Twitch Upon a Star (34 page)
Read Twitch Upon a Star Online
Authors: Herbie J. Pilato
Moorehead was part of the equally legendary Orson Welles and his esteemed Mercury Theatre group, a band that eventually transferred their unbridled talents into several classic films, not the least of which was 1941's
Citizen Kane
(considered in many a cinematic circle as one of the best movies ever made).
In August of 1965,
Bewitched
entered its second hit season. Moorehead talked with reporter Earle Hesse of
Screen Stars
magazine about working with Lizzie, saying: “She keeps us all on our toes. I play a witch also on that show, and it takes some doing to out-witch and out-charm her. She's a born scene-stealer.” And she was, literally, in two “double aspect” episodes of
Bewitched
, initially, in a first-season Dick York episode called “Which Witch Is Which,” and then in “The Mother-in-Law-of-the-Year,” during the middle of Dick Sargent's second year (but the show's seventh season). Summaries for each episode are as follows:
“Which Witch is Which?” (3-3-65) Written by Earl Barrett. Directed by William D. Russell:
Samantha
is unable to make a dress-fitting appointment, so
Endora
transforms herself into her daughter's double and shows up in her place. While being fitted,
Endora-as-Sam
catches the eye of
Bob Fraser
(Ron Randell), a friend of
Darrin's
.
Mrs. Kravitz
(Alice Pearce) sees the two together, and thinks
Samantha
is cheating on
Darrin.
In the end,
Endora
pops in at the
Stephenses
in her
Sam-guise
and leads
Fraser
to believe that she and
Samantha
are “identical twins.”
“Mother-in-Law-of-the-Year” (1-14-71) Written by Philip and Henry Sharp. Directed by William Asher:
Samantha
is forced to impersonate
Endora
who in a unique display of emotion feels neglected by her son-in-law. To get on his good side, she creates and stars in an ad campaign called the “Mother-in-Law-of-the-Year” for
Bobbins Bon Bons
, his new client at
McMann & Tate Advertising
. At first,
Mr. Bobbins
(John McGiver) is smitten by
Endora's
creative charms, but the tables turn when she grows bored with the mortal festivities. At which time,
Samantha
replicates her mother's image, and literally inserts herself into the “Mother-in-Law-of-the-Year” TV commercial.
Endora
then rematerializes in the commercial, and everyone sees double.
Off-screen, however, Lizzie sometimes saw red, as she and Moorehead, aka
Aggie
, were not always on the same page. Both were independent thinkers and rarely backed away from confrontation, although in 1989 Lizzie was quick to make clarifications:
People were always trying to create fights between us and said that Aggie and I hated each other or that Aggie and Maurice (Evans) hated each other, or that Maurice and I hated each other. And none of that was ever true. Even Mabel (Albertson, who played
Darrin's
mother) and Aggie got along fine, mostly because Mabel wouldn't put up with any bullshit. And it was great because Aggie would always try to push it (the limits) with the women that would come on the show. And I would just sit back and say, “Well, let's see how this turns out.”
Elizabeth believed Moorehead enjoyed the challenge of their relationship “because she knew I loved her dearly,” and that “Aggie's bark was worse than her bite.”
But Moorehead chomped at the bit when Dick Sargent was hired to replace Dick York as the new
Darrin
in the fall of 1969. Sargent's new term on the show began on a foot of edgy hostility. Set in her ways, Moorehead was not at all pleased with his presence. She was fond of York and his talent, and respected his New Age-like spirituality. Even though such beliefs countered her conservative Christian viewpoint, Moorehead felt his presence was key to the show's success.
As was explained in
TV Guide
, May 29, 1965, with the article, “He's Almost Invisible in the Glare of Success,” York many times invoked religious items into sculpting, an art he practiced in his spare time. He described one of his pieces as “four-dimensional”:
I try to incorporate all religious teaching, the Old Testament, the New Testament, Confucius, Buddha, The Agnostic, one figure representing all. In the front you see Adam, a cloud-like Adam. Eve is beside him on the ground looking into an empty cradle. As you revolved around it, the back of Eve's head becomes Woman. And Adam, from the back, is the crucified Christ. Then Eve becomes the Virgin Mary from another angle. There are six different perspectives.
It seemed a convoluted concept, but Moorehead respected York's vision, which in her view, contributed to her understanding of the man behind the vision:
I probably understand him better than others. He's rather profound, you know. He has a spiritual quality. I am a religious girl. I have a great faith. This creates a rapport between us. Actors who have this spiritual quality often understand each other without much communication.
Adds Moorehead biographer Charles Tranberg today:
Aggie Moorehead absolutely loved Dick York! And this never wavered. They both had a deep spirituality. Aggie's was more of a conventional God-based spirituality which was developed from a childhood as a minister's daughter. She was a fundamentalist. Dick was not. He was spiritual, but he was more of a deep thinker. He was the type of guy who could find God anywhere. God is being outside looking at a beautiful mountain range. He was interested in all kinds of philosophies, not only the Christian faith. But still Aggie saw him as a fellow seeker of wisdom and somebody who felt that there was a supreme being. They had lots of conversations on the set, between scenes, on things like this. When Dick left the show, she was not happy. She felt he was a big part of the success of the show and even said that he had the hardest part of all because he had to make all these supernatural things happening to him seem real, and that took real acting, another thing she appreciated. She thought he was a superb actor.
