Dining on Integrated Turkey

---

---

We all get busy with other things at this time of the year, don't we? Sometimes to the exclusion of things we really want to do as opposed to those things that we feel we must do or that we feel obligated to do. Funny thing about obligations. People don't always put a priority on the right one.

Well, yesterday (Christmas Eve) was such a day for me. I got busy with other things and entirely neglected to write about something that I have been intending to write about — a special Christmas episode of the Bewitched television series that premiered 45 years ago yesterday.

Better late than never, I suppose.

It was called "Sisters at Heart," and the story was written by some two dozen black high school students in South Los Angeles after they paid a visit to the Bewitched set at the invitation of series star Elizabeth Montgomery and her director and husband William Asher. It dealt with racism and prejudice at a time when that was rarely addressed on television.

It was about a black co–worker of Darrin's (who was played by this time by Dick Sargent) and his family. The co–worker was about to leave on a business trip, and his wife was going with him. They were going to leave their daughter with the Stephenses while they were away, and they brought her over to the Stephens home prior to their departure.

That was terrific as far as Tabitha (Erin Murphy), the Stephenses' daughter, was concerned. The two girls were friends, and Tabitha liked the idea of having a sister, albeit temporarily. Tabitha, as children do, latched on to the idea and started telling people that she and her house guest were sisters. Her friend played along with the game.

Anyway, while the other girl and her parents were in the house, another visitor dropped by. He was the owner of a toy company, and Darrin had been trying to win his advertising account. The visitor's unannounced arrival was deliberate; the goal was to find out if Darrin had any secrets he wanted to conceal.

Samantha was busy with her youngest child when he arrived so he only met the wife of Darrin's colleague, her daughter and Tabitha. Tabitha's friend told the visitor (Parley Baer) that she and Tabitha were sisters. Based on their brief conversation, his assumption was that it was a biracial marriage. It turned out he was a racist, and he wanted Darrin removed from the account.

Tabitha also told a child in the park that she and her friend were sisters, but the child told her they couldn't be sisters because their skin colors were different. Tabitha decided to resolve that and cast a spell on the two, giving them polka dots. When Samantha discovered what Tabitha had done, she insisted that Tabitha reverse the spell, which she tried to do but could not. The reason why was unclear until Samantha deduced that Tabitha didn't really want to reverse the spell because she wanted the two girls to remain sisters.

---

---

When Samantha explained to the girls that they didn't have to look alike to be sisters, Tabitha was able to reverse the spell.

The spell, of course, blew the cover on the Stephens family secret about Samantha and Tabitha being witches — but only to Tabitha's friend, not her parents or the owner of the toy company.

At a Christmas party at the Stephens house, Darrin's boss told him that the owner of the toy company wanted him removed from the account. During the party, the owner of the toy company realized his mistake, that it was not a biracial marriage, and he told Darrin's boss (David White) that it was OK for Darrin to work on the account after all.

When Samantha learned why Darrin had been rejected initially, she decided to teach the toy company owner a lesson and cast a spell on him. He saw everyone in the house as black — himself included when he looked in the mirror.

On Christmas Day, he returned to the Stephens home. The black family was visiting, and the toy company owner apologized to them all for his bigotry and expressed remorse for his racism.

---

---

His apology was accepted, and he was invited to share Christmas dinner with them. "We're having integrated turkey," Samantha told him, "white and dark meat."

Montgomery said it was her favorite Bewitched episode, and it isn't hard to understand why. Bewitched was about dealing with prejudice — the prejudice of the mortal world against the wiccan one — and Montgomery opened and closed the episode by telling the audience the episode "was created in the true spirit of Christmas ... conceived in the image of innocence and filled with truth."

In Bewitched, witches were a put–down minority. But all minorities are not — pardon the pun — created equally.

I suppose racism and wiccaphobia (if such a word exists) aren't entirely comparable. I mean, one can't easily conceal one's race — the way, for example, one can conceal (although not always easily) one's sexual orientation. Consequently, I guess wiccaphobia has more in common with homophobia than racism — Bewitched often proved as much in the characters' efforts to hide Samantha's wiccan abilities.

But the argument can be made that prejudice is prejudice, whether it is on the basis of things that are seen or things that are unseen (or, perhaps, assumed).

Precisely because prejudice and bigotry were hardly ever addressed on TV before 1971, when All in the Family made its debut and made social relevance a key component of TV, "Sisters at Heart" was almost unique in its approach to its topic. Ironically, in these politically correct times, it would probably be viewed as insensitive if it premiered today because some of the characters appear in blackface.

As it so often is with political correctness, that is a classic case of failing to see the forest for the trees.

Fighting the Battle of Burning Oak

---

---

Elizabeth Montgomery was always an activist.

