50 years ago, we lost one of the greatest actresses of all time

I enjoyed her wordless performance on the Twilight Zone.

She'll be back.

She was more talented than me in one respect.

She is one of those actors who I would watch in probably anything. But my favorite performance is hers in Dark Passage as Madge the Pest. She used that great big expressive face of hers to menace the audience. It’s so good.

I love her because she was a journeyman actor - she was in everything but wasn’t a huge star like Elizabeth Taylor, so was able to have a more normal life. I studied drama in college and would have been delighted with her career.

The Boiler Room scene in Ambersons….should have won her the Oscar. (She did get the NY Film Critics Award)

Radio

IIRC, a DLer on a thread a few years ago claimed Moorehead had a lesbian affair with--of all people--Debbie Reynolds!

^ The lovers in their caftans.....

That’s a rumor, R8, I heard many, many years ago.

As a boy, she scared me, it was her makeup and voice on Bewitched that did it. To be fair I was also afraid of the Miss Beasley doll (the toy based on the doll on Family Affair, my cousins had one)

Love her so much in the famous scene where she packs her young son's suitcase in "Citizen Kane." Her heart is breaking, but she's sending him to what she thinks (erroneously) is a better life than she could ever give him.

Agnes was a complicated person. She left part of her estate to Bob Jones University.

It's funny to stumble on this thread today. We just watched "All That Heaven Allows" with Rock Hudson, Jane Wyman and Agnes Moorehead. Agnes played, interestingly, the only nice lady and friend to the leading lady. The rest of the village folks were mean as dirt to Jane Wyman's character.

She was known in Hollywood as Agnes Lesshead because no man or woman ever received less head than this wilder beast.

R4: She nearly stole the movie.

Love this photo

Another good one.

I like her in a lot of things but sometimes she was a bit over the top. And what's with the English accent?

I’m crying as I type this

She was much admired and although she was never an ingénue or bombshell, she basically was known as someone who could play anything. Moorehead did a lot of radio. Shirley Booth had a similar reputation, but was more of a stage actress.

The Debbie Reynolds rumor has been done to death. She was a Presbyterian minister's daughter back in the day when Presbyterians couldn't read "the funnies" on Sunday. I'm sure it was not easy.

She played a madam, gowned by Travilla in The Revolt of Mamie Stover.

[quote] Fifty years ago, on April 30, 1974, we lost one of the greatest actresses of all time - Agnes Moorehead.

Oh dear, did they ever find her?

For you, OP...

R24 Moorehead sounds like she is participating in this interview under protest. She growls at the interview “In what way?” “No, never!”

She spanned two generations of actors and has a clear preference for the one in which she became successful. I can understand that.

In this clip, I’d describe Moorehead as a little starched and high-minded. But she was a really cool presence on film, fun to watch. Probably less fun to know and to work with.

She does seem "grand" in the interview, which probably was something that someone needed to talk her into doing. I seem to recall her coming across that way in print, as well. A lot of that Presbyterian starch, no doubt. Other "stage" people who did tv like Shirley Booth or Julie Harris (a lot of guest roles and prestige shows) didn't seem to condescend as much. Moorehead apparently scared the twins who played Tabitha---she liked Dick York whom she respected as an actor. I never got the impression that she was close to anyone else on the show.

R24, I love that cliip.

I think Agnes started out in that interview just fine, and her accent is the Massachusetts turned Mid Atlantic Hollywood accent (for the person above thinking she was English).

But the interviewer was a bit simple minded actually, and Agnes got irritated. I would have too. That interviewer was about as prepared to interview a stage veteran as one of Agnes' own pupils she was complaining about!

It was interesting that even back then there was a disdain for the younger generation being too cool to be on time for rehearsals.

Moorehead was very close to Dick York and Liz Montgomery. As a matter of fact, in interviews she used to refer to Montgomery as 'the daughter she wished she had', and Montgomery always said they got along as Mother and daughter off-screen. When Moorehead died, she left Montgomery her expensive jewelry collection - including her beloved diamond broach she wore often on the show in later seasons.

She didn't get along with Paul Lynde (she didn't like his sense of humor) or Dick Sargent - she thought it was unfair to York to replace him, and that the show should have ended in 1969 when York was asked not to come back.

As for the twins who played Tabitha (Erin Murphy and her sister Diane), Erin (who played the role as Tabitha grew up) always says that Moorehead was like a real grandmother to her, and always entertained her when they were waiting for their scenes (she said she used to read books to her).

Well, I'll say one thing's for sure. After Tallulah, no one could eat out a pussy better than old Aggie.

[quote] including her beloved diamond broach

Oh, dear.

She certainly had a face for radio……and an ass for any man with a pulse and low self esteem.

She was a religious loon.