Encyclopedia
Bewitched was an
American situation comedy starring actress Elizabeth Montgomery, broadcast on ABC from 1964 to 1972.
Background
The show's focus was the mixed marriage of a nose-twitching
witch, Samantha Stephens, and her mortal husband, Darrin. Samantha's mother, Endora , disapproves of Darrin, and many episodes revolve around her using magic to make life difficult for her non-magical son-in-law, whose name she invariably mispronounces as "Durwood," "Darwin," and other variations even less complimentary.
The only member of Samantha's family that Darrin really likes is the lovable and forgetful Aunt Clara , an aged witch whose powers have begun to wane. Almost all of her spells end in disasters. She was in 27 episodes and Aunt Clara character was not replaced when Lorne died during the fourth season. A similar character, Esmeralda played by Alice Ghostley would make appearances for the rest of the show's run.
Darrin works for McMann and Tate, an advertising company, and his boss, Larry Tate, never learns that Samantha is a witch, despite the strange events that take place on a weekly basis. The Stephenses live at 1164 Morning Glory Circle,
Westport, Connecticut. Across the road lives nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz .
Adding to the fun was the Stephens' witch daughter Tabitha, and the later-added baby boy Adam, and various witches, warlocks, and mere mortals. The program made use of clever-for-its-time
special effects to work its magic, and the story lines were imaginative and good-natured. Most episodes ended with Darrin, having been the victim of witchcraft throughout the episode , affirming his love for Samantha and acknowledging that, like it or not, he would have to accept witchcraft in his life.
The show was an immediate hit and was second only to
Bonanza was an American [i] western [i]/cowboy [i] television [i] series which ...
in its first season. It continued to perform well for five seasons, but it dropped in popularity when
Dick York left the series in 1969, owing to health problems, and was replaced by
Dick Sargent. While actor Ray Fulmner was briefly considered, Sargent was chosen because he was well liked by various directors and was now available. Sargent's version of Darrin was a more acidic, whining character, in contrast to York's nervous, frantic portrayal. The drop in ratings was
ironic in light of the fact that Sargent had been the original choice to play Darrin, but had been under contract in 1964; however, it should be noted that Dick Sargent was first considered for the role of Darrin only when actress Tammy Grimes was first offered the role of Samantha, before William Asher and Elizabeth Montgomery became involved with the show. Asher's first and only choice was Dick York since "He was too perfect for the role".
In 1966, the show saw Samantha give birth to daughter Tabitha, played by
fraternal twins Erin and Diane Murphy. Tabitha took after her mother with her witch abilities, adding to Darrin's worries. In 1968, Diane Murphy was dropped as the sisters began looking less and less alike.
In 1969, Adam was introduced. He was played by Greg and David Lawrence. Many saw this new addition as another reason for the continued decline. Adam initially didn't display any powers, but started to do so in the last few episodes of the series.
Montgomery wanted to end the series at the conclusion of the fifth season, not only because of Dick York's departure, but because both she and her husband, the show's producer William Asher, were getting tired of the series and wanted to move on to other projects, but ABC did not want to drop one of its top-grossers. Since the series was one of the network's few hits, they offered Montgomery and Asher significant pay raises for another three seasons plus part ownership of the series . By the seventh season, the story ideas had started to run dry, with many older episodes being remade. By the last season , episodes were being remade almost word for word. Alice Ghostley had left to do "Mayberry RFD". Even Agnes Moorehead's Endora was seen less, sometimes substituted by rhe previously aloof bit character- Aunt Hagatha. The series was pitted against "All In The Family", a vertual death knell to any series.
ABC cancelled Bewitched at the end of the 1971-72 season. It had finished the year at no. 72 in the ratings . ABC had planned a ninth season according the network's contract with Montgomery and Asher but with the ratings so low, Asher offered to produce another series in place of a ninth season.
The pilot of
Bewitched was written by Sol Saks, who received credit as the creator of the show, although he was not involved with the show after the pilot. Initially, the producer and head writer of the series was Danny Arnold, who helped develop the style and tone of the series as well as some of the supporting characters who didn't appear in the pilot, like Larry Tate and the Kravitzes. Arnold, who had been a writer on McHale's Navy and other shows, thought of
Bewitched as being essentially a romantic comedy about a mixed marriage; his episodes kept the magic element to a minimum, with one or two magical acts to drive the plot but with Samantha usually solving problems without using magic. Also, many of the first season's episodes were
allegorical, using supernatural situations as clear metaphors for the real-life problems a young couple would face. Though the show was a hit right from the beginning, Arnold battled with ABC, which wanted more magic and more farcical plots.
