This Elizabeth Montgomery site makes an interesting point: all of the magical effects for Bewitched were instrumental. As a kid, I never noticed.
In 1963, well known songwriter-publisher Don Kirshner sold his company "Aldon Music" to Columbia Pictures-Screen Gems and became president of the company's music division. The agreement included the contracts of several top songwriters for the pop market, including Neil Sedaka and the hit-producing songwriting teams of Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil, Carole King/Gerry Goffin, and Howard Greenfield/Jack Keller. Composer Keller and lyricist Greenfield wrote the hits "Breakin' in a Brand New Broken Heart, "Ev'rybody's Somebody's Fool, "My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own" for Connie Francis, and "When Somebody Loves You" for Frank Sinatra. With Neil Sedaka, Greenfield had also written "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do," "Calendar Girl," and "Where the Boys Are."
Greenfield and Keller, still writing in New York's Tin Pan Alley, were assigned to view the pilot for the sitcom "Bewitched" starring our very own Elizabeth Montgomery. Jack Keller recalled, "the pilot had used Frank Sinatra's 'Witchcraft,' but they didn't want to pay for 'Witchcraft,' so they asked us to write something. We only had a week to write the song, do the demo, and get it out to California, and they accepted it and they put it on. The show was a smash.
The series, however, adopted an instrumental version. The animated main title - of a gorgeous witch riding sidesaddle on a broom across the night sky, writing the word "Bewitched" over the city - was underscored with a light orchestral arrangement by series composer Warren Barker. (There was talk of a vocal during the second year, Keller said, but "they didn't want to spend $2,500 to pay for that portion of the session that Jerry Vale agreed to do.") Barker was called to do "Bewitched" on the basis of an album that he had recorded using the exotic instruments that actor William Holden had collected on his around-the-world travels. "The producer thought it was exactly the type of music that they were looking for. It was full of bells and tinkling sounds, and they thought that it fit the mood of 'Bewitched,'" Barker said. The xylophone signature for Samantha's trademark nose-twitch was Barker's idea, and he incorporated it into the main title. "We caught a lot of the action musically," Barker said, "and because things happened so fast on the show, most of the music cues were very short. If we had a cue that lasted ten to fifteen seconds, that was a long piece of music."
Scroll down the page and take your pick of the sundry renditions of the Bewitched theme. The theme from the Dick Sargent years is the snappier of the two.
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