Twitch Upon a Star (44 page)
Read Twitch Upon a Star Online
Authors: Herbie J. Pilato
When Bill finally said, “Okayâlet's get through this once,” Lizzie was out of sorts to say the least, but trudged on to face the musicâor at least the conductor.
“Can we just go ahead and shoot it?” she asked.
“No!” Bill insisted. “I just wanna go ahead and
run it
!”
Lizzie caved, “Okay.”
She then found her mark on the set, readied her lines, and with “Aggie standing right there in front” of her, she heard this woman say, “Jesus Christ! She's fat. I had no idea she was that fat!” A jealous crew member's wife had spokenâand Lizzie was her victim.
Oh, how nice
, Lizzie thought upon hearing that hurtful phase, just as Bill was about to scream one very important word: “Action!” But instead, he yelled “Cut!”
Lizzie was trying to concentrate on her lines and they went through the scene twice. But after hearing that disturbing comment, as she recalled, “I just couldn't remember what the hell I was doing, and Bill blew up”:
You're not concentrating! This is ridiculous. There is no reason under the sun why you shouldn't be able to do this.
“Under any other circumstances I would have agreed with him,” she mused in 1989.
But at least there was a break in the clouds and no one was more surprised than Lizzie at what transpired next:
Do you know that Aggie turned to me and said, “Don't let him get you down. You can do it!” And that was the first time she ever said anything like that to me, because she knew it was beginning to get to me. So I took this big deep breath and said, “Okayâlet's go then!”
The result? One of the most beloved scenes in the entire series:
Samantha
, in her elegant ebony and emerald robe, defending herself,
Cousin Serena
and
Uncle Arthur
before the high court of the Witches Council, which has stripped them of their powers. By this time,
Sam
had ignored the Council's demand that she end her mortal marriage, and her cousin and uncle stood firm in support of their favorite relative. Mouthing words that represented the core message of
Bewitched
as well as Lizzie's own philosophy,
Sam
said to her magical elders: “Remember the Witch burnings at Salem? Remember the innocent who were condemned simply for being different? Remember your rage at that injustice? Well, aren't you guilty of the same injustice? Aren't you condemning me simply because I choose to be different? You can take away my powers but I'll always be a witch. It's youâthe highest of all courtsâwho are taking the riskâ[risking] your integrityâyour right to sit in judgment.”
Three years later, in what became
Bewitched's
swan season, 1971â1972, ABC had scheduled its once-supernatural powerhouse against CBS's new reality-based sitcom ratings' giant
All in the Famil
y, which though it began with a slow start in 1971, became the “eye” network's staple of newly crowned contemporary comedies. By this time, the network had rid itself of country-geared hits like
Mayberry R.F.D.
(1968â1971; a spin-off and continuation of
The Andy Griffith Show
, which had debuted in 1960),
The Beverly Hillbillies
(1962â1971),
Green Acres
(1965â1971), and
Petticoat Junction
(1963â1970); each perhaps more realistic than the fantasy fare presented by
Bewitched
, but nowhere near the edgy modern truths that would mark the scripts of producer Norman Lear's
All in the Family
, and his subsequent CBS spin-offs like
Maude
(1972â1978),
The Jeffersons
(1975â1985), and others of this ilk.
The issue-laden adventures of
Archie
and
Edith Bunker
(played by the Emmy-winning Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton) on CBS'
All in the Family
were very different than the magic escapades of
Samantha
and
Darrin
on ABC's
Bewitched
. The television landscape had changed, right along with the times, and viewers were apparently ready for the alterations, although
Bewitched
executive producer Harry Ackerman once relayed how the networks were too quick to make such sweeping changes. “There was room for all kinds of programming,” he said. Most assuredly, he was referring to
Bewitched
, which in fact, was renewed for three more seasons in the spring of 1970, the end of its seventh year.
But Lizzie had first resigned from the show in the spring of 1969, the close of its fifth season which just so happened to be Dick York's final semester as
Darrin
. At that point, certain terms were renegotiated in a new four-year deal that was put in place for seasons six and seven with a mutual option for seasons eight and nine. An additional
Bewitched
TV-movie would then follow in the tenth year, but only if both sidesâColumbia, and Lizzie and Bill Asherâagreed upon all terms. If not, one party could not then force the other to undertake the optional year.
Before season seven commenced in the fall of 1970, that year would be designated as its final semester. Screen Gems and ABC then renegotiated another deal with Lizzie and Bill, granting them close to 80 percent of the show's ownership, along with complete creative control, which in effect they had always had, except that now it was official. It was also a way of sticking it to Jackie Cooper for the way he had treated them in 1963, when the show was first developed.
Consequently, in March of 1971, it was announced that
Bewitched
would be back for its eighth season, and
that
would become its last year in production. Somewhere in the midst of that final season (circa March 1972), Lizzie consented to a ninth year and then, after everyone else had agreed to move forward, she changed her mind. ABC once more met with their favorite star and offered her the farm, as it were. She politely listened, thanked all attending parties, but declined their generous offer, and that was that.
In the interim, Bill Asher admittedly made some personal and professional missteps. He spent too much time on the sets of ABC's
Temperatures Rising
and
The Paul Lynde Show
, both of which he and Lizzie bartered to produce in place of
Bewitched
through their Ashmont production company which was still in operation. At which point, Richard Michaels could have easily stepped in as
Samantha's
core producer/director, if not Lizzie's potential next husband.
