The Life of a Makeup Artist: All Made Up and Somewhere To Go

October 12, 2026March 10, 2026 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

Welcome to our blog theme for the month, “Behind the Scenes.” We are going behind the camera to check out careers of those people working behind the camera to bring our favorite characters to life. Last week we learned a bit about costumer designers, and today we are heading to the makeup counter.

So, what do makeup artists do? Obviously, they apply cosmetic products to enhance the appearance of the stars, but they do so much more. Artists also fit prosthetics and create the effects of blood, wounds, burns, and general aging; adjust colors and textures to work with high-definition cameras and bright lights; assure consistency for multiple-day filming; manage sweating; and sometimes choose and fit wigs for characters. Let’s look at a few of the best in the field to learn more about their life and careers.

William Tuttle

William Tuttle was the first makeup artist to win an Academy Award. He created many innovative techniques and trained generations of makeup artists.

He was born in Florida in 1912. After dropping out of school early to support his mother and younger brother, he held a variety of jobs including forming his own band. In 1930, he moved to Los Angeles, enrolling in an art school and working as a page at Fox Studios. That younger brother, Thomas Tuttle, would also become a makeup artist working on The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Joey Bishop Show, Gomer Pyle USMC, and That Girl among others.

Tuttle was hired at Twentieth Century Pictures to work under Jack Dawn. In 1934, Dawn took a job at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Tuttle moved with him. Tuttle was still working under Dawn but began taking on more responsibilities. He supervised the makeup in many popular movies including The Wizard of Oz and Father of the Bride. Eventually, he became the head of the makeup department.

He received a special Oscar for his work on 7 Faces of Dr. Lao in 1965. In this film, Tuttle transformed Tony Randall into seven different characters including Dr. Lao; an aged, bearded Merlin the Magician; and a Medusa with a feminine appearance. Randall said “he shaved my head and eyebrows . . . gave me an unborn look. But professionally it was a masterstroke.” He went on to say that “all my preconceived notions on how I would play the characters vanished. As soon as Tuttle applied his makeup magic, I felt myself actually become these strange people.”

The Oscar category of makeup artist would not become an official category until 1982. That year Rick Baker won the first Oscar for makeup. He would go on to win another five and he credited Tuttle: “His work greatly influenced me.” He said as a young boy, he often tried to re-create the makeup techniques Tuttle used in The Twilight Zone.

Tuttle was the artist behind one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes, “Eye of the Beholder.” When the episode begins, doctors and nurses are working with a bandaged patient who just wants to look like everyone else. After some time, the bandages are slowly peeled away. We see the beautiful face of Donna Douglas. As she picks up the mirror to look at her new face, she screams, cries and covers her face. Then the camera pulls away and we see all the people Tuttle did makeup on – doctors and nurses with deformed faces and pig snouts.

With 393 credits, most of Tuttle’s work was in the movies, but he contributed to television as well. From 1960-62 he provided all the makeup for National Velvet. He also spent time on Mr. Novak, My Favorite Martian, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. as well as The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., The Phyllis Diller Show, and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, among others.

Later in his career, Tuttle created his own line of makeup, Custom Color Cosmetics. Naimie Ojeil, owner of a beauty supply store in Hollywood said his brand was “the most popular makeup among Hollywood professionals for at least two decades.”

Tuttle would create molds of actors he worked on which allowed him to create their looks beforehand. He donated them to the University of Southern California where he taught from 1970-1995. Herbert Farmer, a USC archivist said Tuttle “was interested in passing on all he could to the students. He had a real following.”

Gene Hibbs

Gene Hibbs was born in Normal, Illinois in 1912.

I couldn’t find a lot of information about him. I did read several times that he was often hired because he had a unique talent for making older actresses look younger than they were with a technique he called “painting.”

His first television series was The Lone Ranger from 1954-1955. He worked on many television shows following that including with Ann Sothern on Private Secretary and The Ann Sothern Show, The Judy Garland Show, Here’s Lucy, and Green Acres.

He was working on Green Acres when Judy Garland passed away. She had stipulated in her will that Hibbs was supposed to do her makeup one last time. Her daughter Liza Minelli phoned Hibbs and he agreed to do that. When the network said no, Eva Gabor said she would not work unless he was allowed to leave for a few days. The producer pleaded with the network, but they held firm and said they would lose $30,000 of time and he could not leave the set.

Ben Lane

Ben Lane was born in 1912 in Chicago, Illinois, the same year as both Gene Hibbs and William Tuttle. Lane was one of the founding members of the Motion Picture Guild, but many of his 236 credits were spent in television.

Lane’s first television series was in 1957 for Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. His career would continue with many popular shows. Get ready to take a long breath because this sample is far from a comprehensive listing of his work. Ready? He was part of the cast for The Lone Ranger, Dennis the Menace, The Farmer’s Daughter, Hazel, Gidget, The Monkees, Bewitched, The Flying Nun, I Dream of Jeannie, Bridget Loves Bernie, The Partridge Family, Police Woman, and Fantasy Island.