Arnold left the show after the first season , leaving producing duties to his friend Jerry Davis, who had already produced some of the first season's episodes . The second season, produced by Davis and with Bernard Slade as head writer, included somewhat wackier plots, with mistaken identity and farce becoming a more prevalent element, but still included a number of more low-key episodes where the magic element was not front and center.
With the third season and the switch to color, Davis and Slade left the show; producing duties were handled first by William Froug and finally by William Asher himself. Most of the episodes from this point on would be more formulaic and more about magical shenanigans than the romantic comedy
Bewitched had been in its first season.
Bewitched continues to be seen throughout the world in syndication.
TV Guide is the name of two North American weekly magazine [i]s about television [i] programming, on ...
recently listed
Bewitched as the 50th Greatest Television Program of All Time.
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the first two seasons of Bewitched on
DVD in 2005, with the third and fourth seasons released in 2006. Due to the fact the first two seasons were produced in black and white, Sony released two versions of the sets in region 1: one with the episodes as originally broadcast and a second with the episodes
colorized. The color sets outsold the black and white sets by a substantial margin. The colorized editions were the only ones released in region 2 and region 4. The photo above of George Tobias and Alice Pearce is from the colorized version, as Pearce only appeared in the episodes filmed in black and white.
Controversy
- The show's witchcraft-related subject matter initially infuriated some evangelical and fundamentalist Christian organizations, which claimed that the show displayed the playful use of ungodly powers in a context that characterized them as good rather than evil as some Christians believed them to be.
- The marriage between Samantha's father and mother was an open one with both Samantha's mother and father dating others at will, but this never caused any issues, with Samantha saying "Mother and Father decided to each go their own way." In one episode Endora did file for an interlocutory divorce but changed her mind.
- The key for dealing with the controversial issues was to avoid it. Religion was virtually never mentioned and Christmas was completely secular.
- In one episode, cousin Serena tells Darren's prodding mother that she is related to Samatha on her father Maurice's side of the family. Yet, Serena calls Endora's brother Arthur- Uncle. This is a familial disconnect, one that often appears in sitcoms with various writers.
- Montgomery had an affair with Richard Michaels, a director of the show, during the filming of the eighth season. They finally revealed their relationship after the finish of the season. Her marriage to producer William Asher ended and so did the series. She moved out of their house and in with Michaels, with whom she spent two and a half years before they parted.
Regular and recurring characters
...
1969-72
...
...
1964-66, Sandra Gould 1966-71
- Larry Tate - David White
- Louise Tate - Irene Vernon 1964-66, Kasey Rogers 1966-72
- Aunt Clara - Marion Lorne
- Esmeralda - Alice Ghostley
- Dr. Bombay - Bernard Fox
- Serena - Pandora Spocks
- Uncle Arthur - Paul Lynde
- Maurice - Maurice Evans
- Phyllis Stephens - Mabel Albertson
- Frank Stephens - Roy Roberts
...
Episode List
Seasons 1-4 out of 8 are the only ones yet released by Sony in the U.S.
Season One
- 1. I, Darrin, Take This Witch, Samantha
- 2. Be It Ever So Mortgaged
- 3. It Shouldn't Happen To A Dog
- 4. Mother Meets What's His Name
- 5. Help, Help, Don't Save Me
- 6. Little Ptchers Have Big Fears
- 7. The Witches Are Out
- 8. Witch Or Wife
- 9. The Girl Reporter
- 10. Just One Happy Family
- 11. It Takes One To Know One
- 12. ...And Something Makes Three
- 13. Love Is Blind
- 14. Samantha Meets The Folks
- 15. A Vision Of Sugar Plums
- 16. It's Magic
- 17. A Is For Aardvark
- 18. The Cat's Meow
- 19. A Nice Little Dinner Party
- 20. Your Witch Is Showing
- 21. Ling Ling
- 22. Eye Of The Beholder
- 23. Red Light, Green Light
- 24. Which Witch Is Which?
- 25. Pleasure O'Riley
- 26. Driving Is THe Only Way To Fly
- 27. There's No Witch Like An Old Witch
- 28. Open The Door, Witchcraft
- 29. Abner Kadabra
- 30. George The Warlock
- 31. That Was My Wife
- 32. Illegal Separation
- 33. A Change Of Face
- 34. Remember The Main
- 35. Eat At Mario's
- 36. Cousin Edgar
Season Two
- 37. Alias Darrin Stephens
- 38. A Very Special Delivery
- 39. We're In For A Bad Spell
- 40. My Grandson The Warlock
- 41. The Joker Is A Card
- 42. Take Two Aspirins And Half A Pint Of Porpoise Milk
- 43. Trick Or Treat
- 44. The Very Informal Dress
- 45. And Then I Wrote
- 46. Junior Executive
- 47. Aunt Clara's Old Flame
- 48. A Strange Little Visitor
- 49. My Boss, The Teddy Bear
- 50. Speak The Truth
- 51. A Vision Of Sugar Plums
- 52. The Magic Cabin
- 53. Maid To Order
- 54. And Then There Were Three
- 55. My Baby The Tycoon
- 56. Samantha Meets The Folks
- 57. Fastest Gun On Madison Avenue
- 58. The Dancing Bear
- 59. Double Tate
- 60. Samantha The Dressmaker
- 61. The Horse's Mouth
- 62. Baby's First Paragraph
- 63. The Leprechaun
- 64. Double Split
- 65. Disappearing Samantha
- 66. Follow That Witch: Part One
- 67. Follow That Witch: Part Two
- 68. A Bum Raps
- 69. Divided He Falls
- 70. Man's Best Friend
- 71. The Catnapper
- 72. What Every Young Man Should Know
- 73. The Girl With The Golden Nose
- 74. Prodigy
Season Three
- 75. Nobody's Perfect
- 76. The Moment Of Truth
- 77. Witches And Warlocks Are My Favourite Things
- 78. Accidental Twins
- 79. A Most Unusual Wood Nymph
- 80. Endora Moves In For A Spell
- 81. Twitch Or Treat
- 82. Dangerous Diaper Dan
- 83. The Short Happy Circuit Of Aunt Clara
- 84. I'd Rather Twitch Than Fight
- 85. Oedipus Hex
- 86. Sam's Spooky Chair
- 87. My Friend Ben
- 88. Samantha For The Defense
- 89. A Gazebo Never Forgets
- 90. Soapbox Derby
- 91. Sam In The Moon
- 92. Hoho The Clown
- 93. Super Car
- 94. The Corn Is As High As A Guernsey's Eye
- 95. Trial And Error Of Aunt Clara
- 96. Three Wishes
- 97. I Remember You... Sometimes
- 98. Art For Sam's Sake
- 99. Charlie Harper, Winner
- 100. Aunt Clara's Victoria Victory
- 101. The Crone Of Cawdor
- 102. No More Mr. Nice Guy
- 103. It's Wishcraft
- 104. How To Fail In Business With All Kinds Of Help
- 105. Bewitched, Bothered And Infuriated
- 106. Nobody But A Frog Knows How To Live
- 107. There's Gold In Them Thar Pills
Season Four
- 108. Long Live the Queen
- 109. Toys in Babeland
- 110. Business, Italian Style
- 111. Double, Double, Toil and Trouble
- 112. Cheap, Cheap
- 113. No Zip in My Zap
- 114. Birdies, Bogeys, and Baxter
- 115. The Safe and Sane Halloween
- 116. Out of Synch, Out of Mind
- 117. That Was No Chick, That Was My Wife
- 118. Allergic to Macedonian Dodo Birds
- 119. Samantha’s Thanksgiving to Remember
- 120. Solid Gold Mother-in-Law
- 121. My, What Big Ears You Have
- 122. I Get Your Nanny, You Get My Goat
- 123. Humbug Not Spoken Here
- 124. Samantha’s da Vinci Dilemma
- 125. Once in a Vial
- 126. Snob in the Grass
- 127. If They Never Met
- 128. Hippie, Hippie, Hooray
- 129. A Prince of a Guy
- 130. McTavish
- 131. How Green Was My Grass
- 132. To Twitch or Not to Twitch
- 133. Playmates
- 134. Tabatha’s Cranky Spell
- 135. I Confess
- 136. A Majority of Two
- 137. Samantha’s Secret Saucer
- 138. The No-Harm Charm
- 139. Man of the Year
- 140. Splitsville
Spin-offs
Comic Book
Dell Comics published a short-lived comic book for 14 issues starting in 1965. Most issues had photo covers.
Tabitha and Adam and the Clown Family
An
animated cartoon made in 1972 by
Hanna-Barbera Productions for the ABC
Saturday Superstar Movie, this featured a teenage version of Tabitha and Adam visiting their aunt and her family who travel with a
circus.
Tabitha
In 1977, a spin-off show entitled
Tabitha aired on the ABC network. The show, which ran for less than a season, starred
Lisa Hartman as an adult Tabitha working, along with Adam, at television station KXLA. The show had several continuity issues including the ages of the lead characters and Adam being a mortal instead of a warlock. Samantha and Darrin never appeared in the spin-off, though Bernard Fox, Sandra Gould, and George Tobias made separate guest appearances as Dr. Bombay, Gladys Kravitz, and Abner Kravitz, respectively.
