Twitch Upon a Star (54 page)
Read Twitch Upon a Star Online
Authors: Herbie J. Pilato
At the time, Knell was only in his late teens, and because he was just starting out in the business, had little free cash to spread around. He didn't even own a car, only a bicycle, which he'd ride to various auditions, location shoots, and/or rehearsals.
One day, shortly before
Belle Starr
began filming, Lizzie hosted a first read-through of the script at her home in Beverly Hills, which Knell defined as “interesting.” It had dialogue that he defines today as “very stylized and not modern at all.” At any rate, those present at the reading were the film's entire main cast and crew, including the movie's director John Alonzo, as well as Robert Foxworth, whom Knell remembers as “a nice guy.”
Knell, who lived in Laurel Canyon at the time, says he took the “longest route possible” to Elizabeth's home. “It was very scenic and wonderful.” But when he arrived at Lizzie's door, it was very comedic and hilarious, for it was at this point that he was introduced to her trademark sense of humor. “She was very playful!” he says.
Indeed, upon first seeing Knell at her door, alongside his bike, Lizzie mused, “What time
yesterday
did you leave?”
Knell laughed, and from that moment on, enjoyed working on
Starr
with Lizzie, whom he called “great,” particularly when it came to mounting horses during filming. “She rode very well,” he recalls. Little wonder, of course, because Lizzie had been riding since she was three.
The exterior scenes for
Starr
added to the movie's realism. It was filmed on location in Agoura Hills, California, which is now a modern, developed area. But in 1980, the cast was in awe of its then-wilderness. Having just completed filming for “Life on the Mississippi,” another production filmed on location in a hinterland setting, Knell in particular was “very much into authenticity” when it came to acting. So much so that when he was cast to play Lizzie's son
Ed
of the Old West in
Starr
, he decided not to wash his hair because “nobody did back then, and it seemed like it would be weird if I did.” Instead, while filming one
Starr
moment, it became “weird” for Lizzie that he did not.
The scene was in
Ed's
bedroom on the farm he shared with
Belle,
shortly before a great fire in the barn, which is ignited by vigilantes who seek to rid the county of
Belle
and her band. Knell as
Ed
is sitting on the bed and the script calls for Lizzie as
Belle
to run her hands through his hair. Upon noticing that his locks were somewhat hygienically challenged, Knell muses, “Lizzie let out a big â
Yick!'
” As to just how “authentic” Lizzie's hair was during the shoot, Knell sustains, “I think she probably washed hers and just made it look dirty.”
In all, Knell says his time with Lizzie on
Starr
was well-spent. “It was just a joy working with her. I think the one particular scene that I remember the most [is the one] where I almost got to kiss her, which was great, but they changed the script and we never got to do it.” Just as well the kissing scene never took place. Having such a moment between
Belle
and her son, no matter how troubled they were, would likely have been too ambiguous an endeavor for the network censors. However, as Knell concludes, “It definitely would have added an additional layer to [their] already complicated relationship.”
While network officials continued to censor scenes from Lizzie's fictional films, she, of course, was no stranger to complicated relationships in real life. Yet, again, her playful nature, like a good portion of her very real character, was inspired by her grandmother Becca.
As Elizabeth expressed to
TV Radio Mirror
in April 1970, Becca â¦
⦠made games of everything. You asked the meaning of a word, she'd say, “What do you think it means?” And, when you came up with your childish' explanation: “That's marvelous, Elizabeth; now let's look it up and see what the people say it means.” In short, the dictionary. And often [after] we found out, she'd say, “But I like your definition much better.”
As Bob Foxworth had expressed on A&E's
Biography
, it was Becca who had also inspired Elizabeth's obsession with the race track. In fact, one day in her dressing room while filming
Bewitched
, she was sprawled out on the floor with a copy of the racing form.
As was explained in
TV Radio Mirror
, November 1969, a publicist walked in on her and howled in protest. Lizzie looked up from her scratch-sheet, pencil-clenched in teeth, and wondered what was wrong. “If you ever want to ruin your image,” said the publicist, “this sort of thing will do it.”
Elizabeth didn't give it a thought and continued on in her carefree way. It was an effervescence that today might be described as “emotional intelligence.” But she had developed that part of her being years before science came up with a name for it, particularly when she was a young lass playing on the Montgomery family compound in Patterson, New York, with her cousin Panda and friend Sally Kemp. “Of course we all enjoyed playing together as children,” Kemp recalls, “and Panda had the same little exquisite face as Elizabeth. But Elizabeth had that
intellectual curiosity
; her intelligence, her interest in being alive in the moment. I don't think she had any aspirations about being a classical actress.”
Whereas Sally, on the other hand, is still eager to act in, for example, a live stage production of
Trojan Women
, the Greek tragedy by playwright Euripides (that was once made into a 1971 feature film starring Katharine Hepburn). She wants to play
Hephzibah
, and she wants do it in an amphitheater “in Greece somewhere,” and she doesn't care if “anyone ever sees it.”
Conversely, she believes Elizabeth “never gave a hoot about any of that. Life was fun for her and she wanted it to be that way.”
As reporter Rose Perlberg assessed in
TV Picture Life
, October 1965, “
Fun
was the word that cropped up most constantly in our conversation with Liz. To her, work is fun ⦠the idea of having ⦠babies is fun, and being married seems to be the most fun of all.”
Lizzie herself admitted as much to
Modern Screen
magazine in May 1965. “I'm not riddled with ambition,” she said. “Acting is something I've done because it's fun and hard work. I enjoy hard work. But a career with me is about as close to last as second can get. First is my life: love, children, and a home.”
