West Pittston Historical Society on the hunt for native daughter’s missing Emmy award

The 20th Primetime Emmy Awards, held in Los Angeles on May 19, 1968, should have been a big event for Luzerne County’s most famous actress.

West Pittston native Marion Lorne MacDougall — known professionally as just Marion Lorne — won the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series that evening for her role as Aunt Clara in “Bewitched.” Unfortunately, Lorne was unable to accept the statue on her own behalf, as she died 10 days before the ceremony took place at the Hollywood Palladium. Her television niece, Elizabeth Montgomery, accepted the award instead.

The whereabouts of that statue is now one of the great mysteries of the local entertainment canon.

Mary Portelli, president of the West Pittston Historical Society, is on a mission to solve this puzzle nearly 60 years later. She was inspired to do so by Tony Callaio, a frequent contributor of Pittston area news, photos and commentary to the Times Leader and Sunday Dispatch.

The search’s opening act

Portelli has had many leads, some of which she has already followed. She reached out to the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the body that oversees the Emmys in its multiple forms, hoping the group would be able to provide some insight regarding the statue.

The answer she received from the Academy only created more questions. They suggested that Portelli find a family member to ask, but doing so is tricky. Lorne and her husband, the late playwright Walter Hackett, had no children.

Initially, Portelli thought she found a path forward in the search pertaining to the night of the Emmys. She said she read online that a niece or nephew of Hackett’s had accepted the Emmy from Montgomery after the awards were handed out.

“After the awards ceremony in 1968, one of Walter’s nieces or nephews took care of the award, so that’s my quest now is to find who Walter’s nieces or nephews were,” Portelli said.

However, that ended up being faulty information. According to Portelli’s genealogical research, Hackett’s only sibling died when they were 17 years old, making it unlikely that a child of theirs could have been on hand at the Emmys in 1968. For context, Hackett was born in 1876.

The search has expanded to other possible relatives. Lorne’s younger brother, Dr. Lorne Taylor McDougall, is buried in West Pittston, retained local connections throughout his life, and had two daughters: Marion Lorne MacDougall McGrath, who died in 2010; and Dorothy F. MacDougall Lyden, who died in 2015. Portelli is hoping that at least one of those two daughters has a descendant who can be contacted and asked about the Emmy of their great-aunt or great-great-aunt.

Though he would be interested in hosting the statue in West Pittston, where Lorne was born on York Avenue, Callaio conceded that a relative might be unwilling to part with it.

“The Emmy might be so precious to [Lorne’s living relatives], they may never want to give it up,” he said.

Aunt Clara connections

There’s also the possibility that Erin Murphy, who played young Tabitha Stephens in “Bewitched,” would know more about the Emmys whereabouts. Though Murphy was only a child when Lorne won the award, she was still a co-star, and one of the last living co-stars at that. Murphy is 60 years old.

Auction houses and museums are also among the wide variety of location possibilities, and ones that would require the statue passing through multiple people to reach its placement.

For that reason, Portelli has turned to fans of Lorne and her famous role to help in the search.

“Marion really has a following,” Portelli said, which became quite clear when the Marion Lorne Film Festival was held in West Pittston in 2023. “When we did our film festival two years ago, it got picked up by one of those — actually, more than one of those — ‘Bewitched’ [Facebook] pages, and those people were like ‘Oh, I wish I could be there. If I was closer, I’d come.’”

Lorne’s popularity certainly extends to fans beyond “Bewitched.” She was a celebrated stage actress for parts of six different decades, and was nominated for Emmys for “Mister Peeper” and “Sally” before she was ever known as Aunt Clara. These additional fandoms, though certainly smaller than that of “Bewitched,” might be useful in expanding the search.

Where things stand

While the final resting place of Lorne is alongside her husband in Westchester County, New York, her legacy in West Pittston looms large. Portelli said she has met people in the borough who can still remember meeting Lorne during her semi-frequent visits to the area after she had initially moved away to pursue acting.

As the years go by, however, and “Bewitched” naturally loses steam in the public consciousness, the urgency in tracking down Marion Lorne’s Emmy is high.

“I think at the time that [“Bewitched”] was happening, people didn’t realize that she was a West Pittston girl,” Portelli noted. “Now that we’re this far removed from the series, the younger folks in town don’t remember the series necessarily.”

Callaio was first inspired to bring Lorne’s Emmy back into the conversation when thinking about her nomination and impending induction into the Luzerne County Arts & Entertainment Hall of Fame. Though finding the award might prove difficult, the longer the search goes on, he is hopeful that success can be achieved.

“It’s kind of like a dead end thing for now, but I’m not giving up on where we could locate that Emmy,” Callaio said. “It’s got to be someplace.”