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by Jane Kesner
TV Radio Mirror
April 1970
"You know, the first thing I heard was Dr. Anton's voice saying that very thing. He and the anesthetist were talking and the doctor was saying, 'My, what beautiful legs; did you ever see legs like that on a brand new baby?' And I knew...another Becca had arrived." She picks up her baby girl and holds her close.
Becca: The beautiful vivacious redhead to whom Elizabeth was so close and who had such a profound effect upon her life...her grandmother. "The grandmother least likely in a way," she says, smiling. "The original hippie in the nicest sense of the word. Certainly the original rebel...interested in everything, always ready to try anything.
"I've never known a woman so full of life. She had auburn hair, snappy brown eyes, and was ageless. I never did know how old she was; it didn't matter to her, and it certainly didn't matter to anyone else. She had a great figure, beautiful hands and the most marvelous legs you've ever seen in your life.
"We always had a little joke, my cousin Panda and I, about Becca and her legs, because Becca had a way of saying, 'Well, I know where Elizabeth (meaing my mother) got her beautiful legs.' And she was so right, and we got such a boot out of that!
"An incredible woman. She drove around town in a red covertible...gave fabulous parties mixing up all sorts of people you wouldn't expect to mix, having numerous beaux--that's what she called them, beaux.
"And she was so vital and so interested in the world, you couldn't be around her without becoming interested, too. She lived near us, of course, and when Mom and Dad were away, she'd come and rule the roost.
"Which I adored. Not because she was easy. Don't you believe it! She always said that if grandmothers were meant to spoil grandchildren, it would have to be somebody else's grandchildren, not hers. And when I was awful--and I was--I can still remember thinking I'm going to get in trouble if I do this, is it worth it? and then going ahead and doing it just the same.
"She would make me go out in our yard and get a switch from the mulberry bush. 'You go out and get it yourself, Elizabeth.' And my screaming--Don't hit me on the legs, Becca. Please not on my legs, just for the benefit of anyone who might be around--was of not the slightest avail. 'Screaming won't do you any good, Elizabeth. I don't care if the neighbors do hear you,' she'd say, and snap went the switch.
"All madly dramatic. And although it stung, I never had so much as a bruise to show the rest of the kids! (Most of their parents were unoriginal enough to use a hair brush.) But that didn't keep me from loving her. And how I missed her when she went away.
"I don't remember how old I was, but I do remember that she was getting ready to go to Europe, and she let me in on a secret. 'Now, Elizabeth, your mother and your Aunt M.B. know I'm going to Italy to visit friends, but what they don't know, and I'd appreciate your not telling them, I'm also going to Africa. They just wouldn't approve, but I'm going.'
"And she did! There was no way anyone could stop Becca. Away she went, and it was kind of spooky not having her right here in town. Something very important was missing, strange really, since I sometimes didn't see her for two weeks at a time. But I guess because I loved her so, she was a marvelous part of my security.
"When she came home, she brought me a leopard's claw! She brought everyone else scarves and things like that, but I got a leopard's claw, and I was so proud...I still have it: it's hanging on my toothbrush rack on the bathroom wall; where else would you put a leopard's claw? It's on a gold bangle bracelet looped around and hanging right there."
Today's small Becca has been napping as we talk, and now she opens her blue eyes and waves her fists. So Elizabeth puts her in her bassinet, and we wheel her out into the sun, where we are promptly joined by 5-year-old Willie and 4-year-old Robert, two little busters who are genuinely intrigued.
"My baby," Robert calls her and then catches himself. "Our baby," he says and gives you a big grin. And Willie says she's "neat-o" which is the top compliment he can pay.
Wherever the boys are, the dogs are, so they now come bounding into the scene, black and white Puck, who's half Brillo pad and half fox terrier; Llama, the afghan ("he gets offended if you don't spell Llama with two l's"), and Who, a little round pig of a mutt who promptly sits up with his paws out.
"Isn't he wild?" Elizabeth says, "Those front paws of his are never on the ground. He's the one who wandered in last year at Christmas time, a stray with no identification whatsoever. We looked in teh papers and ran an ad, but there must be nine million dogs looking just about like this one. Luckily we never got any calls because we love him."
"We lost Boozer," Willie says. "Mom checked all the hospitals and the pound. He's a beagle."
"We don't know what happened to him," Robert says solemnly. But two minutes later he and Willie are off to the tennis court where their dad is playing with Dick Sargent, the long-legged genial chap who has taken over as Samantha's husband on Bewitched. The boys have little racquets of their own, and as they run along they're batting each other over the heads with them.
"They get along so great," Elizabeth says, watching after them with affectionate concer. "They love each other. I really think the reason Robert is always getting hurt is that he tries to keep up with everything Willie does and, being a year younger, he has to go twice as fast."
It was only a few weeks ago that the housekeeper, Joy, phoned her at the studio; "Mrs. Asher, Robert has cut himself rather badly again." Elizabeth's heart sank. Poor Robert--he's like I was as a child. He'll run headlong into a wall while Bill and Willie are so coordinated!
"How bad is it?" she asked.
