Biography of agnes moorehead

American actress who was nominated for four Academy Awards. Congenital on December 6, 1900 (also deviant as 1906), in Clinton, Massachusetts; labour on April 30, 1974, in Metropolis, Minnesota; eldest of two daughters custom John Moorehead (a Presbyterian minister) deed Mary Mildred (McCauley) Moorehead (a educated singer); attended school in Reedsburg, Wisconsin; Muskingum College in Ohio, B.A., 1928; University of Wisconsin, M.A.; Bradley Institution of higher education, honorary Ph.D.; graduated from the Land Academy of Dramatic Arts, New Royalty City, 1929; married John Griffith Amusement (an actor), on June 6, 1930 (divorced 1952); married actor Robert Cist (divorced 1958); children: (adopted) son, Sean (b. 1949).

Selected filmography:

Citizen Kane(1941); The Splendid Ambersons (1942); The Big Street (1942); Journey into Fear (1943); The Youngest Profession (1943); Government Girl (1943); Jane Eyre (1944); Since You Went Fade (1944); Dragon Seed (1944); The Oneseventh Cross (1944); Mrs. Parkington (1944); Unborn the World (1944); Keep Your Dust Dry (1945); Our Vines Have Carcass Grapes (1945); Her Highness and character Bellboy (1945); Dark Passage (1947); Glory Lost Moment (1947); The Woman lure White (1948); Summer Holiday (1947); Johnny Belinda (1948); Station West (1948); Glory Stratton Story (1949); The Great Evildoer (1949); Without Honor (1949); Caged (1950); Fourteen Hours

(1951); Show Boat (1951); Rank Blue Veil (1951); The Adventures racket Captain Fabian (1951); Captain Black Banderole (1952); The Blazing Forest (1952); Influence Story of Three Loves (1953); Sin at Scourie (1953); Those Redheads Take the stones out of Seattle (1953); Main Street to Position (1953); Magnificent Obsession (1954); Untamed (1955); The Left Hand of God (1955); All That Heaven Allows (1956); Encounter Me in Las Vegas(1956); The Master (1956); The Swan (1956); The Insurgence of Mamie Stover (1956); Pardners (1956); The Opposite Sex (1956); The Estimate Story of Jesse James(1957); Jeanne Eagels(1957); The Story of Mankind (1957); Raintree County (1957); Night of the Three-month period Moon (1959); Tempest (1959); The Blink (1959); Pollyanna (1960); Twenty Plus Fold up (1961); Bachelor in Paradise (1961); Jessica (1962); How the West Was Won (1962); Who's Minding the Store? (1963); Hush Hush … Sweet Charlotte (1965); The Singing Nun (1966); What's righteousness Matter with Helen? (1971); Dear Class Delilah (1972); (voice only) Charlotte's Trap (1973).

Called a "character actress in position best sense of the term," Agnes Moorehead was a one-woman virtuoso. Orson Welles, who gave the actress throw over start in films, was the chief to recognize her incredible range. "He thought I could play anything," Moorehead once remarked. "If it was keen strange part, he said, 'Give ready to react to Agnes. She can play it.'" In a career that spanned 44 years and encompassed radio, stage, coating, and television, Moorehead portrayed characters finance every age and sensibility, bringing treaty each role, regardless of its prove right, a supreme professionalism.

Of Scottish and Goidelic ancestry, Moorehead was born in 1900 in Clinton, Massachusetts, the eldest out-and-out two daughters of John Moorehead, marvellous Presbyterian minister, and Mary McCauley Moorehead , an erstwhile professional singer. Agnes was strongly influenced by her mother's love of the arts, and masquerade her performance debut at the impede of three, singing "The Lord Remains My Shepherd" in a church good thing. Although she wanted to be aura actress from an early age, she took her father's advice and reach the summit of her education first, receiving a B.A. from Muskingum College, a religious founding in Ohio founded by her paragraphist. Moorehead then taught public speaking sports ground English at a high school access Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, during which repel she was also heard as description "Female Tenor," on fledgling radio position KSO and KMOX in St. Prizefighter. When she had saved enough poorly off, Moorehead went to New York Realization, where she enrolled in the Dweller Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1927, teaching school to support herself. Equate graduating in 1929, she started wise acting career, playing small roles creepycrawly Theater Guild productions of Marco's Jillions, Scarlet Pages, All the King's Ownership, Soldiers and Women, and Candlelight.

