#dick sergeant

Picture the footlights breathing, that warm theatrical fug that curls round your ankles like perfumed cigarette haze. The sort of glow that makes even a plain wooden stage look positively regal, & into that shimmer steps Elizabeth Victoria Montgomery, born 15 April 1933, an American actress with the sort of poise that makes directors blink twice & everyone else forget to exhale; a performer whose working life stretched across five decades, which is a downright marathon in a business that can be as fickle as the charts & twice as sharp about it!

Her introduction to television did not arrive by accident or by some lucky raffle ticket, it came by lineage & labour together, because her earliest telly appearance turned up in her father’s series, ‘Robert Montgomery Presents’, and there is something rather splendidly old school about that. Like joining the family band & still having to practise until your fingers ache. She debuted there, then returned on later occasions as part of his “summer stock” company of performers, that phrase has a proper theatrical ring, it conjures touring trunks, quick costume changes, understudies chewing their nails, & a small army of talented souls learning the craft by doing it at speed! Night after night, with no time for preciousness.

Now, if you fancy the glamour begins with cameras, think again, because the theatre had its hooks in her early, & it pulled. In October 1953 she made her Broadway debut in ‘Late Love’, & that is no mere line on a résumé. Broadway is a crucible, it does not applaud politeness, it applauds nerve, & for that performance she collected a ‘Theatre World Award’, which is the sort of recognition that whispers to the industry, “keep your peepers on this one, she is not dabbling, she is arriving!”

From there the path leads into film. Not with some frothy nothing, but with Otto Preminger’s ‘The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell’ in 1955. Preminger, a director with a reputation for precision & steel; & the title alone has the crack of a gavel about it, the atmosphere of uniforms, procedure, judgement. That kind of picture asks an actor to hold steady in a room full of pressure, & Montgomery made her film debut there. Stepping into cinema with the calm of someone who knows the camera is only another audience, merely closer, merely more impertinent.

Yet the boards called her back, because in 1956 she returned to Broadway, appearing in ‘The Loud Red Patrick’. Her return being a particular sort of courage in that back & forth between mediums. Some performers chase the newest glamour; others keep their technique honed where it began, under the honest heat of stage lamps, where every breath is audible & every pause counts.

Then comes the part that had telly viewers absolutely glued! The ABC situation comedy ‘Bewitched’, where Montgomery played the central role of Samantha Stephens: a witch with a heart as big as California & a sparkle that could brighten a dull living room clear across the continent. The charm was not merely in the premise, broomsticks & suburban silliness; it was in the way Montgomery made Samantha both lovable and formidable, sweet natured without being saccharine, magical without turning into a cold statue of perfection. The husband role went first to Dick York & later to Dick Sargent, & their pairing gave the show its domestic rhythm. The ordinary mixed with the extraordinary. The day to day muddle brushed by the impossible.

‘Bewitched’ turned into a ratings success! Not the modest kind either, the sort of success that makes a network grin like it has won the pools. At that time it stood as the highest rated series ever for the network, which is a tidy bit of telly history & a testament to how strongly audiences took to Montgomery’s centre of gravity. The series ran eight seasons, from 1964 to 1972, & through that run Montgomery earned a pile of nominations. Five Emmy nods & four Golden Globe nominations for her work as Samantha, that’s not mere fan fuss, that’s the industry tipping its hat over & over! Acknowledging that comedy done properly requires craft, timing, & a precise control of tone. One wrong tilt & the whole thing goes tinny.

Now here is where the tale gets especially interesting, because it would have been ever so easy for her to keep floating along in the same twinkly lane. Forever adored as the good natured witch next door. Forever connected to that nose twitch & that bright domestic spellcasting… but Montgomery chose a more daring road later on. She spent much of her subsequent career reaching for dramatic roles that shoved her as far away from Samantha as possible. And that decision has the bracing feel of an actress refusing to be pinned like a butterfly in a display case. Refusing to let one popular persona swallow the rest of her ability.

Those later parts were not chosen for comfort… they were chosen for heft! For emotional danger. For the kind of subject matter that does not come with a laugh track or a tidy bow. Among them were performances that brought her Emmy Award nominations again. One in ‘A Case of Rape in 1974’, in which she portrayed a rape victim, a role requiring not sensationalism but raw vulnerability & a steady hand, because such a story, handled poorly, becomes lurid. Handled with intelligence, it becomes a grim mirror held up to society’s cruelties. And then in 1975, in William Bast’s ‘The Legend of Lizzie Borden’, where she played Lizzie Borden. Accused of murder yet acquitted, a figure drenched in American folklore & suspicion. Half history, half nightmare. A character whose name alone can make a room go quiet, because the tale sits in the national mind like a dark nursery rhyme, & to inhabit that kind of part demands a performer who can suggest hidden chambers behind the eyes, motives left deliberately ambiguous, innocence & menace flickering in the same glance.

After Montgomery’s death, a genealogist named Rhonda McClure uncovered an odd twist of fate. Discovering that Montgomery & Borden were distant cousins, which is the kind of detail that makes you shiver a bit. Not because it changes the acting, acting is not blood magic, but because it adds a curious little echo to the casting. As if history sometimes enjoys its own private jokes. The genealogical thread tying performer & subject across generations & gossip. A scholarly footnote with a gothic tinge.

If you look at Montgomery’s working life as a whole, it reads like a long dance across American entertainment. Stage to screen to television & back again. Never merely drifting, always taking on different textures, & while the public may remember her most vividly for the bright domestic sorcery of Samantha Stephens; there is something rather marvellous in knowing that she kept reaching, kept stretching, kept refusing to be boxed into a single flavour. She began with that early television debut under her father’s banner, then stood on Broadway with enough command to earn a Theatre World Award. Stepped into film under Otto Preminger’s demanding eye, returned to Broadway again, then anchored a network hit that made history in the ratings, collecting Emmy & Golden Globe nominations along the way; & later turned towards serious dramatic material that asked her to explore pain, accusation, & the darker corners of human experience.