Twitch Upon a Star (14 page)

However, he concluded, “I think she gets her professional attitudes, her capacity for taking infinite pains, from her father.”

Bottom line: Elizabeth wasn't all that interested in following her father onto the big screen. She felt more comfortable on TV and the Broadway stage, venues that for her boded well. By the time “Top Secret” aired, she had just graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (with Sally Kemp, and June Lockhart of
Lost in Space
fame, herself the daughter of esteemed actors Gene and Kathleen Lockhart). Lizzie had also served a summer internship at the John Drew Memorial Theater, in Easthampton, Long Island. Because of her youthful appearance, she was placed in ingénue roles at this theatre and was already concerned about being typecast, some thirteen years before immortalizing
Samantha
on
Bewitched
. “Even though I'm twenty now,” she bemoaned to
TV Guide
in 1953, “everybody thinks I'm about fifteen. If this keeps up, I'll probably be playing ingénues until I'm forty.”

Of a liberal mindset with no interest in making a mark in feature films, Lizzie preferred to play comedic parts, which were at the very least a staple of her dad's career. She was also interested in pursuing musical comedy but confessed, “I can't sing.” Or at least she believed she couldn't carry a tune, which she would later disprove as
Serena
in a few peppy musical episodes of
Bewitched
and as the guest-hostess in 1966 on ABC's
The Hollywood Palace
variety show. For the moment, however, she only danced, with training in ballet, in case a Broadway musical ever materialized. But that opportunity never presented itself.

Except for her initial “Top Secret” segment of
Robert Montgomery Presents
, she had not yet even acted on TV, mostly because the American Academy of Dramatic Arts frowned upon students performing in any manner outside its walls. But she held no ill will against the school. In fact, she was grateful to it for teaching her how to read lines, something her father had prodded her to do for years. As she continued to tell
TV Guide
in 1953, “Dad taught me to read everything since I was a little girl.”

Despite and during her privileged upbringing, she developed a daring sense of humor, which later contributed to an approachable persona that was unaffected by the various Hollywood machinations. As she explained to
TV Radio Mirror
in 1965:

In 1989, she once more attributed her kind demeanor to her family's guidance. Had she behaved with even the slightest trace of pretention, she said her father would have “picked me up by the feet and slammed me against the wall. And I probably would have deserved it. So, it's no credit to me how I was raised. But it's an enormous credit to my Mom and Dad.”

As previously noted, when Robert Montgomery served in the Navy from 1940–1945 during World War II, Lizzie's maternal grandmother Becca Allen became a member of the Montgomery household, contributing a great deal to both Lizzie and her brother's Skip's non-pretentious character.

Out of all the adults who supervised Lizzie as a child, her grandmother Becca certainly seemed to be the one who, more than the others, had it all together. She was young at heart, carefree, and knew how to enjoy life beyond the rigid underpinning of her conservative Southern upbringing. She was supportive of Lizzie's life and career, encouraging, worldly, but unaffected and open-minded. In short, she was
hip
, long before that word was introduced into the vernacular. No wonder Lizzie loved her so much. They bonded on so many levels and were on much more common ground than Lizzie ever shared with her parents.

As Lizzie acknowledged in 1989, had she behaved insolently, Becca would have objected with a sardonic “Oh, please!”

But still, Lizzie looked back and pondered, “Who knows what a
value
is? When you're a tiny child, you really don't know.”

To her credit, she admitted to not being “the easiest child to get along with. I was stubborn. I had a very bad temper that I have since learned to control because Daddy had a worse one.” But her mother used a different strategy in reprimanding her. “Mom had a habit of becoming very quiet,” she recalled. “She would let Dad do the heavy-duty, very articulate disciplining. And I tell you, it was better to raise a hand than an adjective, a verb, or a noun.”

“Boy,” she added of what could be her father's periodic stern ways, “he could really give it to you.” Yet she took it all in stride. In the era in which she was raised, the 1930s–1940s, parents were taught not to spare the rod, or they would spoil the child. “I can barely think of a time when I resented getting in trouble,” she said in 1989.

Not one to shirk responsibility, she kept herself in check. If she fell from any particular grace under her parents' close watch, then she stepped up to the plate and took the blame. “If it was my fault, it was my fault,” she intoned with unabashed honesty. But she resented getting punished, as much as getting caught. “Because that just meant that I wasn't as clever as I thought I was.”