In addition to keeping busy with his career, he was involved in several charities: City of Hope and Shriner’s circus. He became a nationwide clown advisor. He also was a consultant for the Los Angeles Police Department, the US Department of Justice, and the FBI for disguises.

Bud Westmore

📷abebooks.com Westmore working on the film The Lost Moment

Born in 1918 in New Orleans, Westmore and his brothers—Ern, Frank, Monte, Perc, and Wally–were all makeup artists in the entertainment business. At one time, there was a Westmore heading up almost every studio makeup department.

After school, Bud was an apprentice under Perc at Warner Brothers to learn hair design and makeup before taking a job at Twentieth Century Fox. He left to serve three years with the Coast Guard. When he returned to Hollywood, he worked for the Eagle Lion before he was hired as the head of the Universal Studios makeup department in 1947. The largest building on the Universal studio back lot is named for Bud.

His marriages and divorces also kept him busy. He was married to actress Martha Raye for four months in 1937. A few years later he married Rosemary Lane, another actress, and they were together for fourteen years. His divorce to Lane was on March 31, 1955, and on April 1, 1955, he married Jeanne Shores, a former Miss California in 1952. They would remain together until his death from a heart attack in 1973.

In 1957 Bud was asked to create makeup for a new doll that was coming on the market. In 1959 Barbie debuted. Bud had based her on a German doll Mattel found named Lili. He modified “the bee-stung lips, heavy eyelashes, and widow’s peak to give her an All-American Girl look” and he rooted her hair.

With more than 600 credits on both the big screen and the small screen, Bud’s first television project was Playhouse 90 in 1957. During the sixties he was involved in quite a few shows including The Jack Benny Program, McHale’s Navy, The Munsters, It Takes a Thief, Ironside, Marcus Welby MD, and The Virginian.

It was fun to learn a little bit about these make-up professionals and the shows they worked on to help create some of our favorite television land characters.

Herbert Anderson: A Menacing Situation

August 24, 2026February 17, 2026 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month we are learning about the careers of the cast of Dennis the Menace in our theme “They Are a Menace.” Today it’s Herbert Anderson’s turn; he played Dennis’s father Henry on the show.

Anderson was born in California in 1917. His parents immigrated to Oakland from Norway, and his father was the city treasurer while he was growing up. After high school, Anderson attended the University of California, Berkeley.

Anderson was focused on being an actor and began working for Warner Brothers; his first role was in 1939 as a reporter. In 1941 he was cast in Navy Blues with Martha Raye and Ann Sheriden followed by The Male Animal with Henry Fonda and Olivia de Havilland. In Navy Blues, he replaced Eddie Albert who was no longer available. Anderson had done some national defense shots in uniform and seeing those photos is what got him the job. According to the Oakland Tribune, he sent for his grandmother who traveled by train to see her grandson in action in Hollywood.

He continued acting throughout the forties and after he established himself in television, he would occasionally take on a big-screen offer including My Man Godfrey, The Caine Mutiny, and The Benny Goodman Story.

During these years he met and married Mary Palmer and they were together until his death.

In 1949, he jumped to the small screen to appear on Your Show Time. By the mid-fifties, he was working primarily on television, appearing in many popular shows in the fifties and sixties, including Father Knows Best and Perry Mason.

In 1959 he was offered the role of Henry Mitchell on Dennis the Menace. For the next four years, he was busy trying to stay a step ahead of Dennis and the situations he got the entire neighborhood into. During the third season, Joseph Kearns, George Wilson on the show, passed away and the show declined in ratings and was cancelled the next year.

Anderson kept busy in television and didn’t seem to be pigeonholed into father roles the way his onscreen wife, Gloria Henry, was. He would appear on another 34 shows during the decade after Dennis ended. You can catch him on episodes of Gunsmoke, Petticoat Junction, I Dream of Jeannie, Batman, My Three Sons, Bewitched, Green Acres, The Brady Bunch, and his last appearance in 1975 was on The Waltons.

I always enjoyed his Brady Bunch role. When the kids get sick, their parents decide they should call the doctor, back when doctors still made house calls. They are both surprised when two doctors show up. Of course, Carol called the girls pediatrician played by Marion Ross and Mike called the boys’ doctor played by Anderson. Both doctors assure them that whichever one they choose to be the family doctor is fine with them, but when all is said and done, they retain both doctors.

In 1982, Anderson underwent heart surgery and decided to retire. He passed away in 1994 from complications after a stroke.

Like so many of these actors it was hard to find much information on the private life of Anderson. I couldn’t find out if he was happy with his career or if he had wanted to stay in films longer. I appreciate getting to know him as Henry Mitchell in the Dennis the Menace episodes.

