49 years ago, a great actress died

Mom...

Her mother was 16 when she had her - I think that was common back then (1900).

She was a good witch.

Sometimes a triffle meddling, but overall...a good witch.

The other thread shows that Watergate happened 50 years ago today. Do you think these two events were related? One year apart exactly - eerie!

Endora was NOT a Nixon fan...

She couldn't let go until she exposed him for as the crook he really was.

But Endora did like Pat Nixon as I recall.

She left part of her estate to Bob Jones University.

Agnes, Elizabeth, and at least one Duck died from cancer.

I meant Dick

Smokers, all of ‘em.

R9 - I think you meant Durwood.

[quote] I meant Dick

You always do, R8/R9.

I really enjoyed her performance as “the pest” in the film Dark Passage. Her character was just rotten, a nosy, bossy, vindictive killer. She was so good in that role, growling her lines with that strangely expressive face. I really liked this actress in almost everything she did, especially her episode of Twilight Zone and her performance as Velma in Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte, though I understand why some viewers felt her southern accent wasn’t quite respectful.

She, along with John, Wayne and Susan Hayward ("Helen Lawson"), among many others in the cast of The Conqueror, suffered from and ultimately died from cancer.

[quote] Of the 220 film crew members, 91 (comprising 41% of the crew) developed cancer during their lifetime, while 46 (or 21%) died from it. When this was learned, many suspected that filming in Utah and surrounding locations, near nuclear test sites, was to blame. Although the number of cancer cases among the cast and crew is in line with the average for adults in the US at the time, the perception of a link between the film's location and subsequent illness remains, not least because many of those involved in the film developed cancer at a younger age than average

Director Powell died of cancer in January 1963, seven years after the film's release. Armendáriz was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1960 and killed himself in June 1963 after he learned his condition had become terminal. Wayne, Hayward and Moorehead all died of cancer in the 1970s. Hoyt died of lung cancer in 1991. Van Cleef's secondary cause of death was listed as throat cancer. Some point to other factors such as the wide use of tobacco – Wayne, in particular, was a heavy smoker, and Wayne himself believed his stomach cancer to have been a result of his six-pack-a-day cigarette habit. Agnes Moorehead was a nonsmoker, teetotaler, and health fanatic, yet died of cancer.[15] Her mother Mary maintained it was working on The Conqueror which ultimately killed Agnes.[16] Several of Wayne and Hayward's relatives who visited the set also had cancer scares. Michael Wayne developed skin cancer, his brother Patrick had a benign tumor removed from his breast, and Hayward's son, Tim Barker, had a benign tumor removed from his mouth.

She cleaned out Debbie Reynold’s muff on a regular basis.

Isn't uterine cancer highly curable?

In addition to Montgomery and Moorehead, the actress Alice Pearce, who played the neighbor in Bewitched, died of ovarian cancer in her 40s.

R16 It may be highly curable today, but it may not have been 50+ years ago when she was diagnosed.

She confided in Sandra Gould that she was worried about being exposed to health hazards while filming 'The Conqueror'. She said everyone was getting violently sick on the set while filming.

As far as her 'lesbian rumors' go, Debbie Reynolds insisted there was no truth to this - it was a rumor started by her last husband when they divorced. He thought he would 'ruin her career' by starting such a rumor back then, but no one cared.

When she passed away, she left much of her personal belongings to her mother except for a special broach which her mother had given her early in her career. She wore that broach in many episodes of 'Bewitched' when dressed like a mortal for different occasions. Instead of leaving that broach to her mother, she left it to Elizabeth Montgomery - with a note saying that her mother gave it to her, and now she is passing it along to 'her daughter' (as she felt like Montgomery was truly a daughter to her). When Montgomery died in 1995, she had left the broach to her daughter Rebecca, with a note explaining its history. Her daughter didn't feel any attachment to it, and it was said she sold it on eBay to a 'Bewitched' fan for a modest price.

[quote]r17 Her daughter didn't feel any attachment to it, and it was said she sold it on eBay to a 'Bewitched' fan for a modest price.

