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Elizabeth Montgomery, the mischievous witch with the nasal twitch who brought her enchanting whimsy into America's living rooms for eight years, died Thursday morning.
The star of "Bewitched," who later forsook her single-dimensional character and became one of the best known and diverse actors in made-for-TV movies, was 57, according to her family, but several film anthologies list her birth year as 1933.
She died after a long struggle with cancer, said her agent and spokesman Howard Bragman.
With her when she died at home in Beverly Hills was her husband, actor Robert Foxworth, and her three children from a previous marriage.
Daughter of actor Robert Montgomery and stage actress Elizabeth Allen, her first TV work came in 1951 as a summer repertory player on her father's "Robert Montgomery Presents." Thirteen years later she had perfected her craft to the point where she was a convincing, otherworldly Samantha Stephens, the crafty, always entertaining heroine of "Bewitched." But she was not the prototypal hag with a cackling voice and a wart on her nose. Instead, she was stylishly clad, impeccably groomed and a cunning sophisticate.
After Samantha and her clan left the airways, Miss Montgomery made a dramatic metamorphosis and ended her career portraying deadly killers, hardened women or hapless victims.
She had given some hint of her diversity before triumphing in the popular TV series. Early in her career she had parts in several seminal TV dramatic series: "Studio One," "The Twilight Zone," "Kraft Theatre," "General Electric Theatre," "Alcoa Presents"...