Twitch Upon a Star (18 page)

As fate would have it, Cassavetes was linked to Lizzie via a few TV appearances. First, in 1954, for an episode of
Robert Montgomery Presents
titled “Diary,” and then on his own show,
Johnny Staccato
, for an episode called “Tempted” (which aired November 19, 1959):

Robert B. Sinclair directed this
Staccato
segment, in which Lizzie has some memorable lines as
Faye Lynn
that, if they don't quite reflect her reality off-camera, certainly reference it.

For example, regarding her failed and insincere relationship with
Johnny, Faye
tells him: “We tried to make a go of it. It's just one of those things!” He says, “Faye—you've seen too many movies,” and she replies: “That's right, Johnny … too many movies with too many glamorous people, wearing glamorous clothes and going to glamorous places. But that's what I want, Johnny. I want it so very much.”

In reality, of course, Lizzie could not have cared less about those things … except attending movies, at least when she was a child. She always wished she could have seen more films in her youth, something her parents prevented her from experiencing.

Meanwhile, Lizzie as
Faye
shares a passionate kiss with Cassavetes as
Johnny
in one scene, probably the most sultry scene from her entire body of work.

Seven

“Only then in Europe could she begin to see Robert as a father, a person separate and different from the famous star.”

—Writer Jacqueline Starr,
Screen Stars Magazine
, August 1967

In 1979, Lizzie appeared in two very different TV-movies:
Act of Violence
and
Jennifer: A Woman's Story
.
Violence
was in keeping with her post-
Samantha
traumatic plot choices (a woman is assaulted and turns bitter);
Jennifer's
story was somewhat more uplifting (a wealthy woman loses her husband and takes over his successful company).

That same year, Lizzie's friend Lee Remick was featured in a film called
The Europeans
which was the initial presentation of Merchant Ivory Productions, headed by producer Ismail Merchant of Bombay and American director James Ivory, who later directed such acclaimed and stylish films as
Howards End
(1992) and
The Remains of the Day
(1993).

The Europeans
was the first in this series of movies to address the pertinent balance of social graces and reserved emotions—the kind Elizabeth had been addressing her entire life, as instructed by her parents, most certainly her father.

Remick was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, the daughter of Gertrude Margaret Waldo, an actress, and Francis Edwin “Frank” Remick, a department store proprietor. She appeared on six episodes of
Robert Montgomery Presents
, during which she and Lizzie developed their friendship.

Although the two young actresses never performed together on
Presents
, Remick made her Broadway debut with
Be Your Age
in 1953, the same year Lizzie debuted on Broadway in
Late Love
. They later appeared in a fanciful rendition of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novella
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz
, adapted by William Holdack for an episode of NBC's
Kraft Television Theatre
. Airing September 28, 1955, the story was broadly played by all cast members including Lizzie as a seemingly pre-
Serena
-esque character named
Jasmine
, who's unimpressed with her family's wealthy status.

Remick played her sister
Kismine
, alongside Lizzie's future TV-movie co-star William Daniels (from 1974's
A Case of Rape
) as her brother. Rounding out the cast was Signe Hasso and George Macready, as Lizzie's on-screen parents, and Mario Alcalde as Remick's boyfriend.

Lizzie has a free-for-all as
Jasmine
, reciting biting dialogue with such flare to her arrogant pretend mother and father, as if hoping her off-screen prestigious real parents would take a listen.

Here's a sample, regarding
Jasmine's
father:

To
Jasmine's
mother:

In several scenes,
Jasmine
is seen reading
Cinderella
, one of many fairy-tales, Disney-related or otherwise, that Lizzie loved; and at one point
Jasmine
says to her mother:

And then:

To her sister
Kismine
near the end of the episode:

And later, when she wants to accompany her sister and Alcalde:

Dialogue from the other characters also must have proved compelling for Lizzie upon her first read of the script. Remick's boyfriend says: “Everybody's youth is a dream,” to which Lee adds, “How pleasant to be young.”

