Classic TV Rewind · Episode 1
Once Upon a Twitch
Season 1, Bewitched. How the show began: the old movies behind the idea, the writer who wrote one script and kept his name on it for eight years, Elizabeth Montgomery and William Asher, Endora's many names for Darrin, the secret of the twitch, and the pilot that started it all.
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Shannon Thursday night, September 17th, 1964. Nine o'clock. All over America, families are settling in front of the television set. Black and white, rabbit ears on top.
Carol And on ABC, a brand-new comedy is about to start. A cartoon witch on a broomstick swoops across the screen, and writes the title in the sky.
Shannon Bewitched.
Carol Over the next eight years, it would run for two hundred and fifty-four episodes, and become one of the best-loved sitcoms ever made. And people still watch it today.
Shannon Welcome to Classic TV Rewind, where we go back to the shows we grew up with, and find out what made them work.
Carol And this season, we're spending five episodes in a little house in Connecticut, with a witch who married a mortal.
Shannon Episode one. Once Upon a Twitch.
Carol So, where did Bewitched come from? Because a witch marrying an ordinary man wasn't exactly a brand-new idea in 1964.
Shannon Not at all. Hollywood had done it twice already. In 1942, there was a movie called I Married a Witch, with Veronica Lake as a witch who falls for a politician. And in 1958, Bell, Book and Candle, with Kim Novak as a witch in New York and James Stewart as the man who wins her heart.
Carol So the idea was floating around.
Shannon It was. And a writer named Sol Saks put it together for television. He wrote the first episode, the pilot, and he got a "created by" credit on every episode for the next eight years.
Carol That's a good deal for one script.
Shannon (laughs) It was. He wrote the pilot, and his name stayed on the show for eight years.
Carol And then they needed a witch.
Shannon The studio, Screen Gems, first had a different actress in mind, Tammy Grimes, a Broadway star. She said no, and went on to do a sitcom of her own.
Carol And that's where Elizabeth Montgomery comes in.
Shannon Right. Elizabeth Montgomery was the daughter of a big Hollywood star, Robert Montgomery. She'd been acting on TV for years, but she wasn't a household name yet. And she had just married a director named William Asher.
Carol Who knew a thing or two about sitcoms.
Shannon Quite a lot. He'd directed about a hundred episodes of I Love Lucy. The two of them had pitched a sitcom of their own, and the studio steered them toward a witch instead. He directed the pilot, and a few years later he took over as producer, too.
Carol So the star and the man behind the camera were married.
Shannon And you can feel it on the screen. Samantha is warm, a little mischievous, and very much in love. A lot of that comes straight from Montgomery.
Carol Now let's meet everyone. Starting with the husband.
Shannon Darrin Stephens, an advertising man at a Madison Avenue agency called McMann and Tate. He was played by Dick York, a terrific comic actor, who could do more with a slow burn than anyone else on television.
Carol Poor Darrin. He just wants a normal life.
Shannon A quiet house, a wife who cooks without magic, and a client who's happy with his slogan. And he gets none of those for very long.
Carol And his boss.
Shannon Larry Tate, played by David White. Silver hair, big smile, and he'll agree with whoever's paying. Usually in the same breath that he disagreed with them.
Carol And then, the mother-in-law.
Shannon Endora. Played by Agnes Moorehead, who had been in Citizen Kane, of all things, and was one of the most respected actresses in Hollywood.
Carol And she hardly ever called him Darrin.
Shannon Almost never. Derwood, Darwin, Dum-Dum, What's-his-name. Anything but Darrin. It became one of the great running jokes in television.
Carol I always thought she was the best thing in it.
Shannon A lot of people did. And here's the funny part. She didn't expect the show to be a hit. She even arranged to be in only some of the episodes, so she'd have time for other work.
Carol And across the street?
Shannon Gladys Kravitz, the nosiest neighbor in history, played by Alice Pearce. She's always peeking through the curtains, always seeing something impossible, and nobody ever believes her. Especially not her husband, Abner, played by George Tobias.
Carol Okay. We have to talk about the twitch.
Shannon The most famous move on the show. Samantha wiggles her nose, there's a little musical sound, and something magic happens.
Carol How did she do it? I've tried in the mirror, and I can't.
Shannon Well, here's the secret. It's not really her nose doing the work. It's mostly her upper lip, moving very quickly. The camera stays close, the music does the rest, and it looks like her nose is twitching.
Carol All these years, and it was her lip.
Shannon All these years. And it's become such a famous bit of business that people still try it today.
Carol So let's talk about that first episode. What happens?
Shannon The pilot is called I, Darrin, Take This Witch, Samantha. And it opens like a fairy tale. Samantha and Darrin keep bumping into each other in New York. They fall in love, and they get married.
Carol And on the wedding night?
Shannon That's when she tells him. Darrin, I'm a witch.
Carol How does he take it?
Shannon About as well as you'd expect. He thinks she's joking. Then she shows him, and he's stunned. But he loves her. So he asks her for just one thing. No more witchcraft. They'll live like ordinary people.
Carol And she agrees.
Shannon She does. And that promise is the whole engine of the show. For eight years, she keeps trying to keep it, and the magic keeps sneaking out anyway.
Carol And Endora?
Shannon Endora is horrified. Her daughter, married to a mortal! She turns up on the wedding night itself to say it'll never last. And then there's a dinner party at the home of Darrin's old girlfriend, Sheila, who's very snooty to Samantha.
Carol Oh, I remember this. She gets what's coming to her.
Shannon She does. A little gust of wind here, a little trouble with her dress there. Samantha only breaks the rule a little. But it's enough to show you exactly what kind of show this is going to be.
Carol And we have to mention that opening.
Shannon The cartoon opening was made by Hanna-Barbera, the studio behind The Flintstones. The little witch on her broom, and the theme song, which is all music, with no words.
Carol But it had words, didn't it?
Shannon It did. Lyrics were written for it, and recorded later by other singers, but the show itself always used the instrumental. You can probably hear it in your head right now.
Carol I can.
Carol So how did it do?
Shannon It was a smash. In its first season, Bewitched was the second most watched show in the entire country. Only Bonanza beat it.
Carol For a brand-new show, that's amazing.
Shannon And it was the biggest hit ABC had. It ran for eight seasons, until 1972, and it's been in reruns ever since.
Carol Why do you think it worked so well?
Shannon I think because underneath all the magic, it's a story about a marriage. Two people who love each other, from very different families, trying to make a life together while the in-laws make it hard. Everybody knows that story.
Carol Just most of us don't have a mother-in-law who can turn us into a goat.
Shannon (laughs) Thankfully.
Carol So, every episode, we're going to pick what you should watch. What's your pick for this one?
Shannon It has to be the pilot. I, Darrin, Take This Witch, Samantha. It's all there in twenty-five minutes. The romance, the confession, the promise, Endora, and the first little bit of magic.
Carol And mine is a bonus. The 1942 movie, I Married a Witch. If you want to see where the idea came from, it's a delight.
Shannon And our rating, out of five twitches?
Carol For the pilot? Five twitches. It set up eight years of television.
Shannon Four and a half from me. The best was still to come.
Carol That's how Bewitched began. An old idea, the right witch, a husband who just wanted a normal life, and the most famous twitch in television.
Shannon Next time, the black-and-white years. Gladys Kravitz sees more than she should, Samantha has a baby, and everyone starts wondering whether little Tabitha takes after her mother.
Carol That's next time, on Classic TV Rewind.