Agnes Moorehead

Agnes Robertson Moorehead (December 6, 1900 – April 30, 1974) was an Oscar-nominated American character actress. Although she appeared in more than 70 films and on dozens of television shows during a career that spanned more than 30 years, she is most widely known for her role as the witch Endora in the television series Bewitched.

Early life

Moorehead was born in Clinton, Massachusetts of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh ancestry, the only child of a Presbyterian minister. She later shaved six years off her age by claiming to have been born in 1906. She grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and was graduated from Central High School in 1918.

Moorehead earned a bachelor's degree, with a major in biology, from Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio in 1923. (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 earning a master's degree in English and public speaking at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She then pursued post-graduate studies at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, from which she was graduated with honors in 1929.

Career

During her career, Moorehead's varied performances established her as one of Hollywood's premier character actresses. She appeared in many of the best known films of the time including Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, and Johnny Belinda. Her film debut was as the title character's mother in Citizen Kane. She famously won the New York Film Critics award as Best Actress for The Magnificent Ambersons, but was reduced to a nomination as Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars. She was nominated for multiple Academy Awards, all as Best Supporting Actress, including a final nomination as the suspicious maid in Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte.

She skillfully portrayed puritanical matrons, neurotic spinsters, possessive mothers, and comical secretaries throughout her career. Moorehead was part of Orson Welles' Mercury Theater on the Air radio program in the 1930s and appeared in Broadway productions of Don Juan in Hell in 1951-1952, and Lord Pengo in 1962-1963. During the 1940s and 1950s, she was one of the most in demand actresses for radio dramas, and in 1943 starred in the legendary radio suspense play Sorry, Wrong Number, written by Lucille Fletcher. Moorehead played a selfish, neurotic woman who overhears a murder being plotted via crossed phone wires who eventually realizes she is the intended victim. She recreated the performance many times on the radio, recorded an album of the drama in 1952, and performed scenes from the story in her one-woman show in the 1950s.

While rarely playing leads in films, Moorehead's skill at character development and range earned her one Emmy, two Golden Globes, four Oscar nominations and six Emmy nominations. Moorehead's transition to television won acclaim and accolades for her work in drama and in comedy.

Private life

Moorehead married actor John Griffith Lee in 1930, and they divorced in 1952; they 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 1953, she married actor Robert Gist, and they divorced in 1958. In the years since her death, rumors about Moorehead's being a lesbian have been widespread (most notoriously in the discredited book Hollywood Lesbians); however, Moorehead biographer Charles Transberg (I Love the Illusion: The Life and Career of Agnes Moorehead, 2005) interviewed several of the actress' closest friends, including some who were openly gay, who all stated the rumor is untrue.

Moorehead was a devout Presbyterian and, in interviews, often spoke of her relationship with God. Shortly before her death, she returned to her fundamentalist roots and requested an audience with Bob Jones, Jr., perhaps reflecting her own heritage with the embattled Protestants in Northern Ireland, UK.

Agnes Moorehead died of uterine cancer in Rochester, Minnesota Copy of death certificate. Retrieved September 13, 2005. , not lung cancer as was long believed.

While never confirmed, some suspect that Moorehead’s cancer was a result of having been exposed to radiation at a site previously used for nuclear testing while filming The Conqueror (1956) in Utah. Moorehead believed her cancer was related to this exposure, and commented in an interview shortly before her death, "I wish I'd never done that damn movie!" There is no definitive proof that the movie caused her illness, and she had been a heavy smoker for many years.

Moorehead willed her 1965 Emmy for The Wild Wild West, her Oscar nominations and her private papers to Muskingum College, including her home in Rix Mills, Ohio. She left her Ohio estate, Moorehead Manor, to Bob Jones University. She left her professional papers, scripts, Christmas cards and scrapbooks to the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research at the Wisconsin Historical Society.

In 1994, Agnes Moorehead was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

She is interred at Dayton Memorial Park in Dayton, Ohio.

Notable roles

The Shadow (1937-1939), as Margot Lane (radio series)
Citizen Kane (1941), as Mary Kane
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), as Fanny; New York Film Critics Circle Award, Academy Award nomination
Sorry, Wrong Number (1943), as Leona Stevenson (radio drama)
Mrs Parkington (1944), as Aspasia Conti; Golden Globe, Academy Award nomination
Jane Eyre (1944), as Mrs. Reed
Johnny Belinda (1948), as Aggie McDonald; Academy Award nomination
Pollyanna (1960), as Mrs. Snow
The Twilight Zone a non-dialogue performance on the episode "The Invaders" (1961), as "The Woman"
Bewitched (1964–1972), as Endora; six Emmy nominations
Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), as Velma Cruther; Golden Globe, Academy Award nomination

Notes and references

External links