Read Twitch Upon a Star for Free Online Page B

break the happy-go-lucky mold and waxed psychotic in several feature films, including: The Big House (a prison movie released in 1930 that set the pattern for similar future films) and Night Must Fall (a 1937 thriller in which he played a mysterious brutal killer who terrorized the countryside).
    The latter earned him an Academy Award nomination. He received a second Oscar nod in 1941 for Here Comes Mr. Jordan .
    On a flight to his next fight, boxer Joe Pendleton’s (Robert) soul is prematurely snatched from his body by the newly deemed Heavenly Messenger 7013 (Edward Everett Horton) when his plane crashes. Before the matter can be rectified by 7013’s supervisor, the celestial Mr. Jordan (Claude Raines), Joe’s body is cremated; so Jordan grants him the use of the body of wealthy Bruce Farnsworth (original character unseen), who’s just been murdered by his wife (Rita Johnson). As Joe attempts to remake Farnsworth’s unworthy life in his own clean-cut image, he falls for Betty Logan (Evelyn Keyes).
    Lizzie failed to win an Emmy for playing a witch on Bewitched (for which she was nominated five times, with a total of nine nominations throughout her career); her father failed to ace any formal acting award for playing a seraph (or a psycho).
    In 1945, legendary film director John Ford became ill on the set of They Were Expendable , and Robert stepped in as his replacement, making his first mark as a director. After receiving this initial tech credit, he turned out an unusual, controversial production titled Lady in the Lake (1947), a Raymond Chandler mystery thriller told in the first person through tricky subjective camera angles (much like Lizzie’s Missing Pieces 1983 TV-movie). Playing the hero (private eye Philip Marlowe ), he was seen on the screen only twice—once in the prologue, then within the body of the film, when he briefly crossed in front of a mirror. All other scenes were shown from his point of view, as if seen though his eyes. Robert went on to direct and star in several other films that received varied response before retiring from the big screen, and turned his attention to politics, TV, and the stage.
    On Broadway in 1955, he won a Tony Award for best director for the play The Desperate Hours . He later formed Cagney-Montgomery Productions with early screen idol James Cagney to produce The Gallant Hours (1960), his final effort as a film director. Cagney was fond of Lizzie, and later became a mentor of sorts, maybe something even closer.
    As she told Ronald Haver for the 1991 laserdisc release of Here Comes Mr. Jordan , Cagney was one of her dad’s closest friends who was like a second father to her, and it never occurred to her that Cagney was a big star.
    Another larger-than-life celebrity who both Elizabeth and Robert Montgomery befriended was film legend Bette Davis. Lizzie would later take the lead in the 1976 TV-movie, Dark Victory , a remake of Davis’ 1939 motion picture; Bette had co-starred with Robert in 1948’s June Bride (directed by Bretaigne Windust). In time, Lizzie and Bette became closer friends than Bette and Robert, and he became jealous; not so much of Bette, but of Lizzie. But as Bette recalled to author Charlotte Chandler in Bette Davis: A Personal Biography—The Girl Who Walked Home Alone (Simon and Schuster, 2006), Robert left little to be desired or envied. She even went as far as to describe him as “a male Miriam Hopkins,” a reference to her arch rival on the big screen.
    Actress Hopkins had well-publicized arguments with Davis (who reportedly had an affair with Hopkins’ then-husband, Anatole Litvak) when they co-starred in the films The Old Maid (1939) and Old Acquaintance (1943). Davis admitted to very much enjoying a scene in the latter movie in which her character forcefully shakes Hopkins’ character. There were even press photos taken with both divas in boxing rings with gloves up and Old Acquaintance’s