'A Case of Rape' & 'The Legend of Lizzie Borden' Crowned Liz Montgomery the 1st "Queen of TV-Movies"

[Note: Unless otherwise indicated, all commentary and quotes that appear in this article are from an interview conducted by the author with those mentioned.]

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Before actresses like Jane Seymour, Valerie Bertinelli, and Lindsay Wagner made their mark in films specifically produced for the small screen, Elizabeth Montgomery became the first "Queen of the TV-movies."

Best known as Samantha Stephens, the good witch with a twitch on the legendary 1960s TV sitcom Bewitched (ABC, 1964-1972), Montgomery would leave that cheerful, Emmy-nominated role behind for a series of serious Emmy-nominated performances in TV-movies from the 1970s to her tragic death from cancer in 1995.

A Closer Look

Elizabeth Montgomery was born in 1933 to acclaimed actor Robert Montgomery, and Broadway actress Elizabeth Allen.

At first, the elder Montgomery discouraged his daughter from becoming an actor until he could do so no longer. Finally, young Elizabeth made her TV debut on her father's anthology series, Robert Montgomery Presents.

Hundreds of guest-star TV spots followed as did big-screen appearances in feature films like Johnny Cool (with Sammy Davis, Jr. and Peter Lawford), The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (with Gary Cooper), and Guess Who's Sleeping in My Bed (with Dean Martin and her good friend Carol Burnett).

Then Came Samantha

Elizabeth Montgomery's big break, however, arrived with the role of a magical lifetime: Samantha Stephens on Bewitched, playing opposite Dick York and then Dick Sargent as her mortal husband Darrin, and stalwart Agnes Moorehead as her feisty supernatural mother Endora.

Montgomery enjoyed the part, but after eight seasons, she wanted to move on and expand her artistic reach.

Big Breakaway

In the fall of 1972, Elizabeth Montgomery made her post-premiere TV-movie premiere in ABC's The Victim, a tense thriller co-starring George Maharis.

However, it wasn't until two years later, with the NBC premiere of A Case of Rape, that Montgomery made significant headway in the world of TV-movies.

In this film, she played Ellen Harrod, a middle-class housewife who was raped twice and made to feel not only mortification but false guilt following the gradual mistrust of her husband (played by Ronny Cox) and the court's sympathetic leanings toward the accused (Cliff Potts).

Directed by Boris Sagal, A Case of Rape not only became one of the highest-rated and first issue-oriented TV-movies in history. In the process, Montgomery received an Emmy nomination for her performance and her unspoken title of "Queen of the TV-Movies."

The following year, the actress once more struck TV-movie gold with her compelling, and complex starring role in the shocking ABC film, The Legend of Lizzie Borden.

Other of Montgomery's Benchmark TV-Movies

In the 1960s in Bewitched, Elizabeth Montgomery's Samantha Stephens was crowned "Queen of the Witches." By the mid-1970s, the actress had earned her moniker as "Queen of the TV-Movies" with very un-Samantha-like roles.

She made Western films like Mrs. Sundance and Belle Starr; homicidal-geared movies An Act of Violence, Sins of the Mother, With Murder in Mind, and Black Widow Murders: The Blanche Taylor Moore Story; intense melodramas such as Between the Darkness and the Dawn, and Missing Pieces.

Montgomery also returned to more comedic fare with movies like Montgomery (with Christopher Plummer) and Face to Face, in which she starred with Robert Foxworth (her fourth husband, and former co-star from Mrs. Sundance).

Shortly before she died, Montgomery had filmed Deadline for Murder: From The Files of Edna Buchanan. Based on the real-life experiences of the famed Miami journalist, Deadline was a sequel to The Corpse Had a Familiar Face, which aired the year before.

The Buchannon films became so popular, that Montgomery had signed to make more. Unfortunately, those plans and Montgomery's gifted life were thwarted and cut short.

In the end...

In an interview from 1989, Elizabeth Montgomery summed up her TV-movie experience in this way: "They all have different kinds of 'feels' to them, and that's probably one of the reasons why I've done them. I get letters from people saying one of the things they like best about what I've done since Bewitched is that they never knew what I'm going to do next."