Bewitched movie
Bewitched was an American [i] situation comedy [i] starring actress Elizabeth Montgomery [i] ...
is a 2005
movie re-imagining starring
Nicole Kidman and
Will Ferrell. When Jack Wyatt , a failing
Hollywood actor, is offered the chance of a career comeback playing Darrin in a remake of
Bewitched, all he has to do is find the perfect girl to play Samantha. He finds Isabel Bigelow , who really is a witch. It is set in Los Angeles rather than
Connecticut.
Bewitched mobile game
Sony Pictures Digital mobile Game.
Remakes
Argentina
In 2006, the local remake of
Bewitched,
Hechizada, will be made by
Telefé and is slated to be aired in April. Florencia Peña will play the role of "Samantha".
India
In 2002,
Sony Entertainment Television began airing , a local adaptation of
Bewitched.Japan
The
Japanese
TBS network, in collaboration with
Sony Pictures Entertainment, produced a remake called . Eleven episodes were broadcast on Friday nights at 22:00, from January 16 to March 26, 2004, with a special extra episode broadcast on December 21, 2004. The main character,
Arisa Matsui, was performed by
Ryoko Yonekura.
?????? is also the Japanese title for the original American series.
Chile
The
Chilean television channel Mega, in collaboration with
Sony Pictures Entertainment, will produce a remake called
La Hechizada.
Bewitched in other languages
- Catalan: Embruixada
- Chinese: ????
- NOTE: ?? means a supernatural or immortal being
- Finnish: Vaimoni on noita
- French: Ma sorcière bien-aimée
- German: Verliebt in eine Hexe
- Greek: ? µ???ssa
- Hebrew: ????'?
- Italian: Vita da Strega
- Japanese: ??????
- Korean: ??? ????
- Portuguese
- Spanish
- Spain: Embrujada
- Latin America: Hechizada , also La Brujita
- NOTE: The Chilean remake is called La hechizada.
- NOTE: In some countries like Ecuador or Colombia Bewitched is called La Brujita, which means The Little Witch
- Swedish Förhäxed "Bewitched/Charmed"
- Also Same name of Charmed Show about Witches as well
- Turkish: Tatli Cadi
- Mexico: Hechizada
See also
- I Dream of Jeannie was a popular American [i] sitcom [i] with a fantasy [i] premise....
- My Favorite Martian
- My Hero is a British comedy [i] television series, about a not very bright superhero [i] named Therm ...
- Oku-sama wa Maho Shojo
- List of television series that include time travel
Trivia
- The show was featured in a Jack Chick tract, which portrays it as Satan's favorite television show.
- Australia's first winner of Nine Network's 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?' quiz show correctly answered a) Bewitched, to the million dollar question: Which, of these four '60s television show, premiered first: a) Bewitched, b) Get Smart, c) Hogan's Heroes or d) I Dream of Jeannie.
- Darrin's mother was played by veteran actress Mabel Albertson, who was the sister of Jack Albertson . Mabel Albertson also played the mothers of Donald Hollinger and Howard Spraque .
- While Erin Murphy claimed on "E Entertainment" that Elizabeth Montgomery prefered Dick Sargent's Darrin, Kasey Rogers, Bernard Fox, Mabel Albertson and Sandra Gould said that Dick York's "mugging" or animated facial expressions were what really made the character. William Asher claimed that Dick York's screen kisses showed more "passion".
- Darrin Stephens is named James Stephens in Brazil and Jean-Pierre Stephens in France.
- Samantha and Darrin Stephens made a cameo in The Flintstones, an American [i] animated television series [i] produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions [i] ...
. - Samantha and Darrin Stephens were the first live-action TV couple, with the actors not married to each other in "real life," to sleep in a double bed . The episode in question, "Little Pitchers Have Big Fears," aired on October 22, 1964. Despite popular belief, it was not The Munsters or The Brady Bunch, which didn't air until 1969.
- Bewitched proved very popular with young girls when it first aired in Japan, and is considered to be the inspiration for the Magical girl
...
genre of
anime.
- Bewitched is referenced in "The Simpsons" in an episode where Maggie turns into a real witch following a curse at a halloween party.
- In the last scene, where Maggie is flying on a broomstick, the first and last parts of the "Bewitched" theme music are played.
- In an episode of The Fairly OddParents, "Timmy TV", Mrs. and Mr. Turner appear in a scene that was very similar to Bewitched opening.
- Reruns can be seen on LIVINGtv in the UK
Darrin Stephens' Wardrobe
was a video collection from British indie band
The Wedding Present, whilst on the show
Dick Sargent's Wardrobe was provided by Botany 500, the name of which influenced 1990s Scottish pop band Botany 5. The opening credits of one episode of
Futurama stated
Bender's Wardrobe by Robotany 500.
External links
- * The definitive Bewitched website, with extensive information on the show and the people who made it.
