Elizabeth Montgomery is an actress who rises in portraying the main character Samantha Stephens on the supernatural 1960s sitcom Bewitched. While Samantha is a loving and faithful wife on the show, her acting is far from real life. Elizabeth marries four men over her life, with one of those men being one of the show’s producers, Bill Asher. During the production, Elizabeth starts an affair with the series’ directors that causes both of their marriages to an end. Join Facts Verse as we explore how Elizabeth Montgomery destroyed two marriages with her affair during Bewitched.
Affairs on sitcom Bewitched
Fans of the 1960s sitcom Bewitched are surprised to learn that leading actress Elizabeth Montgomery’s affair. The sitcom is a major success for the ABC network, allowing it to start competing with the biggest television stations. The series put Elizabeth on the map as a big star after years of the actress toiling away in Hollywood. Prior to Bewitched, Elizabeth can be in numerous programs and movies, but none of it bring the actress true stardom. With Bewitched, Elizabeth Montgomery finally became a household name.
Marriage Advantages to Television Show
It is her third husband Bill Asher who helps Elizabeth Montgomery get her iconic role in the sitcom Bewitched. Bill is a producer who stuck out for Elizabeth and helps her to get the leading role in the series. However, this didn’t mean that Elizabeth had to be faithful to her husband during the sitcom’s filming! Bewitched ended up lasting for eight seasons, with Elizabeth playing the main character throughout the show’s entire run. However, two separate actors played Elizabeth’s on-screen husband, Darrin, over the course of the series. The show remembers today thanks to reboots and reruns.
Part of what made Bewitched so successful was the loving relationship between the main characters Samantha and Darrin Stephens. The world falls in love with Samantha as the character of Darrin. It will be hard for television audiences to imagine the two with anybody else. However, not only Elizabeth marries one of the show’s producers over the course of the series production in real life. She engages in an extramarital affair with one of the show’s directors later in its run.
Elizabeth’s Marriages History
While Samantha’s marriage to Darrin on Bewitched is picture-perfect. The actress who plays Samantha didn’t have all that much success with her marriages outside of the screen. Bill Asher is Elizabeth’s third husband, meaning that she marries and divorces twice before taking the role of Samantha Stephens. Elizabeth’s first husband was a man by the name of Frederic Cammann, whom she married in 1954. Sadly, Samantha’s drive for Hollywood success causes a division in their marriage, and ends up divorcing only a year. Not long after her first divorce, Elizabeth remarried for the first time in 1956.
Elizabeth and Gig’s Marriage
When Elizabeth Montgomery marries her second husband, Gig Young, in 1956, she’s still trying to make a name in Hollywood. Her first husband is a man close to her age thinking of starting a family away from the Hollywood spotlight. Gig is a much older man who didn’t have any pretense about their Hollywood marriage being anything but superficial. They married for eight years and speculates that Gig is somewhat abusive to Elizabeth during that time. Elizabeth and Gig divorced in 1963, and Elizabeth went on to marry the aforementioned Bill Asher later that same year. In 1964, Bewitched premiered.
Following his divorce from Elizabeth, Gig Young went on to remarry twice. In 1978, he killed himself and his fourth wife, who was a woman the name, of Kim Schmidt. The two marry for a few weeks. Elizabeth would divorce from third husband Bill Asher as a result of her affair during the production of Bewitched. Following this third divorce, she would remarry once more before passing away herself in 1995. If you’re enjoying this video so far, be sure to hit the like button to show your support! Also, subscribe to the channel if you’d like to know when more Facts Verse videos are on their way!
All About Elizabeth and Richard Michaels
Elizabeth involves a man in an extramarital affair during the production of Bewitched. It’s Richard Michaels who hires as a director in the series during its later season. Upon Richard’s hiring, the director hit it off with star Elizabeth almost immediately. As the filming went on, they start to fall in love with each other. This love is hard to hide from other people on the set of the series including Bill Asher.
