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LIZ MONTGOMERY WEEP
TV Radio Mirror
July 1967
What I'm trying to say is--you've changed my world and you've changed me. I don't think you actually tried. You did phone me when I was in New York that one time: "Hey, slow down!" you said. And you did put me under house arrest when I wanted to do some sky diving when I was directing a beach picture. But the real change in me was something a lot more subtle, a matter of happiness catching up with me so that I didn't want to jump any more. When things get as enormously great as they are with us, you don't want to threaten that. There's too much at stake.
I drive slower. No one can get me on skis anymore. I still surf, but I'm not all that shook up about that, either. You know what's happened to my big bug for competitive sports--I play tennis with you and golf with you, and you're probably the fiercest competitor I've ever met. The most fun, too.
I've gotten so I hate flying. I'm not in that big a hurry, and business is no longer that important. All of my energies are devoted to being happy, not wanting to jeapordize that in any way. There was a time, if anyone had told me you could do that to me...if anyone had even suggested I'd someday be married to you...I would have called the law and had them towed away. I said I wouldn't marry any actress, and certainly not the girl I saw that day at Universal when we first met.
Remember? As producer-director in the process of casting. I had seen you in The Untouchables and thought you might be good for the part of the Johnny Cool heroine. So I came out to Universal where you were working in some hokey part with a French accent! I thought you were a real pain. What I thought was: This girl is more actress than person--which is an exact reverse of the truth. The truth is there's never been an actress who is so absolutely real as a human being. I realized this as soon as we started getting together to talk about the picture. It's hard to put these things into words. You're a great pro. But you're first of all a home person, a person who is not only home-oriented but self-oriented. This is something I've always wanted to tell you because it's made our life what it is--you are first of all a mother and a wife, and that's something totally instinctive with you. You've never had to think about it. You just naturally put the real values where they belong.
There are people who find recognition in their field the most important thing in the world, and for them that's probably the place to put the values. But for me, it isn't, and for you it isn't. That's the marvelous thing, we're both this way, we're the kind of people who should be together. The most important thing for people like us is a happy personal life. No contest.
Well, we made the movie together and before I knew it, I was worrying about crossing streets. It was a picture we shot on location, twenty-five days in New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Newport Beach, we never did work on a stage, and by the end of the picture I had seen you in all sorts of circumstances and was pretty intrigued. It's hard to remember how it happened, but, by the summer of the next year, we knew this was it.
Do you recall the night we had dinner at Sardi's and I said, "Elizabeth, the very best way to have two careers within a marriage is to be able to work together. With what I have to offer in television and what you have to offer, why don't we think about a series?"
"Fat chance," you said. "Nobody wants me for a television series."
Now, fade out and fade in four years later and look what Bewitched is...the kind of thing you can't imagine in a lifetime. And add to that our marriage and two healthy boys...if you made it up and asked for it you'd say, I'm being too greedy. I'm asking too much. See what I mean about being afraid to cross the street?
"YOU WHOM I LOVE"
One of the thrills of a lifetime was the early and terrific acceptance of the series and you. I've guided a lot of ladies in successful television and films--Lucille Ball, Jane Wyman, Eve Arden, Joan Caufield, Dinah Shore, Patty Duke--I liked all of them and to have success with them was very gratifying. But to have the audience love you whom I love, that is another kind of experience. That's more fulfillment than one can hope for in a lifetime.
It's been fun working with you. There's a lot of talk about how the director makes a star--but a director can't elicit what isn't there.
I made a lot of changes in the beginning of Bewitched. The big change was to switch from witchcraft which relied on witch-oriented gimmicks, pots of boiling brew, to something inherently you, something that would be as much a part of you as a sneeze, but something no one else could do. You had a funny little thing you did with your mouth--something you'd do in moments of pique or thoughtfulness. What we now call the witch-twitch. When I first mentioned it you said, "I don't know what you're talking about." I suspected you were trying not to remember. And then, the day before we shot the pilot, you did it in conversation and I said, "That's it. That's the thing that will work the magic..."
Did I ever tell you what happened that day we did the commercial for Chevorlet? That was before the series started shooting and we were doing this ad in which you were motivating the magic in the car. You knew your lines and I think you must have been sort of bewildered when the cameraman kept indicating cut and you'd have to do it all over again. After four times I went up to see what the trouble was. The cameraman thought the twitch was a nervous tic and he was too delicate to bring it up!
It's been great working together. We do a job and it's fun and we know what we're going home to. Have you ever stopped to realize--when something wonderful happens we don't go out to celebrate? We stay quietly at home. It's a tribute to you, because you've made home the greatest place in the world for me. I guess that's the joy of having a wife who's a star and doesn't seem to know it.
Staying at home over the weekend is like a vacation. You make it that way. And how about the joy of Willie and Robert? There never was anyone who took to motherhood the way you have. You know what--if people could spy on us, look through a sort of camera eye and see us at home, they'd never suspect you had any other career at all outside of being a mother. You find time for baseball, ping-pong, tennis, golf, even some touch football! I'm pretty proud of you as an athlete period, and the deal still stands, whenever you beat me, I'll take you for a Chinese dinner. And you know I hate Chinese dinners...
Then there are my older kids, Liane and Brian. They really dig those Sunday football games in Roxbury Park. And you know what it means to me that you make them feel so welcome at our house. You've given out with a lot of love and they return it.
I guess to outsiders it looks as if we live an awfully quiet life. I keep thinking, maybe this year we should go to Hawaii on our time off. Last year I thought Bermuda. But we'll never make it. It's too much fun staying at home. My guess is, we'll maybe get three weeks in New York, see a few shows, I'll do some business, we'll visit your family, and then we'll get back as fast as possible.
We're lucky. A lot of stars have the ego drive, the need to be on the go, to be seen, to do the Hollywood bit. But you don't and I'm glad. It's fun sometimes to go off somewhere for a weekend in some town where they'd never expect a celebrity to be. We drop into some bar for a drink and no one even recognizes you because your being there isn't in their frame of reference. "Gee, you look something like that girl on television, the witch," someone said the time we were in Seattle. And how about the times we drop into a bar on the way home from golf, you with your hair in pigtails, and they won't serve you without seeing your driver's license?
Your witchery includes making us younger, you know that? You look like a kid and I feel like one. When we started the series, I was the same age as the camera operator. Now he's four years older than I am!
You get the message? If I had it all to do over again, I'd do it all just the same way, not change it one iota. It's a whale of a life and you're the one that makes it that way.
Love,
Bill