Isn’t it funny how, when you grow up watching certain television characters, their faces almost seem like family. Characters from Bewitched, Sanford and Son, The Andy Griffith Show, I Love Lucy, Gilligan’s Island, and Beverly Hillbillies certainly fit the description for me.

One of my favorites is Samantha and the beautiful actress who brought her to life, Elizabeth Montgomery.

She was born on April 15, 1933 in Hollywood, California. Ironically, one of my favorite film actors, Robert Montgomery, is her father and her mother was stage actress Elizabeth Allen. Talk about a talented family.

Fast Facts About Elizabeth Montgomery

• She lost out on the part of Edie Doyle in the iconic On the Waterfront (1954) to Eva Marie Saint. In his autobiography “A Life,” director Elia Kaza writes that the choices were narrowed down to Montgomery and Saint. Although Montgomery was fine in her screen test, there was an air of finishing school about her. He felt this wouldn’t bode well for Edie, who was raised on the waterfront in Hoboken, NJ.
• She never actually twitched her nose as her “Bewitched” character Samantha. Instead, she twitched her upper lip, which caused her nose to follow and thus gave the impression she was twitching her nose.
• Elizabeth appeared on The Flintstones episode, The Flintstones: Samantha in 1965 – voicing the beloved character she is best-known for.
• She turned down the role of “Krystle Carrington” on Dynasty.
• Elizabeth Montgomery and Lizzie Borden were sixth cousins once removed, both descending from 17th-century Massachusetts resident John Luther. Elizabeth (powerfully!) portrayed Lizzie in the 1975 film The Legend of Lizzie Borden.
• She was 5′ 6½.”
• Acting mentor and friend of Erin Murphy (Tabitha).
• (About her father, actor Robert Montgomery)  “He told me ‘If that’s what you want to do, you’re gonna really want to have to do it because there’s no room out there for some gutless wonder wandering around, you know, there are too many talented people’. And he said it’s one of the most horrifyingly, ego-blasting, destructive, awful, businesses that you can possibly get into, and he said ‘I really wouldn’t really wish it on anyone I care even a little bit about’. So knowing he cared more than a little bit about me, I thought ‘Whoops, this is really tough a one’. However after that conversation, he did say to me that when it is rewarding and it is good, it is such a high you can’t imagine it, and he’s right.”
• Her famous nose twitch was actually a nervous habit. When they were trying to figure out a trademark for the character Samantha the director William Asher noticed that when she got nervous she would twitch her upper lip, so they used that.
• Bewitched Pop Vinyls will be released this month (October 2019). I collect Pop Vinyls of my favorite movies, TV shows, actors, and actresses and I am as excited as a kid at Christmas about this! You can order the Bewitched Pops on Amazon. They will have Samantha, Endora, and Darrin. No doubt about it, they’ll have to have their own shelf.

A personal quote: “The minute someone says ‘Oh God, you could never do that; you can’t get that kind of stuff on the air’…that’s the kind of stuff I want to do.”