The Wackiest Ship in the Army: Couldn’t Find Its Viewers

July 20, 2026January 22, 2026 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

We are half-way through our blog theme for July, which is Military Upended as we look at military sitcoms that all debuted in the mid-sixties.

Like our show from last week, Mister Roberts, this one debuted in 1965 and ran for one season. This hour-long NBC series was produced by Harry Ackerman and Herbert Hirschman. It was loosely based on a film from 1960. Our show last week, Mister Roberts, was also based on a movie that starred Jack Lemmon. Lemmon was in this movie as well with Ricky Nelson.

The show is set in World War II and focuses on the crew of the USS Kiwi in the Pacific theater. This old schooner, flying a Swiss flag, carries out covert missions behind Japanese lines. The commander is Major Simon Butcher (Jack Warden) and Lieutenant Richard Riddle (Gary Collins). Butcher controls land operations while Riddle commands at sea. The Kiwi was previously owned by New Zealand.

Also in the cast were Chief Petty Officer Willie Miler (Mike Kellin), Radioman Patrick Hollis (Mark Slade), Machinist Seymour Trivers (Fred Smoot), Gunner’s Mate Sherman Nagurski (Rudy Solari), and Pharmacist Charles Tyler, the cook, (Don Penny).

The Kiwi was based on the USS Echo, a 40-year-old schooner given to the US Navy by New Zealand to use during the War. The ship was returned in 1944. Its poor condition made it useful for spying. The wooden hull did not show up on radar, its sailing power didn’t register on sonar, and the shallow draft allowed it to travel in shallow waters.

The show was scheduled for Sunday nights. The tough part of the schedule was that it was up against Candid Camera and What’s My Line, very popular programs at the time. However, it was helped by following Bonanza, the number one show that year.

The composer of the theme song was the celebrated Nelson Riddle. With more than 100 credits he worked on films including High Society and Guys and Dolls; did variety shows for Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Julie Andrews, and Rosemary Clooney; and lots of television series including The Untouchables, Route 66, Emergency, and Newhart.

Eddie Foy III talked about casting this show during his Television Academy interview. He said it was one of the best casts of any show he worked on. He said their producer brought the dramatic style the show needed to uphold the comedy. He said Danny Arnold was the talent behind this series and that Danny used to always say that writers aren’t funny and actors aren’t funny, but writers and actors who are successful think funny. Foy worked with him on That Girl and then continued as his casting director for years. Arnold gave everyone on the show freedom to do what they did best, so Foy did not have to run every casting decision by him.

The show was canceled after one season due to low ratings. I’m not sure if it was the quality of the show or if it was a victim of too many shows like this one. During the year this one debuted, we also had McHale’s Navy, F-Troop, Hogan’s Heroes, Gomer Pyle USMC, as well as tons of westerns, and extremely popular sitcoms like I Dream of Jeannie, Green Acres, Bewitched, That Girl, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show, Get Smart, Batman, Petticoat Junction, and My Three Sons.

When you take into account that you had to watch shows live and there were only three choices at a time, it’s easy to understand how some good shows that might be recorded now received low ratings then. That said, this show never seemed to be sure what it was either. It was listed as a sitcom, but it was an hour-long show which was unusual. It wasn’t filmed before an audience, nor did it include a laugh track. And, it sometimes had episodes where people died, not so funny. If you wanted to see a funny military show, there were a lot of other options. There were also lots of good sitcoms and good dramas that all knew what their genre was. If you want to give it a try, it’s available on Philo.

Mr. Adams and Eve: Not Quite Paradise

June 22, 2026January 4, 2026 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

Funny Duos is our blog theme for June. Today we look at a partnership that’s a little different than the other shows we checked out so far. Mr. Adams and Eve, starred Howard Duff and Ida Lupino, a couple that was married in real life. Another difference with this series is that it made it two seasons before being canceled.

In an interview with the Television Academy, Sol Saks said he was very proud of this show. He said it was the first time Lupino had done comedy and she was great to work with. He said he met with the couple and just hanging out at their home, he heard several plots for shows. For example, he heard their maid making horse bets on the phone and at one time, Lupino answered the door and a vacuum salesman was there and wanted to sell her an appliance, but she said she would have to ask their financial people and get back to him. Saks then learned that Lupino didn’t know how to purchase an appliance by herself. So many of the stories from their real life ended up in scripts.

Saks left this show because he was tired of always writing for one show over and over and decided to write movie scripts and pilots.

The show debuted on CBS in January 1957. The series follows two Hollywood stars who live in Beverly Hills. Eve (Lupino) grew up in a family in the entertainment business and is more dramatic and over the top while her husband Howard (Duff) is a humble and quiet man.

