Twitch Upon a Star (36 page)
Read Twitch Upon a Star Online
Authors: Herbie J. Pilato
“I grabbed my Picasso plate and put it underneath the piano.”
“I see ⦠God would take care of you, but you wouldn't trust God with your Picasso plate, eh?”
“Oh, Elizabeth! Really!!”
At which point, according to what Lizzie recalled in 1989, Moorehead “flounced off into her dressing room!”
Elizabeth also remembered how Agnes would sometimes employ a slight affectation in her voice when reciting certain words. “It's like when she hit us that day with âMeami' instead of saying âMiami.' I said, âYou just came back from
Meami
?' And I thought,
If anybody says anything, I'm gonna kill âem
. Because I didn't think I could handle that. I just went, âOh, give me a break!'” While filming the episode, “Double, Double, Toil and Trouble,” on September 28, 1967, something or someone was going to
break
for sure. In this segment:
Samantha
, now Queen of the Witches, has to hold court at her house. When
Darrin
arrives home and sees the unusual proceedings, he orders every witch and warlock, including
Endora
, to vacate the premises. Infuriated, Endora enlists
Serena's
help to rid
Samantha
of
Darrin
forever. So, while
Sam
attends a church fundraiser,
Endora
and
Serena
impersonate
Sam
[making] every attempt to drive
Darrin
away. Later, when their plan fails, Endora and
Serena
, along with
Samantha
and
Darrin
, [each] receive a pie in the face, during a free-for-all that takes place after
Sam
brings home a few baked goods from the church fundraiser.
The pie-throwing scenes were ignited when
Darrin
mistakenly threw a pie at
Samantha
who he thought was
Serena
, and the mayhem just expanded from there. And when this episode is viewed closely, Lizzie, who received a pie in the face twice, first as
Samantha
and then as
Serena
, is seen laughing so hard, her lines had to be dubbed twice. She and York clearly enjoyed filming this episode, but as Lizzie recalled in 1989, Moorhead was none too pleased about receiving a pie in the face:
It was instant fury and amusement at the same time. It was totally beneath her dignity when it happened to her. She wasn't the least bit happy. She was seething, and not a happy camper ⦠And yet it happened to everybody else and because she was an actress that's the only thing that saved it. But there was no reason she should have been happy
all
the time. We would accommodate her in the schedule when she really had something to do like her one-woman show. Even though she confessed to me once that when she first read for [
Bewitched
], she thought well,
It's a job. I'll take it. It's going to be a failure anyway
. And then of course she was kind of hoping that it wouldn't have been a success, and then [when it was] she said she only wanted to do seven episodes ⦠Then after doing [those seven and more], she said,
What do you mean, only seven episodes?
I always knew that once she was hooked on it, she wasn't going to go away too much.
But that's exactly what Moorehead eventually would do with her cross-country one-woman stage show tour, and it ultimately annoyed Elizabeth.
We'd do the schedule around her and everything. And she was cranky. I used to think,
I can't believe this
.
Why are we accommodating this woman?! If I'd try to do this, everybody would say, âWhat?! Get your ass on the set, and stop behaving like an ass!'
Right? And of course I wouldn't have done it anyway, but that used to bother me (that Moorehead did it). And then she would get really nasty about stuff sometimes. And Bill would say,
Oh, come on, now, Liz ⦠she's lonely
. And I'd be like,
Dammitâit's her own fault
! She's lonely and feeling put upon. Because I always tried to really make her feel terrific. I mean, I'd argue with her and stuff like that. I mean, why not? ⦠Because that was fun.
Clearly, there were highs and lows, bonds and gaps between Lizzie and Aggie. But more than anything, as Charles Tranberg confirms, the two women had a solid professional relationship. Lizzie, in particular, “did little things” for Moorhead, sent cards, flowers, etc. “But off the set, except for an occasional party, such as one of Aggie's lavish Birthday-Christmas parties, they really didn't hang out together. If anybody was the daughter Agnes never had it was probably Debbie Reynolds.”
As Tranberg sees it, Lizzie's association with Moorehead could have been more competitive on Aggie's part:
But Elizabeth took great effort to make sure that Aggie felt comfortable as a member of the
Bewitched
family. She would send her cards for holidays and birthdays and flowers and funny little notes, just to let Aggie know that she was thinking of her. Aggie, I think, came to like Elizabeth very much so. At first she might have been a little dismissive of Elizabeth's talents. She once, reportedly, told Elizabeth that she basically plays herself, while when Aggie was Elizabeth's age she was
always characterizing
.
I think Elizabeth took that kind of comment with a grain of salt and as time went on Agnes came to revise her opinion of Elizabeth's talent. She would have been greatly impressed, had she lived long enough, to see the many diverse and different types of roles that Elizabeth took on after
Bewitched
âand how well she did in them.
Tranberg says Moorehead always perceived Lizzie as a refined woman with good manners and a funny bone:
Aggie loved a good sense of humor and Elizabeth could have a wicked oneâas could Aggie. Neither, I believe, suffered fools gladly. They were both professionals who came to the set on time and knew their lines; Aggie certainly appreciated this about Elizabeth. Certainly as people that they had a respect and certain affection towards one another. As artists, I'm sure that Elizabeth was proud to be on a series that included an actress of Aggie's stature. Aggie could be a bit jealous, however, that she was not the
star
of the show. It's somewhat revealing that in her correspondence to her secretary, Aggie repeatedly refers to
Bewitched
as
my show
. It's kind of funny.
