Agnes Moorehead initially
turned down the role of Endora in Bewitched (1964), but reconsidered
when Elizabeth Montgomery asked her in person, when they met in a
department store. Moorehead joined the cast not expecting the series
to last more than one season, let alone become a long-running hit.
Agnes Robertson Moorehead (December 6th,
1900 – April 30th, 1974) was an American actress whose career of
six decades included work in radio, stage, film, and television. She
is chiefly known for her role as Endora on the television series
Bewitched. She was also notable for her film roles in Citizen Kane,
The Magnificent Ambersons, All That Heaven Allows, Showboat and
Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte.
While rarely playing leads in films,
Moorehead's skill at character development and range earned her one
Primetime Emmy Award and two Golden Globe awards in addition to four
Academy Award and six Emmy Award nominations. Moorehead's transition
to television won acclaim for drama and comedy. She could play many
different types, but often portrayed haughty, arrogant characters.
Moorehead
was born in Clinton, Massachusetts, of English, Irish, Scottish, and
Welsh ancestry, to a Presbyterian clergyman, John Henderson
Moorehead, and his wife, the former Mildred McCauley, who had been a
singer. Moorehead later shaved six years off her age by claiming to
have been born in 1906. Moorehead recalled her first public
performance was at the age of three, reciting "The Lord's
Prayer" in her father's church. The family moved to St. Louis,
Missouri, and Moorehead's ambition to become an actress grew
"very strong". Her mother indulged her active imagination,
often asking, "Who are you today, Agnes?", while Moorehead
and her sister would often engage in mimicry, often coming to the
dinner table and imitating parishioners. Moorehead noted and was
encouraged by her father's amused reactions. She joined the chorus of
the St. Louis Municipal Opera Company, known as "The Muny".
In addition to her interest in acting, she developed a lifelong
interest in religion; in later years, actors such as Dick Sargent
would recall Moorehead's arriving on the set with "the Bible in
one hand and the script in the other".
Moorehead graduated from Central High
School in St. Louis, in 1918. Although her father did not discourage
Moorehead's acting ambitions, he insisted that she obtain a formal
education. In 1923, Moorehead earned a bachelor's degree, with a
major in biology, from Muskingum College (now Muskingum University)
in New Concord, Ohio; while there, she also appeared in college stage
plays. She later received an honorary doctorate in literature from
Muskingum and served for a year on its board of trustees. When her
family moved to Reedsburg, Wisconsin, she taught public school for
five years in Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, while she also earned a
master's degree in English and public speaking at the University of
Wisconsin (now University of Wisconsin–Madison). She then
pursued postgraduate studies at the American Academy of Dramatic
Arts, from which she graduated with honors in 1929. Moorehead
received an honorary doctoral degree from Bradley University in
Peoria, Illinois.
Moorehead's early career was unsteady,
and, although she was able to find stage work, she was often
unemployed and forced to go hungry. She later recalled going four
days without food, and said that it had taught her "the value of
a dollar". She found work in radio and was soon in demand, often
working on several programs in a single day. She believed that it
offered her excellent training and allowed her to develop her voice
to create a variety of characterizations. Moorehead met the actress
Helen Hayes, who encouraged her to try to enter films, but her first
attempts were met with failure. Rejected as not being "the right
type", Moorehead returned to radio.
Moorehead met Orson Welles, and by 1937
was one of his principal Mercury Players, along with Joseph Cotten.
She performed in his The Mercury Theatre on the Air radio
adaptations, and had a regular role opposite Welles in the serial The
Shadow as Margo. In 1939, Welles moved the Mercury Theatre to
Hollywood, where he started working for RKO Pictures. Several of his
radio performers joined him, and Moorehead made her film debut as his
mother in Citizen Kane (above, 1941), considered one of the best
films ever made. She also appeared in his films Journey Into Fear
(1943), based on a novel
by Eric Ambler, and The Magnificent Ambersons (right, 1942), based
on a novel by Booth Tarkington. She received a New York Film Critics
Award and an Academy Award nomination for her performance in the
latter film. Moorehead received positive reviews for her performance
in Mrs. Parkington, as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best
Supporting Actress and an Academy Award nomination.
Moorehead played another strong role in
The Big Street (1942) with Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball, and then
appeared in two films that failed to find an audience, Government
Girl (1943) with Olivia de Havilland and The Youngest Profession
(1944) with the adolescent Virginia Weidler.
