WHAT'S NEW
BIOGRAPHY
PHOTO GALLERIES
SCREEN CREDITS
STAGE CREDITS
ON THE RECORD
MEMORABILIA
SIX YEAR GIG
ASHMONT
A WORTHWHILE VENTURE
LIZ'S DAD
WANTED ITEMS
LINKS
GUESTBOOK
MAILING LIST
CONTACT THE WEBMASTER
ONLY SAMANTHA KNOWS ITS REAL-LIFE SECRET
by Terry Francis
TV Radio Mirror
April, 1966
Some questions are like links in a chain, one leads into the next. So to this question, Liz responds with a laughing question of her own. "Have you ever known a baby that wasn't utterly bewitching?" she asks.
Her husband, producer Bill Asher, is no help either. Says he with a crafty wink, "You'll have to ask Samantha. You know, it takes one to know one."
Now on a show which features such fascinating witches and warlocks (which is the name for male witches) as Samantha, her mother Endora (Agnes Moorehead), her father Maurice (Maurice Evans) and Aunt Clara (Marion Lorne), it should surprise nobody to learn that Sam's baby Tabatha is capable of casting spells. In fact, those who watch the hilarious shenanigans of these all-too-human practitioners of deviltry must be aware that Tabatha's daddy, Darrin (Dick York), has read the riot act ot his wife regarding their daughter.
"We'll have none of that funny business around here, if you please," Darrin fumed. "Tab's going to be a normal, well-brought-up little girl. No broomstick riding and no putting hexes on the baby doctor. And that's final!"
As might be expected, Samantha has meekly bowed to her husband's wish. But, she wails in private, if the little thing is a teeny-weeny witch, how is anyone going to keep her in line? Once Tabatha finds out her power (and what baby doesn't have the power to make fools out of ordinary adults?) she's bound to exert a certain charm to get her bottle when she wants it, or to make Mommy and Daddy her slaves.
Says Elizabeth, "You might as well say my real-life little baby, Bobby is a warlock. He has already, at the age of five months, beguiled his dad into buying him a catcher's mitt. Imagine that! If that's not witchcraft, I simply don't know what is..."
HOW MANY BABIES DOES SAMANTHA HAVE? ONE? MORE! TWINS? MORE!
"Well," smiles Bill Asher, "it wasn't anyting of the sort. I happened to be on Hollywood Boulevard and passed a sports shop. I looked in the window at some golf clubs, and suddenly I thought that I really want both our little boys (our first is William) to be redblooded American kids.
"For no reason at all, I got this sudden urge. It was like something or somebody, whispering in my ear, which is just nonsense, of course, but it kept whispering, 'Buy that glove for Bobby, buy it for Bobby.' Before I knew it there was the catcher's mitt beside me in the car."
"But it wasn't witchcraft, naturally," smiles Liz.
"Naturally," Bill asserts, but his face is a study of suspicion and doubt.
The real mothers of the babies--yes, there is more than one; in fact, more than two!--who have played Tabatha in Bewitched, have a few words on this subject, too.
Says Mrs. Robert Gentry, whose baby appears on the cover of this issue (on the right) and at the bottom of page 35 (first picture in the article -- ED), "Some people may not know this, but in Hollywood, whenever a baby is hired to appear before the cameras, twins, instead of a single baby, are used. Luckily, I do have twins, Heidi and Laura, born August 16, 1965. They were small enough to play the infant Tabatha on the series.
"The event caused a real flurry of excitement in my family. My husband was amused but my little Karen, age 7 1/2, was absolutely thrilled. 'Just think,' she proudly told all her friends, 'my baby sisters are going to be the baby of Samatha, the TV witch.' Then she popped the big question: 'Will the baby be a witch, too?' I told her we'd have to wait and see. She answered, 'Well, wouldn't it be marvelous if she was able to wiggle her nose and changer her own diaper, too? It would save a lot of work!'"
Though the Gentry twins played Tabatha when she was barely a few weeks old, they were not the first to portray her on the show. That honor goes to Cynthia Black, who was only 2 1/2 weeks old when she appeared as the just-born Tabatha. Cynthia made her debut on January 13th, but her stint in the limelight was brief. She was soon replaced by the Gentry girls--but the change had nothing to do with her "performing" ability.
The policy of the show is to have Tabatha "grow" a bit faster than a baby would in real life. Hence the necessity of hiring slightly older baabies every few months. As a result, the stint of the Gentry twins was also over in a fairly short time. Their places were taken by the twin daughters of Mrs. Stephen Young, who were born on June 24, 1965. The Young girls are called Julie and Tamar, and you can see pictures of them on pages 36 and 37 of this issue (top of page, second row, left --ED).
So, should anyone ask how many children Samantha has, the safest reply is, "More than twins!"
Mrs. Stephen Young, also the mother of "More than twins" (besides Julie and Tamar, she has a three-year-old daughter called Zoe), says she won't be disturbed if Samantha's baby is a tiny witch. "The way it's shown on TV," Mrs. Young, the wife of a psychologist, explained, "there are good witches and bad ones. Samantha is a good one. If baby Tabatha is going to practice a little good magic, why, that's just perfect.
"I wouldn't object in the least if my daughters were able to use some good witchcraft. Think of the help they would be around the house!"
It's nice that all the mothers--Elizabeth Montgomery (or should we say Samantha?), Mrs. Gentry and Mrs. young--agree that having a child with supernatural powers is rather a nice idea. For the answer to the question, "Will Samantha's baby really turn out like her mother?" is "Yes, indeed, she will." Tabatha is going to be a witch, too. She won't show her true colors for a while, yet, but we have it on good authority that Samantha's little girl definately inherited all of her mother's helpful magical powers!
It would almost seem as if Tabatha's supernatural talents have already rubbed off on the babies who play her on television. The mother of Heidi and Laura Gentry tells this story about her family's witching powers.
"When I was examined by my doctor before the twins were born," says Mrs. Gentry, "he said he heard only one heartbeat. 'Be prepared for a king-sized infant,' the doctor joked. But my husband was sure that twins were on the way--and my husband was right.
"Our doctor was stunned. 'How did you know?' he asked. Without realizing what we were saying, my husband and I told him that 'the little poeple' had brought us the good news."
The Gentrys have three other children, Karen, 7 1/2, Robert Lawrence, 4 1/2, and Keith, 20 months. But nothing like that had happened when they were born.
According to Mrs. Gentry, the arrival of the twins was only the first hint that "something unusual and strange" was at work. In the beginning, it never even occurred to her to turn a pair of perfectly normal-looking girls into a baby witch. Then one day she attended a meeting of the Mother's Club of San Fernando Valley. One of the women there mentioned that Screen Gems was looking for baby twins to play the infant Tabatha.
"I'd never given a thought to my children working as actors until then," says Mrs. Gentry, "but when this woman (whose husband works for ABC-TV), offered to call the casting director of Bewitched and tell him about Heidi and Laura, 'something' seemed to give me a nudge. I said okay. The casting director was interested enough to invite us to the studio.
"I was a little nervous at first, but all my fears blew away when I saw how the babies took to the other actors, the cameras and the lights. Young as they were, they immediately developed a crush on Dick York, who in real life is the father of five children. Their eyes followed him wherever he went. And they seemed to catch the love of everyone within reach of their tiny fists. 'Born hams,' my husband says. But I'm inclined to think they're a couple of born witches..."
In the case of Julie and Tamar Young (who follwed the Gentry girls in playing Tabatha), the question never arose as to whether they would or would not be born twins. They came to the studio. They saw and conquered Liz, Bill Asher, the cast, and even the technical crew. At first Mrs. Young and her husband, Stephen, a phychology major doing graduate work, were hesitant about pushing their twins toward a career in TV.
"We'd heard so much about child actors losing their most precious years of childhood that we were repelled at the idea." Mrs. Young points out, "but a friend of ours finally convinced us that twin babies are in great demand in both the movies and television, and that we ought to take advantage of this situation. We could put the money away for a trip abroad or for the children's education. Besides, it need only be a temporary job that would soon peter out. So we talked it over," Mrs. Young relates with quizzical humor in her eyes, "and we decided to register the babies with Central Casting."
It was only after her twins had been hired to play the slightly older Tabatha that Mrs. Young's thoughts began to dwell on witchcraft. "All at once," she smiles, "I noticed that both babies had developed big dimples and what's more, were flashing them at all the people on the set. They also gurgled, clapped pink little hands and rolled their eyes.
"'What happy little imps!' one reporter exclaimed when he got a close look at them. Mr. Asher laughed, 'Imps is the word for them. Imps are what we hired and imps are what we gott--good, sweet imps!' And you know, when I took a long look at my babies acting before the cameras, I came to the same conclusion. Most mothers say their babies are little angels. I'm forced to admit mine are little imps."
At first, the Young twins posed a problem. They did not eat at the same time. One cried for her bottle at 4, the other at 4:45. Nor were they on the same sleeping regimen, one preferring to take her nap an hour before her sister. "In the end, we discovered this was really a blessing," says Bill Asher with satisfaction, "perfect for our shooting schedule. It meant that one of the babies was always available for the cameras."
Careful! Tiny imps at work!
As required by California law, a nurse is present at all times. Special lights, dimmed down so as not to injure the infants' eyes, are in use, as well as ulra-fast film and special makeup to help the babies get off the set in the shortest possible time. Even with these precautions, though, the director is limited in his use of the babies to thirty seconds at a time. The script girl acts as timekeeper, and yells out at the expiration of half a minute, "Cut!" This is the only occasion when someone other than the director can call for a break in the shooting of a scene.
Elizabeth Montgomery, the reason for all this hubbub, is a woman of winning ways. Even before she transformed herself into the TV witch, Samantha, Liz had little difficulty mesmerizing men and women with her charm, humor and intelligence. About her real-life baby boys she says, "Billy and Bobby are a couple of high-spirited kids. For a while, they had me running back and forth like a nut. I soon got wise to their little tricks, however. When Billy wanted to get something not on his menu or schedule, he would set up a howl. Things got worse after Bobby was born. Baby though he is, he picked up this cute maneuver pretty fast.
"Babies practice their own brand of witchery to make servants of their parents, families and visitors. They'll exercise any spell to captivate and enslave the people around them. And I'd like to say that mothers (and fathers, too) must use witchcraft in self-defense, to enforce discipline and consideration on these willful, greedy, playful and cunning little beings."
Bill Asher, a firm but kindly director, supports this contention. "Baby actors are almost as bad as animal actors. You have to see them in action before you can picture such temperament and sass. They demand to be treated like stars, and frankly I think most stars show less temperament than these tots. Witchcraft? you explain to me how these imps know it's five o'clock, and what magic tells them that this is eating time. Not a day passes but, at the dot of five, both twins set up a yowl, and won't quit till we fill their tummies with food."
With motherly pride, Elizabeth describes her own little newcomer, Bobby, as "divine looking--he really is. Solid as a rock." She goes on to call him "a World Series kid" because, as she puts it, "he was such an easy delivery, and so fast, I was back in my room watching the World Series before it really got under way."
The magic of a newborn babe
In her case, too, however, the baby's will to come into the world was apparently stronger than the doctor's prediction. "By all the usual signs, your baby will arrive about the 24th of October," the doctor guessed. But Elizabeth had a hunch that the child she was carrying was likely to do something unexpected. So when her mother wrote that she'd be coming out from the East on the 18th, Liz wired back that she had a feeling the baby might be born sooner than the doctor thought. Her mother then decided to come a week earlier--but little Billy (sic) announced his arrival on October 5th, three weeks ahead of schedule. "And," adds Liz, "that was just the start. He's been doing everything but what he's supposed to do. Talk about warlocks! He's full of magical gimmicks and he doesn't even twitch his nose to turn our home topsy-turvy." Talk about witchcraft!
Liz denies that her babies have made so many inroads into her time that they constitute a danger to her career. "My goodness, whoever says that is just plain silly. Bill and I have never given it a moment's concern. After all, I'm not under any obligation to spend my life before a camera. Children are better than careers, a good marriage dearer than success, and a happy home a more worthy goeal than seeing your name in the papers..."
While admitting that she had suffered from morning sickness "and other physical discomforts" when bearing her firstborn, Billy, and that toward the end of her second pregnancy she had felt "so tired...exhausted, all dragged out..." Liz still insists that she would not be bothered the least by another baby. "Bill and I would like to try for a girl," she puckers her mouth thoughtfully. One gives the impression that, like Samantha, Liz is about to wiggle her nose and bring it to pass at once. "In fact, I have a theory that child-bearing gets easier as it goes. My second was easier than my first.
"I'd sure like to have a little girl playing around the house. I'd bet anything the little witch would have her daddy and two brothers eating out of her tiny hand in a matter of months. I suppose that goes for me, too. I don't think my magic could stand up against that of a darling good little witch..."