There was a large supporting cast in this show. It includes their studio boss Joe J.B. Hafter (Alan Reed), director Max Cassolini (Lawrence Dobkin/Christopher Dark), agent Steve (Hayden Rorke), housekeeper Elsie (Olive Carey), Eve’s mother Connie (Lee Patrick), and the Stewarts (Frances Robinson and Dan Tobin), their good friends. Their daughter Bridget also pops up on one episode portraying Mary Pickford.

While some of the plots are about their domestic life, most of the action involves their professional challenges.

David Rose was brought on as composer. I’m not sure how awkward it was or was not, but Lupino’s ex-husband Collier Young was the creator and executive producer.

The show originally aired on Friday nights. Its competition was Treasure Hunt and The Joseph Cotton Show. I would think with two stars of their magnitude, they would win the ratings for this time slot, but the show was moved to Tuesdays during the second season. The competition that night was a bit tougher with established shows Cheyenne and The Eddie Fisher Show.

Lupino and Duff made the decision to end the show when they didn’t get the viewership they were hoping for to pursue individual projects for the following year. Duff starred in Dante about a nightclub owner which only lasted one season. While both stars appeared in many different television series over the decades, neither of them starred in another show. The couple’s marriage lasted much longer than their show but it did end in divorce in 1984.

Lupino was nominated for an Emmy both years and Richard Kinon was nominated for director. Lupino had some tough competition. In 1958 she competed against Spring Byington (December Bride), Eve Arden (The Eve Arden Show), Jane Wyatt (Father Knows Best), and Jan Clayton (Lassie). In 1959 other nominees were Byington, Wyatt, Ann Sothern (The Ann Sothern Show), Gracie Allen (Burns and Allen), and Donna Reed (The Donna Reed Show.) Wyatt won both years, and the directing Emmy went to Peter Tewksbury also for Father Knows Best.

Perhaps one of the best things about this show was its opening. It had cartoonish figures similar to the Bewitched opening, but they were in a real setting, another show Sol Saks worked on. One of my favorite characters was Eve’s mother Connie who Eve called Connie. She brought a lot of fun to every scene she was in.

The episodes I watched were pretty good, especially for the late fifties. At least the Duffs made a successful transition from the movies to television and ended the show on their own terms. There is a DVD of shows out there as well as episodes on YouTube.

Sara Seegar: What a Character!

April 27, 2026January 6, 2026 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

As we wind up our April blogs What a Character!, we end with Sara Seegar. Seegar was born in Indiana but grew up in London, Paris and Hollywood where she went to school. She then attended Los Angeles Junior College, majoring in drama.

She moved to London to appear on the stage there but returned to the United States once WWII began. Seegar began performing on Broadway before appearing on film, radio, and television.

The year she came home from London she met Ezra Stone while performing in Horse Fever. They were married two years later.

The couple raised their children in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, performing at the Bucks County Playhouse.

Seegar would appear in eight films, the most famous of which was The Music Man.

She only had 37 televisions credits, but she made memorable appearances on many of the most popular shows. She began her television career on several of the fifties’ drama shows that were so popular early in television history.

She began the sixties on Perry Mason, then moving to sitcoms including The Donna Reed Show, The Andy Griffith Show, and The Patty Duke Show. Her most famous role was Eloise Wilson on Dennis the Menace. Sylvia Field and Joseph Kearns played Martha and George Wilson from 1959-1962. After Kearns passed away, Field left the show, and Gale Gordon and Seegar took over as George’s brother and sister-in-law. Sara discussed her role of Eloise, saying “One of the things I’ve enjoyed about the role as Mrs. Wilson is that she could be me. Of course, basically, she’s sweeter, but I’ve been pretty much myself.”

She continued her roles in both sitcoms and dramas in the seventies including Marcus Welby MD, The Brady Bunch, and Kojak. She was in ten episodes of Bewitched, often playing the wife of one of Darrin and Larry’s clients. Her last appearance was in 1979 on The White Shadow.

From 1967-1990 Seegar was a workshop leader, lecturer, and guide for the American College Theater Festival and the Kennedy Center. Seegar passed away in 1990 in Pennsylvania.

I wish I knew more about the life of Sara Seegar. Viewers often mention how funny she was in the scenes she was in on Bewitched. It sounds like she had a lovely career.

Jane Connell: What a Character!

April 13, 2026January 6, 2026 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month is one of my favorite themes: What a Character! Today we are learning about the career of Jane Connell.

Connell was born in California in 1925. After high school she attended the University of California, majoring in drama. She married her college boyfriend Gordon Connell, and they were together until her death in 2013. The couple performed together; one of their first plays was at San Francisco’s Purple Onion with May Angelou who was a calypso singer at the time.