She was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War when her TV series, Bewitched, was popular. Long after the series went off the air, she was an advocate of women's rights and gay rights (the latter influenced to a certain extent by her friendship with Bewitched co–star Dick Sargent, the second Darrin, who was gay).

Surely, it was due at least in part to Montgomery's influence that Bewitched was more than another slapstick '60s sitcom. It had the requisite bizarre circumstances the primary characters were striving to overcome with goofy supporting characters. But it was also clever, contemporary and cosmopolitan — and socially aware.

Consequently, it probably wasn't much of a stretch for her to do episodes of Bewitched like the one that first aired 45 years ago tonight, "The Battle of Burning Oak."

The premise was that Darrin (Dick York) was invited to join a country club, Burning Oak, that was very exclusive — and very bigoted. Viewers knew it wasn't the kind of thing that would appeal to Darrin; but it was the kind of invitation that was of enormous value to a social ladder–climbing, up–and–comer like Darrin's mother–in–law, Endora (Agnes Moorehead), imagined him to be. She said as much to Samantha, who thought nothing of it.

(Samantha, like many viewers, probably dismissed it as the rantings of a mother who believed her daughter had married beneath her — a theme that was well established on the show by this time and paved the way nicely for an episode about prejudice and stereotyping.)

To prove her point, Endora turned Darrin into the snob to end all snobs — a snob's snob and a sure bet to be asked by the screening committee to become a member.

---

---

And he was — in spite of the fact that the ladies of the screening committee had been unimpressed when they learned that Samantha did all her own housework.

Samantha deduced that her mother had cast a spell on Darrin and, with the help of her Aunt Hagatha, dug up some dirt on the committee members to level the playing field.

It all led to an amusing confrontation with the members of the club in which Samantha, with a little assistance from witchcraft, exposed the snooty members of the committee, some of whom claimed to have had ancestors on board the Mayflower.

From a group that advertised itself to be "pure–bred Americans," it turned out that some had ancestors on the wrong side of the law; for example, one was descended from a horse thief. Others did not have the noble ancestry they claimed; one was descended from a servant, another from a stowaway. And so on.

They all came to America to escape prejudice, Samantha declared. Actually, she continued, no one could rightfully claim to be a pure–bred American except an Indian. "And an American Indian could never get in here," she said with a sweet smile.

My memory is that some of the proper ladies of the club's board fainted when she said that.

At that point, Samantha rose when Darrin announced that it was getting late and it was time to go home.

In hindsight, it was courageous of writers Leo and Pauline Townsend to tackle the topic of bigotry.

At the time, Americans' social consciousness and sensitivity was emerging. The debut of All in the Family, which regularly challenged prejudice, was still a couple of years away. TV sitcoms were mostly silly in those days, seldom trying to make a serious point.

I suppose Bewitched had its share of silliness, too, 45 years ago tonight.

At one point, Endora, in her indignant way, observed that she had been protesting a new movie that portrayed witches as evil. I don't recall a specific title being mentioned, but I have often wondered, whenever I have seen that episode, if perhaps Endora was referring to "Rosemary's Baby," which was quite popular at the time.

The theme of witches being a persecuted minority was a recurring one — which, I suppose, gave Bewitched legitimacy to poke fun at bigotry.

It's hardly the same thing, of course. Witches are fictional characters. Prejudice against them can't be taken seriously, but prejudice against real people, whatever the reason for it, should be taken seriously.

That seems obvious today, doesn't it? But you have to keep it in the context of the times. It was a big deal at that time for a TV series to have a black leading lady who wasn't carrying trays.

(It's been quite awhile since I have seen the episode, and I don't remember now if there were any stereotyped servants at Burning Oak — but it wouldn't surprise me if there were. It's the kind of touch that would have appealed to Montgomery.)

Bewitched was uniquely positioned to challenge the prejudice and double standards of its time. The marriage of Darrin and Samantha, after all, was a "mixed marriage" — not in the way that phrase was interpreted by most people at the time, but mixed, nonetheless — and it was likely to produce offspring who carried the genetic material of both parents, as indeed it did.

It was also about a marriage in which the wife had more power than the husband, something that is much more common today than it was in 1969. Her actual power advantage (witchcraft) was a metaphorical edge as well. That made it easier, I suppose, for viewers to accept it when stories could be seen on more than one level.

The story lines, like the one in "The Battle of Burning Oak," played with questions about stereotypes and group depictions that were only starting to be asked — and it did so in a way that was virtually invisible if you weren't looking for it. The best episodes of Bewitched worked both as metaphor and as a serious story.

It seems our culture is taking prejudice seriously today, and you can attribute that to many factors — but don't underestimate the contribution Bewitched made on this night 45 years ago. In my experience, laughing about something is the first and most positive step to take in dealing with it.