Twitch Upon a Star (19 page)

That's how dating was defined in those days; you attended dances and proms with platonic friends, most of the time never sharing the slightest kiss or even holding hands. At least such was the case for this younger wealthier set … from the outside looking in.

Baker then recalled another dance, this time at the River Club, down by the water on New York's East End Avenue. The summer before, he had met Lizzie's father and brother. His family owned a home on the shore and someone invited the Montgomerys, including Robert and Skip, to join them. Bud said they were both “great … easy-going,” Skip, in particular, “always was.”

Bud hoped such associations would have proved fortuitous, if only so he could cut in line to dance with Lizzie at the River Club, approach her and say, “Hey—you know, I met your dad and your brother this summer.”

More times than not, however, and to his great disappointment, she would be unimpressed, which made him think, “
She's really snooty.
”

Bands headed by Meyer Davis (who died in 1976), or Lester Lanin (who died in 2004, but was still going strong into his nineties) would be playing in the background, and Bud would try again. “Great band, isn't it?” Still, Lizzie would give him that “above-it-all look.”

“To tell you the truth,” he said in 1967 at the height of
Bewitched's
popularity, “she wasn't as much fun as she is now.” And apparently, she wasn't as attractive to him then as she had become. “Her figure was always okay, but her face was sort of babyish and kind of pouty, especially when you mentioned her father. It wasn't from any lack of love for him, though. Through the years I've discovered that. She adores her dad. But who wants to talk about a famous father?”

Probably not Lizzie; but Bud wasn't “hung up” on those dances. He didn't get carried away and he never thought Lizzie did either. The only reason he attended those dances was to dance with her and a few other gals.

Although Lizzie was very reserved, and more insecure than she let on, according to Bud, she danced like a dream. She was a coordinated athlete who looked and was totally feminine. She wore lovely discreet clothes, in excellent taste. “You figured she'd marry young … someone with a great family name behind him and become one of the social set on the East Coast.”

She did. Frederic Gallatin Cammann, Baker's upper-class Harvard acquaintance whom he said came from “a great family,” namely Albert Gallatin, Cammann's maternal great grandfather, and a former Secretary of the Treasury. According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury:

In the meantime, Fred Cammann became friends with Lizzie and the Montgomery brood before his service to the United States. After graduating from Harvard, he enlisted in the army and was stationed in Korea. Once discharged from the service, Cammann was reintroduced to Lizzie in 1953, when he was hired as a stage manager-turned-casting director for
Robert Montgomery Presents
.

It has been suggested that Cammann was drawn to Lizzie primarily because of her entertainment affiliations, as his career interests leaned toward the industry, specifically in the casting department. But
why
they got together didn't matter to Robert Montgomery. According to Dominick Dunne, Elizabeth's father was just plain “thrilled” that his daughter was interested in as well-bred a man as Cammann. At least that's what Dunne told MSNBC's
Headliners & Legends
in 2001.

Like Cammann, Dunne started out in show business as a stage manager on
Presents
and the two were friends. Robert Montgomery had also befriended Dunne and placed a great deal of trust in him, and held him as a confidant. As Dunne explained it, Robert told him that Cammann was “the kind of guy I want my daughter to marry.”

This time, Lizzie was all too eager to bend to her father's will. She and Cammann started dating and then, according to
Newsweek Magazine
, March 29, 1954:

The wedding was held on March 27, 1954, at St. James Protestant Episcopal Church in New York. When asked in 2011 about his life with Lizzie, Cammann was cordial, but brief: “I'm in my eighties now, and that was a long time ago. It's in the past, and that's where I'd like to keep it.”

Sally Kemp, however, remembers Lizzie's wedding to Cammann as if it happened yesterday. It was a not-so-great marriage that was at least preceded by a happy and reverent ceremony, and an elegant and festive reception. Lizzie had been a bridesmaid at Sally's first wedding, and when Lizzie decided to marry Cammann, Sally returned the favor. She recalls:

Academy Award–winning actor Cliff Robertson loved Lizzie, too, but as a platonic friend. The two performers remained close through the years and, like Sally, Cliff was there when Lizzie married Cammann:

Robertson had “no idea” why Lizzie's first marriage failed, but he detected it might have had something to do with her theatrical ambitions.

