Elizabeth Montgomery

Elizabeth Montgomery, the housewife-sorceress who cast spells with a twitch of her nose in the enduring sitcom "Bewitched," died after battling cancer. Montgomery died Thursday at home about a month after surgery to remove a tumor. Reference books and news clippings put her age at 62, but her family said she was 57. Her family did not disclose the type of cancer. "Bewitched," a comedy that ran on ABC from 1964 to 1972, was one of the network's biggest hits and Montgomery's only TV series. She starred as Samantha, a witch who tries to avoid using her power to please her often exasperated mortal husband, an ad executive. The popularity of "Bewitched" has proved durable: Reruns of the sitcom are among the highest-rated programs on Nick at Nite, a cable TV channel. Montgomery's post-"Bewitched" career focused on TV movies, including "Deadline for Murder," broadcast on CBS just last week. It was her second TV film based on the career of reporter Edna Buchanan. The daughter of Hollywood star Robert Montgomery also appeared in a few films in the 1950s and '60s, including "The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell." But television was her medium of choice. "I guess you'd say I'm a TV baby," she once said. She made her TV debut in her father's playhouse series, "Robert Montgomery Presents," in the 1950s and appeared in more than 200 live television programs over the next decade. In "Bewitched," Samantha was surrounded by relatives who disapproved of her efforts to abandon her supernatural roots. When Samantha wound up using sorcery as a last resort to solve a comic problem, a twitch of her nose was her key to magic. Samantha and Darrin (played first by Dick York, then by Dick Sargent) became TV parents in 1966 with the birth of daughter Tabitha. The pregnancy coincided with a real-life pregnancy for Montgomery. In a 1965 Associated Press interview, when "Bewitched" was near the top of the ratings, she recalled: "I'd never thought much about a series because I liked the idea of picking a script I liked with a character I thought I could sustain for an hour. In a series, you live with one character day in and day out _ and you only hope it will be one that will not drive your crazy." York, who suffered from emphysema, died at age 63 in February 1992. Sargent, 64, died in July 1994 after a battle with prostate cancer. Montgomery went on to star in made-for-TV movies that often won her critical acclaim. They included "A Case of Rape" (1974); "The Legend of Lizzie Borden" (1975); "Black Widow Murders: The Blanche Taylor Moore Story" (1993), and "The Corpse Had a Familiar Face," about Buchanan, in 1994. She worked with husband Robert Foxworth in TV movies ("Mrs. Sundance," 1974, "Face to Face," 1990) and in a 1989 New York production of the play "Love Letters." She also tackled more serious subjects, working for liberal causes and narrating "The Panama Deception," a documentary that criticized the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama. The film won the Academy Award for best feature documentary in 1993. Montgomery's mother, Elizabeth Allen Montgomery, also was an actress. Among Montgomery's previous husbands were actor Gig Young and "Bewitched" producer William Asher; she and Asher had three children.