I Love the Illusion: The Life and Career of Agnes Moorehead (11 page)

Arthur Anderson made his debut the following week as Young Jimmy
Hawkins in “Treasure Island,” with Agnes cast as his mother. “She used a
very authentic cockney accent, she was wonderful at dialect,” he would
remember. Anderson recalls the routine of the show as very casual. “We
would do a first reading around a table, then we would do a mike check for
special effects. A dress rehearsal would then be done with the orchestra led
by Bernard Herrmann, who had been rehearsing prior to this. Then Orson
always recorded the dress rehearsals on discs and he, John Houseman (the
producer), and Paul Stewart would sit around, probably while eating
dinner, and argue it out on what to cut or change, then the actors would be
brought in again and told what was decided.” Anderson would also recall
that at this time Orson and Houseman worked efficiently together, but
later they went their separate ways and were estranged for the rest of their
lives. Anderson remembers being told (he wasn’t present) that the Mercury
actors were called into a meeting by Orson to set the record straight about
which man — he or Houseman — ran the Mercury Theatre. “There is
some dissension about who is in charge,” Welles was reported to have said.
“Well,
I
am the Mercury Theatre.”

Elliott Reid, who also worked in several Mercury productions, recalls
Houseman as “A portly gentleman (who) spoke beautiful English, having
been brought up over there. He was a charming person, highly intelligent;
I liked him and admired him. He was producing the business side of Orson
Welles — he had a little cubby-hole office — a little hole in the wall.”

For all his admiration for Orson, Anderson considers Welles “The
supreme egotist; actors who were twice his age could be intimidated by
him and he would take them aside and say, ‘shame on you,’ if they did
something wrong. My opinion is that Orson was usually right.” Welles is
also credited by Anderson as “very clever and creative as a director — he
didn’t mind doing outrageous things and then changing them if they didn’t
work out, which any good director would do.” As an example of Welles’
innovations, Anderson would recall that he was cast as the Ghost of
Christmas Past in the Mercury adaptation of “A Christmas Carol.” “Here I
was only 15 and I’m playing this part, but that was the innovator in Orson.”

Elliott Reid also credits Orson as a creative radio director, but adds: “He
didn’t go in for directorial flourishes. He had people who he knew could do
it or he wouldn’t cast them in the part, so he trusted them. He did direct
the actors at times, but technical things were what he concentrated on. But
perusing the inner life of a character or artsy direction — No. I can’t recall
Orson ever saying, ‘Now this guy . . . ,’ and telling his background.” As a
director, Reid recalls that Orson liked to keep things relaxed. “He would
come to the table with a good deal of bantering, before the reading of the
script, and then we would get to it. I looked forward to being in one of
Orson’s shows.” When directing the Mercury shows, Reid says that Welles
“had earphones so he could hear the actors from what it sounded like in the
control room. Very rarely did he direct from the control room itself — he
liked to be with the actors because he generally was acting as well as directing,
and so he stood on a platform and would cue us and so forth.”

Reid recalls that Welles had an easy rapport with his Mercury players and
seemed especially fond of Agnes. “They had a very warm relationship.
Agnes was very gracious and charming and loved to laugh and was a
wonderful actress, and Orson liked to laugh and wanted good actors and
naturally he wanted Agnes. They knew each other in a different way — he
and Agnes had a very warm and relaxed relationship.”

Among the other actors, besides Agnes, who were linchpins of the
Mercury productions was Welles’ good friend Joseph Cotten. “He was a
great friend of Orson’s,” says Reid. “Really, Orson gave him his career or at
least got it started. He was a struggling actor in New York when he came to
Orson. Very charming, delightful man.” Agnes, too, came to know and
befriend Cotten and would work with him many times on radio, film and
stage in the years to come.

Ray Collins, who was already well into his 50’s when he joined the
Mercury Theatre, is recalled by Reid as “A delightful man, loved to kid,
loved to laugh. Because I was so young, he would tell stories which might
get a blush out of me. They didn’t really shock me that much. A charming
guy, but very right-wing (Reid and most of the Mercury players were well
to the left, except for Collins and Agnes), and such a wonderful voice.”

Everett Sloane was another mainstay, but is recalled by Reid as having “a
dark view of life.” Reid emphasizes this was his own limited view of Sloane,
but others have also confirmed this, including Agnes. Reid remembers that
years after the Mercury experience he and Sloane worked together on an
Alfred Hitchcock Presents,
“and it was nighttime and we had to do a scene on
a street at night; not pleasant to do. Everett and I had to make an entrance
and we were waiting, and were waiting for an electric light to cue us to go
in. So we were standing behind this fake door, outdoors, chilly, and Everett
was unhappy over it and says, ‘Can you believe we are standing out here at
9:30 at night doing this Goddamn thing?’ I said, ‘At least we are working.’
He seemed to like to complain.”

Another semi-regular Mercury player, who worked often with Welles
and Agnes, was Karl Swenson. “He got known on Broadway in a show
called
New Faces
,” Reid says. “Very handsome, Scandinavian blood — very
good actor (Agnes and Swenson had done a radio version of
Way Down East
together). He had a severe hearing problem, but he was always able to do
his work, to get his cues — but away from work you had to be careful when
speaking with him so he could hear you.”

Martin Gabel was another friend and Mercury semi-regular who would
have a long association with Agnes. He occasionally directed Agnes and
Welles in
The Shadow
and also directed Agnes in the 1947 film
The Great
Moment,
and tour for several months with her in 1957 in the play,
The
Rivalry
. “Marty was very nice to work with,” says Reid, “but I think he was
diminished somewhat by a tragedy — he was a physical fitness fiend so he
had these dumbbells which were small but very heavy. It was spring or
summer and he and Arlene (Francis, his wife) lived in a high-rise apartment
and the window was open and accidentally one of these dumbbells rolled
off the table and out the open window and killed a man.”