Cammann's career choices were periodically described as a stage manager, TV producer, casting director and/or executive; he wanted an old-world wife and Lizzie wanted to be a newfangled actress. That was something she worked hard to achieve, and not by exploiting her father's famous name. According to Robertson, she was determined not to be labeled a society actress. “And I think that came from her mother's side,” he said. “Her mother was a Southerner, and her aunt (Martha-Bryan), who was a dear friend of mine as well, was from I think Tennessee, and she had all the graces of a Southern lady.”

In other words, Lizzie had a strong sense of pride and wanted to succeed as an actress on her own merit. “Freddie was very upper crust and old-fashioned,” Sally Kemp says. “The marriage probably would have lasted had Elizabeth decided not to become an actress.”

If anything, Elizabeth's marriage to Cammann proved to be benchmark in her friendship with Kemp. They were moving in different directions. By the time Lizzie married Freddie, she and Sally did not see one another that often anymore. In the pre-Cammann days, the two women would have dinner, lunch, or get together somehow several times a week. “When we each married,” Sally laments, “things changed.”

To anyone who knew Lizzie, the idea of her being identified as a stay-at-home wife, minus any form of career, was slightly absurd, at least at this time in her life. Only later would she more readily embrace the sequestered home life, and sometimes crave it. But that transpired after she became a star on
Bewitched
, when she was able to better balance and appreciate the finer and simpler things in life.

In the beginning, Cammann made an effort to support her theatrical endeavors. According to
Cosmopolitan Magazine
in July of 1954, he was in the Service when she made her TV debut on that “Top Secret” episode of
Robert Montgomery Presents
(December 1951). She explained:

When he was relieved of the KP duty, and upon eventually leaving the Army, he and Elizabeth were busy with decorating their new apartment on New York's Upper East Side. When asked if he objected to Elizabeth continuing her acting career now that they were married, he replied, “Not at all. How else can we pay for all the furniture she's ordered?”

Certainly, no one on either side of their family had to worry about meeting such payments. The main concern, at least for Lizzie and Cammann, was meeting eye to eye on the marriage in general, which just simply never came to be. As one of their mutual friends concluded in an article for
The Saturday Evening Post
in 1965, “Freddie just couldn't measure up to her father.” But it wasn't all Robert Montgomery's fault.

Lizzie's marriage to Cammann was unstable from the onset. Although wired for show business, Cammann cut such ties away from the set. In Lizzie, he envisioned a stay-at-home wife, much like
Darrin
hankered for
Samantha
to remain earthbound on
Bewitched
. But the actress, unlike her most famous TV counterpart, wanted a full-time job, outside of the home, specifically, an acting career. And she wanted to take it to the next level … in California, but he didn't want to leave New York, so the marriage went south.

Had the two met later in life, the bond may have stuck. Instead, their wedded bliss unraveled, commencing with his ousting from the elite social circles to which he had become accustomed. Close colleagues and friends were aghast at his alliance with Elizabeth, whom they incorrectly labeled as a common actress. It was not a personal attack on her, but rather a general displeasure with her profession. His peers were simply unimpressed with the theatrical world, even when such a world revolved around so endearing a performer as Lizzie.

On the home front, the two bickered constantly, with their first major disagreement proving to be nothing less than outright jarring. He apparently became so upset he packed his bags and went home to mother.
Samantha
had at times threatened to do the same on
Bewitched
. In such a case
Darrin
would exclaim, “What for? Your mother's always here!”
Samantha
was usually supportive of her mortal husband, but would be appalled at his attacks on her mother.

In contrast, Lizzie was stunned at Cammann's inaugural retreat to his mother's.

Following each minor or major altercation, he would storm out only to return to his newlywed wife, time and again. After what ultimately became the final intense bout with his packing ritual, Lizzie allegedly—and we can only assume, gently—placed her derriere upon his suitcase in order for it to lock properly, which paved the way for his final exit. Immediately following, she purportedly filed for divorce.

At least this is what Gig Young, her second husband, apparently told his sister, according to Young's biography,
Final Gig: The Man Behind the Murder
by George Eells.

That said, a brief item in the press, “Star's Kin Asks for Divorce,” appeared in a Las Vegas newspaper on August 10, 1955, stating that Lizzie, now 22, and referred to as “Robert Montgomery's daughter,” had obtained a divorce from Cammann, now 26, whose profession was listed as “a television executive.” Although terms of a property settlement were not disclosed, she charged cruelty and was granted restoration of her maiden name.