Connell spent almost five decades in New York Theater including Broadway, summer stock, national tours, and cabaret. Jane talked about how things changed in the theater, saying “there’s no question that theater has changed through the years. The one thing that bothers me is that so many of today’s young actors come from television and have not been taught theater technique. They don’t realize when they’re upstaging you. It’s not done out of meanness or trickery. They just think there’s a camera over their shoulder that is filming the other actor. But I don’t complain about it. I just look out front and deliver the lines. I was born a character person. I was always eccentric, never a conventional beauty. I grew up in the Depression, the youngest of four kids. I wanted to make people laugh, because making my family laugh helped us forget our concerns. And I found that I could do it.”

Connell’s claim to fame happened in 1966 when she was cast as Agnes Gooch in the Broadway version of Mame. She would also appear as Agnes in the 1974 film that Lucille Ball starred in.

She appeared in ten big screen films throughout her career as well as several made-for-tv movies.

Her first television appearance was on nine episodes of Stanley in 1956. This was an early sitcom starring Buddy Hackett as a newsstand vendor in a luxury hotel where he gets involved with many of the residents and guests.

Connell showed up in many of the most popular sitcoms in the sixties and seventies including The Patty Duke Show, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, That Girl, Green Acres, Love American Style, and Maude. She was cast in six Bewitched episodes as different characters, often playing regal figures including Martha Washington, Queen Hapzibah, Queen Victoria, and Mother Goose.

She continued her movie and tv work throughout the eighties and nineties including MASH and Law and Order. Her last appearance was in 1999. At age 87 she passed away while living at the Lillian Booth Actors Home of the Actors Fun in New Jersey, leaving behind Gordon who died in 2016 and two daughters Melissa and Maggie.

I thought it was ironic that she was typically described as a tiny dynamo with a squeaky voice, being under five feet tall. However, one of her most memorable lines was on Bewitched as Queen Victoria when she said, “We are not amused”– the opposite of a tiny, squeaky-voiced character like Agnes Gooch. Thanks for being such a versatile character actor Jane Connell and treating us to so many years of entertainment.

Alice Pearce: Going Through a Phase

February 23, 2026October 26, 2025 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

Alice Pearce does not have the number of acting credits that many golden- age character actresses possess because she passed away at an early age. Many of us recognize her as Gladys Kravitz.

Pearce was born in New York City in 1917. She was an only child. Her father was a foreign banking specialist, and her family moved to Europe when she was a toddler. They had what I would imagine was a magical life, living in Brussels, Antwerp, Rome, and Paris. However, Alice was not a fan of Europe and never went back. In an article in the Buffalo News in July of 1965 she said that she hated living there and just wanted to be an average American kid who was allowed to walk to the movies or the drug store without a chaperone.

While living in Europe, she fell off a swing at age nine after losing her grip on the chain and landed on her chin. From that point on, she had an underdeveloped chin.

Pearce enrolled in Sarah Lawrence College in 1940, graduating with a degree in drama. After graduation, Alice moved to Maine to do summer stock. Leonard Stillman saw her there and cast her in “New Faces of 1943,” where she received great reviews.

Although her parents did not approve, Alice began working as a comedienne in nightclubs, auditioning on Broadway. Her parents didn’t know much about theater at the time, and they didn’t see it as a stable career. She moved to New York and sold underwear at Macy’s to make ends meet.

Alice always had a sense of humor about herself and her looks. She related a story in an interview with the Buffalo News in February of 1965 that during this time she and a few women performed at army camps and hospitals during the war. She said they were at a hospital one day and Imogene Coca was walking down the hall to do the show. One man in a bathrobe saw her and yelled that if they all looked like her, he was going back to bed. A minute later, Alice appeared. The man said they did all look alike and he went back to bed.

From 1944-46, she was a cast member in the original Broadway production, “On the Town.” Gene Kelly was so impressed with her performance that he brought her to Hollywood as a cast member in the big-screen film of the play in 1949. In both versions, Alice played Lucy Schmeeler, a “unsexy adenoidal” blind date.

Her performance in On the Town was so popular that she was given her own television variety show, The Alice Pearce Show which she described as “fifteen minutes of songs, topical skits, and me.” Pearce co-hosted the show with pianist Mark Lawrence. It was on for fifteen minutes every Friday, but it was cancelled after six episodes.

📷moviestillsdb.com The Disorderly Orderly

Throughout the fifties, Pearce continued to appear on Broadway and on the big screen. Alice had fourteen film roles. She was spot-on as a hypochondriac in The Disorderly Orderly with Jerry Lewis as she describes her numerous physical ailments and symptoms.

I think Alice was hoping for a more prolific film career. After her death, an AP article that ran in many national papers related a story Pearce had told several times. She said that for one audition she went to, they were looking for an “Alice Pearce type,” so she thought it was a shoe in. About ten women were in the waiting room. Alice did her audition but didn’t get the part!