"Pretty bad," Joy said.
Elizabeth's first impulse was to rush home and take care of her child. Let Bewitched wait until tomorrow. She's an actress, yes, but she's a mother first.
But, in the next instant, she realized that it was dumb to try to handle this when she was in Hollywood, and the injured child in Beverly Hills. Joy could get him to the hospital much faster than she could. Besides, it's important that those at home know what to do in a crisis.
She's a born mother, Elizabeth. She has love to give and patience and an instinctive know-how, which, she says, must be left over from her own wonderful childhood.
"Such security," she says, "from Mom and Dad and Becca. They loved us, but they were all really firm. There was never a question. If it was no, it ws no. If it was yes, it was yes. Which made for a great deal of security and no wasted energy.
"If ever they were wrong, they admitted it. 'Well, Elizabeth, I was wrong, but that's the way I saw it'...even if it were a month later, they'd admit it.
"I can't tell you how many times, in situations with my children, I'm reminded....I don't think you can be around anyone as vital and interested as Becca was, for example--someone with that searching quality--and fail to be influenced tremendously.
"Little things like when I was small, I'd say 'What's that?' and she'd say, 'That's an ashtray, and you know what else it is? It's a circle; something round is called a circle, and something with sides like this (showing me a box top) is called a square, and that over there is a pentagon.' So that by the time I was 3 or 4 I could name all the geometric figures.
"She made games of everything. You asked the meaning of a word, she'd say, 'What do you think it means? And, when you came up with your child's explanation; "That's marvelous, Elizabeth; now let's look it up and see what the people say it means.' In short, the dictionary. And often after we found out, she'd say, 'But I like your definition much better.'
"She got me interested in horseracing and football; she had me convinced that wrestling was the most blood-thirsty thriller in the world!
"When I was little, her favorite wrestler was Baron Leoni, the one who went flying through the air and kicked people in the teeth with his heels.
"Becca and I though that was great! Oh and boxing!
"I remember her turning on a Joe Louis fight on TV and the minute it was over, Becca said, 'Do you know what might interest you, Elizabeth?' And out would come books on boxing, all about John L. Sullivan and Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, all the colorful fighters of the past.
"I saw my first football game with her and went to my first horserace. All the things Bill and I do now. So you can understand why she was crazy about Bill.
"I'm just sorry she didn't live to see all this..." Her rich happiness...the three children...She did see Willie. "I took him right from the hospital to her house.
"We spoke of it when my mother was here. She was out to welcome the new baby and, of course, to be with Willie and Robert while I was in the hospital. It was wonderful. She adores the boys; she sings them Becca's songs.
"Becca wrote wonderful children's songs. You should have seen the boys' faces, listening when my mother sings to them. She wrote poetry too, verses expressing her really deep lovely thoughts about life. There's one couplet that often recurs to me: Some people like a straight, straight road / buy this is not for me / My road must be of many turns so that I may not see what lies beyond"
Something Elizabeth might have written herself, for that is how she lives, with a joy and a faith in living, an intrinsic health that makes her unique in this business.
"There's no one quite like Elizabeth," her husband Bill Asher says, "She's a great pro but she is first of all a home person, a person who is not only home-oriented but self-oriented. She's never had to think about being first of all a wife and mother. She jsut naturally puts the real values where they belong."
See her in her home, the tender, gay rapport she has with her children and with Billys. Lianne and Bryan always find time from their own teenage activities to drop by ont he weekends because weekends are so gorgeous at the Ashers'. Everyone plays tennis and golf and touch football (Elizabeth's a fierce competitor). She also cooks, another way she resembles her mother and her grandmother.
"...although Beca never let any of her beaux know that she'd say, 'Elizabeth, once they find out you can cook, that's what you'll be doing the rest of your life.'"
But, of course, Elizabeth loves to cook. Where she does resemble Becca--and it's too bad her grandmother didn't live to see Bewtiched, but died just a few weeks before the show went on the air--is in the area of ESP. She had it.
One night when Elizabeth was working out here, Becca phoned and asked her to come over for cocktails. She had cancelled two dinner engagements because there was something she wanted to talk about with Elizabeth. As they were talking, the doorbell rang.
"Would you go, Elizabeth, and take the flowers?"
"What flowers?"
"The flowers that are at the door."
And there they were, flowers with a little note: Sorry you couldn't make it for dinner.
Half an hour later, the bellr ang again, and Becca said, "More flowers," and, of course, there were. Wouldn't she have loved Samantha?
Of course, Becca knew about the series and was very excited about it. She was always very pleased that Elizabeth had decided on acting.
"Both Mom and Aunt M.B. were in the theatre and both of them gave it up when they married, much to Becca's and my chagrin, because they both would have been marvelous. So Becca was thrilled when it was my turn. Her faith was unlimited. If I had done everything she wanted me to do, I'd have been exhausted!
"Her philosophy was: Never back away from a challenge; don't be foolhardy, but don't back away from obstacles, and enjoy everything you do to the fullest or don't do it. There's nothing worse for the people around you than if you're doing something which makes you miserable. She also believed that a little impatience is a good thing--if it's with yourself, not others."
