Was Elizabeth Montgomery ever considered a great actress?

Short answer: no. Mostly because she was a creature of early TV, not studio films.

[quote]Elizabeth Montgomery was born into show business. Her parents were screen actor Robert Montgomery and Broadway actress Elizabeth Allen. Elizabeth graduated from the Spence School in New York City and attended the Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. After three years' intensive training, she made her TV debut in her father's 1950s playhouse series Robert Montgomery Presents (1950) and appeared in more than 200 live programs over the next decade. She once remarked, "I guess you could say I'm a TV baby."

I love this picture of her as a brunette, pre-BEWITCHED. A strong beauty.

She did an excellent made-for-TV movie called "A Case Of Rape" which was groundbreaking at its time. I still remember it to this day.

No. But she was gorgeous, likable, gay-friendly, and a splendid comedic actress.

Luv huh.

I liked her in that Lizzie Borden tv movie.

She wasn't gorgeous. She was attractive, which made her perfect for a sitcom heroine.

de gustibus, R6

She was pretty fucken gorgeous, IMO.

Up until the 1980s, when Broadway became Webberized, you weren’t a great actor until you’d had at least one acclaimed performance in a serious play. That’s why it was such a big deal when Farrah Fawcett did Extremities and actually got good reviews for it. Elizabeth Ashley May have been a cokehead but her Maggie the Cat was legend.

Minimally competent in her debut, THE COURT MARTIAL OF BILLY MITCHELL (55). But then Otto Preminger must have been terrifying to her.

Her father was good at light comedy, and superb in John Ford's THEY WERE EXPENDABLE (45). But he was laughable as a "tough guy" in the late 40s before he quit performing in front of the camera.

She's great in "Two" (Twilight Zone/1959) with Charles Bronson

I absolutely loathe Bewitched and how spectacularly unfunny it is. Sole exception: interchanges between Agnes Moorehead and Paul Lynde. They weren't particularly funny in and of themselves but it was always an interesting set of acting styles. It was unfortunate that such a great beauty was in a show that started as the middling execution of a not-bad idea and then became increasingly shoddy over eight years. We used to watch it every week because it was my sister's favorite show but my main memory of it is that this is the show that we were watching when they broke in and announced the assassination of Martin Luther King.

That said, she is great as Lizzie Borden, wonderful in A Case of Rape, and superb in The Awakening Land. The last is a deeply unappreciated television classic and she was robbed of her Emmy -- one of 9 nominations. But she lost to Streep in Holocaust, a Hollywood double whammy if ever there was one. Her work as the narrator of The Panama Deception is remarkable, especially as it shows the magnificent timbre of her voice and her being on the right side of history.

She was very good in the miniseries "The Awakening Land" in 1978.

Sultry.

The blonde hair really changed her look and persona. The dark hair makes her look older but also sexier and more sophisticated, IMHO.

Actually, I think she was considered a very talented actress, but she was firmly rooted in television and that would only get you so far back in the 70s. And by the time the 80s rolled around, she was too old to do anything but television. However, her television movies nearly always garnered her very good reviews and Emmy attention. I would say she and Patty Duke were the two pre-eminent tv movie actresses of their time.

I like this clip of her in "Who's Been Sleeping In My Bed."

She was a part of the 50s serious actor method acting class.

She was intense and sultry. Like a non-dancing Cyd Charisse.

The turn for comedy was a natural fit. She was truly talented.

Great? Debatable. Accomplished, oh hell yes.

She had the looks and talent to be considered a “great actress” but then again that designation is fickle. Her peers knew how talented she was and once her career trajectory was set she couldn’t pivot and become a prestige feature actress. I doubt she had many regrets. Are Norma Shearer or Claudette Colbert or Greta Garbo considered “great actresses” today?

She came out for gays and marched in pride parades when doing such a thing would destroy your career and reputation. She also was well aware of Bewitched gay undertones and talked about it on set. She was a wonderful woman.

She had the issue of her famous director father. People screamed nepotism and the two didn’t get along. He was very jealous of her.

She did a lot of great work in the over 20 years after Bewitched ended to put Samantha to bed. She loved playing bitchy characters like Lizzie Borden and a Nurse Ratched type in Amos. Gorgeous woman with an incredible voice.