Lizzie believed her parents were rarely incorrect in the way they raised her and she had no complaints. Although she admitted her parents and Becca were “very strict,” they made certain she retained her own sense of values. Homework had to be done. Grades were expected to be good. “There were always choices within choices,” she explained. “It wasn't just totally regulated. They gave me a lot of freedom to a point.”

Despite that latitude, there were specific restrictions that she termed “weird.” For one, her parents forbade her from going to the movies, which was unfortunate because for her so simple an excursion was “an amazing treat.” That isn't to say her parents denied their daughter the joyful pastime that millions around the world continue to embrace unto this day. They did not put their collective foot down and demand that she never step foot in a movie theatre. “It was much subtler than that,” she said.

“Oh, now, Elizabeth,” she recalled her father saying, “you have something a hell of a lot better to do than on a Saturday afternoon than sitting in a movie theatre.”

“But everybody else gets to go,” she would protest.

“We don't care what everybody else is doing,” would be the response. “This is what
you
are going to do.” She said such exchanges were “fairly regular,” and in time, she became intrigued with not attending the cinema, a media-sensitive prohibition that may have seemed odd, particularly due to her father's movie stardom. But she didn't think they were trying to
protect
her. “That might not be the right word,” she said. Instead, she viewed the prevention measure as a modus by her parents to steer her from temptation. “I was a mad enough child that I would want to jump into it immediately,” she concluded in 1989 of the movie-going experience.

However, in 1991, during her conversation with Ronald Haver, she explained how her father's film
Here Comes Mr. Jordan
played into the game of her non-movie-going experience when she was as a child. She began by explaining an early scene in the movie in which the plane carrying her father's character,
Joe Pendleton
, was falling apart. It became a particularly traumatic sequence for her to watch as a child:

Sally Kemp recalls things differently. “We'd go to the movies all the time.” But this was in their teen years, when they met as students at the prestigious American Academy of the Dramatic Arts in New York. Somewhat more independent by then, it was Lizzie who now set the rules, if only to confuse Sally with the provisions. Lizzie would take her cousin Panda to Walt Disney pictures, but Sally was only allowed to see horror movies, and she never understood why. “It was like she had some kind of catalogue,” Sally says, mimicking her friend's logic in the situation: “
Sally goes to horror movies and my cousin goes to Disney films
.”

Sally found the cinema segregation particularly puzzling, mostly because Panda, with whom she remains good friends today, seemed better suited for viewing horror films. “She had more of a macabre streak than I did.”

Ever unpredictable, Lizzie surprised Sally one day, inviting her to see the classic 1953 feature film,
Lili
, starring Leslie Caron, Mel Ferrer, Jean-Pierre Aumont, and Zsa Zsa Gabor. Though a few of the characters may not always be on their best behavior, this delightful romantic comedy with a dash of fancy could hardly be classified as a monster movie:

Upon close inspection of the film, it may be clear as to why Lizzie held it so dear—and why she chose to share it with a good friend like Sally.

Lili
had lost her father when she was only sixteen. Sally's father had died when she was young.
Lili
tells a joke early on in the film that references horses, which both Lizzie and Sally adored.

Other quotes from the film are more reflective: “A little of what you want is better than large quantities” and “Refusal to compromise is a sign of immaturity.”

On screen,
Lili
was seeking answers to life's biggest questions. Off screen, in the 1953 reality of her youth, and with an adventurous, if short, life ahead of her, so was Lizzie. With her good and generous heart, she may have then felt Sally was also seeking the same answers. Instead of viewing the beastly images of the horror movies they all too frequently attended, Lizzie may have wanted her good friend to gaze upon the simple beauty of
Lili
—a film that Sally would later view sixteen times. “I love it,” she says. “And I think of Elizabeth each time I see it” (as will probably anyone who reads this passage).

The similarities are significant between
Lili
and Lizzie's return to comedy with the CBS TV-movie,
When the Circus Came to Town
, which originally aired on January 20, 1981.

A tender and happy story, filled with hope and promise for change, the movie (which was filmed at the Coastal Empire Fairgrounds near Savannah, Georgia) might have been equally pleasing to
Bewitched
fans, providing them with an opportunity to see their beloved Elizabeth Montgomery in a lighter role that most would find fitting to her comedic forte. What's more,
Circus
, like much of Lizzie's work, was filled with lines that could have easily been pulled from the dialogue of her real life. At various points in the film, her character,
Mary Flynn
said: