Bewitched's Tabitha

[thomas7g]

Does anyone remember the old spinoff of the Bewitched TV series? I just happened to be talking to a friend when this came up so I dug up some good info on it.



In 1977, a spinoff was made featuring Lisa Hartman as the grown up Tabitha. It had some pretty uninspired writing, but Lisa Hartman was adorable as the grown up version of Tabitha.

Some odd facts:

- Tabitha's younger brother, Adam is now her OLDER brother. And he is plain mortal and for some reason having lost his magic powers. he provides the Darren frustration with magic in the new show.

- The show aired in 1977. Oddly Lisa Hartman was 22 years old. But the original actress who played Tabitha was only 13 or so at the time. So it was odd to see Tabitha grow up so fast.

- Lisa Hartman not only starred in the show, she sang the opening theme!

- One of the things that I think hurt the show (besides horrible writing) was that there was no mention of her parents. Nor any of her relatives. Instead they invented a new relative named Aunt Minerva.

- The only crossover characters were Gladys and Abner Kravits (the nosey neighbors) and Dr Bombay.

- Robert Urich played a poor imitation of Ted Baxter from the Mary Tyler Moore show. In real life he was married to Heather Menzies who was doing Logan's Run the TV show.

- Though Erin Murphy, who played the original baby Tabitha, was never in it. She got lots of royalty checks cause her image appeared in the opening credits. And the show was shown all over the world!

- Erin Murphy shares the same birthday as Elizabeth Montgomery's real life daughter, Rebecca Asher.


- Rebecca Asher is a script supervisor for Anchorman, a movie staring Will Ferrell due out this year. Will Ferrel happens to be set to play DArrin in the new Bewitched which is in pre-production. Small world, eh?


In real Life, Erin Murphy who played the original Tabitha (with help from her twin sister) grew up to become incredibly stunning!!! She's been married and divorce twice. But then she fell in love again and married a guy named Darren. And, when he was younger his sister called him DURWOOD. LOL

here is a link to some Erin Murphy info
http://broph.homesite.net/ErinMurphy/SpookyWorld98.html
http://www.bewitched.net/erin99.htm

And here is a great Tabitha page!
http://www.bewitched.net/tabithaspinoff.htm
if you look, there is a mpeg of the original opening theme sung by Lisa Hartman!

[Gemini1999]

Tom -

You continually surprise me - I'm a big fan of Bewitched! I do remember the Tabitha spin-off - they show it from time to time on the TVLand channel. It usually is run about 10:30pm on Fridays here on the west coast. I watched it when it came out and was dissappointed by the lack of connection to the orginal show, but I still gave it a chance. Lisa Hartman was fun to see in it, but other than that, the show was almost painful to watch as the writing and production values just didn't mirror those of the parent show. The story inconsistancies (Adam being a mortal and older than Tabitha), really got to me, although I realized their actual ages would preclude the existance of the show, given the time frame at which the show was produced.

This series wasn't the first attempt at getting a spinoff started. There was an earlier ABC TV movie (1975) called "Tabatha" (with and "a" instead of an "i") starring a dark-haired Liberty Williams. In this version, Tabitha was a witch, but resisted from using her powers as much as possible. Adam was a full-fledged warlock and had a mischievous sense of humor and used his powers accordingly. This particular spin-off was passed on by ABC as it failed to capture an audience other than out of curiosity viewers.

Tom - where did you get your info on this?:

Robert Urich played a poor imitation of Ted Baxter from the Mary Tyler Moore show. In real life he was married to Heather Menzies who was doing Logan's Run the TV show. Though as Logan's Run and Tabitha died, so did their marriage.

Heather Menzies and Robert Urich enjoyed a very long and happy marriage - they were married in 1975 after the divorce of Robert's first marriage, which broke up in 1974. Robert and Heather never divorced, they were still married up until the time that Robert passed away in 2002. They had 3 children together.

For those that like to read and also are fans ofBewitched, there is a really well-written retrospective book titled "Bewitched Forever: The Immortal Companion to Television's Most Magical Supernatural Situation Comedy"

Bewitched Forever

The book was written by a fan - Herbie J. Pilato and William Asher (producer and Elizabeth Montgomery's ex-husband). It is fairly easy to find and very affordable.

Running along...
Bryan
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[thomas7g]

oops! I stand corrected. I was paroting info I found on the web. I forget which witch site I was on when I saw that.

I'll axe that part.

I didn't know about the movie. I musta missed that. Was it any good?

I do agree with you about Tabitha having abysmal writing. I just loved Lisa Hartman as Tabs. She was soooo cute!