With specific regard to the
Darrin
switch, Tranberg adds:
Aggie didn't like the
Darrin
switch. She hoped it wouldn't happen, but she accepted it, because this type of thing does happen in the theatre all the time as she noted. She took out her disappointment on Dick Sargent, who was hired to play the new
Darrin.
For a while on the set she made his life difficult. He wasn't happy about the way she treated him either. She certainly didn't have the rapport on-screen that she had with York. Eventually as time went by, she did mellow somewhat, even inviting Sargent to her annual Christmas-Birthday bashes, but there certainly wasn't the same bond with Sargent that she had with York.
Although Agnes Moorehead claimed no lack of communication between herself and Dick Sargent, or any personal objection to him replacing Dick York, David White, the irascible
Larry Tate
on
Bewitched,
recalled things differently.
In the fall of 1970, the
Bewitched
cast and crew traveled to Salem, Massachusetts (the show's first on-location filming) for an arc of episodes having to do with
Samantha
attendance at a Witches' Convention. On the plane-ride back to Los Angeles, White was seated next to Sargent, who he said, had a tear in his eye. Apparently, something Moorehead said had made him cry. “He was very upset,” White said.
It was like that from the beginning. At the first table script-reading with Sargent the year before, in 1969, White said Moorehead rose from her seat, turned to all of those who would listen, and stated pointedly, “I am not fond of
change
.”
In 1992, Sargent granted an interview to author Owen Keehnen, which appears in Keehnen's book,
We're Here, We're Queer
(Prairie Avenue Productions, 2011). According to Sargent, Moorehead said, “They should never meddle with success.”
“Meaning,” Sargent explained, “Dick York should never have been replaced, which I thought was a very cruel and unthinking thing to say in front of me. But that was her. She came to rehearsals with a Bible in one hand and her script in the other. She was certainly the most professional woman in the world, and she was so good [an actress]. Thank God we became friends eventually.”
In 1989, Sargent only praised York's performance as
Darrin
, calling him “excellent!” In 1992, Sargent told Keehnen that he was set to play the famous
Mr. Stephens
before York, and even actor Richard Crenna (
The Farmer's Daughter
), who was in the running for the role. “I had the interview and by the time they got back to me, I had already signed on a series called
Broadside
, so Dick York got it. But I was the original choice.”
One year before, in 1988, York assessed Sargent's take on
Darrin.
Although York wanted the summer of 1969 to “rest up” in order to continue playing the part through that fall and for the remainder of the series, he had nothing but kind words for Sargent: “The man had a job to do, and he did it well. He was an actor, and he did a fine job. I never held anything against him.”
As to York's relationship with Elizabeth,
Bewitched
writer Doug Tibbles recalls:
He was quiet, and now looking back, that was because of the pain he was in. He did not seem loaded the way people on pain medication [do]. It didn't seem that way at all. He just seemed like a nice quiet professional. He was semi-detached. Through my eyes, his relationship with Elizabeth was simply professional. I mean, they were kind of almost sweet. But you couldn't tell if it was just two polite people or two people just being polite. I didn't see tons of closeness and I didn't see tons of distance. It was somewhere in the middle.
That's kind of where Elizabeth found herself when she ultimately confronted Moorehead about her mistreatment of Sargent, of whom Lizzie was fond and enthusiastic about his joining the
Bewitched
cast. She made every attempt to keep peace on the set. At one point early on, she walked with Sargent to see Moorehead, who proved to be nothing less than unwelcoming. As Lizzie explained in 1989, upon greeting Sargent, Moorehead outstretched her arm and instructed him to kiss her hand, as if he was greeting royalty. Lizzie was stunned. “Oh, Aggie,” she said with a ting of sarcasm. “How wonderful ⦠I can always count on you to make people feel at home.”
Moorehead responded with an icy glare, but Lizzie would have none of it. “Don't you look at me that way,” she told her.
Lizzie thought “Aggie's response was great, because that meant we were really communicating.”
Later that day, she walked into Moorehead's dressing room, something she rarely did, and communicated some more:
Now, you know how you can be, and I know how you can be. So, I don't want you to be like you and I know you can be. Obviously you're being difficult because you know what I'm telling you is true, and that I should have never come in here ⦠and that we should have never had this conversation, because it may sound like I think you're stupid. And if that's true, well, then, I'm sorry. I do apologize. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings by telling you something that you already know.
As Lizzie went on to explain in 1989, Moorehead feigned ignorance. “She pretended as if she didn't understand what I meant and was a little aggravated.”
A short time later, she and Moorehead were back on the set, and ready to shoot a scene. Suddenly, in the middle of rehearsal, Moorehead turned to her TV daughter and said, “You're right.”
“That was all that was ever said about the incident,” Lizzie recalled. She believed Moorehead enjoyed the challenge of their relationship because “she knew I loved her dearly. We really did have a mother-daughter relationship. I truly did adore Aggie. She was heaven.”
A few graffiti artists in Hollywood would have agreed. Sometime in the mid-1980s, the phrase, “Agnes Moorehead is God,” was canvassed across the side of a Tinseltown structure, once standing opposite the Capitol Records building on Vine Street. Upon learning this in 1989, Lizzie's eyes widened and smiled in bemusement. “Huh!” she said, “She finally made it, eh?”
