Bewitched and Beyond: The Fan Who Came to Dinner (3 page)

The next day we arrived together at the Studio. I think the guy who had once told me: “anytime you come out look me up, we’ll chat” was taken aback that I had actually done it as our initial meeting at Columbia was met with a bit of resistance. But Kasey and I still kept a positive attitude and “just knew” that we had them in our back pocket (Ahh, the faith of the young and young at heart). We were given a small tour of the studio, saw the sound stages where
Bewitched
and
I Dream of Jeannie
(among so much more) were filmed and got to actually see inside Harry Cohen’s office.

A QUICK SIDE NOTE
about the original Czar of Columbia Pictures; In his day, Harry Cohen was NOT well liked. He would bark orders from his office window at all the writers. If he did not hear the sounds of typing, you were out! His wife was his secretary and sat out front of his office. This did not detour Harry and his womanizing ways, the man who made stars of Rita Hayworth (and later Kim Novak when he got angry at Hayworth) simply had a secret staircase put into a small closet in his personal office. If Mrs. Cohen ever knew about the hopeful starlets he paraded in and out of there she never said a word!

ON ANOTHER FUN NOTE,
whether it was a recreation or not, the office used for Darrin’s psychiatrist in an episode from season 3 called “No More Mr. Nice Guy” was the exact same in look as Mr. Cohen’s. Even the doorknobs, Aunt Clara, are the same as on set!

After that initial let-down, I went back to Smyrna, Herbie went back to New York, but Kasey and I continued to chat every day.

Laura Elliot (Kasey) with M-G-M’s first big star: the original Leo the Lion. I probably should have put this photo first as all good pictures started with his roar! LOL

Chapter 3

Josie Imogene Rogers

I’d like to tell you a bit about the “early” Kasey. “Kasey” was a stage name; her third, as a matter of fact. She was born Josie Imogene (pronounced “EYE-mo-gene” in this case) Rogers in Moorehouse, Missouri on December 15, 1925; not 1926, as some bios have reported. The confusion in age began when she went to Paramount and decided to shave a year off, as the life span of the starlet is so short.

Her parents were Eben Elijah and Ina Mae Rogers — he being from Illinois, and she from Kentucky.

At the age of two, the Rogers family left Missouri and moved to Los Angeles to a home on 61st Street. By the time Kasey was twelve, they were living in Burbank. (Kasey once figured that she had lived in at least
thirty-six
different homes in her lifetime!)

It was here in grade school, that she discovered she could hit a baseball farther than any boy, and they tagged her with the nickname “Casey.” It would be many years later when her second husband would change the “C” to a “K.”

Shortly after, she became engaged to a young man from Scotland named Tommy, whose family had recently moved to California. Because he was Scottish, Tommy couldn’t fight for America, so he enlisted in the RAF (Royal Air Force) instead.

Kasey kept all his letters and a few mementos until just a few months before her death. I never read them, but she once told me that he sounded increasingly frightened about a huge secret mission he was about to go on.

Tommy’s uneasy feelings may have been a premonition because the plane he commandeered on that very mission went down under mysterious circumstances and Imogene never saw him again. Tommy was only twenty years old.

We spent many hours in the last year of Kasey’s life trying to find out what had happened to Tommy, but never did. Kasey harbored some guilt over thoughts she had of breaking off the engagement, but Tommy, at least in this lifetime, never knew of her intentions.

Imogene later married James Donnellan after briefly dating his brother. Albeit too late, she ultimately realized, and freely admitted, that she had married the wrong Donnellan!

About this same time, a talent scout from Paramount Pictures had seen Kasey working as a show girl (under the name “Sandy Donnellan”) at the Earl Carroll Theatre.

An Earl Carroll Girl was Hollywood’s answer to Broadway’s Ziegfeld Girl. Earl Carroll Girls were gorgeous, leggy, and performed entertaining song and dance revues on an 80-foot main stage with a 60-foot wide double revolving circular stage that rotated in two different directions. As a matter of fact, the theater is still there on Sunset Boulevard.

FUN SIDE NOTE:
In the mid-1990s, Kasey, Sandra Gould, (the second “Gladys Kravitz”) and Bernard Fox (“Dr. Bombay”), once did a talk show on that very stage. During one of the breaks, Kasey began looking around backstage, and found what was left of this amazing revolving stage from decades before. She excitedly showed it to us and the crew members who were working there. Because the theater had been turned into a sound stage a few years before, no one working there at the time had ever noticed what was left of this amazing DOUBLE revolving stage from a Hollywood long gone by.

It was during this time that Imogene also found out she was pregnant. To her, that situation was a no-brainer. She quickly decided that taking care of her baby was much more important than the talent scout, or being a movie star at Paramount, so she passed. Can you imagine?!

Many determined actresses would have not even considered passing as an option.

On December sixteenth, one day after her twenty-first birthday, Imogene gave birth to a little baby boy named after his father, James, but who would always be called “Jay.”

Imogene graduated from Burbank High soon after playing the lead in her high school play,
The Taming of the Shrew.
Her leading “man” was her best girlfriend, because most of the available boys had gone to war.

Imogene and Tommy.

Kasey aka Sandy Donnellan is on the right.

Chapter 4

The Paramount Years

Less than a year later, with her marriage in shreds, Kasey decided to throw caution to the wind and call the Paramount talent scout to ask if he’d still be interested.

Amazingly, he said yes (one lucky girl, here!) and a screen test was set up opposite none other than Paramount legend, Charles Boyer! (Today, that would be like going on YOUR FIRST EVER audition and reading with Brad Pitt!)

And if that wasn’t amazing enough, only three days later, she found herself co-starring opposite future “Superman,” George Reeves, in her first film called
Special Agent.
The film also starred William Eyeth, who was writing a little show at the time called
Lend an Ear.

Lend An Ear
would be the stage play that would ultimately propel Carol Channing to stardom.

FUN NOTE:
Fifty years later, Kasey and I went to see Carol recreate her legendary role of Dolly Levi at the Pasadena Playhouse. She was amazing! When she descended the staircase singing “Hello Dolly,” the audience rose to their feet and roared with approval — and didn’t stop! For what seemed to be an amazingly long time, Carol just
stood
there! Then, slowly she picked up her skirt and train, and went
back up the stairs,
pointed to the band, and did it all over again! This time, the audience went even wilder!

Finally, in loving desperation, she went to the edge of the stage, motioned for everyone to quiet down and simply stated, “I’d like to go on, but you won’t shut-up!”