In the mid-1940s, Moorehead joined
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, negotiating a $6,000-a-week contract with the
provision to perform also on radio, an unusual clause at the time.
Moorehead explained that MGM usually refused to allow their actors to
play on radio as "the actors didn't have the knowledge or the
taste or the judgment to appear on the right sort of show." In
1943–1944, Moorehead portrayed "matronly housekeeper Mrs.
Mullet", who was constantly offering her "candied
opinion", in Mutual Radio's The Adventures of Leonidas Witherall.
Moorehead was in many important films,
including Dark Passage (with Humphrey Bogart above) and Since You
Went Away, either playing key small or large supporting parts. She
skillfully portrayed puritanical matrons, neurotic spinsters,
possessive mothers, and comical secretaries throughout her career and
played Parthy Hawks, wife of Cap'n Andy and mother of Magnolia, in
MGM's hit 1951 remake of Show Boat.
In
1941, Moorehead played Maggie in the short-lived Bringing up Father
program on the Blue Network. From 1942 to 1949, Moorehead played the
role of the mayor's housekeeper in the radio version of Mayor of the
Town. She also starred in The Amazing Mrs. Danberry, a situation
comedy on CBS, in 1946. Moorehead's title character was described as
"the lively widow of a department store owner who has a tongue
as sharp as a hatpin and a heart as warm as summer."
During the 1940s and 1950s, Moorehead was
one of the most in-demand actresses for radio dramas, especially on
the CBS show Suspense. During the 946-episode-run of Suspense,
Moorehead was cast in more episodes than any other actor or actress.
She was often introduced on the show as the "first lady of
Suspense". Moorehead's most successful appearance on Suspense
was in the legendary play Sorry, Wrong Number, written by Lucille
Fletcher, broadcast on May 18th, 1943. Moorehead played a selfish,
neurotic woman who overhears a murder being plotted via crossed phone
wires and eventually realizes she is the intended victim. She
recreated the performance six times for Suspense and several times on
other radio shows, always using her original, dog-eared script. In
1952, she recorded an album of the drama, and performed scenes from
the story in her one-woman show in the 1950s. Barbara Stanwyck played
the role in the 1948 film version. Mooreheads’ work in
1948’s Johnny Belinda (below) earned her a third Supporting
Actress Oscar nomination. She didn’t win, but neither did
Stanwyck for Sorry, Wrong Number.
Untitled
In
the 1950s, Moorehead continued to work in films and to appear on
stage across the country, including a national tour of Shaw's Don
Juan in Hell, co-starring Charles Boyer, Charles Laughton, and Cedric
Hardwicke (1951–1952) and Lord Pengo in 1962–1963. She
appeared as the hypochondriac Mrs. Snow in Disney's hit film
Pollyanna (1960). Alongside Bette Davis, Olivia De Havilland, Mary
Astor, and Joseph Cotten, she starred in Hush... Hush, Sweet
Charlotte (1964), as the maid, Velma, a role for which she was
nominated for a her fourth Best Supporting Actress Academy Award.
In 1959, Moorehead guest starred on The
Rebel. Her role in the radio play Sorry, Wrong Number inspired
writers of the CBS television series The Twilight Zone to script an
episode with Moorehead in mind. In "The Invaders"
(broadcast January 27th, 1961) Moorehead played a woman whose
isolated farm is plagued by mysterious intruders. In "Sorry,
Wrong Number", Moorehead offered a famed, bravura performance
using only her voice, and for "The Invaders", she was
offered a script where she had no dialogue at all.
Moorehead
also had guest roles on Channing, Custer, Rawhide, in "Incident
at Poco Tiempo" as Sister Frances, and The Rifleman. On February
10th, 1967, she portrayed Miss Emma Valentine in "The Night of
the Vicious Valentine" on The Wild Wild West, a performance for
which she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting
Actress in a Drama Series.
In 1964, Moorehead accepted the role of
Endora, Samantha's (Elizabeth Montgomery) mortal-loathing, quick-witted
witch mother, in the situation comedy Bewitched. She later commented
that she had not expected it to succeed and that she ultimately felt
trapped by its success. However, she had negotiated to appear in only
eight of every 12 episodes made, therefore allowing her sufficient
time to pursue other projects. She also felt that the television
writing was often below standard and dismissed many of the Bewitched
scripts as "hack" in a 1965 interview for TV Guide. The
role brought her a level of recognition that she had not received
before as Bewitched was in the top 10 programs for the first few
years it was on the air. Moorehead received six Emmy Award
nominations, but was quick to remind interviewers that she had
enjoyed a long and distinguished career. Despite her ambivalence, she
remained with Bewitched until its run ended in 1972.
