Twitch Upon a Star (41 page)
Read Twitch Upon a Star Online
Authors: Herbie J. Pilato
When she wasn't working, she gave them as much time as she could. On the weekends she and Bill, Sr. were home most of the time, and on their off days during the week, they were with little Billy and Robert. One time, she and Bill, Sr. went to Palm Springs for a few weeks without the kids, if only because she felt it was easier than “uprooting the boys.”
“They didn't mind,” she told
Photoplay
. “They prefer being at home.”
Years later, Lizzie still felt she could have done more as a mother to all of her children. As she expressed to John Tesh on
One on One
in 1992, “Parenting is probably the toughest job anyone could ever have. I haven't been very good at it. But I think I've gotten better.”
However, after she passed away, Billy Asher, Jr. appeared on MSNBC's
Headliners & Legends
in 2001, and said she was a “great parent.” And although she believed she wasn't maternally accessible because of her career, from Billy's perspective, she provided nothing but unconditional love.
Each of her children acknowledged how fortunate they were to have had Lizzie as their mom; just as the
Bewitched
cast and crew appreciated working with her on the set.
As the show's executive producer Harry Ackerman said in 1988: “We were the luckiest people in the world to have someone as warmhearted and appealing as Elizabeth Montgomery.”
Echoing what her friend Sally Kemp said upon first seeing Elizabeth do the “bunny nose” when they were kids, Ackerman concluded, “No one could twitch her nose like she did. Believe me, we all tried.”
Once Lizzie walked away from
Bewitched
, she walked away for good. She would not twitch again on screen, except for a series of Japanese TV commercials in the 1980s, and American public service announcements for the visually impaired in the early 1990s. Beyond that, her famous facial tic became a harness around her adenoids. Over the years too many negative nose encounters took their toll, ad nauseam, and she could not always wriggle her way free.
According to what her friend Liz Sheridan said on
Bewitched: The E! True Hollywood Story
in 1999, Lizzie was not at all pleased when people asked her to twitch her nose.
But what was she to do? She retained one of the most dedicated followings in TV historyâand in turn felt obligated to her fans. “They have given me what I have, and I'm grateful,” she told
Screen Stars
magazine in 1965. She liked a “normal amount of privacy,” but she wasn't the “dark-glasses type” who scurried behind hedges or ducked out back doors every time a fan approached her for an autograph. If they were “reasonably courteous,” she intoned, “I felt I should be also.”
Years later, in 1989, she said, “People are nice. They really are ⦠most of the time.” Other times, not so much, as when a random parent would force their child to say hello. “This inevitably happens at least once a year,” she said, “and it's heartbreaking.”
On one occasion, she was shopping and a somewhat abrasive woman, with her reluctant preteen daughter in tow, approached Lizzie and made a scene. “You come over here and say âhi' to Miss Montgomery,” the mother insisted to her offspring.
“No,” the child responded. “I don't want to.”
Yet the woman insisted how much her daughter wanted to meet
Samantha
.
“If that's true,” Lizzie wondered, “why is she yelling to the contrary?”
“She's just shy,” the mother replied, and then to threaten her child, she said she'd told her that if she refused to greet the
Bewitched
star, the actress would twitch her nose and “turn her into a toad.”
Lizzie was livid: “You told her
what
?! How
dare
you say such a thing? No wonder she's scared to death!”
Upon hearing that, the mother grabbed her daughter by the hand, and scuffed away in a fit of anger.
Another time, early in
Bewitched's
run, Elizabeth was filming a promotional spot on the set of
Bonanza
, as both series had the same sponsor (Chevrolet). “Every time I did the twitch,” Lizzie remembered in 1989, the director of the spot would yell, “Cut!'”
She thought, “What the hell is the matter? I'm getting bored with this. I thought I could do this in one take and then get out of here!”
No such luck. Suddenly, the director turned to someone on the set and said, “I don't know how she's ever going to do a series. She's got this terrible
twitch
!”
“Everybody was like, âOh, my God ⦠he doesn't know,'” Lizzie laughed in recalling the awkward moment. “He saw the storyboards but just never made the connection. He must have been the most humiliated person. But I was hysterical.”
A third uncomfortable public twitch encounter, this time, somewhat more intrusive, less comical, and downright insulting, occurred shortly after
Bewitched
debuted. As Elizabeth revealed in 1989, it happened one night in the ladies' room of Chasen's Restaurant in West Hollywood. “Of all the weird kinds of old fashioned places to be in,” she said, “Right?”
“I was powdering my nose or whatever it was I was doing,” she went on to explain, and this woman kept pacing back and forth in front of her. Lizzie was like, “What is going on here?”
She found out, when the woman approached her and said, “Pardon me, but I just have to ask you ⦠w
here did you get your nose job?
”
“Being the quick thinker that I am,” she mused to herself, “Oh, Godâ what do I say? Don't say (anything like), âMy Mummy and Daddy gave it to me.'”
Instead she replied, “The Farmer's Market,” which only further confounded the woman. But Lizzie continued taking delight in sending her inquisitor on a detour: “You know, there's a place called
The Coral Reef
, and right in back of that little kind of hut ⦠there's a doctor's office ⦠and it's absolutely amazing what they can do. I was only bruised for like a couple of days. They're fantastic.”
“In California you can just find anything,” the woman replied sincerely, if a little befuddled.
Lizzie recalled in 1989:
To this day, I still think of that woman, because I knew she had to be a tourist. And then I thought, Why did I say “The Farmer's Market?” It just popped into my head ⦠and I just had to make something up. But she was like, “Oh, wow! That's really great.” And I just pictured this poor woman wandering around The Farmer's Market (looking for just the right plastic surgeon).
