Twitch Upon a Star (13 page)

But in July 1954, she told
Cosmopolitan
writer Joe McCarthy a different story. According to the article, “The Montgomery Girl,” she wasn't at all happy with working in her father's summer stock TV theatre:

Then for
TV Guide
, August 7, 1954, she added:

Meanwhile, her father, interviewed for the
Cosmopolitan
piece, had a less intense view of the scenario:

Robert claimed Lizzie didn't ask him to make even a phone call on her behalf when she was trying to land the ingénue role in
Late Love
, the live stage production in which she made her Broadway debut in the fall of 1953. “She never discussed the play with me before she took the role,” he relayed to
TV Guide
, “and she never talked with me about how she should handle her part while she was in rehearsal. As a matter of fact, she didn't show me the script of
Late Love
until a few days before the played opened.”

She may have simply wanted to wing it alone this time. As she told
TeleVision Life Magazine
the following January, 1954:

But no one showed her any animosity. “Everybody's been just so wonderful and kind,” she said. Her father's company excluded.

According to
TV Radio Mirror
in January 1965, when a preparatory edition of
Late Love
was performed in Hartford, Connecticut, a proud if judgmental papa was in the audience. He went backstage after the curtain fell and said, as she hung on his every word, “Well, my girl, naturally, I hope you'll improve before you get to Broadway.”

To which she dutifully responded, “You're right, Daddy. I'll try harder.” And she did.
Late Love
hit Broadway on October 13, 1953, and before its season (of 95 performances) was up on January 2, 1954, Lizzie had won the coveted Daniel Blum Theatre World Award. A note of congratulation arrived from her dad. It said simply, “Good.”

Upon receiving it, she sighed and said, “That one word from my father was equal to a volume of praise from anyone else.”

Later on
Bewitched
, an affirmative “Good!”—with an exclamation point—became one of the popular one-word catch phrases that Lizzie incorporated into
Samantha's
speech pattern whenever she approved of some random magic or mortal occurrence on
Bewitched
.

As opposed to when
Sam
would squeal “Well?!” whenever she was unable to answer one of
Darrin's
spastic queries of “What's going on?!”

On August 7, 1954,
TV Guide
published the article, “Biggest ‘Barn' On Earth: Summer Stock Was Never Like This”; it profiled
Robert Montgomery's
Summer Theatre
(also known as
Robert Montgomery's Playhouse
), which was a summer replacement series for
Robert Montgomery Presents
. At the time the show was in its third hit season. Robert Montgomery was proud of the series, which he conceived in 1952 as what
TV Guide
called, “a sound way to hold onto his network spot during the dog days of July, August, and early September.” Or as he further explained, the program gave “a group of young actors a chance to put on a show of their own, undominated by big names and formidable reputations … this week's star may be next week's butler.”
Presents
always aired live (only Robert's intros and farewells were on film), and the scripts had “nearly always been reasonably lively,”
TV Guide
said.

After her affair with
Late Love
ended, Lizzie was seduced by a role in
A Summer Love
, which aired as a critically praised episode of her father's summer series on July 20, 1953:

She also received high marks from her co-star, the reputable John New-land who, according to
TV Radio Mirror
, said, “Elizabeth is one of the most flexible actresses I've ever known.”

Robert, meanwhile, was more subdued with his review. “Elizabeth,” he remarked, “always remember that, if you achieve success, you will get applause; and, if you get applause, you will hear it. But my advice to you concerning applause is this: Enjoy it, but never quite believe it.”

The following May, Lizzie continued to address whether or not her prestigious lineage helped or hindered her career. In the article, “The Girl Behind the Twitch,” published by
Modern Screen
, she said, “Celebrity off-spring or no celebrity offspring, it's one thing (to have a name) to open doors and another to keep them open. Nobody will take a second chance on you unless you're good, no matter who you are.”

Or as she reiterated to John Tesh in 1992, “A name will open doors.”

But when she wed senior actor Gig Young in 1956, Elizabeth Montgomery considered changing her name to “Elizabeth Young,” if only out of respect to her new husband, and maybe as a tiny jab to her dad. “I gave it to him good,” she mused to
TV Guide
in 1961.

Robert, however, recoiled at the notion and responded with a “real pathetic look,” she recalled. He was unhappy with her choice to marry a “father-figure” of a man more than twice her age. What's more, he was concerned that the public would think she was the daughter of rival actor Robert Young who, during the reign of
Robert Montgomery Presents
, was the star of the hit family show,
Father Knows Best
(CBS/NBC, 1954–1960). Not only would Robert Young have another hit series (
Marcus Welby, M.D.
on ABC, 1969–1975, debuting in
Bewitched's
sixth season); but like Lizzie's father, he had been a film star of the 1930s and 1940s at the same studio, MGM.

In effect, Mr. Montgomery wondered if Lizzie was “ashamed” of him and their family name. And even though she at times enjoyed confounding him, a brief press item about actress Lee Remick's wedding may have offered at least a measure of relief.

Lizzie was a dear friend of Remick's and served as matron of honor at her marital ceremony, held at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer in New York. As archived in the Thomas Crane Public Library, the wedding announcement/press release, dated August 3, 1957, was titled: “Lee Remick, Quincy Star of TV and Movies, Bride of William A. Colleran in New York City.” It described Lizzie as:

Despite such intermittent clarifications, Lizzie's lineage was always in question, as when George Montgomery, another contemporary of her father's with whom she shared no relation, was added to the name game. (Additionally, George, Lizzie, and Robert were no relation to actor Earl Montgomery—born 1894, died 1966—who is periodically albeit inaccurately linked to Robert Montgomery's film, and Lizzie's favorite of her father's movies,
The Earl of Chicago
.)

Film historian Rob Ray co-hosts the esteemed weekly Friday Film Forum at Long Beach School for Adults in Long Beach, California. As he sees it, George Montgomery was more of a common man who came to prominence in the early 1940s as the more established stars like Robert went off to war. George was a Twentieth Century Fox contract player who made minor hits like 1942's
Roxie Hart
(
Chicago
without the music), “but he never really became a star. He usually supported the female star in a list of films and had the lead in B movies.”

George also went on to support and marry TV legend Dinah Shore, and lived somewhat in her shadow when she became a hugely popular star of her own show. While she devoted all her time to a successful television career and entertained millions, he became a talented carpenter and woodworker (a role he later popularized in Pledge TV commercials of the 1970s).

Robert Montgomery's life was quite a different story. He came from money and entered films around 1930 at MGM as what Ray calls “a suave, Cary Grant–type in the days before Archie Leach (Grant's real name) became Cary Grant.” He worked largely at MGM, which is now owned by Ted Turner, and remained a star into the forties. But as they aged, Grant garnered the suave roles and Robert moved into films noir and war movies in the 1940s and went behind the cameras directing and producing especially on television in the 1950s. During the Red Scare of the late 1940s and early 1950s, he was considered a loyal, conservative old-money establishment Republican, which Ray says, “Elizabeth rebelled against.”

Just as her career took off with
Bewitched
, Robert's started slowing down. He largely stayed out of the limelight for the rest of his life until his death in 1981. “I never, ever saw him appear with Elizabeth anywhere after she became a star,” Ray intones. “I suspect she always feared being known as ‘Robert Montgomery's daughter' and did everything she could to downplay that relationship, including not casting him as her father in
Bewitched
.”

Actually, she did cast him, but he said no. By the time
Bewitched
became a hit—which was immediately after it debuted in 1964—it was Robert Montgomery who became known as “Elizabeth Montgomery's father.” Fact is, she became a bigger star than he ever was. As Lizzie's friend Sally Kemp revealed on MSNBC's
Headliners & Legends
in 2001, she encountered people who knew of Elizabeth, but were unfamiliar with who her father was.

In 1999, Billy Asher, Jr. told A&E's
Biography
that post-
Bewitched
, people would approach Robert Montgomery and identify him as Elizabeth Montgomery's father. That just tickled Lizzie to no end. At such times she responded with a triumphant “Yes!” because as Billy saw it, she had a very strong sense of who she was as a person.

The label, “Robert Montgomery's daughter,” was an albatross around her neck. “And boy, did she want to get past
that
,” Billy added. Indeed. As reported in Elizabeth's interview with
TV Radio Mirror
in January 1965,

With that in mind, and although a reserved actress, Lizzie did not shy away from the public life created first by her father's name and then her own. In the end, her charismatic father trusted his dynamic daughter to follow her own career path. In the early days, pre-
Bewitched
, and upon her request, he remained accessible to her, but was sure not to play favorites. She would still have to “prove herself,” he said, which she certainly would do, time and again.

Elizabeth's relationship with Robert Montgomery, however, also helped to build her character and strengthen her spine in an industry that many times takes no prisoners. As Bill Asher, Sr. told
Screen Stars
in August 1965, “She is perhaps a little overly conscientious, in short, a worrier. But that's a good way to be in a demanding profession.”