Elizabeth Montgomery

            On Monday morning I finished posting “You Never Feel My Shotgun”, which is my translation of “Shotgun” by Serge Gainsbourg. I listened once and sang along with his song “Glass securit” (Safety Glass). Tomorrow I’ll start memorizing it. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the second of two sessions. Tomorrow I’ll begin a four session stretch of playing my Martin acoustic guitar. 

            I weighed 86.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I ordered the novels The Buried Giant and Pearl on Amazon but The Buried Giant doesn’t look like it will be shipped until after we’ve started reading it. I have a digital version I can use I guess. 

            Two crows stopped across the street on top of the building opposite. When they took off they joined a flock of flying pigeons for a while. 

            I started re-reading Beowulf yesterday and continued before lunch. I got up to the point where Beowulf arrives in Denmark to present himself to Hrothgar and offer his assistance in fighting Grendel.

            I weighed 86 kilos before lunch. In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. Pigeons were pecking at the ice on the Bloor bike lane. Further east a dog was sitting on the edge of the lane with its leash stretched into the open door of a car while someone sitting in the back seat was pulling to get the dog to come inside but it refused. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:30. I finished reading the required section of Beowulf up until the killing Grendel’s mother but then read a little further because Beowulf retells the story to Hrothgar and adds more details. He also retells the story to his own king when he returns home. I started reading the essay, “Horror and the Maternal in Beowulf”. 

            I had a potato with gravy and some pork ribs while watching season 1, episode 2 of Burke’s Law. 

            A body with no identification is found near a merry go round where children are riding. There’s a 38 bullet in his back. There are no bloodstains and so Burke concludes that he was shot somewhere else and brought there. He’s been dead for three days. They find in his pocket a matchbook from the Crystal Pier Ballroom, which burned down in 1930. On it is a phone number for an actor named Stacy Evans. Burke goes there. Stacy says she’s under exclusive contract to film producer Emory Fludd. She’s was given the house and $500 a week but she’s been living there for four years and not only has she yet to do a movie, she’s never even met Fludd. He takes her to identify the body but she doesn’t recognize it. At one point she wiggles her nose. Stacy is played by Elizabeth Montgomery who will becomes a star a year later on Bewitched playing a witch who casts spells by wiggling her nose. He goes to Fludd’s office where the person in charge Mr. Gregory dusts everything every day even though Fludd hasn’t been there for thirteen years. Fludd has a multiple telephone system by which he gives instructions on running the business. He says it’s impossible to know where Fludd is. Burke learns there is only one person of higher rank than him and that’s Henry Gellar. Gellar doesn’t know where Fludd is either. Burke tells him he’s putting out a material witness warrant on Fludd. At the station four of Fludd’s lawyers arrive and demand to see the body. They confirm that Mr. X is Fludd. Burke goes back to Gellar and finds out there’s one more person over him in the organization. His name is Harold Mason. Burke and Tim go back to talk to Gregory where an elderly woman named Miss Rogers is waiting to see Fludd and has been waiting there every day for years. They drive her home. Burke goes to see Mason who is feeding a tropical fish to a piranha. Mason finally admits that last Tuesday Fludd called to tell him he was wounded and to come and help him. When he got there Fludd was dead. He removed his identification and transported the body. They go to Miss Rogers’s house where the calendar is still on 1929. In her drawing room they remove a picture from the wall where they find a bullet hole. They ask her about the bullet hole. She says a few nights ago she heard a key turn in her lock and an old man walked in. He tried to kiss her. She got her gun and shot him. They take her away without her knowing that she’d killed her own lover who she hadn’t seen since he was a young man.

            Elizabeth Montgomery was the daughter of producer Robert Montgomery and her first TV role was in his series Robert Montgomery Presents. She studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She made her Broadway debut in 1956 in Late Love and won a Theatre World Award for her performance. Her first movie was The Court-martial of Billy Mitchell. She was nominated for an Emmy for her guest appearance on The Untouchables. She co-starred in Johnny Cool, and Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed? In 1964 she was cast as Samantha Stevens in Bewitched and in the second season she began also playing Samantha’s mischievous and sultry cousin Serina. At the time it was the highest rated series ever for ABC. She was nominated for five Emmys and four Golden Globes. The show only fell apart when her marriage to director William Asher crumbled. She had more Emmy nominations for A Case of Rape, The Awakening Land, and The Legend of Lizzie Borden. It was only discovered after she died that she was a sixth cousin to Lizzie Borden. She was a feminist, an AIDS activist and a champion for gay rights. Of the two Darrens on Bewitched she preferred the second one as played by Dick Sargent and remained friends.