In January that year, she added in
TV Radio Mirror
:
When women choose a life of competition with men in the marketplace, it is usually due to circumstances beyond their control ⦠like sickness in the family or some inner drive for success that's caused by a childhood frustration. Most women try to walk the tightrope between home and office, and some of them manage to do surprisingly well at it. In my case, the problem is much the same for both
Samantha
and me. For the sake of home and husband, she'd like to kick the witchcraft habit, but finds it too hard to do. I'd like to concentrate all my heart and soul on my private life, but I find it impossible to forsake acting. I grew up in the actor's world of make-believe, and it's become part of my living tissue. My great hope is that, like
Samantha
, when I pursue my special brand of witchery, it will not offend my husband but make me more intriguing to him.
Of course, none of that was easy in 1965 when
Bewitched
was a massive hit and she was married to Bill Asher. It was difficult before she worked on the show, and remained a challenge after she ended the series. Lizzie may have pursed acting, but she never pined after economic success. She was born into that. However, she hungered for other forms of success, in romance, friendship, and family. She never gave up on love in any of its forms, even if she sometimes found too much of it, too soon.
At twenty, she married socialite Fred Cammann, and divorced him one year later. At twenty-three, she wed actor Gig Young and after six years, divorced him, too. Shortly after that, she fell in love with Bill Asher and their honeymoon lasted approximately eleven years. It was her twenty-year romance with Bob Foxworth, whom she finally married approximately twenty-eight months before she died, that was her lengthiest relationship.
Over the years, she endured personal disappointments throughout the long, grueling professional hours, beginning with
Robert Montgomery Presents
, and followed by numerous TV guest star appearances, feature films,
Bewitched,
and then later, her TV-movies. She survived the heartache of her personal life with the backbone she sustained by way of her strict upbringing. She viewed herself as a Hollywood product, and she was okay with that. She pegged the glamour and glitz for what it was worth, well-aware of the countless actresses who looked to their careers for happiness because they lacked inner peace within themselves. For Lizzie, acting was a normal, natural thing.
Her parents had talent and performing was something she did. It was “fun” to do. It was not something for which she compromised her life. And she knew that from the onset of
Bewitched's
popularity, and most probably before, as she relayed to
Modern Screen
in 1965:
It's wonderful and gratifying to know that people are enjoying the idea that you enjoy ⦠bringing them something that gives pleasure. But if you're lucky enough to have success with a series, it's something that you really can't think of as being your own. You should be grateful, of course, and you have a responsibility to the people who are watching, but success itself is something just loaned to you. Once it's gone, if you felt you'd lost something then the other part of your life, your basic personal life, would not be completed. That's not right! I've always felt that way.
In 2004, New Path Press published
The Seesaw Girl and Me: A Memoir
by Dick York, who appreciated Lizzie's playful spirit. As is explained in this very honest book, there were moments in
Bewitched
when he and Lizzie:
⦠really did develop a close personal relationship above and beyond the characters, but necessary to the characters (of
Darrin
and
Samantha
). I mean, we did play games. Liz was a game player and a crossword puzzle fan, and we invented all kinds of guessing games and word games â¦
Her TV-movie co-star, veteran actor Ronny Cox, agrees with that.
Cox is best known in classic TV history for his short-lived role as the father on
Apple's Way
, created by Earl Hamner as a contemporary take on his mega-hit family period piece,
The Waltons
(which was set in the Depression). The liberal-minded Cox is also known for iconic feature films like 1972's
Deliverance
, in which he co-starred with Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, and Jon Voight (father to Angelina Jolie).
Farrah Fawcett, in one of her first pre-
Charlie's Angels
TV roles, made a guest appearance on
Apple's Way
, and would later star in NBC's acclaimed 1984 TV-movie,
The Burning Bed
âa film that shared many similarities with the network's 1974 TV-movie,
A Case of Rape
, in which Cox had co-starred with Lizzie (both movies featured iconic blonde stars who played characters that were physically assaulted and mentally abused). Cox also worked with Lizzie in her 1992 TV-movie,
With Murder in Mind
. But it was on
Rape
where they met and bonded, mostly due to her approachable personality, their shared political ideals, and because they both enjoying playing games. Real games. Not head games. Cox explains:
I grew up poor in New Mexico, really poor. All we had was a radio and a deck of cards and dominoes. So I knew every card game known to man and I played those kinds of games my whole life. Plus, those were the kinds of things that you could do that didn't cost money.
Like Cox, Lizzie enjoyed such everyday games, he thinks, because she craved a certain amount of normalcy in her life. “She came from a world of acting and the theatre,” he says, where there's such “vicious competition. And I don't discount for a second Lizzie's competitiveness.”
But Lizzie's love for games, be it Gin, Scrabble, Charades, or Backgammon, the last which was all the rage when Lizzie and Cox met, were outlets for her “competitive nature,” says Cox, who classifies himself as a “real competitor.” So much so, he used to have a tennis court on his property and on every day that he didn't work (which was rare, because he's not stopped working since
A Case of Rape
), he enjoyed playing tennis. And if it came down to who wanted to win more, he or Lizzie, Cox says,
⦠it would be me. Most people I know of who are as fiercely competitive are also not the best losers in the world. But whether I win or lose, I don't lord it over people. And I think that's a rare thing, and that was also Lizzie's quality. And the thing about Lizzie is that she was never a prima donna in any sense of the word. Working on [
A Case of Rape
] was one of the smoothest sets I've ever been on, and that was mostly because of her. We connected more on a personal level. It was not that I was knocked out by her stardom or [that] she was knocked out by me. We just immediately hit it off.
