Elizabeth Victoria Montgomery (April 15, 1933 β 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.
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. 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).
Throughout her career, Montgomery was involved in various forms of political activism and charitable work.
In 1954, Montgomery married New York City socialite Frederick Gallatin Cammann; the couple divorced less than a year later. She was married to actor Gig Young from 1956 to 1963 and then she was married to director-producer William Asher from 1963 until their divorce in 1973. They had three children: William, Robert and Rebecca. The latter two pregnancies were incorporated into Bewitched as Samantha’s pregnancies. During the eighth year of the show, Montgomery fell in love with director Richard Michaels. Their resulting affair led to the end of both of their marriages, as well as the end of the series. They moved in together when shooting ended in 1972; the relationship lasted two and a half years. On January 28, 1993, she married actor Robert Foxworth, after living with him for nearly twenty years. They remained married until her death in 1995.
Montgomery suffered from colon cancer. She ignored the influenza-like symptoms during the filming of Deadline for Murder: From the Files of Edna Buchanan, which she finished filming in late March 1995. Due to the late diagnosis, the cancer metatasized from her colon to her liver.
With no hope of recovery and unwilling to die in a hospital, Montgomery chose to return to her Beverly Hills home that she shared with Foxworth. She died on the morning of May 18, 1995, at the age of 62, surrounded by Foxworth and her three children.
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