Lizzie and Aggie were at the very least strong-willed, if not competitive. The competition, Tranberg says,
⦠would be mostly on Aggie's side. Elizabeth was proud to be associated on the series with her. In fact, she was the one who suggested Agnes for the role of
Endora
and actually approached her about doing it. Agnes, at least from her private letters, seemed to feel that at times her contribution to the show was less appreciated than say, [that of] Elizabeth and Dick York.
In 1968, both women were Emmy-nominated in the lead actress category, possibly leaving room for Moorehead's vindication because, as Tranberg goes on to explain,
⦠she felt it was her rightful place to be; even though Elizabeth, quite frankly, was certainly the lead actress and appeared in every episode. Whereas Agnes, who was brilliant as
Endora,
didn't appear in every episode [only two-thirds] and in some of those in which she did, she might just âpop' in and then âpop' out again. My guess is that when Agnes was, afterward, nominated in the supporting category again, it was a disappointment to her.”
Another interesting cross-tone between Lizzie and Aggie was Robert Montgomery, an actor for whom both women had a great deal of respect. In the 1940s, when Moorehead was new to Hollywood, a columnist, “perhaps it was Hedda Hopper or Louella Parsons,” Tranberg suggests, asked her to name a few actors she admired and the elder Montgomery, a Republican, was on her list.
Politically, Agnes grew more conservative as the years went by. Early on she had greatly admired Eleanor Roosevelt and even had provided the voice of ER on radio with
The March of Time
, but by the 70s Agnes was openly supporting Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. She had previously thought that actors shouldn't be publicly involved in politics, but she truly felt that America was on a moral decline and felt that people like Nixon and Reagan would implement policies that would turn this around.
In that way, she was probably closer to Robert Montgomery than to Elizabethâwho was a lifelong liberal. I doubt very much that Elizabeth and Agnes ever discussed politics. I can't really document it but I have a feeling somewhere along the line Agnes might have told Elizabeth, “You did a good job in that scene. Your father would be so proud!” But then again, if she felt that there was a hint of Elizabeth and Robert Montgomery having problems in their personal relationshipâshe might not say anything to Elizabeth about him.
Tranberg concludes that both actresses were bright, funny, strong-willed, and talented women who came to like each other a great deal and enjoyed working together. “Agnes probably thought that Elizabeth got a few more perks and consideration due to the fact that her husband, Bill Asher, was the director and later producer of the show. She alluded to it a couple of times in letters to her secretary regarding this.” But in general, he concludes, Lizzie and Aggie complemented each other well. “You could see really in their performances that they could be mother and daughter. They brought a lot of affection and love to their scenes together.”
Meanwhile, the following twitch-bit of information proves intriguing:
According to entertainment historian Rob Ray, the name
Endora
, bestowed upon Moorehead's
Bewitched
character, refers to the Biblical
Witch of Endor
. Ray says this sorceress, sometimes called
The Medium of Endor
, was “a woman who apparently conjured up the spirit of recently deceased prophet Samuel, at the command of King Saul of the Kingdom of Israel, in the
First Book of Samuel
(28:3â25),” although the witch is absent from the version of that event recounted in the deuterocanonical
Book of Sirach
(47:19â20). If anything, that seemingly fits Moorehead's religious personal profile (which also includes her coaching actor Jeffrey Hunter for his role as Jesus in the 1961 movie,
King of Kings
).
Ray further explains how William Shakespeare is nicely added into the witch's brew here, specifically Act IV, Scene 1 of
Macbeth
: “There's that infamously popular moment in
Macbeth
when those three witches cast a spell to bring a double amount of âtoil and trouble' to the king”âa moment that concurs with Lizzie and
Bewitched
in more ways than one, mostly because she caused her father a periodic measure of heartache, and vice versa.
Thirteen
“Do I look like
Mary Poppins
to you?”
â
Serena
, in the
Bewitched
episode, “
Serena's
Youth Pill,” February 5, 1972
Lizzie loved to watch science fiction/fantasy programs like the original
Star Trek
(NBC, 1966â1969) and the gothic daytime soap
Dark Shadows
(ABC, 1966â1971), the latter of which featured another blonde sorceress (
Angelique
, played by Lara Parker). After
Bewitched
, she delighted in shows like
The Incredible Hulk
(CBS, 1978â1982), which co-starred Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno in a double lead role.
To tone her own theatrical twin muscles on
Bewitched
, she'd don a black wig and some funky 1960s wardrobe to play
Serena, Samantha's
look-alike and somewhat wilder cousin.
The idea for Serena was generated early on in the series. In 1989, Lizzie explained the
Samantha-Serena
transformation process:
Melody McCord was my understudy. We would go into my dressing room and go over dialogue, so she could get the timing right, so there wouldn't be any gaps. She was exactly my height and looked very much like me. That's why we could do the wonderful crossover (scenes on camera). We were lucky that she worked out that way. There are times when you have an understudy that doesn't look anything like you at all, except for light coloring. She and I are built alike, same coloring. Then they would have to tie-off all the cameras and wait until we changed clothes and makeup. For her, makeup was no problem unless we were using 3/4 of her face, and not just changing her wig. With me, it would be a complete makeup change. It was always easier to go from
Sam
to
Serena
than
Serena
to
Sam. Serena
wore a lot more makeup ⦠that crazy person.