All of this rubbed off. In fact, there isn't a day of Elizabeth's life she doesn't emulate both her grandmother and her own mother.
"...another incredible woman," Elizabeth says. "Mom's softer than Becca, and I mean that as a compliment. She has the same sense of humor; she certainly is just as much fun.
"I remember how dear she was, taking care of me when I was sick at night. I remembered that one night when Willie was sick, and I was caring for him.
"The thing that impressed me most I think was Mom's calmness, her almost flippancy in time of strife. Like the day I broke my arm. There was a bunch of us chasing each other and Billy Webster stuck his foot out as I came around the hedge. I wne flying and hit the sprinkler, there was this loud crrrrack. My arm was broken, and I started screaming. My mom heard me and came running out the door, then she stopped herself short.
"'Elizabeth,' she said, 'whether your arm's broken or not, will you stop making all that noise.' That took a lot of control on her part--she was probably as panicked as I was, but her tone calmed me down at once, and I've always tried to do exactly the same thing for Willie or Robert. The worst thing you can do for a hurt child is go to pieces with the sympathy bit.
"We had a nurse in the beginning who was like that. If Willie'd fall down, she was all over him. I was trying to break him of bursting into tears every time he so much as stubbed his toe. One day I was sitting on the couch when he took such a header. It hurt, and I knew it, but it wasn't serious, so when he started to whimper, I just said calmly, 'Are you okay, Willie? Come on over and let me look.' So he came, and I looked and gave him alittle hug, and he was fine.
"Just then the nurse came rushing in; she'd heard the bump. And the minute he saw her--boom! We had to get another nurse, and it's good we did. That first one would have really panicked when Robert started falling down!
"Mother's Day...there's a blood curdling scream, and there's Robert standing in the kitchen with blood streaming all over his face. We got him to bed, wiped away the blood, and he did have a big gash on his forehead. We put ice on it, and stopped the bleeding and closed it up with bandages; I didn't want him to have stiches unnecessarily.
"I think he stayed calm because I did and then started crying because we were closing it up, and he had wanted to 'look at the bleed.' After all--everybody else got a good look at his wound but him! So we got him a mirror. Then he was okay."
She's so good with these kids. She answers their questions but doesn't burden them with too many details. With the new baby, for example...She'd always heard how difficult it is to tell young children about new babies. She had no trouble at all. She sayed so slim that for a long time she said nothing, knowing that nine months to children is like nine years. So she waited, and then one night she said, "Guess whatt? We're going to have a baby." The little boys were very excited.
"Where is the baby?" Willie said.
"In my tummy."
"Really, Mom?"
"Really."
"Well, how about that."
Time passed and they had more questions, and she tried to explain about two people loving each other "and when I had you and Robert, this is what happened." Their eyes were big as saucers.
Willie said, "Mom, can I ask you something?"
"Sure, Williie."
"Can I go play now?" That was it.
And there was the night Robert wanted to know just when the baby was going to get here.
"Not for a while, sweetheart. It has to say in there where it's nice and warm until it's ready to be born."
"Listen, I have an idea," Robert said. "Why don't you take it out so I can play with it and then you can put it back."
"I wish I could, but I can't."
"Oh, well..."
And, of course, they were delighted when it arrived and was a girl because they didn't have one. Lianne was especially delighted--"She wanted a girl when Robert was born; we were getting a little outnumbered," Elizabeth says. She is very close to Lianne and Bryan, who live at Malibu with their mother and come over weekends.
"The trick witht hem, and with the youngsters, too, is that you've got to grow, not necessarily with them but with the times aroudn you so that you don't end up in the generation gap. I'm lucky. I'm right smack in the middle--too young to be involved with the establishment I don't approve of, yet old enough. It's good to be right smack in the middle if you can keep up with changes and also keep changing your mind about things. You've got it made. You can be a help to the kids. My mother did it that way, and that's the way I want it.
"For example, she grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. There must have been around her plenty of anti-Negro feeling, but never, ever did she convey that to me. I don't even understand prejudice; I never have. It's the most embarrassing, outrageous thing in the world that human beings should have any such feeling, should want to downgrade other human beings.
"It's also stupid; and from what I observed, it's today's older people not the young ones who perpetuate this. It's the Negro who's emerging with dignity, and I just hope that by the time Willie and Robert get to high school, there won't be any such problems left. If the young generation has anything to say, there won't be.
"The one thing grownups seem to object to is the fact that the kids are right so much of the time. When someone 16 or 18 says you're wrong, adults don't like that. Well, like it or not, they'd better accept it!
"I don't think there's anything wrong with today's kids. There're always a few who give the rest a bad name, but it's a shame to hear people bemoaning 'These terrible kids.' They're great. A generation gap? Of couse there is but what's wrong with that so long as it's constructive and not destructive?
"Adults have to keep growning with their time," she says. After all, her mother did. And her grandmother. That was a two-generation gap. Proof of it--this new little Becca. Through her, the past catches up with Elizabeth Montgomery.