This begs the question, then, which is more important?...quality of a body of work or just "pop culture"
value? I adore BW, and I find it underrated and usually have to defend my love for the show. However,
I do NOT place it on the same level as I Love Lucy, Mary Tyler Moore, All in the Family, Frasier, or
Seinfeld, although again, this is highly subjective (I know many who HATE All in the Family, but that
doesn't mean it wasn't ground-breaking television and a super high quality series).
Most of Liz's TV movies are long forgotten, and/or simply do not hold up (has anyone tried sitting
through Jennifer: a Woman's Story? Yuck!).
Robert Montgomery was very gifted. A JERK, but gifted, and he made many, many great films.
But, yes, most people approached on the street would be able to place "Elizabeth Montgomery", while
never knowing "Robert Montgomery." That still doesn't convince me that Liz's total body of work
touches her father's.
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Galactus03 (4289)
7 years ago
True. Yes I like Bewitched very much as well but there are better shows. All in the family was great (at least at the beginning) but suffered after Gloria and Mike left. The other shows are get as well. But Bewitched has a charm to it then others do not. So there's that.lol.
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[email protected] (5497)
7 years ago
Yes there is a difference between artistic success and commercial success. Elizabeth Montgomery surely had the latter, owing to Bewitched.
On the one hand though, being a commercial success does not necessarily mean you have talent. Who hasn't heard the name Kardashian? But do those women have any talent at all? Other than a talent for self promotion, that is.
A lot of people achieve commercial success without talent, but surely not Elizabeth Montgomery.
Miss Montgomery did not have the body of film work that her father had, she became a huge success in television. And some of it is really good!
Her first post- Samantha outing was "The Victim', hardly a great TV movie but a very effective scary story. I enjoyed it a lot as a child.
She went on to do Lizzie Borden which was heralded as a great version of the Borden murders.
A Case of Rape was groundbreaking for its time.
She starred in the miniseries "The Awakening Land', an excellent adaptation of the novel.
'Between the Darkness and the Dawn' from 1985 is a great performance by her. Just found it on youtube recently. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to see how talented Elizabeth Montgomery was.
Some of her pre- Bewitched stuff is really good too. She had a small but memorable role in 'The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell."
On TV, she did an episode of The Twilight Zone. But a role that I enjoyed even more was from the old Boris Karloff series Thriller. It's an episode called 'Masquerade'. She co-stars with Tom Poston who plays her husband. They are a young couple who seek shelter on a stormy night in what appears to be a haunted house. Scary and funny. I also found it on youtube.
It is a shame that many great talents like Robert Montgomery aren't well known anymore. But that's the way it goes. I was talking to some teen-agers a few years ago who had NO idea who Marlon Brando was!
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