During the fifties, she appeared on 13 television series, many of them dramatic playhouse shows. In 1953, Alice was cast in two sitcoms, and both would last a year. In Jamie, she appeared in eight episodes as Annie Moakum. The show was about an orphan, Jamie, who lands in one “foster” home after another until he moves in with Aunt Laurie where he meets Grandpa; the two of them become best friends, sharing a variety of adventures.

In The Jean Carroll Show, Alice played their neighbor in six episodes. This show only lasted three months. It was a typical sitcom about Jean, her bumbling husband Herbie and her daughter who doesn’t even have a first name in the credits.

Alice found herself in sixteen series during the sixties including Many Happy Returns. Many Happy Returns was a show that only lasted 26 episodes. It starred John McGiver as Walter Burnley who was a supervisor of the Returns Department at Krockmeyer’s Department Store. A widower, he lives with this daughter played by Elinor Donahue and her husband Bob and daughter Laurie.

1964 was a great year for Pearce. When she was in the Broadway production of “Bells Are Ringing,” she met director Paul Davis whom she married in 1964. At that time, Davis owned one of the top art galleries in Los Angeles. Alice loved art and did some painting herself.

That same year she was asked to play the role of Grandmama in The Addams Family. She turned down the part which went to Blossom Rock.

It ended up being a good career move to turn down The Addams Family, because later in 1964 she was offered the role of Gladys Kravitz on Bewitched. She was perfect as the nosy neighbor always in the Stephens’ business. After spying on her neighbors and seeing something that could not be explained logically, she would shrilly yell, “Abner, Abner” and relate the newest situation. Of course, witchcraft always took care of the problem before she could prove anything odd had occurred, and she was considered eccentric and high strung by the other neighbors and her husband. Pearce appeared in 27 episodes before passing away from ovarian cancer in 1966 at age 48. She was adored by her Bewitched family.

Alice had been acting for a couple of decades and had become a household name. In the July 1965 Buffalo News interview, Alice mentioned that even though she was 47, her parents had moved to La Jolla, California and still felt acting was a phase she would outgrow.

In 1966, Doris Day’s movie The Glass Bottom Boat was released. Pearce and George Tobias were cast as next-door neighbors in the film. Although they weren’t named Gladys and Abner, the Fenimores were a carbon copy of the Kravitzes.

Alice was diagnosed with terminal cancer before she joined the Bewitched cast. After she died, Elizabeth Montgomery and her husband William Asher offered Davis a job as director on the show. He had stepped away from his career to help care for Alice.

Alice worked until the last two weeks of her life. She commented on how her attitude helped her deal with her diagnosis: “I feel the progress of the disease in my case is unusual because of my mental attitude. I am a supremely happy woman. I have never been beautiful, but I have been blessed with a rich career and the love of two fine men. The strength I have found in the devotion of my dear Paul is beyond measure.”

Frederick Turner wrote a book, Sweet Oddball: The Story of Alice Pearce. He recalled a quote that he had heard about Pearce, describing her as “’the adenoidal lass with the most beautiful, homely face on Broadway who carved out a unique career playing wallflowers, nitwits, nags and oddball characters.” I think Alice would be just fine with that description. Although she left us much too soon, she was an amazing comedienne who I’m sure would have had a long and satisfying career, and perhaps her own sitcom, had she lived a few more decades.

George Tobias: Following His Own Dream

February 16, 2026October 26, 2025 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

As we learn about a few Bewitching characters this month, I had to include the Kravitzes, Abner and Gladys, a/k/a George Tobias and Alice Pearce. Today let’s take a closer look at the career of George Tobias.

Tobias was born in New York in 1901. He was the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, and his parents were active in the Yiddish theatre. After his older brother joined them, they tried to discourage George from following in their footsteps. In a St. Louis Post Dispatch interview in 1940, Tobias said “They made up their minds very definitely that I was not going to spend my life nearly starving as they did. They wanted me to be a doctor or lawyer, but I knew from a very early age that I would follow the same career as my mother, father and brother . . . so whenever I got an acting job in between other jobs, I had to keep it from my family.”

At age 15, Tobias was in local productions, making his Broadway debut at age 23. In 1939, Warner Brothers offered him a contract, and he appeared in 65 big-screen productions during his career, including parts in This is the Army and Marjorie Morningstar. Tobias appeared in four Oscar Best Picture nominees: Ninotchka (1939), Sergeant York (1941), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), and Mildred Pierce (1945).

Tobias’s television career began in 1954 in Our Miss Brooks. He would go on to earn 34 additional television credits before he retired in 1977.

📷imdb.com With James Cagney in The Strawberry Blonde

His first cast role was in Hudson’s Bay playing Pierre Falcon in 1959. This show centered on Hudson’s Bay Company and its fur trade shortly after North America’s colonization. Trappers, explorers, Native Americans, and both the French and British navigate the territory, seeking fortune, fame, and adventure.