The cuntery!

[quote] "When Montgomery died in 1995, she had left the broach to her daughter Rebecca"

Oh, dear.

Her final scene in Dark Passage with Bogart... where she falls out the window. Love it.....

one of the few times where Bogart lets the other performer run away with the scene.

Agnes chews that scenery to shreds.

This is so weird. I absolutely would have sworn that my cousin interviewed her for a magazine when she was in college. But if she died in 1973, my cousin would've been about eight years old.

Now I have to ask my cousin who she interviewed because it was obviously not Agnes Moorehead.

Also The Magnificent Ambersons

It's not a groundbreaking performance, but I've aleays liked her in "The Bat", w/Vincent Price.

[quote] "aleays"

Damn it.

*always

The title of the film escapes me, but there was a black-and-white period piece where Agnes played an elegant society woman with a French accent and I couldn't believe how well her beauty came across. She was an excellent actress, a chameleon.

R25 Mrs. Parkington. Greer Garson and Walter Pidgin.

Big. Lesbian. Mule!

R25. Her character’s name was Aspasia Conti and it is implied her character had been Pidgeon’s character’s mistress before he met Garson’s. Moorehead displayed her gift for accents and made you believe she could be a great courtesan. She won the Golden Globe, but lost the Oscar to Ethel Barrymore for her Ma Mott in None But the Lonely Heart (Angela Lansbury was nominated the same year for her debut in Gaslight). Moorehead was nominated four times but never won (should have for The Magnificent Ambersons—and I like Teresa Wright as an actress).

Now they give the award to Jamie Lee Curtis.

R21- Agnes Moorhead died in 1974.

Beauty.

R26 What a great movie that was ! Today we have 'Super Mario Brothers' and 'Superhero' movies.

Interviewed on the Bewitched set.

The film The Bat was on TCM this month. It’s not a great film but I really enjoy Moorehead in almost everything I see her in.

Hey troll, could you please try using someone from this century?

R32 I wished I hadn’t watched that clip. She seems so humorless and high-minded. I still really admire her performances. She comes off imperiously in this interview, meager and grudging in her replies as that interviewer tries to engage her. I can’t help but feel bad for reporters who get the cold shoulder from their subjects. I think there are a few well known examples but I can’t recall who was involved.

Paul Lynde called her “One of Hollywood’s biggest all-time dykes”.

Paul Lynde was a nasty drunk—I wouldn’t look to him for accurate information. Moorehead may have been a lesbian, but the only name I’ve ever heard her linked with was Debbie Reynolds. They were best friends and Eddie Fisher tried to make hay of their closeness.

She would have been fascinating in the Grayson Hall role in The Night of the Iguana—same year, both nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

It was Paul Lynde who started the lesbian thing.

He was a nasty drunk and said really awful things for their shock value. Never let truth get in the way of a good zinger.

I'm sure Agnes didn't suffer fools like him.

Agnes was an odd duck (religious nonsense and a sketchy "son") but she was a great actress.

And then Bose Hadleigh—another winner!—published his collection of interviews with aging Hollywood actresses, in which he sniffed around and used pretentious phrases like “contractual marriage,” and got some of them (like Marjorie Main) to reveal indirectly that either they or others were lesbians (I’ve read Main and Spring Byington were likely a couple). Moorehead wasn’t having any of his “investigative journalism “ and, IIRC, Stanwyck through him out of the house. Did some of these women have significant relationships with other women—some romantic, some erotic, some deep emotional friendships? No doubt. But reading every “strong” actress from the era as a lesbian feels just as stereotypical as assuming that, because they played ingenues or live goddesses and had biological children, that Janet Gaynor and Mary Martin were indisputably heterosexual. The worlds of film and theatre were and remain complicated in terms of persona and inner self. Nothing wrong if “all of them lesbians,” as Hutch would say—but just assuming they all were or weren’t on the basis of either snotty, resentful remarks made by has been or never-was queens seems wrong-headed.