Garbo is an Old Hollywood legend and a timeless beauty. But I don't think young actors today regard her as a great acting talent, no.

Montgomery's mother, stage actress Elizabeth Allen was a stunner.

Serving up some Anna Magnani realness here.

She was considered “sitcom good” but not “movie good.”

I also thought she was gorgeous and that she was a solid actress. Can't remember ever seeing her in anything and thinking she was awful. Plus her gay positivity was great. I was really sad when she died.

R22, that's better-known English actress Elizabeth Allan. No relation to EM.

oops. Google Images has failed me, R26.

Samantha was a secret sex bomb. As was the actress who played her. She's long before my time but everyone knows Bewitched. She was married to that slime Gig Young and her dad was a cold old movie star who resented her freedoms and hedonistic ways. I think she has enormous warmth and a lovely pretty face, a spirit that shines bright. You can't fake charm. Elizabeth Montgomery had that. And yes, she was a very good actress. She created a fully realized comic character that was inherently ridiculous but never a joke. She loved her gay co stars and all the men she knew from the early days. I was surprised to find out she had such a back catalogue of film and TV work before Bewitched. She also kind of perfectly defines that era. Samantha is a suburban swinging sixties looking pretty pretty chick. Married to a square.

The Lizzie Borden movie is quite chilling. She's very good in it. And she had a nice handsome man who loved her fully and madly as she got even prettier in middle age. Married her after 20 years - after she got sick. Goodness shines through. EM was good.

In terms of her place among other actresses, she would be an A-/B+.

Not quite at the level of what we consider to be the classic award winning actress, but very solid, with a great range, a wider range than most of her TV peers, for sure.

She may have been capable of doing that work, but she was almost entirely excluded from feature work.

Samantha wasn't swinging.

'Are Norma Shearer or Claudette Colbert or Greta Garbo considered “great actresses” today?'

Norma Shearer dear God yes!

I've appreciated Bewitched more in recent years when viewing through the lens of gay subtext....and of the subtext of a changing world in general.

She was wonderful in Bewitched. For some reason people think anyone can do comedy and that’s just not true. Comedy is actually harder than drama.

[R33] Agreed. Comedy takes smarts and immaculate timing. Doris Day was a comedic genius. Someone like Tracey Ullman is a great sketch comedian but she needs to go BIG to be funny - whereas EM and Doris worked more within the confines of character and script. Take a Tracey Ullman or a Carol Burnett or an Amy Sedaris and put them into tightly scripted comedy and they look small and hamstrung.

[quote]She came out for gays and marched in pride parades when doing such a thing would destroy your career and reputation.

She and Patty Duke were the leaders in all this.

It’s a crime she never won an Emmy. I don’t get it.

Honestly, the trophies don't matter. I know it takes some excitement out of people lives....but the trophies don't matter. Not in the arts. They're more fun to discuss than to care about. The actors and singers and producers who make too big a deal of them.....

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liz bump

R12 is that Liz or Jane Fonda in The Dollmaker?

They look and SOUND so much alike.

She worked hard to expand her range after "Bewitched" and was, as far as I remember, always fine, but never spectacular. She is so likable that light comic roles were a better fit for her than Lizzie Borden...

"Bewitched" is my favorite TV show ever, but I saw a documentary on EM and it showed an early B&W TV show she was on where her acting was just atrocious! She was supposed to be an upper-class debutante and was putting on the worst accent I've ever heard. Obviously her acting improved with age.

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She was great

How does she compare to Barbara Eden?

She's great in "The Legend of Lizzie Borden." Montgomery (who was a distant relation of Borden herself) brings a dazed, mysterious quality to Lizzie that's completely convincing. The movie has an unusually good script by James Dean's companion, William Bast.

Much better than Eden R45

You can't watch her Lizzie Borden and say she wasn't great. Once she found her niche in TV she stayed there; she was lowkey and didn't seem interested in a film career or a higher profile.

A Case of Rape

The Legend of Lizzie Borden

The Awakening Land

married to gig young couldn't have made life easy.

What R1 said, no. GOD, NO.