She commented to the New York Times in
1974, "I've been in movies and played theater from coast to
coast, so I was quite well known before Bewitched, and I don't
particularly want to be identified as a witch." Later that year
she said she had enjoyed playing the role, but it was not challenging
and the show itself was "not breathtaking", although her
flamboyant and colorful character appealed to children. She expressed
a fondness for the show's star, Elizabeth Montgomery, and said she
had enjoyed working with her. Co-star Dick Sargent, who in 1969
replaced the ill Dick York as Samantha's husband, Darrin Stephens,
had a more difficult relationship with Moorehead, caustically
describing her as "a tough old bird."
In
1970, Moorehead appeared as a dying woman who haunts her own house
in the early Night Gallery episode "Certain Shadows on the
Wall". She also reprised her role in Don Juan in Hell on
Broadway and on tour, in an all-star cast which also featured Edward
Mulhare, Ricardo Montalban, and Paul Henreid.
Moorehead also memorably supplied the
voice of the friendly Mother Goose in Hanna-Barbera's 1973 adaptation
of the E. B. White children's book Charlotte's Web.
For the 1973 Broadway adaptation of Gigi,
Moorehead portrayed Aunt Alicia and performed various songs,
including "The Contract" for the original cast recording.
She fell ill during the production, forcing Arlene Francis to replace
her. Moorehead died shortly afterward.
In January 1974, three months before her
death, Moorehead performed in two episodes (including the first) of
CBS Radio Mystery Theater, the popular series produced by old-time
radio master Himan Brown. Moorehead died of uterine cancer on April
30th, 1974, in Rochester, Minnesota; she is buried at Dayton Memorial
Park in Dayton, Ohio.
Moorehead appeared in the 1956 movie The
Conqueror, which was filmed near St. George, Utah, downwind from the
Yucca Flat, Nevada, nuclear test site. There were 220 cast and crew
members working on the picture. Over 90 them including Moorehead,
Susan Hayward, John Wayne, Pedro Armendariz, and director-producer
Dick Powell developed cancer. At least 46 died from the disease. Even
though these rates of cancer are almost identical to the general
population speculations of a connection persist.
No bombs were tested during the filming of
The Conqueror, but 11 explosions occurred the year prior. Two of them
were particularly "dirty", depositing long-lasting
radiation over the area. The 51.5-kiloton shot (code name
"Simon") was fired on April 25th, 1953, and the
32.4-kiloton blast (code name "Harry") went off May 19th.
(In contrast, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 16 kilotons.)
"Fallout was very abundant more than a year after 'Harry'",
said former AEC researcher Robert C. Pendleton. "Some of the
isotopes, such as strontium 90 and cesium 137, would not have
diminished much." Pendleton pointed out that radioactivity can
concentrate in "hot spots" such as the rolling dunes of
Snow Canyon, a natural reservoir for windblown material, which was
where much of The Conqueror was filmed.
Pendleton noted that radioactive
substances enter the food chain. By eating local meat and produce,
The Conqueror cast and crew were increasing their risk. Pendleton,
director of radiological health at the University of Utah, stated,
"With these numbers, this case could qualify as an epidemic. The
connection between fallout radiation and cancer in individual cases
has been practically impossible to prove conclusively. But in a group
this size you'd expect only 30-some cancers to develop. With 91, I
think the tie-in to their exposure on the set of The Conqueror would
hold up even in a court of law." On the other hand, Pendleton's
number has been questioned by the National Cancer Institute, which
states that a random group of 220 people, 96 should have cancer at
some point in their lives, and that rate has been essentially the
same throughout the 20th century, trending slowly upwards as longer
lifetimes are experienced. Later inquiries into the deaths of the
crew of The Conqueror have revolved around extreme cigarette usage
among them.
Moorehead was one of the first members of
the company to perceive a connection between the film and the
fallout. Her friend Sandra Gould, who was featured with her on
Bewitched, recalls that long before Moorehead developed the uterine
cancer that killed her in 1974, she recounted rumors of "some
radioactive germs" on location in Utah, observing:
"Everybody in that picture has gotten cancer and died." As
she was dying, she reportedly said: "I should never have taken
that part."
