Classic TV Rewind · Episode 5
Salem and Goodbye
Season 1 finale, Bewitched. The 1970 trip to Salem and the bed warmer that was really a warlock, the Europe tour, the last episode in 1972, the Tabitha spin-off, the reruns, the 2005 movie, the Samantha statue in Salem, and why the show has lasted.
Now playing
Loading episodes…
Click any section or line to jump there in the audio.
Shannon Summer, 1970. Salem, Massachusetts. People have come out to watch, because a TV crew is in town. And stepping out of a car is Elizabeth Montgomery.
Carol Samantha herself, in the most famous witch town in America.
Shannon For six years, Bewitched had been made on studio sets in California. And now, for the first time, the whole show had come east.
Carol Welcome to Classic TV Rewind, where we go back to the shows we grew up with, and find out what made them work.
Shannon This season, it's Bewitched. And this is our last episode of the season.
Carol Episode five. Salem and Goodbye.
Shannon So, why Salem? Part of the reason was a fire. In early 1970, a big fire at the studio's ranch lot in Burbank damaged some of the Bewitched sets. And with the sets being rebuilt, the show went on the road.
Carol And if you're a show about witches, there's only one place to go.
Shannon Exactly. Salem is famous for the witch trials of 1692. A dark chapter, and the town has never forgotten it. But by 1970, Salem was just starting to make peace with its witch history. And a friendly witch on television helped. A lot of people say those episodes are what really started Salem's witch tourism.
Carol And what happens in the story?
Shannon The witches are holding a big gathering in Salem, and Samantha has to go. Darrin comes along, of course, and so does Serena. And over the next several episodes, things go wrong in all the ways you'd expect.
Carol What's the best one?
Shannon A lot of fans love the one with the bed warmer. An old brass bed warmer, the kind people used to fill with coals and slide under the covers, starts following Samantha around the House of the Seven Gables. It turns out to be a warlock that Serena put under a spell, centuries ago. And poor Darrin gets arrested for stealing it.
Carol Oh, no. Not again.
Shannon As always. And there's another one where Darrin trades places with a famous statue of a fisherman, in nearby Gloucester. The statue comes to life and goes wandering, and Darrin is left standing on the pedestal.
Carol Oh, that's funny.
Shannon And the best part is watching the real places. The House of the Seven Gables, the harbor, the old streets. After six years in a studio, it's like the show took a deep breath of sea air.
Carol And after Salem?
Shannon The show kept traveling for a while. At the start of the eighth season, the family goes on a trip to Europe. England, Scotland and the Loch Ness Monster, Italy, and Paris, where Darrin ends up on top of the Eiffel Tower.
Carol Of course he does.
Shannon (laughs) Where else would Darrin find trouble in Paris?
Carol But the audience was changing.
Shannon It was. By the early seventies, television was changing too. Shows like All in the Family were on, with real-life problems and arguments at the dinner table. And a gentle sitcom about a witch in the suburbs started to feel a little old-fashioned.
Carol And the ratings came down.
Shannon They did. Halfway through its last season, the show moved to Saturday nights, and fewer people were watching. And in March of 1972, Bewitched aired its last episode.
Carol What a run.
Shannon Eight seasons, and two hundred and fifty-four episodes. That's a lot of twitching.
Carol And there was a spin-off, wasn't there?
Shannon There was. In 1977, a show called Tabitha. Grown-up Tabitha, working at a TV station in Los Angeles, and still using a little magic now and then. Lisa Hartman played her.
Carol I remember that one. It didn't last long.
Shannon Just one season. But it shows how much people still loved the family.
Carol And Bewitched itself never really went away.
Shannon Never. It went straight into reruns. Every afternoon, all over the country, and then all over the world. A lot of us met Samantha after school, years after the show ended.
Carol That's how I watched it.
Shannon Me too. And then cable came along, and it found a whole new audience all over again.
Carol And the cast?
Shannon Elizabeth Montgomery went on to serious dramas in the seventies, in TV movies, and she was very good in them. But she was always Samantha to most of us.
Carol And we've lost them all now, haven't we?
Shannon Most of the grown-ups, yes. Agnes Moorehead died in 1974. Paul Lynde in 1982. Dick York in 1992, and Dick Sargent two years later. And Elizabeth Montgomery in 1995. She was only sixty-two.
Carol That's young.
Shannon It is. But Erin Murphy, our Tabitha, is still with us. And she's spent a lot of time talking with fans about growing up on that set.
Carol And then, a movie.
Shannon In 2005. A Bewitched film, with Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell. But it isn't a straight remake. It's about an actor who's making a new Bewitched TV show, and he casts a woman who, it turns out, really is a witch.
Carol A show about the show.
Shannon Right. Shirley MacLaine and Michael Caine are in it too. And the same summer, something else happened back in Salem.
Carol The statue.
Shannon The statue. A bronze statue of Samantha, riding her broom across a crescent moon, put up in a little park in the middle of town. It's still there today. People line up to take their picture with it.
Carol So Samantha went back to Salem for good.
Shannon She did. Thirty-five years after that first trip.
Carol So, after five episodes. Why do you think Bewitched lasted?
Shannon I keep coming back to the marriage. All that magic, all those relatives, and underneath it, two people who chose each other. And every week, they chose each other again.
Carol And it was funny.
Shannon It was very funny. Endora's names for Darrin. Uncle Arthur's jokes. Aunt Clara and her doorknobs. Gladys at the window. A cast like that doesn't come along very often.
Carol And the twitch.
Shannon Always the twitch. There's a little bit of magic in all of us, if we wiggle hard enough.
Carol So, for our last picks of the season. What's yours?
Shannon Mine is from the Salem trip, Samantha's Hot Bed Warmer. A bed warmer that's really a warlock, and Darrin ends up in jail. It's the show having fun with its own history.
Carol And mine is a bonus again. Go and see the statue, if you're ever in Salem. And then come home and watch the pilot one more time.
Shannon And our ratings, out of five twitches. Not for one episode this time. For the whole show.
Carol Five twitches. Bewitched is one of the great ones.
Shannon Five from me too. Eight years, two Darrins, and not one boring mother-in-law.
Carol That's our first season of Classic TV Rewind. Five episodes, one little house in Connecticut, and the most famous witch on television.
Shannon Thank you so much for spending this season with us. Next season, we'll be back with another classic show, and another family we grew up with.
Carol Until then, keep your nose twitching.
Shannon That's Bewitched, on Classic TV Rewind.