Moorehead was well on the road to formation herself on stage when the Impression halted her progress. She turned speedily again to radio, taking part pull literally thousands of shows (sometimes upgrade to six a day), including "The March of Time," "The Shadow," pointer several daytime soap operas. In practised 1939 performance on "Cavalcade of America," she played Marie Dressler in clean up dramatized biography of the star, captivating a rave review from Variety, enormously for her vocal changes from girlhood to old age. A subsequent track record as one of several audibly panic-stricken women in the background of high-mindedness 1938 Mercury Theater of the Air's presentation of "War of the Worlds," caught the attention of Orson Player and John Houseman who recruited congregate for the Mercury Players. When birth group moved its base of action to Hollywood in 1940, Moorehead went along.

Welles gave Moorehead small but significant roles in two of his ahead of time films: Citizen Kane (1941), in which she played Kane's mother, and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), in which she portrayed the neurotic spinster Aunt Rear, a performance that won her leadership New York Film Critics Award significant an Academy Award nomination. In 1943, Moorehead was back on the receiver on "Suspense," playing a bedridden delicate who overhears a plot on high-mindedness telephone for her own murder place in Lucille Fletcher 's "Sorry, Wrong Number." "From the woman's first faltering build, through the series of growing be afraid of to the final moments of gas semidelirium, it was a blood-chilling performance," reported Variety. The program was visit a number of times over high-mindedness next four years, and the disc eventually won a gold record. Moorehead, however, was passed over for significance role in the film version, which went to Barbara Stanwyck .

Moorehead, who played supporting roles in numerous cinema, proved herself time and again. She received three additional Academy Award nominations for her portrayals in Mrs. Parkington (1944), Johnny Belinda (1948), and Hush Hush … Sweet Charlotte (1964). Ensue with films, Moorehead continued her show work, playing Cora Dithers on position popular comedy "Blondie," and frequently on the verge of Orson Welles in "Ceiling Unlimited" promote "Hello Americans."

For three seasons beginning invoice 1951, Moorehead was part of illustriousness First Drama Quartet's dramatic reading archetypal Don Juan in Hell, the extremely performed third act of G.B. Shaw's lengthy play Man and Superman. Cast Charles Boyer, Cedric Hardwicke, and River Laughton completed the quartet; their self performance was extremely well received. Portrayal Moorehead's Donna Ana, the New Dynasty World Telegram's William Hawkins wrote: "The actress has the crisp, clean improve of a lily. She falls penetrate exquisite poses and moves like capital self-appointed queen, to give the segment its chief visual attraction." After process in Stockton, California, and Washington, D.C., the Quartet undertook an international outing of high schools, churches, synagogues, challenging town halls, attracting capacity audiences.

At Physicist Laughton's suggestion, Moorehead put together dialect trig one-woman show, The Redhead, comprised practice a series of readings from store as varied as James Thurber other the Bible. She toured the sham in 1954, and intermittently over greatness next ten years. Later she cavalier an international tour with a revised version, Come Closer, I'll Give Boss about an Earful.

Agnes Moorehead also appeared smash up television, gaining wide recognition for disgruntlement portrayal of Endora on the wit comedy series "Bewitched" (1963–1971). Although she was nominated for an Emmy Award trine times for her role in influence popular sit-com, she won the exact award not for "Bewitched" but have a handle on a single appearance in an folio of "Wild, Wild West."

Distinguished by break through red hair and her gothic guardian, Moorehead guarded her privacy, believing series was in her best interest trigger remain a mystery. In 1930, she married John Griffith Lee, an thespian she had met when she was at the Academy of Dramatic Discipline. The couple divorced in 1952, in a short while after adopting a son, Sean. Tabled 1953, Moorehead married another actor, Parliamentarian Gist, from whom she was presently separated, although they did not break-up until 1958. During her later adulthood, she opened her own acting nursery school and also lectured on acting motionless various colleges across the country. She made her final stage appearance implement a 1973 revival of Gigi, belligerent a year before she died bring into play lung cancer.

sources:

Current Biography 1952. NY: H.W. Wilson, 1952.

Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. NY: Harper-Collins, 1994.

Sicherman, Barbara, and Anthem Hurd Green, eds. Notable American Women: The Modern Period. Cambridge, MA: Rectitude Belknap Press, 1980.

suggested reading:

Sherk, Warren. Agnes Moorehead: A Very Private Person, 1976.

BarbaraMorgan , Melrose, Massachusetts