Before women’s lib. Before Maude. Before Harriet Miers — there was Endora.
FACT FILE: Endora is a 1,000-year-old witch — though if you saw her pop up suddenly on top of a lampshade — a favorite perch — you’d swear she couldn’t be a day over 999. With her radioactive-blue eye shadow, Lucy red hair, and brilliant lips, Endora tends to be as much Auntie Mame as Wicked Witch of the West. She has eschewed witchy weeds for flowing diva robes in clashing purple-green combos.
Though she is on cordial terms (for the most part) with her ex-husband, the warlock Maurice, who fancies himself an actor and speaks with a British accent (real or fake, we never know), Endora has really one mission in life: butting into her daughter’s life at every inopportune moment. Right when Samantha is up to her twitchable nose in a domestic crisis, there’s Endora materializing on the staircase, atop the banister, while somewhere a harp is discordantly plucked.
Endora makes no secret of despising Samantha’s conventional ad-exec husband, whose name she purposely garbles — sometimes calling him “Darwood,” “Dexter,” “Dum Dum” but never “Darrin” (his actually name), settling at one point on the all-purpose “low-grade mortal.” It is Darrin, paranoid about his job and what the neighbors will say, who has forbidden Samantha from practicing magic, insisting she keep all trace of witchiness in the closet — as much as she can, which, as we know (too well) will be very little. Samantha, thanks to mom, is constantly breaking out into fabulousness.
The globe-trotting Endora, whose broom is never grounded for long, speaks hundreds of languages (Chinese and Swahili being favorites) and is a lecturer on the Witches Council Convention circuit. She commands respect in both natural and supernatural circles. Her hobbies (other than rearranging Darrin’s face when he’s asleep) are mountain climbing, reading Harpies Bizarre Magazine, and lunching in Paris.
David K: All I recall of fourth grade was the debut of Bewitched. Nothing else from that time is really all that vivid. I had a job peddling TV Guide in our neighborhood, and I remember going through the Fall Preview issue that year and seeing all these pictures of Samantha and broomsticks…
John Calendo: And the crazy looking Endora with her wing-tipped eyeliner! I remember that 
Fall preview issue too. Zina Bethune was on the cover.
DK: Zina Beth-who?
JC: She was like the sensitive Sandra Dee type on The Nurses. It was like an all-girl Dr. Kildare — except with bed pans and nurse caps.
DK: OKaaay. I remember being giddy from anticipation at the time. I caught the first Bewitched episode and stayed with it right to the end.
JC: Me too! And that was the same year The Addams Family came out. The Munsters had been a big hit the year before, so all the new shows were based on magic and horror fairy tales.
DK: And yet Bewitched had this gay subtext to it, not only because Paul Lynde kept flying in out of the blue –
JC: Dear Paul Lynde, always light in the loafers …
DK: But because Bewitched had all the right ingredients to make a precocious homo-tot like myself pay extra attention.
JC: Speak on it, precocious brother! What were those happy gay ingredients? Call them out!
DK: Magic.
JC: Hallelujah!
DK: Outsiders.
JC: Praise!
DK: The collision of the everyday with the supernatural. The glamorous Elizabeth Montgomery, who always found the gumption to disobey her silly husband …
JC: It did have a gay vibe, but I couldn’t have told you what it was at that age. All I knew was that Darrin wanted to keep Samantha’s magical nature in the closet. He was always pulling down the blinds so Mrs. Kravitz wouldn’t discover their secret — which she always did, but like a lot of straight people, she preferred not to believe her eyes.
DK: God, I loved Mrs. Kravitz! That face! It could have struck small children down in the street!
JC: So here’s this wonderful, magical gal trying hard to be a Stepford wife, and all the while she knows she could clean up the whole house just by twitching her nose. But no, Darrin is too freaked out. So we watch her get down there with the Ajax — until drag-queeny Endora shows up to remind her daughter who she is.
DK: Jesus, Agnes Moorehead made that damn show!
JC: Endora was presented as the troublemaker, but the reason I loved her — not just me but everybody who watched that show — was that as soon as she showed up, magic was permitted. Endora encourged her daughter to embrace her larger, magical identity.
DK: Right, Endora fostered “witch pride.” I remember there were some kids in school who weren’t allowed to watch the show because it was about the occult. To me the idea of witches living next door seemed like the most normal thing in the world — in fact, desirable. Especially Endora. Whenever Agnes Moorehead came on, the show shot off into the stratosphere.
JC: The show cast its spell and we were … totally … completely … absolutely bewitched!
DK: And that’s the way it is. This Halloween. 2005.
Endora’s own telephone psychic line.
Agnes Moorehead’s biography from Amazon.
Agnes Moorehead illustration by Ronald Searle, TV Guide, June 18 1966 issue.