She was a TV actress of the day, not a good actress that anyone would talk about. When Dick Sargent came out, the tabloids labeled her "conservative" and not gay friendly. ALL of those actresses were labeled as such, except for Elizabeth Taylor who was very explicit in how she was more than gay- AIDS - friendly.

R51, you're an idiot. Elizabeth was very supportive of Dick Sargent when he came out publicly and even rode in the West Hollywood Pride parade with him. Bewitched has an earned reputation as perhaps the most gay-friendly sitcom of all time.

Dummy, R52, the TABLOIDS labeled her conservative, dick head. Is English you first language???

i

[quote] Samantha was a secret sex bomb. As was the actress who played her. She's long before my time...

I can tell.

R53, you didn't add a disclaimer that it wasn't true so you are just as bad as the tabloids for spreading such lies, IDIOT.

Elizabeth Montgomery showed up to support her friend Carol Burnett in the early days of Carol's new show

I don't think she was a great actress in Bewitched, but I do think her later work showed off her acting skills better. Imagine trying to make the strain of that very flimsy plot funny or believable, though. It was the eccentric characters who made that show, particularly Moorehead and Lynne, but the Aunt Clara role was also funny. As a sidebar, I have read that in general, young gay boys preferred Bewitched, and young straight boys preferred I Dream of Jeannie. There's an entire dissertation to be written about that topic someday. I think she was a middling actress with a particularly musical and pleasant speaking voice.

People who were kids in the 60s really grew up with hokey and not very funny sitcoms. Green Acres, Bewitched, Jeannie, F Troop, Gomer Pyle, Gilligan's Isle, the Beverly Hillbillies, Hogan's Heroes. These were not comic masterpieces. Get Smart, Batman, The Munsters and the Addams Family at least had camp value, but I'm sure young gaylings all over American frequently dreamed of a future filled with witty repartee and catty dialogue.

She looks almost exactly like Jane Fonda there r13. From what TV movies of hers I’ve seen I thought she was a very good actress. She and Lee Remick seemed to get all the prestige roles (for women above a certain age) at that time.

.,.,

R59

Unfortunately, no!

When she did Bewitched, in 1964, TV was still new. Many actors looked down on television. You'll notice on a lot of old game shows they introduced actors as "star of stage and screen." If you made a big splash on Broadway then you were considered a REAL actor!

Liz had been on Broadway but that really wasn't what she was famous for. She had done movies, but she wasn't really famous for that either. Her claim to fame is a silly TV show made in an era when TV was not respected. So although Liz came from an acting family, had training, performed on Broadway, had a hit TV Show and several movies, she was not (at that time) considered a great actress.

If she were to come along today with that resume, the opposite would be true. And certainly in retrospect it cannot be denied that she was a great actress. Bewitched is still playing on TV, several times a day and in several countries all over the world right now! It was genius!

On a personal level, when my sister and I found her in "A Case for Rape" many years after it originally aired, we cried our eyes out (Yeah, I know... MARY!). We had only seen Liz in Bewitched so we were excited to see her in something else. But to see Samantha Stevens get "raped" broke our little hearts. She was so convincing and it was so painful to watch. If that is not an example of great acting, I don't know what is.

Bewitched did 30 plus episodes a week. It was a quick shoot.

R61 is delusional. TV was not "new" in 1964. TV actors, mostly male, had crossed over to movies. There had been a steady stream of "quality" shows, some of which hold up better than others.

Montgomery had done a lot of television and was mostly forgettable in her few, supporting movie roles. In the present day, as someone upthread noted, she easily could have had the kind of career Jennifer Anniston has had. She probably could have carved out a niche in Hallmark or Lifetime movies, like actresses a generation younger. Creating a "fantasy entertainment career" for someone usually neglects their limitations---there were lots of B-movie people who were very successful in tv from Lucille Ball to Donna Reed to Ronald Reagan, not to mention bit players like Raymond Burr and Barbara Billingsley who became stars. None of those people was going to carry an A-picture and they all were lucky to have tv as a fallback. Most of the B-types were good in ensemble and entertaining enough for 30-60 minutes. Montgomery was fine in a sitcom and able to do some very good tv movies but she was not a big personality like Liz Taylor or driven to expand herself like Jane Fonda (whom she superficially resembled). She was not going to be a big monster movie star.