Apparently, it wasn’t long into Samantha and Richard’s affair that people on the set of Bewitched began to take notice. As a result of finding out about the affair, both Samantha and Richard’s respective marriages will fall apart. After Richard Michaels’ wife found out about the affair, she divorced him in 1972. Of course, that wound up being the same year that Bewitched aired its series finale. The following year, Elizabeth Montgomery and Bill Asher divorced. The pair is trying to make it work after Bill Asher initially found out about the affair, but can’t manage. Bill is unfaithful to Elizabeth, with the producer taking advantage of his industry clout to secure affairs with famous starlets.
Elizabeth Montgomery and Bill Asher
In the end, Elizabeth and Bill marry for nine years when Bill is more unfaithful to Elizabeth than she is. Women that Bill engages in affairs with at the time of his marriage, didn’t fall in love with them. It’s a serious and personal nature of Elizabeth’s affection for Richard Michaels that ends up damaging the marriage. Bill cannot stand to see his wife in love with another man. Although Elizabeth and Richard fall in love with each other, they never marry after divorcing their respective spouses. Instead, Elizabeth went on to marry someone else before her death in 1995.
Elizabeth and Bill divorces in 1973, claiming that Bill remains in love with Elizabeth for the rest of his life. Elizabeth gets a way of charming the men around her. Richard and her four husbands were far from the only notable men that the actress was ever romantically involved with. In fact, over the course of her life, Elizabeth involves with such major celebrities as Elvis Presley and Dean Martin. Still, neither of these celebrities became quite as smitten with Elizabeth as Bill Asher was. Prior to his death in 2012 at the age of 90, Bill expressed his belief that everything bad that had happened during his marriage to Elizabeth was his fault.
Age Conflict Between Two Lovers
Although Bill Asher had been older than Elizabeth Montgomery, it was Elizabeth who ended up passing away first. Elizabeth’s aforementioned 1995 death occurred as a result of colon cancer, which she had been diagnosed with only a few months prior. At the time of Elizabeth’s death, the actress was 62 years old. Her fourth husband, a younger actor by the name of Robert Foxworth, survived her. Her and Robert had tied the knot only a few years prior, in 1993.
Elizabeth’s Family Conflicts
When Elizabeth Montgomery decided to become an actress, she was following in the footsteps of both of her parents. Elizabeth’s mother had been a notable Broadway actress by the name of Elizabeth Daniel Bryan, while her father had been the even more prominent actor Robert Montgomery. While her father was a modest success, he never achieved fame during his life quite like his daughter would thanks to her time on Bewitched. Robert was never very encouraging of young Elizabeth choosing to follow in his footsteps, and he became outright jealous when his daughter became more successful than him with her new show.
Some say that Robert Montgomery’s neglect of his daughter is what caused her to seek romantic relationships with older men during her adulthood. Robert himself feared that Elizabeth was trying to replace him, though it seems that she never had very much success doing so. Beyond Robert being jealous of his daughter’s Hollywood success, some have also suspected that Robert held a grudge against young Elizabeth as a result of the death of his firstborn daughter when she was only an infant. Robert had an infant daughter that died before Elizabeth was born, and some think that Robert held a grudge against Elizabeth for surviving while his firstborn daughter had not.
Elizabeth Montgomery As A Mother
Elizabeth Montgomery mothered three children of her own over the course of her lifetime, and it has been said that she didn’t much enjoy these children being around her father. Many people wondered why this was so, as it seemed as if Robert Montgomery was a stand-up citizen without much to hide. However, Elizabeth would later share that her reasoning was that she didn’t want her children to grow up around as cold and unloving of a figure as she had.
While actress Elizabeth Montgomery largely had third husband Bill Asher to thank for receiving her iconic role on the beloved 1960s television series Bewitched, that didn’t stop her from cheating on him with one of the show’s directors during it’s production. Now it’s time to hear from you: did you know that actress Elizabeth Montgomery blamed her famous father for her poor luck with love, and that she was married four times during her life? As always, like this video to show your support, and subscribe and hit the notification bell if you’d like to be among the first to know when more Facts Verse videos are on their way!