The most telling non-
Jasmine
dialogue that might have hit a nerve in Lizzie's father/daughter dynamic was voiced by Macready's parental TV role: “Cruelty doesn't exist where self-preservation is concerned.”

In January 1954,
TeleVision Life
published the article, “Our Name Is Montgomery” by Norma Gould, in which Elizabeth talked about her how her parents viewed her career. She had expressed how much her father tried to discourage her from acting, painting the bleakest possible picture of the entertainment industry. “He said it was the most heartbreaking field you can go into,” she recalled. However, her father added that it could also be quite satisfying.

These comments were voiced the year Elizabeth debuted in “Summer Love,” an episode of
Robert Montgomery Players
, the summer replacement series for
Robert Montgomery Presents
. It was in “Love” that she co-starred with John Newland, who spoke glowingly of Lizzie, who called him a “wonderful performer.” When asked if they had ever dated, she replied, “Well, we've had drinks together after rehearsals at the Barberry Room. We're just good friends.”

Her ideal man, as explained in the article, was one with personality, character, ease, and a nice wardrobe. “She also prefers older men,” Gould wrote, as was later more than evident when Lizzie married Gig Young and then Bill Asher.

But at the moment, her father was the only older man in her life; and for the most part, he approved of her life and career. He kept a close eye on each of her performances, including those on
Robert Montgomery Presents
and the
Robert Montgomery Summer Theatre
shows. As for her mother, “Well, I guess she's pleased,” Elizabeth said. “You know how it is; she's never actually sat me down and said, ‘Elizabeth, I want to tell you how pleased I am with what you're doing.'”

In September of 1967,
TV Radio Mirror
magazine published the article, “An Old Beau Tells All about Liz Montgomery's Past,” by Jane Ardmore. It profiled a former boyfriend of Elizabeth's from New York, a physician who—because the American Medical Association apparently then frowned upon the personal publicity of its members—was clandestinely identified as “Bud Baker.”

Baker used to dance at various high society balls with Elizabeth; he had attended St. Mark's High School in New York with Lizzie's brother Skip and then later went to Harvard with a young sophisticate named Frederic Gallatin Cammann, who graduated in 1951.

In 1950, after her parents divorced, Lizzie moved with her family to New York. Her father was despondent over the lack of Hollywood roles for forty-something men his age and he had high hopes for a lateral career move on the East Coast. He was also now married to the socially prominent Elizabeth “Buffy” Harkness, an heiress who just happened to be close friends with Cammann's mother, who according to Tom McCartney, was known as Mrs. H. Thomas Richardson; Cammann's father was Frederic Almy Cammann.

While it is uncertain as to who exactly introduced Lizzie to Frederic, who would in time become her first husband, it was most likely Buffy, who was slightly class conscious. But Lizzie and Cammann had many mutual professional and personal connections, and they saw one another at various social functions and dances in New York, the same debutante gatherings that were periodically attended by Bud Baker. As Baker told
TV Radio Mirror
in 1967, “I'd always be on the stag line,” where he would see Lizzie whom he described as “very, very pretty, very popular.”

“You couldn't dance with her one minute straight without some other guy cutting in,” he said. “And she always seemed so above it all; bored stiff, really.” Or so she appeared. In reality, the high society game wasn't Lizzie's style. Only later did Baker understand that she was a country girl at heart, someone who loved horses and dogs, any animal, and the wide open spaces of the Montgomery compound in Upstate, New York.

“The social game was new to her,” he said. Her entrée was, he confirmed, by way of her stepmother Buffy Harkness, “and of course, everyone knew she was Robert Montgomery's daughter. But Liz was a bright light in her own right. She had this built-in radiance.”

Bud had first met Lizzie when his cousin escorted her to a prom at St. Mark's—a cousin who apparently still treasured her picture in his year book. “And let me say,” he clarified, “that my cousin wasn't any big romance of Elizabeth's. He was a
fun
friend. That's what I was, too.”