It’s Elizabeth Montgomery’s Birthday! What Were Her Greatest Non-‘Bewitched’ TV Roles?
Beloved Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery died tragically on May 18, 1995, from colorectal cancer. Had she lived, the Emmy-nominated daughter of screen legend Robert Montgomery and Broadway actress Elizabeth Byran Allen would have turned 92 on April 15, 2025.
Before, during, and after she played twitch-witch Samantha Stephens on Bewitched from 1964–72, Montgomery made over 200 stage, movie, and TV appearances.
Her feature films included The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955), and 1963’s Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed? and Johnny Cool, the latter directed by William Asher, who she later married and partnered with on Bewitched.
However, it was on TV that Elizabeth made her most indelible mark, both before and after Bewitched.
> ‘Bewitched’ Has Cast its Magical Spell On TV For 60 Years
From Guest Appearances on Her Father’s Series to The Untouchables
Everett Collection
On December 3, 1951, at 18, Elizabeth made her TV debut on “Top Secret,” an episode of Robert Montgomery Presents, her father’s acclaimed anthology show. Montgomery’s first role was, naturally, playing her father’s daughter. By the time the series ended in 1957, Elizabeth had appeared in 28 episodes.
Additional TV appearances included her performance as the wealthy and relatively bored daughter of George Macready in the Kraft Television Theatre episode, “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz” (September 28, 1955). Eight months later, Elizabeth played the similar but more arrogant, spoiled, and unhappily married offspring of Edward Arnold in “The Last Showdown,” another episode of the Kraft Musical Theatre (April 11, 1956)
Other Pre-witched TV guest appearances included her heralded performance in The Untouchables, starring Robert Stack as G-man Eliot Ness who, with his elite team, battles organized crime in 1930s Chicago. On the October 13, 1960 episode “The Rusty Heller Story,” Ness is nearly swayed by the many charms of Montgomery’s Rusty Heller — a prostitute who ultimately displays a heart of gold in her crooked pursuit of financial gain.
Elizabeth earned her first Emmy nomination for “Heller,” which featured several passionate scenes with guest star David White, who later played Larry Tate on Bewitched.
Everett Collection
Then came Montgomery’s performance in “Two,” the now-benchmark, dialogue-less 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone. Here, she played opposite a pre-superstar Charles Bronson as the sole survivors of opposing sides in an apocalyptic battle that ultimately brings them together.
On September 27, 1963, one year before her Bewitched debut, Elizabeth guest-starred in an episode of Burke’s Law, titled, “Who Killed Mr. X.” And in an astonishing “twitch-bit” of irony, she played an actress — and at one point, inadvertently motions what later became her famous nose-wriggle.
On “White Lie,” an October 25, 1963 episode of 77 Sunset Strip, Montgomery portrayed the conflicted biracial granddaughter of Oscar-nominated actress Juanita Moore (Imitation of Life).
Then, on September 17, 1964, Montgomery began her acclaimed run as Samantha Stephens on Bewitched, which resulted in five Best Actress Emmy nominations.
After Bewitched
Everett Collection
In the fall of 1972, Elizabeth made her first post-Bewitched TV movie, an ABC thriller called The Victim, with a post-Route 66 George Maharis.
Two years later, she played the lead in ABC’s Mrs. Sundance, a TV movie where she met and fell in love with costar Robert Foxworth (later a regular CBS’s Falcon Crest). By 1974, Elizabeth had divorced William Asher and was romantically involved with Foxworth, who encouraged her to tackle more serious roles.
Case in point: A Case of Rape, the 1974 NBC production which became the highest rated TV movie in history, as well as the first issue-oriented film of its kind, one that helped to change the laws for assaulted women.
In 1975, she returned to ABC with a shocking, Emmy-nominated TV-movie performance as an ax-murderer The Legend of Lizzie Borden. And in 1976, she starred in NBC’s Dark Victory, a TV movie remake of the 1939 big-screen classic starring her dear friend Bette Davis.
This was followed by TV movies such as (but not exclusive to) her Emmy-nominated performance in NBC’s 1977 The Awakening Land, and CBS’s 1979 Act of Violence.
Elizabeth in the Eighties
NBC/courtesy Everett Collection
She kicked off the 1980s on CBS with 1980’s Belle Starr, a Western that was similar, if superior to, Mrs. Sundance, the 1982 two-part The Rules of Marriage (co-starring Elliott Gould), and 1984’s Second Sight: A Love Story. The latter film, about a visually impaired woman and her seeing-eye dog, not only signified Elizabeth’s real life, unending affection for animals but also her concern for the disabled.
The serious overtones continued on CBS into the 1990s, with shockers like Sins of the Mother, With Murder in Mind (with Foxworth), and The Black Widow Murders: The Blanche Taylor Moore Story.
Post-Bewitched, Elizabeth performed in only two comedic TV movies, both for CBS: When the Circus Came to Town (co-starring Christopher Plummer in 1981); and Hallmark Hall of Fame’s Face to Face (1990), which marked the second of three times she paired with Foxworth on screen. Filmed in Kenya, Africa, Face also helped Elizabeth advocate for animals, specifically, elephants. During a press tour, she appeared with Foxworth on CBS This Morning, where she protested the slaughter of the wild kingdom’s largest residents.
Five years later, Elizabeth made her final live-action appearance in the CBS TV movie called Deadline for Murder: From the Files of Edna Buchanan, which aired May 9, 1995. Based on the real-life exploits of Buchanan, the Pulitzer Prize-winning crime journalist for The Miami Herald, Deadline was a sequel to the first Edna-based film, The Corpse Had a Familiar Face, which CBS aired on March 27, 1994. More movies were planned, but it was not meant to be.
Cliff Lipson/CBS/Courtesy Everett Collection
During Deadline, Elizabeth became frail. In March of 1995, she was diagnosed with colon cancer, only two years after she finally married Foxworth, who had for decades had asked her to be his bride. Now, he was her widower.
Also left behind was William Asher, and her three children with him: William Allen Asher, Robert Asher, and Rebecca Asher —along with Elizabeth’s younger brother, Robert Skip Montgomery, Jr. who in 2000 succumbed to lung cancer.
Robert Montgomery, Sr. had died in 1981. Elizabeth Byran Allen died in 1992.
Their daughter’s final performance was a voiceover role as a barmaid in an episode of Batman: The Animated Series, titled, “Showdown,” which aired posthumously on September 12, 1995.
[Herbie J Pilato is the author of several acclaimed pop-culture/media tie-in books, including acclaimed biographies of Elizabeth Montgomery, who was a dear friend.]
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