R11

MARY! MARY! MARY! MARY! MARY!

R60 Why are you so dumb?

R63 The 1950s was gauged as the golden age of television but it was not until the 1960s when TVs were affordable for the general public. It was only then that TV began catching on you Dipshit!

Many actors looked down on TV as not real acting. Robert Reed (in the same era) was a stage actor and did not want to do TV for the same reason. Certainly TODAY many sitcom actors go on to be movie stars. Jennifer Anniston is no where near the caliber of an Elizabeth Montgomery. That Anniston bitch never carried a show (or a movie for that matter) on her own despite being given numerous opportunities since Friends! Liz IS Bewitched! The crossover between theater, tv and movies is huge. The industry has changed tremendously ya dinosaur. Get your head out of the sand!

You may not like Liz Montgomery but by today's standards she absolutely would be considered a star!

Liz did not look like Jane. R63

Who created this thread? Is this the same asshole doing all the "what actress would have played this role better" threads?

Whoever it is needs to be publicly buggywhipped.

delish!

[Quote] Is this the same asshole doing all the "what actress would have played this role better" threads?

NO, r68.

I think the alternative casting polls are fun. It's gets the creative juices flowing. It's a shame some of you are such rigid stick-in-the-muds.

Elizabeth was excellent in a number of TV films. Nothing wrong with being a TV star. Her movies got huge ratings.

She was married to GiG Young for chrissakes.....can't we just be grateful he didn't shoot her like he did Wife #5 and leave it at that?

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I think some people want to look at Elizabeth Montgomery in a 2021 lens instead of seeing how much of a trailblazer she was for her time. Bewitched premiered in1964, ahead of the Civil Rights Act.

Women were second class citizens. She was a feminist. Viewing her achievements with that backdrop may cause you to view her talent differently. Apparently she was a liberal ahead of her time and she gave zero fucks about people knowing it. That may have impacted accolades she was due.

This is what Juanita Moore (a fellow Actress - a Black woman), who worked with Elizabeth Montgomery, said about her:

[Quote]She was talented…she was an actress…a fine actress! She left this world too young…she was so gifted…such a divine person…so easy going. At that time of 77 Sunset Strip, we [as actresses] had limited parts.

[Quote]Everyone said that she was stuck-up because of having her own show, but they [were] just jealous and very envious actors and nay-sayers. I think she was good [as Samantha], and I think she could have been better . . . if they [had] let her loose and allowed her to stretch herself . . . and you saw that [when she played] Serena …but [because of] TV you have to tone [things] down.

[Quote]“Elizabeth was learned . . . she was ahead of all of them out there in Hollywood. . . Plus, she was a nice young lady. To me, she was just like my child . . . it’s a bond we had, ya’ know. She was a gift!”

Oh BTW, While we know Elizabeth Montgomery was a Gay Rights Advocate and a Feminist, She also was an Advocate for Civil Rights and ensured that a groundbreaking episode promoting anti-prejudice was featured on her show, Bewitched.

So much of "Bewitched" was poking fun but also subtle criticism of racism, classism and homophobia - or tolerance for anyone and anything queer (more the late 19th/early 20th century usage there, darlings.)

She was good in Lizzie Borden.

Better-looking with blonde hair than with dark hair, IMO.

Extremely attractive and gorgeous. Sexy, yes. I still think she's more of the hottest woman in town than a classic beautiful woman, though.

I stopped watching Bewitched when Elizabeth stopped teasing her hair.

[quote]I stopped watching Bewitched when Elizabeth stopped teasing her hair.

I like it when she became the Connecticut housewife who didn't wear a bra...

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I like that she was a housewife that wore slacks and not a house dress. The first season of Bewitched is the best Sam a bit darker and jealous of Darrin's ex girlfriend and the little hottie next door.

[quote]The first season of Bewitched is the best Sam a bit darker and jealous of Darrin's ex girlfriend and the little hottie next door.

You Pleasure O'Reilly and her younger sister Danger O'Reilly.

I always wondered why were they living in the Baxter's house from "Hazel"...were they related to George and Dorothy?

Was it an AirBnB thing?

I can't believe Hazel or any of the Sunshine Girls approved of their obvious attempts to flirt with the married men of Morning Glory Circle.