Elizabeth Montgomery

Elizabeth Victoria Montgomery was an American actress born on April 15, 1933, in Los Angeles, California, to film star Robert Montgomery and Broadway actress Elizabeth Daniel Bryan Allen. She had an elder sister, Martha Bryan Montgomery, born in 1931, who died in infancy, and a younger brother, Robert B. Montgomery Jr. Of Irish and Scottish descent, Montgomery's great-grandfather, Archibald Montgomery, was born in County Antrim and emigrated to the United States from Belfast in 1847. She attended the Westlake School for Girls in Holmby Hills, California, before graduating from the Spence School in New York City, and subsequently studied for three years at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan.

Montgomery launched her professional career in the early 1950s through appearances on her father's television series Robert Montgomery Presents, including work with his summer stock company of performers. In October 1953, she made her Broadway debut in Late Love, a credit that earned her a Theatre World Award. She returned to Broadway in 1956 in the comedy The Loud Red Patrick. Her film debut came in Otto Preminger's The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell in 1955, and her early television work included appearances on Studio One, Kraft Television Theater, The Twilight Zone, Wagon Train, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Burke's Law, among other programs. At the 13th Primetime Emmy Awards, she received a nomination for her portrayal of southern nightclub performer Rusty Heller in a 1960 episode of The Untouchables. In 1963, she appeared in the film Johnny Cool, directed by William Asher, and in the comedy Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?, directed by Daniel Mann and starring Dean Martin and Carol Burnett.

Montgomery's career reached its widest audience through the ABC situation comedy Bewitched, in which she played the central role of witch Samantha Stephens beginning in 1964. Dick York originally portrayed her husband, later replaced by Dick Sargent. Starting in the second season, Montgomery also took on the role of Samantha's cousin Serena under the pseudonym Pandora Spocks. The series ran for eight seasons, from 1964 to 1972, and earned Montgomery five Primetime Emmy Award nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations. In 1965, she made a cameo appearance as a witch in the beach party film How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, directed by Asher, and that same year provided the voice of Samantha for an episode of the animated series The Flintstones.

Following the conclusion of Bewitched, Montgomery pursued dramatic television roles that differed substantially from her Samantha Stephens persona. She earned Emmy Award nominations for her performances as a rape victim in A Case of Rape in 1974 and as accused murderer Lizzie Borden in The Legend of Lizzie Borden in 1975. After her death, genealogist Rhonda McClure determined that Montgomery and Borden were sixth cousins once removed, both descended from 17th-century Massachusetts resident John Luther; Montgomery had been unaware of this connection when she took the role. In 1977, she played a police detective in A Killing Affair opposite O. J. Simpson, and in the same year appeared in the television film The Trial of Elizabeth Chase as a woman accused of witchcraft. She portrayed a pioneer woman in 1820s Ohio in the 1978 miniseries The Awakening Land, a performance that earned her ninth Emmy nomination. Between 1980 and 1983, she appeared in a series of Japanese television commercials for Lotte Corp.'s Mother chocolate biscuits and cookies. In the 1985 television film Amos, she played a villainous nurse who abuses residents of a senior care facility, with Kirk Douglas and Dorothy McGuire among the cast members playing her wards.

Montgomery's Broadway career extended across several decades, from her 1953 debut through a final stage appearance in 1989. That year she returned to Broadway in a production of Love Letters opposite Robert Foxworth. One of her last recorded performances was the role of a barmaid in the Batman: The Animated Series episode Showdown, which aired posthumously. Her final television series was an Edna Buchanan detective series, the second installment of which first aired on May 9, 1995. Montgomery died on May 18, 1995.

In her personal life, Montgomery married New York City socialite Frederick Gallatin Cammann in 1954; the marriage ended in divorce less than a year later. She was married to Academy Award-winning actor Gig Young from 1956 to 1963, and subsequently married director-producer William Asher in 1963. With Asher she had three children: William, Robert, and Rebecca, with the latter two pregnancies incorporated into the storyline of Bewitched.