Moorehead, Agnes (1900–1974)

views updated

Moorehead, Agnes (1900–1974)

American actress who was nominated for four Academy Awards. Born on December 6, 1900 (also seen as 1906), in Clinton, Massachusetts; died on April 30, 1974, in Rochester, Minnesota; eldest of two daughters of John Moorehead (a Presbyterian minister) and Mary Mildred (McCauley) Moorehead (a professional singer); attended school in Reedsburg, Wisconsin; Muskingum College in Ohio, B.A., 1928; University of Wisconsin, M.A.; Bradley University, honorary Ph.D.; graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, New York City, 1929; married John Griffith Lee (an actor), on June 6, 1930 (divorced 1952); married actor Robert Cist (divorced 1958); children: (adopted) son, Sean (b. 1949).

Selected filmography:

Citizen Kane (1941); The Magnificent Ambersons (1942); The Big Street (1942); Journey into Fear (1943); The Youngest Profession (1943); Government Girl (1943); Jane Eyre (1944); Since You Went Away (1944); Dragon Seed (1944); The Seventh Cross (1944); Mrs. Parkington (1944); Tomorrow the World (1944); Keep Your Powder Dry (1945); Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945); Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945); Dark Passage (1947); The Lost Moment (1947); The Woman in White (1948); Summer Holiday (1947); Johnny Belinda (1948); Station West (1948); The Stratton Story (1949); The Great Sinner (1949); Without Honor (1949); Caged (1950); Fourteen Hours

(1951); Show Boat (1951); The Blue Veil (1951); The Adventures of Captain Fabian (1951); Captain Black Jack (1952); The Blazing Forest (1952); The Story of Three Loves (1953); Scandal at Scourie (1953); Those Redheads From Seattle (1953); Main Street to Broadway (1953); Magnificent Obsession (1954); Untamed (1955); The Left Hand of God (1955); All That Heaven Allows (1956); Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956); The Conqueror (1956); The Swan (1956); The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956); Pardners (1956); The Opposite Sex (1956); The True Story of Jesse James (1957); Jeanne Eagels (1957); The Story of Mankind (1957); Raintree County (1957); Night of the Quarter Moon (1959); Tempest (1959); The Bat (1959); Pollyanna (1960); Twenty Plus Two (1961); Bachelor in Paradise (1961); Jessica (1962); How the West Was Won (1962); Who's Minding the Store? (1963); Hush Hush … Sweet Charlotte (1965); The Singing Nun (1966); What's the Matter with Helen? (1971); Dear Dead Delilah (1972); (voice only) Charlotte's Web (1973).

Called a "character actress in the best sense of the term," Agnes Moorehead was a one-woman virtuoso. Orson Welles, who gave the actress her start in films, was the first to recognize her incredible range. "He thought I could play anything," Moorehead once remarked. "If it was a strange part, he said, 'Give it to Agnes. She can play it.'" In a career that spanned 44 years and encompassed radio, stage, film, and television, Moorehead portrayed characters of every age and sensibility, bringing to each role, regardless of its size, a supreme professionalism.

Of Scottish and Irish ancestry, Moorehead was born in 1900 in Clinton, Massachusetts, the eldest of two daughters of John Moorehead, a Presbyterian minister, and Mary McCauley Moorehead , an erstwhile professional singer. Agnes was strongly influenced by her mother's love of the arts, and made her performance debut at the age of three, singing "The Lord Is My Shepherd" in a church event. Although she wanted to be an actress from an early age, she took her father's advice and finished her education first, receiving a B.A. from Muskingum College, a religious institution in Ohio founded by her uncle. Moorehead then taught public speaking and English at a high school in Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, during which time she was also heard as the "Female Tenor," on fledgling radio stations KSO and KMOX in St. Louis. When she had saved enough money, Moorehead went to New York City, where she enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1927, teaching school to support herself. After graduating in 1929, she started her acting career, playing small roles in Theater Guild productions of Marco's Millions, Scarlet Pages, All the King's Horses, Soldiers and Women, and Candlelight.

