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“Bewitched,” the magical supernatural situation comedy starring Elizabeth Montgomery, ran on ABC from 1964 to 1972 and has remained in syndication ever since. In the series, Montgomery portrayed the part of the nose-twitching witch Samantha, a blonde bombshell who could manipulate her husband at will.

Also starring Dick York (1964-69), Dick Sargent (1969-72), Agnes Moorehead, and a bevy of memorable supporting and recurring players, the delightful series was nominated for 22 Emmys (winning three times) and was ranked in the Top 10 in the Nielsen ratings during three of its eight seasons. The show has been available for several years via DVD season sets, and a complete series DVD box edition.

Today, more than twenty years after her sudden death from colorectal cancer at the age of 62, her private life is under close scrutiny following the publication of Herbie Pilato’s biography “Twitch upon a star,” which details the darker aspects of her life. Four husbands and numerous affairs, she may well have enchanted every man she ever met, but was seemingly drawn to troubled men, not nice guys. The Hollywood beauty also appeared to have a “father complex,” picking partners who abused her physically and mentally.

Picking over the bones of her life will tarnish the collective consciousness of millions of a certain age, who retain warm memories of the show and their childhood innocence. There’ll be no twitch of her nose to banish such revelations. More’s the pity……………

She was born in Los Angeles in 1933, the daughter of the actress Elizabeth Allen and the stage and screen actor Robert Montgomery, who was one of the first film stars to work prominently on television. She trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Art, in New York, and made her television debut in her father’s series Robert Montgomery Presents, in a story entitled “Top Secret” (1951), at the age of 17. She appeared in another 26 episodes of the programme over the next five years, as well as acting in other live dramas in series such as Armstrong Circle Theater, Kraft Theater, Studio One, Warner Brothers Presents and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Montgomery’s many other television appearances included guest roles in Appointment with Adventure (1955), Climax (1956), Suspicion (1958), Cimarron City (1958), The Loretta Young Show (1959), Riverboat (1959), Wagon Train (1959), The Untouchables (1960, nominated for an Emmy award for her portrayal of the sex siren Rusty Heller), Twilight Zone (1961), Burke’s Law (1963 and 1964), Rawhide (1963) and 77 Sunset Strip (1963), before finding fame in Bewitched.

Montgomery was actually the second actress to be approached for the role of Samantha Stephens, after Tammy Grimes turned it down. Montgomery and her husband-to-be, the director William Asher, were looking for a show to work on together and, after reading the script, she told the programme’s co-creator William Dozier, “This is a series I just must do, that’s all.”

Montgomery and Asher were hired and Bewitched became the second most popular programme on American television during its first series, in 1964- 65. It was the first “fantasy sitcom” on the small screen and was set to be followed by others such as I Dream of Jeannie, although that genre had already become a part of cinema, most notably in I Married a Witch, the 1942 film starring Veronica Lake.

Dick York and, later, Dick Sargent played Montgomery’s screen husband, Darrin Stephens, and Agnes Moorehead acted her mother. Montgomery also played Samantha’s mischievous identical cousin Serena and provided the voice of “Samantha” in a 1965 episode of the Flintstones cartoon series. Since it finished in 1972, Bewitched’s 306 episodes have been regularly repeated around the world.

In the Seventies, Montgomery turned to drama and acted in some of the most popular television films screened in the United States: The Victim (1972), as a woman in a remote farmhouse stalked by a psychotic killer during a thunderstorm; Mrs Sundance (1974), as the widow of the Sundance Kid, who is duped into believing that her husband is still alive; A Case of Rape (1974), as a married rape victim; The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975) as the infamous New England spinster tried for the axe murders of her father and stepmother; and Dark Victory (1976), as a woman dying of a brain tumour, in a remake of the 1939 Bette Davis classic cinema feature. More recently, she played the Pulitzer Prize-winning crime reporter Edna Buchanan in The Corpse Had a Familiar Face (1994) and Deadline for Murder (1995).

Montgomery’s other screen appearances included the television films A Killing Affair (1977), Jennifer: A Woman’s Story (1979), Belle Starr (1980), When The Circus Came to Town (1981), Second Sight: a love story (1984), Amos (1985), Between the Darkness and the Dawn (1985) and Sins of the Mother (1991); and the mini-series The Awakening Land (1978) and The Rules of Marriage (1982).

She also appeared in half a dozen films, including The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955), Johnny Cool (1963), Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed? (1963) and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965). On stage, her Broadway debut as Janet Colby in Late Love, at the National Theater (1953), won her a Theater World Award for Most Promising Newcomer. She later narrated the theatrical documentaries Cover Up: Behind the Iran Contra Affair and The Panama Deception.

In all, Montgomery received eight Emmy Award nominations for her television work, including five for Bewitched. A keen artist, she wrote and illustrated an unpublished children’s book, Annabelle, and sold several water-colours. She was also active for the Aids Project, Amnesty International and the peace movement.