dad presided as president. In 1945 he attended school in Arizona. Five years later, when their parents divorced, Skip remained with Lizzie in the family's Upstate New York home with their mother and attended St. Mark's School in Southborough, Massachusetts in 1952. In 1958, Skip, then twenty-two, formally joined the family business by becoming a working actor. That same year, he also became a father when his wife, socialite Deborah Chase, gave birth to a son, Robert Montgomery, III.

The following year, he won small roles in movies such as
Say One for Me
and
A Private's Affair
as well as on TV shows such as
The Loretta Young Show
(NBC, 1953–1961), in which his sister performed, and
Gunsmoke
(CBS, 1955–1975), the latter in which he made his TV acting debut. Here, he appeared in the macabre episode “Lynching Man” which originally aired November 15, 1958.

Directed by Richard Whorf and written by John Meston, this segment also featured an overacted performance by guest star George Macready (who had played Elizabeth's father in NBC's
Kraft Television Theatre
production of “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz” in 1955):

While Macready over-projected his part, Skip appeared to underact. Although his was a minor role, Skip could have made the part of
Billy Drico
something more. It was his TV acting debut. Understandably nervous, he made every attempt to live up to his father's great expectations. But his anxiety appears to have got the best of him. Skip did not give the role his all; he appeared awkward and uncomfortable on camera. Unlike Lizzie, unfortunately, his performances were not given a chance to be properly modulated; he never quite attained the opportunity to hone his craft under his father's watchful eye. By the time Skip started to legitimately pursue acting,
Robert Montgomery Presents
had completed its run.

But, happily, Robert Montgomery, Jr. had other things on his mind. Nine months after
Gunsmoke
, on July 10, 1959, he and his wife welcomed a daughter into the family when Deborah Elizabeth Montgomery was born.

He continued acting on television with minor roles in such popular fare as
Sea Hunt
(in two episodes, one in 1959, the other in 1961), the anthology show
Death Valley Days
(hosted by future president Ronald Reagan), and a series called
The Tall Man
, which was created by Samuel Peeples (of
Star Trek
fame), in which he played a character named
Jimmy Carter
(precursing at least the name of yet another future president).

Skip also acted on the big screen with in 1960: a small part in
The Gallant Hours
, a feature his father both produced and directed, and enjoyed a larger role in the science fiction film,
12 to the Moon
.

But correctly sensing that his career was going nowhere fast, in 1962, he left the world of acting and became a Wall Street stockbroker with Hayden Stone & Co. where he enjoyed a lucrative career for the next two decades.

He spent his golden years in Tallahassee, Florida, where he became the community liaison for Florida State University's Graduate Film Conservatory. He also established the Sleepy Actors Group, which provided housing for students working on their thesis films and hosted a database listing production related services and locations.