These were all very talented actors with great voices and they all got
along well. Yet in their spare time they did not necessarily socialize. Welles
described the Mercury Company as “ . . . an Anglo-Saxon type family where
the members leave each other pretty much alone. We had our fun together
during working hours — and it was fun, you know. The atmosphere was
like a sort of house party. To give you an idea, we always kept a good
jazz-piano man on the set. Between jobs, though, we tended to go our
separate ways.”

First Person Singular
was a summer series which ran from July 11–
September 5. Agnes didn’t appear every week. After the first two episodes,
“Dracula” and “Treasure Island,” she didn’t appear again for three weeks
until “Abraham Lincoln,” where Agnes appeared as Mary Todd to Orson’s
Abraham. She was then absent for the rest of the season. Part of this was
due to Agnes having a very busy radio career beside Mercury. It wasn’t that
Agnes wasn’t wanted on Mercury on a regular basis. The female parts in
many of the pieces which were adapted were often scarce, and between
Agnes and Arlene Francis they had to fight for the few feminine
roles available.

When CBS offered Orson
First Person Singular,
he opted out of continuing
on as Lamont Cranston on
The Shadow
. Mutual hired veteran radio actor
William Johnstone to replace him, but Agnes continued on as Margot
Lane. Johnstone would become a great friend to Agnes, who would also
befriend Johnstone’s wife, Georgia. Georgia Johnstone would soon become
Agnes’ secretary and, by the mid-50’s, her New York theatrical representative.
The change from Welles to Johnstone on
The Shadow
didn’t diminish the
ratings of the show; in fact, ratings improved and many listeners felt that
Johnstone made a more effective Cranston than Orson. Anthony Tolin,
The Shadow
biographer, later wrote that “Johnstone brought a mature
sophistication to the role of Cranston and a commanding authority as The
Shadow that often eclipsed the performances of his illustrious predecessor.”
Radio Daily Magazine,
in November 1938, wrote of the new
Shadow
: “Bill
Johnstone . . . does a thoroughly good job, up several notches from last
season’s interpretation by Orson Welles.”

CBS was very pleased
with
First Person Singular,
even if the ratings were
not overly high — it
gave the network a
certain amount of prestige to present these
weekly plays. After the
summer run, the show
returned with a name
change,
The Mercury
Theatre of The Air.
But
the formula was the
same — literary works
adapted for the radio listener. The first few
weeks of the show didn’t
include Agnes at all, and
the one show where she
did “appear” she didn’t
have any lines at all, but
she was instrumental
in providing some of

particular show; she is heard several times screaming. The date was October
30, 1938 and that evening’s presentation would make broadcast history and
eventually lead to a Hollywood contract for Orson which would benefit
nearly everyone involved in the Mercury Theatre — especially Agnes.

The War of the Worlds
by HG Wells was about Martians landing in the
United States.
Mercury Theatre of the Air
was up against Edgar Bergen and
his wooden sidekick, Charlie McCarthy. The Bergen show was a huge
rating’s success; according to Hooper radio ratings, Bergen got ratings in
the mid-30s while
Mercury
was struggling on with a 3.5 rating share. But
something very odd happened that evening.
The Mercury Theatre of the Air
began as always that evening with an announcer stating: “The Columbia
Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the
Mercury Theatre on the Air in ’The War of the Worlds’ by H.G. Wells.
Ladies and gentlemen: the director of the Mercury Theatre and the star of
these broadcasts, Orson Welles.“ Welles then went on to introduce the set
up to the night’s broadcast. For those who started with the broadcast from
the beginning they understood what they were hearing was, in fact, a play.

After the introduction by Welles the script called for a phony weather
bulletin, followed by a minute or so of ballroom music, so that if anybody
was casually switching stations they might think that they had come upon
a show featuring dance music. If so, they were the ones caught in the trap
that Orson had sprung. Suddenly, a newsflash interrupts the music
announcing that Professor Pieson (Orson) of the Princeton Observatory
had observed an explosion of gas on Mars. After this “newsflash,” the music
resumed — the music (Ramon Raquello and his orchestra) keeps getting
interrupted at regular and longer intervals.

It seems that about halfway through the Bergen show his guest, the
popular operatic singer Nelson Eddy, began a song; for some that seemed
to be a good time to switch stations. For those who switched to CBS — Hooper
later concluded that 12 percent of the Bergen audience, or four million
listeners, may have switched to CBS — it was just in time to hear, according
to Frank Brady, “amidst crowd noises and police sirens, the concerned and
authentic-sounding voice of a ‘newscaster,’ direct from Wilmuth Farm in
Grover Mill, New Jersey, painting a word picture of the strange scene of the
projectile half-buried in a huge hole” with creatures emerging from the hole
and sending out rays which ignited anything in its path. Suddenly the voice
of the newscaster goes silent and the air is filled with static.

Despite an announcement about 40 minutes into the program that the
audience was listening to a dramatization, panic soon spread. According to
The Encyclopedia of Orson Welles,
“Priests were called to deliver last rites.
Police stations were swamped as well. A half hour into the program, panic
had seized thousands of people who were in flight, speeding along highways
to try to distance themselves from the Martian menace.” At the end of the
program, just as police were knocking on the doors to try and bring an end
to the program, Orson closed the proceedings: “This is Orson Welles, ladies
and gentlemen, out of character to assure you that ‘The War of the Worlds’
has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to
be . . . the Mercury Theatre’s own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and
saying ‘Boo! . . . ’” The show, and the panic it caused, brought great
publicity, and not all of it good. The FCC banned the use of fictional news
bulletins in radio dramas, for instance.