Elizabeth Montgomery

Her great-grandfather, Archibald Montgomery, was born in Belfast and he immigrated to the United States in 1849.

Genealogical research which was conducted after her death revealed that she and Lizzie Borden, acquitted of the murder of her father and stepmother in 1893, were sixth cousins once removed; both of them were descended from 17th-century Massachusetts resident John Luther.

She had an elder sister who was born in 1931 and died in infancy, Martha Bryan Montgomery (named after her aunt Martha-Bryan Allen) and a younger brother, Robert B. Montgomery Jr. Montgomery was of Irish and Scottish descent.

Elizabeth Victoria Montgomery (April 15, 1933 – May 18, 1995) was an American actress whose career spanned five decades in film, stage, and television.

She portrayed the good witch Samantha Stephens on the popular television series Bewitched, which earned her five Primetime Emmy Award nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations.

Montgomery was born on April 15, 1933, in Los Angeles, California, to Broadway actress Elizabeth Daniel Bryan Allen and film star Robert Montgomery.

Montgomery's mother was a native of Kentucky and her father was a native of New York.

The daughter of actor, director and producer Robert Montgomery, she began her career in the 1950s with a role on her father's television series Robert Montgomery Presents, and she won a Theater World Award for her 1956 Broadway debut in the production Late Love.

In October 1953, Montgomery made her Broadway debut, starring in Late Love, for which she won a Theater World Award for her performance.

She then made her film debut in Otto Preminger's The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955).

Montgomery returned to Broadway in 1956, appearing in The Loud Red Patrick.

Montgomery's early career consisted of starring roles and appearances in live television dramas and series, such as Studio One, Kraft Television Theater, Johnny Staccato, Burke's Law, The Twilight Zone, The Eleventh Hour, Wagon Train, Boris Karloff's Thriller, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Montgomery was nominated at the 13th Primetime Emmy Awards for her portrayal of southern nightclub performer Rusty Heller in a 1960 episode of The Untouchables, playing opposite David White, who later portrayed Larry Tate on Bewitched.

She played the part of Rose Cornelius in the Rawhide episode "Incident at El Crucero" (1963).

Montgomery was featured in a role as a socialite who falls for a gangster (Henry Silva) in Johnny Cool (1963), directed by William Asher, and the film comedy Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? (also 1963), with Dean Martin and Carol Burnett, this time directed by Daniel Mann.

After her appearance on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Alfred Hitchcock had her in mind to play the sister-in-law of Sean Connery, who sees herself as a rival to the troubled heroine in the film Marnie (1964), but Montgomery was unavailable.

In the ABC situation comedy Bewitched, Montgomery played the central role of lovable witch Samantha Stephens, with Dick York (and later with Dick Sargent) as her husband.

Starting in the second season of the series, she also played the role of Samantha's mischievous cousin, Serena, under the pseudonym Pandora Spocks (a pun on Pandora's Box).

Bewitched became a ratings success (it was, at the time, the highest-rated series ever for the network).

The series aired for eight seasons, from 1964 to 1972, and Montgomery received five Emmy and four Golden Globe nominations for her role on Bewitched.

In a parody of her Samantha Stephens role, she made a cameo appearance as a witch at the end of the beach party film How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965).

The film was directed by Asher, her husband at the time.

That same year she also provided the voice of Samantha for an episode of the animated series The Flintstones.

After Bewitched ended in 1972, Montgomery continued her career with roles in many television films, including A Case of Rape (1974) and The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975), as Lizzie Borden.

Both performances earned her additional Emmy Award nominations.

Throughout her career, Montgomery was involved in various forms of political activism and charitable work.

Despite low ratings late in the series run, it was renewed for a ninth season to run from fall of 1972.

However, Montgomery's marriage to Bewitched director William Asher was failing and the couple had separated by the end of the eighth season.

This situation caused severe friction in their professional relationship and it also ended any possibility of another season.

As a consolation to ABC, Montgomery and Asher (under their company name Ashmont, which produced Bewitched) offered a half-hour sitcom, The Paul Lynde Show, to the network for the 1972–1973 season.

Lynde's series only lasted one year.

Among her later roles were performances that brought her Emmy Award nominations: a rape victim in A Case of Rape (1974), and the accused (but acquitted) murderer Lizzie Borden in William Bast's The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975).

After the actress died, Rhonda McClure, a genealogist, discovered that Montgomery and Borden were distant cousins.

Montgomery made many appearances on the game show Password.

Montgomery portrayed Borden in the television film The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975), unaware that Borden was her distant cousin.

After attending the Westlake School for Girls in Holmby Hills, California, Montgomery graduated from the Spence School in New York City.

She studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan for three years.

Montgomery made her television debut in her father's series Robert Montgomery Presents and on later occasions, she appeared as a member of his "summer stock" company of performers.

Montgomery returned to Samantha-like twitching of her nose and on-screen magic in a series of Japanese television commercials (1980–1983) for "Mother" chocolate biscuits and cookies which were produced by the confectionery conglomerate Lotte Corp. These Japanese commercials provided a substantial salary for Montgomery while she remained out of sight of non-Japanese fans and the Hollywood industry.

In the United States, Montgomery spent much of her later career pursuing dramatic roles that took her as far away from the good-natured Samantha as possible.