After “Bewitched” ended its run in 1972, Elizabeth Montgomery made no further appearances as nose-twitching witch Samantha Stephens from the popular series. She was ready to move on and didn’t want to be typecast as the character. Lizzie went on to make numerous TV movies and enjoyed a successful career until her passing in the mid 1990s. Though “Bewitched” has been in constant syndication since it ended its original run, she rarely talked about “Bewitched” until fan interest in the show picked up in the late 1980s and early 90s, and books and the like started to appear around the subject. She was pleased with her performances as Samantha, but she didn’t want to be known as just Samantha. In the early 1990s she did agree to appear in a pilot for a reboot of the series. The new version was to be about a witch that lived in London, but the show never came to fruition.
Even though Lizzie was distancing herself from Samantha, she did appear in a run of Japanese commercials for Lotte Mother Biscuits, twitching her nose and doing Samantha-like magic. I guess she figured these Japanese commercials would never make it to the States. But courtesy of the Internet and Youtube, we can see Elizabeth Montgomery doing Samantha like things in the mid 1980s.
As a lifelong “Bewitched” fan, it’s fun to see Elizabeth doing her Samantha like gestures later in her life.
