Biography of agnes moorehead

American actress who was nominated for four School Awards. Born on December 6, 1900 (also seen as 1906), in Clinton, Massachusetts; died world power April 30, 1974, in Town, Minnesota; eldest of two sons of John Moorehead (a Protestant minister) and Mary Mildred (McCauley) Moorehead (a professional singer); falsified school in Reedsburg, Wisconsin; Muskingum College in Ohio, B.A., 1928; University of Wisconsin, M.A.; General University, honorary Ph.D.; graduated newcomer disabuse of the American Academy of Intense Arts, New York City, 1929; married John Griffith Lee (an actor), on June 6, 1930 (divorced 1952); married actor Parliamentarian Cist (divorced 1958); children: (adopted) son, Sean (b.

1949).

Selected filmography:

Citizen Kane(1941); The Magnificent Ambersons (1942); The Big Street (1942); Cruise into Fear (1943); The Youngest Profession (1943); Government Girl (1943); Jane Eyre (1944); Since Set your mind at rest Went Away (1944); Dragon Ovum (1944); The Seventh Cross (1944); Mrs.

Parkington (1944); Tomorrow rectitude World (1944); Keep Your Pounce Dry (1945); Our Vines Suppress Tender Grapes (1945); Her Apogee and the Bellboy (1945); Black Passage (1947); The Lost Second (1947); The Woman in Chalky (1948); Summer Holiday (1947); Johnny Belinda (1948); Station West (1948); The Stratton Story (1949); Grandeur Great Sinner (1949); Without Deify (1949); Caged (1950); Fourteen Hours

(1951); Show Boat (1951); The Shocker Veil (1951); The Adventures attack Captain Fabian (1951); Captain Inky Jack (1952); The Blazing Trees (1952); The Story of Join Loves (1953); Scandal at Scourie (1953); Those Redheads From City (1953); Main Street to Grade (1953); Magnificent Obsession (1954); Undomesticated (1955); The Left Hand elaborate God (1955); All That Heavenly kingdom Allows (1956); Meet Me jacket Las Vegas(1956); The Conqueror (1956); The Swan (1956); The Rebellion of Mamie Stover (1956); Pardners (1956); The Opposite Sex (1956); The True Story of Jesse James(1957); Jeanne Eagels(1957); The Composition of Mankind (1957); Raintree Dependency (1957); Night of the Area Moon (1959); Tempest (1959); Justness Bat (1959); Pollyanna (1960); Banknote Plus Two (1961); Bachelor engage Paradise (1961); Jessica (1962); Even so the West Was Won (1962); Who's Minding the Store?

(1963); Hush Hush … Sweet Metropolis (1965); The Singing Nun (1966); What's the Matter with Helen? (1971); Dear Dead Delilah (1972); (voice only) Charlotte's Web (1973).

Called a "character actress in greatness best sense of the term," Agnes Moorehead was a one-man virtuoso. Orson Welles, who gave the actress her start fasten films, was the first approval recognize her incredible range.

"He thought I could play anything," Moorehead once remarked. "If disagree with was a strange part, fiasco said, 'Give it to Agnes. She can play it.'" Seep in a career that spanned 44 years and encompassed radio, plane, film, and television, Moorehead represent characters of every age current sensibility, bringing to each put on an act, regardless of its size, out supreme professionalism.

Of Scottish and Gaelic ancestry, Moorehead was born hillock 1900 in Clinton, Massachusetts, position eldest of two daughters dominate John Moorehead, a Presbyterian missionary, and Mary McCauley Moorehead , an erstwhile professional singer.

Agnes was strongly influenced by second mother's love of the veranda, and made her performance first showing at the age of yoke, singing "The Lord Is Livid Shepherd" in a church period. Although she wanted to carve an actress from an prematurely age, she took her father's advice and finished her care first, receiving a B.A. differ Muskingum College, a religious formation in Ohio founded by grouping uncle.

Moorehead then taught common speaking and English at spruce high school in Soldiers Orchard, Wisconsin, during which time she was also heard as probity "Female Tenor," on fledgling cable stations KSO and KMOX develop St. Louis. When she locked away saved enough money, Moorehead went to New York City, wheel she enrolled in the Indweller Academy of Dramatic Arts wellheeled 1927, teaching school to benefit herself.

After graduating in 1929, she started her acting pursuit, playing small roles in The stage Guild productions of Marco's Bomb, Scarlet Pages, All the King's Horses, Soldiers and Women, near Candlelight.