Peter Ackerman remembers hearing a conversation between his parents,
Bewitched
executive producer Harry Ackerman and
Father Knows Best
actress Elinor Donahue, who were unaware of his close proximity. It had to do with Lizzie and another crew member, possibly Michaels, approaching his father about continuing
Bewitched
, “obviously pushing Bill Asher out.”
He explains:
My dad, as loyal a man as you could ever meet, determined not to stab Bill in the back like that, and kindly but firmly told Liz and the other fellow “no.” I recall another part of that same conversation between my parents which, if true, is a bit salacious and would only be seen as gossip today. So I will keep that to myself. I do recall that on this very same day Bill Asher and his kids came over to the house, probably to commiserate with my dad. I was out playing with his and Liz's kids and I told Willie, their oldest son about what I overheard; both what I shared here and what I did not. And I realize now that it probably got back innocently to one or both parents. Again, we were young and would not have had the filters to keep things to ourselves. I still believe to this day that I may be the reason that the Asher kids never came to play with us again. Years later Bill mentioned that right after that visit, Liz made it clear that their kids were no longer to go to our house. It could be that Willie shared what I said to him with his mom and dad and because of that, or perhaps only because Liz was disappointed that my dad did not continue the show with her and the other fellow, [that] made her decide to separate herself from the Ackerman family as much as possible, including not having her kids play [with us].
As time went on, Peter never sensed any hard feelings between the two families. “My parents would see Lizzie at events,” he says, and in 1975, his father took to him visit her on the set of
The Legend of Lizzie Borden
, “and she could not have been nicer to me or my dad.”
Harry Ackerman passed away in 1991 and Lizzie entertained the idea of attending the service, for which Bill Asher hosted the post-funeral gathering with his then-wife, actress Joyce Bulifant,
Marie Slaughter
on
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
, and mother of John Asher (former husband to Jenny McCarthy). “But ultimately,” Peter says, “Liz decided not to attend.”
In 1997, the Asher family organized a surprise seventy-fifth birthday party for Bill, who was by then divorced from Bulifant, and now married to Meredith Asher. Peter was invited to the bash, along with many of the
Bewitched
crew. Also in attendance were two of the Ashers' adult children, Billy, Jr. and Rebecca, both with whom, Peter says, he “happily, and most importantly, was able to reestablish contact.” Unfortunately, he says, the Ashers' middle child, Robert, did not attend the gathering.
There was likely a large list of directors/producers who could have easily taken the
Bewitched
reigns in Bill Asher's absence, even with another actor besides Dick York or Dick Sargent potentially playing a
third Darrin
. But there was only one
Samantha
, and she was portrayed by the irreplaceable Elizabeth Montgomeryâwho was simply not interested in moving forward with the series.
Consequently, ABC developed and aired
The Paul Lynde Show
and what ultimately became
The New Temperatures Rising Show
with Lynde replacing James Whitmore from the old
Temperatures Rising
sitcom, all of which aired in place of
Bewitched's
nonexistent ninth season and subsequent TV-movie sequel (intended for the 1972â1974 seasons).
But when
Bewitched
switched to Saturday nights in the fall of 1971 to do battle against
All in the Family
, Lizzie had chosen not to continue with the series, even though ABC had opted to renew it. She was tired and viewing episodes from that eighth year, that became abundantly evident to the audience. Beyond the “liberated woman” braless look that she was sporting by that time (as was Marlo Thomas as
Ann Marie
in the final season of ABC's
That Girl
, 1966â1971), Lizzie looked as though she was dragging her feet in every scene. By this time, too, Dick Sargent was into his third season playing
Darrin,
and the show started reworking previous Dick York episodes. It remains puzzling as to why Bill Asher and company simply did not hire an entirely new batch of writers to create all new scripts. Instead, many of the show's episodes in that final year were mere retreads of previous segments.
Essentially, the rewriting of such scripts paved the way for the writing on the wall, and the end was near for
Bewitched
. Peter Ackerman remembers those final hours:
Although I was young I had a sense then that it had run its course. I remember watching a “new” episode with my grandmother, in which
Darrin
was squawking through his living room dressed as a chicken or something and I recall thinking, “This show is starting to get too silly,” although I never told my dad that.
In the eyes of Ackerman, the
Bewitched
cancellation “cancelled something else. With it or, more to the point, because of it, Bill and Liz ended their marriage.”
By then, Screen Gems/Columbia was co-producing the series with Ashmont Productions, Lizzie and Bill's company that took its cue from Desilu Productions, presided over by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. A pattern was beginning to take shape, for better and for worse, with female TV stars and their business partner/husbands, one that Jackie Cooper had first recognized with Donna Reed and her business partner/husband Tony Owen and their power struggle over
The Donna Reed Show
.
Yet, whereas Reed and Owen stayed together until after the
Donna
show's demise, the end of Ball's half-hour weekly series
I Love Lucy
in 1957 was followed by her real-life marriage dissolution from husband and show producer Arnaz. Twenty years later when
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
ended its CBS run in 1977, Moore called it quits with her show producer/husband Grant Tinker. After CBS gave the pink slip to
The Carol Burnett Show
in 1978, Carol gave walking papers to her husband and
Burnett
show producer Joe Hamilton. When Sonny & Cher ended their famous
CBS Comedy Hour
in 1974, so did they end their real-life once wedded bliss. Now
Bewitched
was closing its doors, and so soon would be the Montgomery/Asher love affair.