In
1994, Moorehead was posthumously inducted into the St. Louis Walk of
Fame and the Touchdown Tavern in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, opened the
Agnes Moorehead Lounge, exhibiting memorabilia.
Moorehead bequeathed her 1967 Primetime
Emmy Award statue for The Wild Wild West, her private papers, and her
home in Rix Mills, Ohio, to her alma mater, Muskingum College. She
left her family's Ohio estate and farmlands, Moorehead Manor, to Bob
Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, as well as some
biblical studies books from her personal library. Her will stipulated
that BJU should use the farm for retreats and special meetings
"with a Christian emphasis", but the distance of the estate
from the South Carolina campus rendered it mostly useless. In May
1976, BJU traded the Moorehead farmlands with an Ohio college for
$25,000 and a collection of her library books. Moorehead also left
her professional papers, scripts, Christmas cards, and scrapbooks to
the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research at the Wisconsin
Historical Society.
Moorehead married actor John Griffith Lee
in 1930; they divorced in 1952. Moorehead and Lee adopted an orphan
named Sean in 1949, but it remains unclear whether the adoption was
legal, although Moorehead did raise the child until he ran away from
home. In 1954, she married actor Robert Gist; they divorced in 1958.
Within
the entertainment community, Moorehead was widely believed to be a
lesbian. In an interview, Paul Lynde, Moorehead's occasional co-star
on Bewitched, said: "Well, the whole world knows Agnes was a
lesbian, I mean classy as hell, but one of the all-time Hollywood
dykes". Journalist Boze Hadleigh has reported an incident in
which, when she caught one of her husbands cheating on her,
"Agnes screamed at him that if he could have a mistress, so
could she". In an interview, Moorehead acknowledged her same-sex
orientation while identifying a number of other Hollywood actresses
who "enjoyed lesbian or bi relationships".
Moorehead was a staunch conservative
Republican who believed in less government intervention and tax cuts.
She also supported her close friend Ronald Reagan for his 1966 run
for governor.
Selected Agnes
Moorehead TVography
Adventures in Paradise
- The Krismen (1960)
Alcoa Theatre
- Man of His House (1959)
Barefoot in the Park
- Pilot (1970)
Bewitched
- series regular as Endora (254 episodes 1964-1972)
Burke's Law
- Who Killed Hamlet? (1965)
- Who Killed Don Pablo? (1964)
- Who Killed Beau Sparrow? (1963)
Channing
- Freedom Is a Lovesome Thing God Wot (1964)
The Chevy Mystery Show
- Trial by Fury (1960)
Climax!
- Locked in Fear (1957)
- Child of the Wind (1956)
The Colgate Comedy Hour
- Roberta (1955)
Custer
- Spirit Woman (1967)
Disneyland
- Strange Monster of Strawberry Cove (1971)
The DuPont Show of the Month
- A Tale of Two Cities (1958)
General Electric Theater
- Deed of Mercy (1959)
The Greatest Show on Earth
- This Train Don't Stop Till It Gets There (1964)
Harrigan and Son
- There's No Fool Like an Old Fool (1960)
Hollywood Talent Scout
- Episode dated April 4th (1966)
Lancer
- A Person Unknown (1969)
The Lone Ranger
- The Trickster/Crack of Doom/The Human
Dynamo (1966 voice)
Love, American Style
- Love and the Particular Girl (1971)
Marcus Welby, M.D.