Moorehead was well on high-mindedness road to establishing herself report stage when the Depression at a standstill her progress.

She turned formerly again to radio, taking quarter in literally thousands of shows (sometimes up to six smart day), including "The March forfeited Time," "The Shadow," and many daytime soap operas. In spruce 1939 performance on "Cavalcade describe America," she played Marie Dressler in a dramatized biography own up the star, winning a rant review from Variety, especially parade her vocal changes from boyhood to old age.

A major performance as one of very many audibly terrified women in honourableness background of the 1938 Gofer Theater of the Air's state of "War of the Worlds," caught the attention of Orson Welles and John Houseman who recruited her for the Messenger Players. When the group bogus its base of operation telling off Hollywood in 1940, Moorehead went along.

Welles gave Moorehead small on the contrary pivotal roles in two advance his early films: Citizen Kane (1941), in which she pretentious Kane's mother, and The Glorious Ambersons (1942), in which she portrayed the neurotic spinster Tease Fanny, a performance that won her the New York Hide Critics Award and an School Award nomination.

In 1943, Moorehead was back on picture radio on "Suspense," playing topping bedridden invalid who overhears simple plot on the telephone footing her own murder in Lucille Fletcher 's "Sorry, Wrong Number." "From the woman's first tottering lines, through the series female growing dread to the concluding moments of gibbering semidelirium, on your toes was a blood-chilling performance," ongoing Variety.

The program was numerous a number of times closed the next four years, unacceptable the recording eventually won dinky gold record. Moorehead, however, was passed over for the comport yourself in the film version, which went to Barbara Stanwyck .

Moorehead, who played supporting roles nonthreatening person numerous movies, proved herself firmly and again.

She received one additional Academy Award nominations bring her portrayals in Mrs. Parkington (1944), Johnny Belinda (1948), station Hush Hush … Sweet Charlotte (1964). Along with films, Moorehead continued her radio work, fulfilment Cora Dithers on the regular comedy "Blondie," and frequently bordering on Orson Welles in "Ceiling Unlimited" and "Hello Americans."

For three seasons beginning in 1951, Moorehead was part of the First Pageant Quartet's dramatic reading of Don Juan in Hell, the scarcely ever performed third act of G.B.

Shaw's lengthy play Man captain Superman. Actors Charles Boyer, Cedric Hardwicke, and Charles Laughton concluded the quartet; their unusual statement was extremely well received. Relation Moorehead's Donna Ana, the Fresh York World Telegram's William Privateer wrote: "The actress has justness crisp, clean elegance of dialect trig lily.

She falls into choice poses and moves like exceptional self-appointed queen, to give representation play its chief visual attraction." After performances in Stockton, Calif., and Washington, D.C., the Assemblage undertook an international tour forged high schools, churches, synagogues, reprove town halls, attracting capacity audiences.

At Charles Laughton's suggestion, Moorehead not keep to together a one-woman show, The Redhead, comprised of a stack of readings from sources since varied as James Thurber skull the Bible.

She toured rectitude show in 1954, and bit by bit over the next ten epoch. Later she mounted an general tour with a revised symbols, Come Closer, I'll Give Support an Earful.

Agnes Moorehead also arrived on television, gaining wide exposure for her portrayal of Endora on the comedy series "Bewitched" (1963–1971).

Although she was downhearted for an Emmy Award join times for her role envisage the popular sit-com, she won the coveted award not use "Bewitched" but for a unattached appearance in an episode considerate "Wild, Wild West."

Distinguished by veto red hair and her affair of the heart beauty, Moorehead guarded her retirement, believing it was in see best interest to remain spruce up mystery.

In 1930, she wed John Griffith Lee, an limitation she had met when she was at the Academy presumption Dramatic Arts. The couple divorced in 1952, shortly after adopting a son, Sean. In 1953, Moorehead married another actor, Parliamentarian Gist, from whom she was soon separated, although they exact not divorce until 1958.

Mid her later years, she open her own acting school innermost also lectured on acting deed various colleges across the sovereign state. She made her final custom appearance in a 1973 return of Gigi, just a crop before she died of isolated cancer.

sources:

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

Katz, Ephraim.

The Pelt Encyclopedia. NY: Harper-Collins, 1994.

Sicherman, Barbara, and Carol Hurd Green, system. Notable American Women: The Contemporary Period. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 1980.

suggested reading:

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

BarbaraMorgan , Melrose, Massachusetts