Oscar Profile #147: Agnes Moorehead

Born December 6, 1900 in Clinton, Massachusetts to a Presbyterian minister and his mezzo-soprano wife, Agnes Moorehead was encouraged by her mother to perform and was singing church solos at age three. At ten she joined the St. Louis Municipal Opera where she sang and danced for four years. At her father’s insistence she left the stage to continue her education and graduated from college with a B.A. in English and public speaking. She later earned a doctorate in literature. She taught public school English and drama for five years before making her radio singing debut in 1923. She became a fixture on radio serials in the 1930s and loved the work so much that when she was later contracted to MGM, she insisted in being allowed to continue her radio work, which she did well into the 1950s.

Moorehead met Orson Welles in 1937 through her radio work. He invited her to become a charter member of the Mercury Theater Players along with Joseph Cotton and himself. She was involved in the notorious 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds which caused a panic when listeners thought the Martian invasion treated as news in the broadcast was actually happening. She made her screen debut as Welles’ mother in his 1941 masterpiece, Citizen Kane and played her greatest role as Aunt Fanny in Welles’ and her second film, 1942’s The Magnificent Ambersons. It brought her the New York Film Critics Award for Best Actress and the first of her four Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress.

She may have been late to films, but Moorehead quickly made up for lost time. In 1944 alone, she had major supporting roles in six important films, Jane Eyre, Since You Went Away, Dragon Seed, The Seventh Cross, Mrs. Parkington and Tomorrow, the World!, earning a second Oscar nomination for Mrs. Parkington. She had equally memorable roles over the next few years in Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, Dark Passage, The Lost Moment, The Woman in White and Johnny Belinda, for which she received her third Oscar nomination.

The 1950s and 60s were particularly good to Moorehead as she gave one standout performance after another in such films as Caged, Fourteen Hours, Show Boat, The Blue Veil, The Story of Three Loves, Those Redheads from Seattle,Magnificent Obsession, Untamed, All That Heaven Allows, The Left Hand of God, The Swan, The Opposite Sex, Raintree County, The Bat, Pollyanna, How the West Was Won, Hush. Hush, Sweet Charlotte (for which she received her fourth Oscar nomination) and The Singing Nun.

Moorehead played her most popular role, that of the witch Endora, Elizabeth Montgomery’s mother, on the hit series Bewitched for which she was nominated for an Emmy six times during the show’s eight year run from 1964 to 1972. She won her only Emmy for a guest appearance on The Wild Wild West in 1967.

Agnes Moorehead’s last role was as Aunt Alicia in the 1973-74 Broadway run of Lerner & Loewe’s Gigi. She died on April 30, 1974 at the age of 73.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

CITIZEN KANE (1941), directed by Orson Welles

Named the greatest movie ever made in poll after poll for decades, Welles’ first film was a thinly disguised fictionalized biography of powerful newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and was not allowed to be advertised or even mentioned in Hearst newspapers. Despite, or perhaps because of the notoriety, the film caused a sensation with the critics thanks to Welles’ audacity. More than that, however, the film floored them with its brilliance. Welles won his only Oscar for the film’s screenplay which he shared with Herman J. Mankiewicz. Gregg Toland’s innovative cinematography was also a standout. Moorehead also stood out in her few scenes as Welles’ dowdy mother.

THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (1942), directed by Orson Welles

Welles’ second film was finished by the film’s editor, Robert Wise, while Welles was in Mexico working on his next, uncompleted film. It was also edited down by Wise at RKO’s insistence. Its greatness or lack thereof has caused endless debate by critics ever since. Never in dispute, however, has been the greatness of the acting, particularly by Moorehead as the shy, old maid aunt. The scene in which she begs her spoiled nephew (Tim Holt) not to send her to the poor house remains the highlight of the film. Moorehead won the New York Film critics Award for her Best Actress for her performance despite the fact that it was a supporting one. She was nominated for an Oscar in the supporting category.

DARK PASSAGE (1947), directed by Delmer Daves

Moorehead received her second Oscar nomination for 1944’s Mrs. Parkington and would receive her third for 1948’s Johnny Belinda, but her best remembered performance of the decade aside from The Magnificent Ambersons was her tour-de-force portrayal of a malevolent murderous who ends up going out the window in the Humphrey Bogart-Lauren Bacall starrer, Dark Passage. She was also memorable that year in quite a different role as a 105-year-old woman in The Lost Moment, the film version of Henry James’ The Aspern Papers.

ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (1955), directed by Douglas Sirk

In the third of four films in which Moorehead ably supports Jane Wyman, the others being Johnny Belinda, Magnificent Obsession and Pollyanna, the actress had her best character role of the decade as Wyman’s fair weather friend. The film, generally dismissed as “a woman’s picture” in its day has long had a cult following and was twice more or less remade, first by Rainer Werner Fassbinder as Ali: Fear Easts the Soul and more recently as Far From Heaven in which Patricia Clarkson played the Moorehead role in support of Julianne Moore in the Wyman role.

HUSH…HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE (1964), directed by Robert Aldrich

The Bette Davis-Joan Crawford career revival that began with Aldrich’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? was supposed to continue with this film two years later. Crawford, however, became ill during the early shooting and after a lengthy stay in the hospital was replaced by Oliva de Havilland. The delay lasted so long that co-star Barbara Stanwyck had to drop out due to her commitment to begin filming TV’s The Big Valley. She was replaced by Mary Astor. Moorehead was due to be replaced by Thelma Ritter due to her commitment to begin filming TV’s Bewitched when de Havilland was cast and filming resumed. Good thing, too, as it’s Moorehead’s portrayal of the slovenly housekeeper that takes the film out of the ordinary and brings it to the near extraordinary. It earned her the fourth and final Oscar nomination of her distinguished film career.