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HOME-MODEL WITCH Look January 26, 1965

Eye of newt and toe of frog, flip the twitch and zip-zap... ELIZABETH MONTGOMERY

Adding a refreshing drop of vinegar to the confectionery world of Samantha and her mortal mate is Agnes Moorehead as Samantha's mother Endora, who teleports in for tea.

Though she sometimes sickens of Samantha's rock-candy sweetness, Liz resists any changes in the nature of the domesticated harpy. As she explains it, Samantha is like the gunfighter in Shane, sure of her powers and almost impossible to provoke.

When she wriggles her upper lip, it's magic

When you come to the end of a shooting day, you're beat. But while the cameras roll, Dick York, as Samantha's husband, summons up magic of his own to make an engagingly fallible human out of a nose-to-the-grindstone straight man for a winsome witch.

"Even when Bill is standing still, he's in motion," says a friend, "like a really good car." A high-torque project juggler, Asher has taken leave from Bewitched to direct both a TV pilot and film.

"I just never had the desire to be a star," says Liz

Impish humor comes through in sketches like her quick-penciling of a Samantha witch.

One luxury they can't afford is "enough time to be alone together."

Not a bit chagrined is young William Allen Asher, who caused producers autumn anguish.

It's enough to make Cotton Mather burn, not to mention the folks at CBS and NBC. For the TV season's most potent new brew is ABC's Bewitched, a series that keeps asking, "Can a highly spirited witch find happiness as the wife of a Madison Avenue advertising man?"      She can, because Samantha the witch is really Elizabeth Montgomery, hem-deep in ticky-tacky, a clean-scrubbed, suburban Everywoman, with her caldron hooked to the rotisserie.     By occult standards, Samantha is a drop-out, who yearns to be just a floor-scrubbing, laundry-toting housewife. She may drive men to dream of saucy sorceresses, but the ladies fear nothing from this dimpled do-gooder, who weekly forswears necromancy to share their lot.      A succesful series is a goose that lays golden eggs, and no one messes with the goose's diet. The Bewitched bird thrives on thaumaturgy. So, Liz, often more waif than witch, still wriggles her upper lip at least once a show, to set off the sorcery. On the screen, there's magic. In the caverns of Stage Four at Columbia Studios, the resident dijins take over. But special effects is a time devouring business, and time is the bane of Stage Four.      Most series have a healthy backlog of episodes, but Bewitched has been running only a minimal four shows ahead of air time. Liz, who found she was pregnant after the pilot, didn't start work until August 17, just 24 days after her son was born and 31 days before the series started. Even with 12-hour days, shooting drags behind schedule. "No one's going to be grateful," producer Danny Arnold says, "if we're fast, cheap and bad."      "There's one thing that makes Samantha easy to play," Liz proudly explains, "She's as much in love with Darrin as I am with Bill."      Marriage to director Bill Asher, her third, and their child, her first, seem almost the only real parts of Liz's life. Everything else--the series, her personal success, old friends and the love and loyalty of 39 million viewers--is slightly out of focus. She's cooler now, more withdrawn since her secret marriage, though there are still flashes of that fey, funny girl who could charm the ears off the most jaded Sunset boulevardiers.      She resents the new pressures, the 12-hour days and the race to make up time. "My life is here," she says, with an arms-out gesture that includes her newly rented home in Benedict canyon, her husband, infant son, Zip-Zip the cat and Charlie the dog. The series takes second place. "Just about as close to last as second can be."      Asher, who directed the pilot film and first 14 shows, has more practical views. "If you make a pilot and it works," he says, "it's like finding a gold mine." If the show lasts three years, Liz's 20 percent of the Bewitched bonanza could amount to more than $2 million.      But Liz never aimed for the money or for stardom. She agreed to do the series only to work with her husband. "I just never had the desire to be a star," admits the actress, whose 13-year career has begun to go-go-go.      Though her father, Robert Montgomery, spotted Liz's talent early, he didn't encourage her career. "Dad didn't think I was exactly riddled with ambition," she explains. Still, she made her debut with him on Robert Montgomery Presents.      Neither Asher nor Liz knows quite what to make of her broom-zooming popularity. "But it is gratifying," he abashedly admits, "to know that America loves her too."