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legend of the 1930s and 1940s.
    Although he was a Republican, and she a Democrat, Lizzie followed in his social advocacy. It was difficult for her to fathom and accept the scope of his notoriety before she ever began to question her own. She would later ponder the harvested influence over a legion of Bewitched buffs, because she had seen the role celebrity played in her father’s life. Once she glittered with fame, it was hard for her to embrace praise even from those whose lives she helped improve.
    A political promoter rooted with a conservative outlook, her father held a stoic position in moderate contrast to her liberal stance; but both believed in the American dream (and the freedom that goes along with it).
    In 1935, he was elected to the first of four terms as president of S.A.G., the Screen Actors Guild. It was here his political agenda began to take shape. In this capacity, he gained publicity in 1939 when he helped expose labor racketeering in the film industry. He went on to become a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Reserve, an assistant naval attaché at the American Embassy in London, an attendant at a naval operations room in the White House, a commander over a PT boat in the Pacific, and an operations officer during the D-Day invasion of France. He was awarded the Bronze Star and later decorated as Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor.
    In 1947, he headed the Hollywood Republican Committee to elect Thomas E. Dewey as President. That same year he testified as a friendly witness in the first round of the House Un-American Activities Committee, denouncing communist infiltration in Hollywood. Following President Eisenhower’s 1952 campaign, he was called on by the Principal Head of State to serve as a special staff consultant to television and public communications—the first individual to hold such a media post for the White House.
    Robert came to Eisenhower’s attention because of his affiliation with Robert Montgomery Presents . During the 1960s he was engaged in a futile campaign against the practices of commercial TV, which he summarized in the book An Open Letter from a Television Viewer (J. H. Heineman, 1968). Also in the 1960s, the decade in which his daughter would begin to turn the world on with her twitch, Robert served as a communications consultant to John D. Rockefeller III and a director of R. H. Macy, the Milwaukee Telephone Company, and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. From 1969 to 1970 he was president of Lincoln Center’s Repertory Theatre.
    Steven J. Ross is the author of Hollywood Left And Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics (Oxford University Press, 2011). On April 22, 2012, Ross appeared on C-SPAN at the Los Angeles Festival of Books. When asked what role Robert Montgomery played in the Hollywood/political game, he replied:
    Robert Montgomery actually had gone to prep school with George Murphy and the two of them were very close friends and Murphy … during the late ‘40s and ‘50s was a very prominent Republican activist. In fact, he was Louis B. Mayer’s [MGM executive] point man going around the country and when in 1952 Eisenhower wanted some help from Hollywood, or should I say the GOP got Eisenhower help, the two people who advised him on media strategy were Montgomery and Murphy. And Eisenhower liked the two of them so much that he basically told his Madison Avenue firm that had been hired to do the TV, “You can keep writing the ads, but they’re going to show me how to appear on TV.” Afterwards, Eisenhower asked both men to come to Washington with him. Murphy kindly deferred and Montgomery still kept his career but he actually had an office in Washington to help Eisenhower for eight years with sort of media appearances and helping him stage his presence. Remember … this is a period when TV is just really emerging as a national phenomenon and politicians don’t really know how to deal with television. They