Lewis McFadden

Bewitched' broke ground 45 years ago

To hardcore fans, ABC’s Bewitched had jumped the shark eight years before the Happy Days expression was even coined when in 1969 actor Dick York was swapped out with no explanation for Dick Sargent in the lead role of Darrin Stephens.

So by 1970 fewer eyes than ever were on the long-running show. That is until an experimental Christmas-themed episode took it from the TV listings to the front pages.

"Sisters at Heart," which aired 45 years ago on Christmas Eve, not only found the usually frothy fantasy acknowledging real life with a story about racism, but it also incorporated the issue by having it written by an entire class of inner-city tenth graders.

The idea was hatched when Marcella Saunders, a young English teacher at L.A.’s Thomas Jefferson High School, reached out to several TV shows looking for a way to connect her students to reading and writing through prime time.

Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery and producer William Asher (Montgomery’s then-husband) responded with an invitation for the class to come to the set.

As a thank you, the group collaborated on a storyline for the show about black-and-white friendship that was spun by staffer Barbara Avedon into a 1970 holiday episode.

Set on Christmas Eve, twin stories revolve around 6-year-old Tabitha Stephens’ friendship with a black girlfriend whom she calls her sister, and Tabitha’s ad-exec father Darrin dealing with a bigoted client who comes to mistake the “sister” for Darrin’s actual child and thus the product of a mixed-race marriage. Disapproving, he cuts business ties with Darrin, referring to him as “unstable.” (In true TV fashion, the client comes to recognize and learn from his prejudice.)

Montgomery introduced the episode, telling viewers it evoked “the true spirit of Christmas …conceived in the image of innocence and filled with truth.” And while “Sisters at Heart” serviced the show’s cartoony legacy (novice witch Tabitha conjures up black polka-dots for her skin and white ones for her friend’s, so they’ll look more alike), it also offered up fairly in-your-face storytelling for its time. Literally.

One scene featured the white cast in blackface to underscore Darrin’s client’s racism. The end credits read “Story by 5th Period English – Room 309 Thomas Jefferson High School [Los Angeles, California].” All 26 students were listed.
Praised by critics and educators, the episode was given the Emmy Governor's Award in 1971.

Bewitched, about the oft-protested marriage between a witch and a mortal, was one of many light-hearted other-worldly sitcoms zapped up in the mid-1960s, but it seemed to rest on a basic premise of tolerance for all of its eight seasons.
(The show has been considered a civil-rights allegory.) It skirted reality with topics from trick-or-treating for UNICEF to the paranoia of the 17th-century Salem Witch Trials. Montgomery, who died in 1995, called “Sisters” her favorite of Bewitched’s 254 episodes.

A coda to the show that Christmas Eve features the actress back onscreen with a teachable moment of her own at the dawn of a turbulent decade, wishing viewers “a happy and peaceful new year.”

She seemed to emphasize the word peaceful.