- He Could Sell Iceboxes to Eskimos (1972)
Matinee Theatre
- Greybeards and Witches (1956)
The Millionaire
- Millionaire Katherine Boland (1960)
My Sister Eileen
- The Protectors (1961)
- Aunt Harriet's Way (1961)
Night Gallery
- Witches' Feast (1971)
- Certain Shadows on the Wall (1970)
Playhouse 90
- The Dungeon (1958)
Rawhide
- Incident at Poco Tiempo (1960)
The Rebel
- In Memoriam (1959)
The Red Skelton Show
- He Wanted to Be a Square Shooter But He
Found That his Barrel was Round (1969)
The Revlon Mirror Theater
- Lullaby (1953)
The Rifleman
- Miss Bertie (1960)
Schlitz Playhouse of Stars
- The Life You Save (1957)
Shirley Temple's Storybook
- The House of the Seven Gables (1960)
- The Land of Oz (1960)
- Rapunzel (1958)
The Smith Family
- The Anniversary (1971)
Startime
- Closed Set (1960)
Studio 57
- Teacher (1956)
Suspicion
- The Protege (1958)
That's Life
- A Cold is Nothing to Sneeze At (1969)
The Twilight Zone
- The Invaders (1961)
The Virginian
- Gun Quest (1970)
Wagon Train
- The Mary Halstead Story (1957)
The Wild Wild West
- The Night of the Vicious Valentine (1967)
Moorehead
was born in Clinton, Massachusetts, of English, Irish, Scottish, and
Welsh ancestry, to a Presbyterian clergyman, John Henderson
Moorehead, and his wife, the former Mildred McCauley, who had been a
singer. Moorehead later shaved six years off her age by claiming to
have been born in 1906. Moorehead recalled her first public
performance was at the age of three, reciting "The Lord's
Prayer" in her father's church. The family moved to St. Louis,
Missouri, and Moorehead's ambition to become an actress grew
"very strong". Her mother indulged her active imagination,
often asking, "Who are you today, Agnes?", while Moorehead
and her sister would often engage in mimicry, often coming to the
dinner table and imitating parishioners. Moorehead noted and was
encouraged by her father's amused reactions. She joined the chorus of
the St. Louis Municipal Opera Company, known as "The Muny".
In addition to her interest in acting, she developed a lifelong
interest in religion; in later years, actors such as Dick Sargent
would recall Moorehead's arriving on the set with "the Bible in
one hand and the script in the other".
novel
by Eric Ambler, and The Magnificent Ambersons (right, 1942), based
on a novel by Booth Tarkington. She received a New York Film Critics
Award and an Academy Award nomination for her performance in the
latter film. Moorehead received positive reviews for her performance
in Mrs. Parkington, as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best
Supporting Actress and an Academy Award nomination.
In
1941, Moorehead played Maggie in the short-lived Bringing up Father
program on the Blue Network. From 1942 to 1949, Moorehead played the
role of the mayor's housekeeper in the radio version of Mayor of the
Town. She also starred in The Amazing Mrs. Danberry, a situation
comedy on CBS, in 1946. Moorehead's title character was described as
"the lively widow of a department store owner who has a tongue
as sharp as a hatpin and a heart as warm as summer."
In
the 1950s, Moorehead continued to work in films and to appear on
stage across the country, including a national tour of Shaw's Don
Juan in Hell, co-starring Charles Boyer, Charles Laughton, and Cedric
Hardwicke (1951–1952) and Lord Pengo in 1962–1963. She
appeared as the hypochondriac Mrs. Snow in Disney's hit film
Pollyanna (1960). Alongside Bette Davis, Olivia De Havilland, Mary
Astor, and Joseph Cotten, she starred in Hush... Hush, Sweet
Charlotte (1964), as the maid, Velma, a role for which she was
nominated for a her fourth Best Supporting Actress Academy Award.
Moorehead
also had guest roles on Channing, Custer, Rawhide, in "Incident
at Poco Tiempo" as Sister Frances, and The Rifleman. On February
10th, 1967, she portrayed Miss Emma Valentine in "The Night of
the Vicious Valentine" on The Wild Wild West, a performance for
which she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting
Actress in a Drama Series.
In
1970, Moorehead appeared as a dying woman who haunts her own house
in the early Night Gallery episode "Certain Shadows on the
Wall". She also reprised her role in Don Juan in Hell on
Broadway and on tour, in an all-star cast which also featured Edward
Mulhare, Ricardo Montalban, and Paul Henreid.
In
1994, Moorehead was posthumously inducted into the St. Louis Walk of
Fame and the Touchdown Tavern in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, opened the
Agnes Moorehead Lounge, exhibiting memorabilia.
Within
the entertainment community, Moorehead was widely believed to be a
lesbian. In an interview, Paul Lynde, Moorehead's occasional co-star
on Bewitched, said: "Well, the whole world knows Agnes was a
lesbian, I mean classy as hell, but one of the all-time Hollywood
dykes". Journalist Boze Hadleigh has reported an incident in
which, when she caught one of her husbands cheating on her,
"Agnes screamed at him that if he could have a mistress, so
could she". In an interview, Moorehead acknowledged her same-sex
orientation while identifying a number of other Hollywood actresses
who "enjoyed lesbian or bi relationships".
