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The character actor provided the understructure of a film. Take any movie, good or mediocre, from 1930 to 1970 and you will find one or more memorable “characters”. A leading role in films usually required a “name”, a celebrated star who had mass appeal and who could bring audiences into the theater. The character or featured roles depended on someone who specialized in a particular “type” of personality and who could wrap a persona around the role to give it dimension, depth and mood soon identified with that actor alone. It was these players who kept the audiences in their seats.
One of America’s finest character actors, Agnes Moorehead challenged every medium…radio, stage, screen and television…and won hands down! The daughter of a Presbyterian minister, she was born Agnes Robertson
Moorehead on December After finishing college (she earned a BA in liberal arts at Muskingum College in Ohio, a Masters degree in English at University of Wisconsin and a PH.D in Literature at Bradley University in Illinois) she paused a while to teach speech and drama in high schools and then continued with her drama studies at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. By 1928, she was appearing regularly on Broadway, and doing roles
on radio. “Radio was a wonderful boon to the actor. You could
use your imagination and your voice to create all sorts of characterizations…sometimes
those radio fantasies seemed very real.” The radio roles included
the tortured woman in “Sorry Wrong She joined Welles and Joseph Cotton as a charter member in Orson’s
famous Mercury Theater Players and made her film debut as Charles Kane’s
mother in “Citizen Kane” (1941) In 1942 she received her
first Oscar nomination as Fanny in “The Magnificent Ambersons.” She
would receive 3 more nominations as “Baroness” Aspasin
Conti in “Mrs. Parkington” (1944), Aggie McDonald in “Johnny
Belinda” (1948) and Velma in “Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte” (1964)
but never went home with that gold statuette. “I guess I’ll
remain a bridesmaid for the rest of my life,” she said after
the 4 th disappointment. However, Agnes did win a Golden Globe for
both “Mrs. Parkington” and “Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte”. When she felt her film career was on firm footing, Agnes moved lock, stock and barrel to Hollywood and, in 1948, got herself a fabulous mansion with beautiful gardens, a swimming pool and libraries with enormous catalogs of books. Married to Jack Lee, a television/radio actor, the couple adopted 2-year-old Sean to make their family complete. The marriage lasted 22 years (1930-1952) but ended in divorce. Her second marriage, to TV director Robert Gist, also ended in divorce after only 5 years (1953-1958). In 1950, Agnes made the trip back to Broadway with Charles Boyer,
In 1964 Agnes Moorehead got the role she was probably most famous
for…not on the big screen Agnes Moorehead worked until the very end of her life. Her final
contribution was on the Broadway stage taking her full circle from
the beginning of her career until the end. She died on April 30, 1974
of lung
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6,1900 in Clinton, Massachusetts. The family
relocated to St. Louis where Agnes exercised her love of acting early,
making her first stage appearance at 3 and her professional debut at
11 in the ballet and chorus of the St. Louis Municipal Opera Company.
Number” and the girlfriend
in “The Shadow”. It was her first meeting with Orson Welles
who played the title role.
Charles
Laughton and Sir Cedric Hardwicke to do George Bernard Shaw’s “Don
Juan in Hell”, a huge success. Then something happened that would
change the course of her life. In 1954 Agnes joined the cast of “The
Conqueror” to be filmed in the Nevada desert not far from where
the government was doing nuclear testing. It has been widely speculated
that the location was set in a radioactive area and that all of those
working on the site were exposed to its deadly radiation. Ironically,
sand from the area was trucked back to the studio for eventual retakes.
Many of the crew, including John Wayne, Susan Hayward, director Dick
Powell and Agnes eventually died of cancer.
but
on the small one. It was the part of Endora, the mother of television’s favorite witch, Samantha
on “Bewitched”. She was nominated 7 times for an Emmy Award
and 6 times it was for “Bewitched”. Ironically her only
win in 1967 was for her role as Emma Valentine on “The Wild Wild
West” episode titled “Night of the Vicious Valentine.”
cancer and is buried in Dayton, Ohio next to her parents, not
far from the farm in Hamilton she purchased early in her career to
be near her parents and where she spent her leisure time 