David White listened to Lizzie tell this story, and said the
nosy
woman should never have questioned his famous twitch-witching friend about such a delicate subject, not to mention, operation:
She should have known that you didn't, if she looked at your nose, she would have realized that nose jobs sink after a while. A girl I knew in New York had one, and she was beautiful when she just had it done (but only) for a few years afterwards. And then I saw her later, and it had sunk ⦠because they take the bone out ⦠and they put gristle in there or something. So it isn't as sturdy a bone like the bridge of your nose ⦠Your nose is just like your Dad's.
While filming
Bewitched
, he and Lizzie would meet in the makeup room every morning, “And there she'd be,” he said, “without any makeup on, and her hair pushed back. I used to think, âShe could never say
Robert Montgomery isn't my dad
.'”
“People do say that I look like him,” Lizzie interrupted.
“Yes, around the eyes,” David said.
“My Mom and Dad both had these (arched) eyebrows.”
Overall, Lizzie may have shielded many aspects of her personal life from the press, specifically with regard to her marriages and other personal issues that she may have had, but a fine balance of her trademark humor and decorum ever lurked behind the scenes. On occasion, if selectively so, she was refreshingly honest and self-deprecating, whether discussing, for example, her father or her appearance. She cheerfully addressed both topics during an interview with
TV Radio Mirror
magazine in January 1965, concluding:
I myself believe there was some kind of hocus-pocus afoot in my getting to be a TV star. In spite of my being Robert Montgomery's daughter, the odds were against me. I'm no Hollywood glamour girl, and my so-called “beauty” calls out for a plastic surgeon. I feel sorry for the poor makeup man in the morning. I'm his greatest challenge.
At the start of
Bewitched's
third season, executive producer Harry Ackerman offered the position of story editor to then-twenty-six-year-old
Bewitched
writer Doug Tibbles, who penned a few segments of the show including the “Nobody's Perfect” episode that introduced the catch phrase, “Mustn't twitch.” But Tibbles, now seventy-two, turned down the job. He explains:
I just didn't want to do it. I felt like I was good at the dialogue, but I just didn't like the show. It just didn't hold my interest. I just didn't care about it. It didn't mean anything to me. And I had a string of money coming in, which dried up later. But at the time, it seemed like I could pick and choose.
Because Tibbles rejected the promotion, Ackerman offered the position to Bernard Slade, who later became famous on Broadway for writing
Same Time Next Year
and for creating
The Partridge Family
for ABC in 1970. “To be honest,” Tibbles says, “Slade was âmore qualified' for the job. I was too young. I was good with the dialogue and that's what I was known for. My trick was to âmake âem laugh out loud' twice on a page, even if they couldn't use it, or even if Standards and Practices threw it out for some reason.”
But according to how Lizzie felt about Tibbles' talents, his words weren't going to land anywhere except in the mouths of the
Bewitched
actors. For example, there's a “perfect” moment between
Samantha
and
Tabitha
that is quite touching and eloquent, and representative of the core “acceptance” message of the entire series. When
Sam
catches her daughter using witchcraft for the first time she experiences a circle of emotion, but ultimately pride and joy. She says:
Oh, I know ⦠I know what it is like to be part of the magical life, to have so much at your fingertips. But we're living in a world that isn't quite used to people like us. And I'm afraid they never will be. So, I'm going to have to be very firm with you. You're going to have to learn when you can use your witchcraft and when you can't. Now, your wonderful daddy wants us to be just plain people. So you're going to have to stop wiggling your fingers whenever you want something.
Besides “Nobody's Perfect,” Tibbles penned “I Don't Want to Be a Toad, I Want to Be a Butterfly” and “
Samantha
the Sculptress,” all of which he wrote while only in his mid-twenties.
“
Samantha
the Sculptress,” from the fifth year, 1968â1969, involved very odd special effects that featured talking-head clay busts of
Darrin
and
Larry
. It was a quirky entry, just this side of
The Twilight Zone
.
“Toad/Butterfly,” also from the fifth season, turned out to deliver what Lizzie considered to be one of the funniest lines in the entire series. The episode aired on December 12, 1968, and featured Maudie Prickett as
Mrs. Burch, Tabitha's
mortal teacher who talks with
Ruth Taylor
(Lola Fisher) about her daughter (and
Tabitha's
fellow classmate)
Amy Taylor
(played by Maralee Foster, and named for Doug Tibbles' real-life daughter).
Ruth Taylor: I understand about playing in the forest, I understand why you wanted to make my Amy a toad instead of a butterfly. But the fact is that my child is still missing.
Mrs. Burch: But I have never lost a child in all my years as a teacher.
Ruth Taylor: And you start by losing mine.
Mrs. Burch: Lookâsomehow I'll make it up to you.
Ruth Taylor: I'm calling the Police.
It was that second last line, “Lookâsomehow I'll make it up to you,” to a parent about the misplacement of their child to which Lizzie took a liking. “For whatever reason,” Tibbles explains, “she loved that line.” Whether or not her appreciation of that line had anything to do with the troubled kinship she experienced with her father Robert Montgomery is left to the imagination.
In the meantime, Elizabeth's other core relationship of the day, her marriage to Bill Asher, may have already been in trouble. According to what Tibbles can remember, the Montgomery-Asher-Richard Michaels triangle began long before the final season of
Bewitched
. He, like William Froug, saw signs of tension as early as season three, while working on “Nobody's Perfect.”
But before discussing the details of what Tibbles recalls about that complicated relationship, it's pertinent to provide some background on his own fascinating life and career:
