Agnes Moorehead

Moorehead in the trailer for Citizen Kane (1940)

Harry Shannon, George Coulouris and Agnes Moorehead in Citizen Kane (1941)

Richard Bennett, Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Don Dillaway, Agnes Moorehead, and Ray Collins in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

By 1937, Moorehead had joined Orson Welles' Mercury Players, as one of his principal performers along with Joseph Cotten. (In an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show on February 19, 1973, she revealed that, in 1922, she had by chance met Welles (fifteen years her junior) when he was a mere seven years old at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.)[8] 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 Lane. 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 the mother of his own character, Charles Foster Kane, in Citizen Kane (1941), considered by most film critics as one of the best films ever made. Moorehead was featured in Welles' second film, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), and received the New York Film Critics Award and an Academy Award nomination for her performance. She also appeared in Journey Into Fear (1943), a Mercury film production.

Moorehead received positive reviews for her performance in Mrs. Parkington (1944) 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 adolescent Virginia Weidler.

By the mid-1940s, Moorehead became a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player, negotiating a $6,000-a-week contract, which also allowed her to perform on radio, an unusual clause at the time. Moorehead explained that MGM usually refused to allow their actors to appear on radio as "the actors didn't have the knowledge or the taste or the judgment to appear on the right sort of show."[9] In 1943–1944, Moorehead portrayed "matronly housekeeper Mrs. Mullet", who was constantly offering her "candied opinion", in the Mutual Broadcasting System's The Adventures of Leonidas Witherall; she inaugurated the role on CBS Radio.[10]

Throughout her career, Moorehead skillfully portrayed puritanical matrons, neurotic spinsters, possessive mothers, and comical secretaries. She had supporting roles in Since You Went Away (1944) and the crime drama Dark Passage (1947), starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Becall. She then played Aggie McDonald in the 1948 film, Johnny Belinda. She played Parthy Hawks, wife of Cap'n Andy and mother of Magnolia, in MGM's hit 1951 remake of Show Boat. Moorehead was in Broadway productions of Don Juan in Hell in 1951–1952, and Lord Pengo in 1962–1963.

In her first radio role, Moorehead appeared as a replacement for Dorothy Denvir's role as Min Gump in The Gumps. 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 play Sorry, Wrong Number, written by Lucille Fletcher, broadcast on May 18, 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. The May 25, 1943 airing was made part of the National Sound Registry by the Library of Congress in 2014. 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.

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."[11] Moorehead played one of her last roles on January 6, 1974, as Mrs. Ada Canby in the ironically titled "The Old Ones Are Hard to Kill", the inaugural episode of CBS Radio Mystery Theater.[12]

Moorehead in The Bat (1959)

In the 1950s, Moorehead continued to work in films and appeared on stage across the country. Her stage roles included a national tour of Shaw's Don Juan in Hell, co-starring Charles Boyer, Charles Laughton, and Cedric Hardwicke, and the pre-Broadway engagements of the new musical The Pink Jungle. She had a supporting role in the big-budget Howard Hughes film The Conqueror (1956), starring John Wayne and Susan Hayward, a film she later regretted appearing in. She starred in The Bat (1959) with Vincent Price. She appeared as the hypochondriac Mrs. Snow in Disney's hit film Pollyanna (1960). She starred with Bette Davis, Olivia De Havilland, Mary Astor, and Joseph Cotten in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) as the maid Velma, a role for which she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award.

In 1959, Moorehead guest-starred on many series, including The Rebel and Alcoa Theatre.[13] 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.[14] In "The Invaders" (broadcast January 27, 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 10, 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.

Moorehead with Bewitched castmates Dick York and Elizabeth Montgomery

Moorehead as Endora in Bewitched

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.[15] 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 aired.

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 enough, 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, describing her as "a tough old bird."[9]

In fall 1964, Moorehead participated in a five-minute commercial spot featuring casts of both Bonanza and Bewitched, announcing the new 1965 Chevrolet line. Moorehead was featured with Dan Blocker extolling the virtues of the new '65 Chevy II.

In the 1970s, Moorehead's life was increasingly affected by declining health. 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 co-starred with Shelley Winters and Debbie Reynolds in the horror film What's the Matter with Helen? (1971) and had the lead role in the low budget ax murderer film Dear Dead Delilah (1972) with Will Gear, her last starring role. She also reprised her role in Don Juan in Hell on Broadway and on tour, with an all-star cast that featured Edward Mulhare, Ricardo Montalban, and Paul Henreid.

Moorehead supplied the voice of the friendly "Goose" in Hanna-Barbera's 1973 adaptation of E. B. White's 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.

In 1930, Moorehead married actor John Griffith Lee; they divorced a year after fostering a boy named Sean in 1952. She married actor Robert Gist in 1954, and they divorced in 1958.

Moorehead's sexuality has been the subject of much speculation and dispute.[16] A number of articles that appeared in periodicals in the alternative press have identified her as a lesbian.[17] Paul Lynde, Moorehead's co-star on Bewitched, stated: "Well, the whole world knows Agnes was a lesbian – I mean classy as hell, but one of the all-time Hollywood dykes".[18] Journalist Boze Hadleigh reported an incident, also sourced to Lynde, 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."[19] In an interview, Moorehead was reported to have acknowledged her same-sex orientation while she identified a number of other Hollywood actresses who "enjoyed lesbian or bi relationships."[20]

Moorehead's close friend Debbie Reynolds stated categorically that Moorehead was not a lesbian. Reynolds' autobiography mentions the rumor and states it was started "maliciously" by one of Moorehead's husbands during their divorce.[21] Moorehead's longtime friend and producer Paul Gregory concurs in the assessment. Quint Benedetti, Moorehead's longtime employee who is gay, also stated that Moorehead was not a lesbian and attributed the story to Paul Lynde's frequent gossiping and rumor-mongering.[22]

Moorehead rarely spoke publicly about her political beliefs, but she supported both Franklin Delano Roosevelt (she portrayed Eleanor Roosevelt multiple times over the course of her career), as well as close friend Ronald Reagan for his 1966 run for Governor of California.[23]

• Lynn Kear, Agnes Moorehead: a Bio-Bibliography. (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1992). ISBN 0-313-28155-6
• Charles Tranberg, I Love the Illusion: The Life And Career of Agnes Moorehead (Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media, 2005) ISBN 1-59393-029-1