In 1960, he showed up as Penrose on season one of Adventures in Paradise in a show about the adventures of the Tiki III and crew as they sailed from island to island through the South Pacific, carrying cargo and the odd passenger from one drama to another.

From 1964-1971, Tobias was part of the Bewitched cast as Abner Kravitz. He put up with his wife Gladys despite thinking she was high strung, delusional, and just plain kookie.

📷tvinsider.com 1946 Nobody Lives Forever

George’s last regular role was in The Waltons during seasons one and two when he played junkman Vernon Rutley.

While Tobias took on a few more roles before retiring, 1977 was his last year of acting, appearing on Tabitha when he reprised his role of Abner Kravitz. Tabitha was Darrin and Samantha’s daughter, now an adult.

Tobias passed away in 1980 from bladder cancer. He never married or had children, although he had a 40-year on-and-off relationship with actress Milicent Patrick. Patrick had an active career in entertainment from 1941-1961; she was also a commercial artist, fashion designer, and children’s book illustrator.

Even though Tobias was no longer living, he had one more adventure to journey through. The hearse with his body was stolen on its way to the mortuary. The car was in a fender-bender, and while the two drivers exchanged information, a carjacker made off with the hearse. The car and body were found shortly afterward.

In his book, Bewitched Forever, Herbie J. Pilato discusses how rugged and tough Tobias was in real life. He said he was “quite the equestrian. He owned and trained many horses, loved to play polo, and was a volunteer mounted policeman.” David White, who played Larry Tate, told Pilato that George “was a sheriff out in Peach Blossom, California, where he lived. He had a badge and everything.”

I always like Abner and Gladys Kravitz. I’m happy Tobias stuck to his guns and continued with his acting career, despite his parents’ worries. It sounds like he had a happy and successful life.

Dick York: His Job Was Back-Breaking Work

February 9, 2026October 26, 2025 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month we are learning about some Bewitching characters and their careers. Today we get to learn more about Dick York, the first actor to portray Darrin Stephens.

York was born in 1928 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, part of a working-class family; his father was a salesman, and his mother was a seamstress. During his younger years, the family relocated to Chicago, and at 15 he began acting on the radio in “That Brewster Boy.”

He would appear in hundreds of radio episodes and instructional films before heading to New York City in 1951 where he lived at the YMCA. In New York, he appeared on Broadway and then began his film career. That same year, York married Joan Alt. While he was doing the radio show “Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy,” they met when she came in to do a commercial.

In 1959, he was filming They Came to Cordura with Gary Cooper and Rita Hayworth when he suffered a back injury on the set. As York described it, “Gary Cooper and I were propelling a handcar carrying several wounded men down a railroad track. I was on the bottom stroke of this sort of teeter-totter mechanism that made the handcar run. I was just lifting the handle up as the director yelled ‘Cut’ and one of the wounded cast members reached up and grabbed the handle. Now, instead of lifting the expected weight, I was suddenly, jarringly, lifting his entire weight off the flatbed—180 pounds or so. The muscles along the right side of my back tore. They just snapped and let loose. And that was the start of it all: the pain, the painkillers, the addiction, the lost career.”

However, the injury didn’t catch up with him at that exact moment. A year later he was offered a role in Inherit the Wind. He would end up in ten films during his career, but it was television where he spent most of his time.

A couple of years later he was part of the cast of Going My Way for a season. His television career continued, and you’ll see him in episodes of The Twilight Zone, Dr. Kildare, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Route 66, and Wagon Train, among others.

In 1964 he was offered the role that made him a house-hold name, Darrin Stephens on Bewitched. York was with the series for five years and was nominated for an Emmy in 1968. York was nominated along with Richard Benjamin from He and She and Brian Keith and Sebastian Cabot from Family Affair, but they were all beat by Don Adams from Get Smart.

His back caused him a lot of pain while on the Bewitched set. The crew constructed a wall where he could lean between scenes, but half-way through season three, he was diagnosed with a degenerative spine condition which often sent shooting pains through his body. Watching seasons three and four, Darrin often can be found lying down or on the couch in many of his scenes.

Things escalated during the fifth season. York fell ill with a temperature of 105 degrees. He was feeling awful but decided to try to get through a few scenes. He was sitting on a scaffolding with Maurice Evans, Samantha’s dad on the show, when he told a crew member that he thought he should get down. “He started to help me down and that’s the last thing I remember until I woke up on the floor. That’s about all I remember of the incident . . . I’d managed to bite a very large hole in the side of my tongue before they could pry my teeth apart.” While he was in the hospital, he and William Asher had the tough talk about his future, and he agreed he needed to quit; he was then replaced with Dick Sargent.