Moorehead was well on the road to establishing herself on stage when the Depression halted her progress. She turned once again to radio, taking part in literally thousands of shows (sometimes up to six a day), including "The March of Time," "The Shadow," and several daytime soap operas. In a 1939 performance on "Cavalcade of America," she played Marie Dressler in a dramatized biography of the star, winning a rave review from Variety, especially for her vocal changes from youth to old age. A subsequent performance as one of several audibly terrified women in the background of the 1938 Mercury Theater of the Air's presentation of "War of the Worlds," caught the attention of Orson Welles and John Houseman who recruited her for the Mercury Players. When the group moved its base of operation to Hollywood in 1940, Moorehead went along.

Welles gave Moorehead small but pivotal roles in two of his early films: Citizen Kane (1941), in which she played Kane's mother, and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), in which she portrayed the neurotic spinster Aunt Fanny, a performance that won her the New York Film Critics Award and an Academy Award nomination. In 1943, Moorehead was back on the radio on "Suspense," playing a bedridden invalid who overhears a plot on the telephone for her own murder in Lucille Fletcher 's "Sorry, Wrong Number." "From the woman's first faltering lines, through the series of growing dread to the final moments of gibbering semidelirium, it was a blood-chilling performance," reported Variety. The program was repeated a number of times over the next four years, and the recording eventually won a gold record. Moorehead, however, was passed over for the role in the film version, which went to Barbara Stanwyck .

Moorehead, who played supporting roles in numerous movies, proved herself time and again. She received three additional Academy Award nominations for her portrayals in Mrs. Parkington (1944), Johnny Belinda (1948), and Hush Hush … Sweet Charlotte (1964). Along with films, Moorehead continued her radio work, playing Cora Dithers on the popular comedy "Blondie," and frequently joining Orson Welles in "Ceiling Unlimited" and "Hello Americans."

For three seasons beginning in 1951, Moorehead was part of the First Drama Quartet's dramatic reading of Don Juan in Hell, the rarely performed third act of G.B. Shaw's lengthy play Man and Superman. Actors Charles Boyer, Cedric Hardwicke, and Charles Laughton completed the quartet; their unusual performance was extremely well received. Describing Moorehead's Donna Ana, the New York World Telegram's William Hawkins wrote: "The actress has the crisp, clean elegance of a lily. She falls into exquisite poses and moves like a self-appointed queen, to give the play its chief visual attraction." After performances in Stockton, California, and Washington, D.C., the Quartet undertook an international tour of high schools, churches, synagogues, and town halls, attracting capacity audiences.

At Charles Laughton's suggestion, Moorehead put together a one-woman show, The Redhead, comprised of a series of readings from sources as varied as James Thurber and the Bible. She toured the show in 1954, and intermittently over the next ten years. Later she mounted an international tour with a revised version, Come Closer, I'll Give You an Earful.

Agnes Moorehead also appeared on television, gaining wide recognition for her portrayal of Endora on the comedy series "Bewitched" (1963–1971). Although she was nominated for an Emmy Award three times for her role in the popular sit-com, she won the coveted award not for "Bewitched" but for a single appearance in an episode of "Wild, Wild West."

Distinguished by her red hair and her gothic beauty, Moorehead guarded her privacy, believing it was in her best interest to remain a mystery. In 1930, she married John Griffith Lee, an actor she had met when she was at the Academy of Dramatic Arts. The couple divorced in 1952, shortly after adopting a son, Sean. In 1953, Moorehead married another actor, Robert Gist, from whom she was soon separated, although they did not divorce until 1958. During her later years, she opened her own acting school and also lectured on acting at various colleges across the country. She made her final stage appearance in a 1973 revival of Gigi, just a year before she died of lung cancer.