In his autobiography, York says the next 18 months found him bedridden and dependent on painkillers. He got off the meds, but it took six months. He was able to beat his addiction. He and Joan had five children that needed care.

The family struggled economically after his addiction. In the mid-seventies, a real estate investment of theirs failed, and they were forced to go on welfare. In the early eighties the couple moved to Michigan to help care for York’s mother-in-law; they were surviving on a $650 monthly pension from the Screen Actors Guild.

York always kept a positive attitude. While he was bedridden, he made phone calls to help raise money for the homeless. He said, “I’ve been blessed. I have no complaints. I’ve been surrounded by people in radio, on stage, and in motion pictures and television who love me. The things that have gone wrong have been simply physical things.” He tried to revive his career, appearing on Simon & Simon and Fantasy Island, but it was just too late.

In addition to his back issues, York smoked three packs of cigarettes a day, and he eventually was diagnosed with emphysema. By 1989, he needed oxygen to help him breathe. He passed away from complications of the disease in 1992 at the young age of 63.

What a sad and painful ending to such a promising career. It’s amazing that someone in that kind of torment could still reach out to help others and try to spin a positive attitude about what he was grateful for. Thank you, Dick York, for leaving us with 68 great roles and the chance to get to know Darrin Stephens.

Dick Sargent: It Took Him Five Years to Become Darrin Stephens

February 2, 2026October 26, 2025 / thewritelife61 / 4 Comments

Welcome to February! This month we are learning about some Bewitching characters, four actors who appeared on the show Bewitched: Dick Sargent, Dick York, George Tobias, and Alice Pearce. We are beginning with Dick Sargent.

Richard Cox was born in California in 1930. He later changed his name to Dick Sargent for his career. Sargent’s mother, Ruth McNaughton, was an actress using the name Ruth Powell. His father was a manager for many famous Hollywood actors including Douglas Fairbanks and Erich von Stroheim.

Dick majored in drama at Stanford University, appearing in a couple of dozen plays with the Stanford Players. After graduation, he began his movie career with his first film, Prisoner of War in 1954 starring Ronald Reagan. He had small roles in 35 films during his career including Love Me Tender with Elvis Presley, Operation Petticoat with Cary Grant, and That Touch of Mink with Doris Day. 1954 was also the year he began his television career in I Married Joan. Sargent would go on to appear in another 78 series before his career ended.

In the sixties he had his first roles as a cast member. He was in One Happy Family in 1961, Broadside in 1964, and The Tammy Grimes Show in 1966.

He was cast as Darrin Stephens in Bewitched from 1969-1972.

Sargent was originally asked to play Darrin in the pilot of Bewitched, but he was under contract with Universal, so he had to turn it down. I will admit, he had great credentials and a great career, and I appreciated his acting ability and admired him for his charitable work, but to be honest, I never liked him as Darrin, much preferring Dick York. I felt the same way about Sandra Gould who replaced Alice Pearce; she was a fine actress, but she just wasn’t Gladys.

It was more than the fact that they were both replacements. Dick York just seemed to have all the great traits of Darrin, and I understood why Samantha fell in love with him, even when he was being stubborn and unreasonable. However, with Sargent, he seemed to have a touch of arrogance and impatience. I also think York’s mannerisms gave more depth to the role and provided more humor. However, I do think the writing was much better in the early years, so if Sargent had been free to accept the role from the beginning, maybe his character would have been more likable.

Sargent’s only other regular cast role came in 1984 in Down to Earth. There were a lot of weird plots on sitcoms in the eighties, and this was one of them. After being struck down by a trolley in 1925, Ethel MacDoogan, a flapper, waits in heaven for a chance to help a family and earn her wings. That chance arrives in the form of the Preston family with Sargent as the father.

In between 1972 and 1984 he continued his television roles appearing on I Dream of Jeannie, Here’s Lucy, Taxi, Alice, Fantasy Island, Charlie’s Angels, The Waltons, and Murder She Wrote.

Sargent was an advocate for many charities. He and Sally Struthers raised money for the Christian Children’s Fund. He also worked on behalf of Special Olympics, World Hunger, AIDS Project Los Angeles, and the American Foundation for AIDS Research.

Sargent was a closeted gay man for much of his career, but in 1991 on National Coming Out Day, he admitted that he was gay. He said he felt he had to open up because he was concerned about the high rate of suicide among young, gay men. Sargent said when he finally came out at age 61, “It was such a relief. I lived in fear of being found out. Now it’s given me a whole new mission in life.”

In 1989, Sargent was diagnosed with prostate cancer and passed away five years later.

Despite my preference for Dick York as Darrin, Sargent had an amazing career. He was able to continue in both film and television until he passed away in 1989. He gave back to the community and tried to make the world better for children, which I greatly appreciate. Whether you prefer York or Sargent, they were both Bewitching characters who helped make the show a favorite for decades.