I Love the Illusion: The Life and Career of Agnes Moorehead (14 page)

What Agnes doesn’t say in her lecture is that when they got around to
using the soundtrack on the first day of shooting (October 28, 1941 — the
scene where Georgie tells Eugene that automobiles are a “useless nuisance”),
the actors found it very difficult to show expression, timing and
characterization with this approach. It was abandoned. The first day’s
shooting lasted until 7:45 at night. Orson shot one scene with 20 set ups
and recorded three minutes and twenty seconds of the script.

The pace over the next several days was slow — which exasperated
Welles, who felt that the cameraman, Stanley Cortez, spent too much time
lighting the set. He couldn’t get his favored cinematographer, Gregg
Toland, who had filmed
Kane
. Furthermore Welles felt that Cortez was
pretentious; Cortez was an art lover and collector and would make suggestions
to Orson for certain scenes by referencing great pieces of art. “Why don’t
we see if we can produce a Goyan ‘black painting’ in the scene with Aunt
Fanny by the boiler,” he would say. But Cortez also knew his stuff and the
photography of
Ambersons
is in every way as impressive as
Kane
. While sets
were being lit, Orson continued to rehearse his actors.

The cast and crew spent nine days filming inside a rented ice house in
Los Angeles. Orson decided to shoot at an authentic ice house because he
wanted to see the breath of his actors as if they were really outdoors in
midwinter. (The snow scene in
Kane
which featured Agnes bothered Welles
because you couldn’t see the actors’ breath.) The ice house smelled of fish
and the actors wore longjohns under their costumes. Welles made sure there
was plenty of hot coffee, hot chocolate and soup to warm the actors up
between scenes. Joseph Cotten made cocktails for the cast toward the end
of the day to warm the actors up. These measures didn’t work on everyone — Ray Collins caught pneumonia and was hospitalized, missing
several days of work. As for Orson, he gained back a great deal of the weight
he had lost for
Kane.
His reason? Nobody would see him on camera.

But the scenes filmed during those nine days are among the lightest in
Ambersons
. Eugene is driving his “horseless carriage” on the snow packed
roads with Isabel, Fanny, and Uncle Jack when they are passed by Georgie
and Lucy in a sleigh driven by a horse going at a high speed. The sleigh
overturns (with Holt and Baxter doing the scene themselves, as Orson didn’t
believe he could get the kind of shot needed with doubles performing the
stunt). The car stops to help them, the young people are fine and join their
elders in the drive back to the Amberson mansion. The car needs help
getting started and eventually, to get it to move, they have to push it — a
task Georgie reluctantly helps with. Eventually the car goes on its own
power with the cast happily singing “The Man Who Broke the Bank at
Monte Carlo,” with Agnes’ fine voice heard to particular advantage. The
scene has a neat fade-out — a happy, light scene in a film which from this
point forward grows increasingly pessimistic and dark.

Agnes has many fine scenes in this film and the most demanding is near
the end of the picture when the Amberson fortune is gone. Georgie feels
obligated to look out for Fanny, who has spent the day walking all over
town looking for clean and affordable lodging for the two. The scene is
commonly referred to as “the boiler scene” since it takes place in the
kitchen by the boiler of the old Amberson mansion they would soon be
vacating. Fanny is sinking down to the floor by the boiler staring up to
Georgie — she is emotionally at the end of her rope and as the scene
progresses she grows more hysterical:

F
ANNY
:
You want to leave me in the lurch!
G
EORGE
:
Get up, Aunt Fanny.
F
ANNY
:
I can’t. I . . . I’m too weak. You’re going to leave me in

G
EORGE
:
Aunt Fanny! I’m only going to make eight dollars a week at
the law office. You’d have to be paying more of the expenses
than I would.

G
EORGE
:
Certainly you would. You’d be using more of your money
than mine . . .
F
ANNY
:
(
laughs hysterically
) I have twenty-eight dollars. That’s all.
G
EORGE
:
You mean until the interest is due again.
F
ANNY
:
:
I mean that’s all. I mean that’s all there is. There won’t be any
more interest because there isn’t any principal. I know, I told
Jack I didn’t put everything in the headlight (company),
but I did . . . Every cent except my last interest payment
and . . . and it’s gone.
G
EORGE
:
Why did you wait until now to tell me?
F
ANNY
:
I couldn’t tell till I had to. It wouldn’t do any good . . . Nothing
does any good, I guess in this old world! I . . . I knew your
mother wanted me to watch over you and try to have something like a home for you . . . And I tried. I tried to make
things as nice for you as I could . . . I walked my heels down
trying to find a place for us to live . . . I walked and walked
over this town . . . I didn’t ride one block on a street car . . . I
wouldn’t use five cents no matter how tired I . . . (
laughs wildlyhysterically
) Oh . . . And now . . . You Don’t want . . . You
Want . . . You want to leave me in the lurch! (
she laughs wildly
)
G
EORGE
:
(
impatiently
) Aunt Fanny! Aunt Fanny . . . Get up! Don’t sit
there with your back against the boiler . . . Get up, Aunt
Fanny!
F
ANNY
:
Oh, it’s not hot. It’s cold. The plumbers disconnected it. I
wouldn’t mind if it burned . . . I wouldn’t mind if it burned
me George!

In her lecture at the Actors Lab, Agnes spoke of this scene. “Take for
example the scene by the boiler . . . When we did it, it ran from the kitchen
through the door into another room to the hall. I did it twelve times
though there was no fluffing. Sometimes it was because the lights weren’t
right or the sound. The first time I did it, he (Orson) said that was all right,
now we’ll do it as an insane woman and the next time as a drunk. I saw
what he was driving at. Everything you did and every time you did it, you
used a little more and in the end they all merged . . . At least four times that
we did the scene, he changed the perspective and the final time I did it, I
didn’t know what I was doing. That is really wonderful for the actor . . . ”

Years later Agnes did another elaboration on this pivotal and muchremembered scene. “Orson would say during rehearsal, ‘Agnes, why don’t
you play it as if you were drunk? I’d play it that way. ‘Okay,’ he’d say, ‘now
as if you were numb.’ Then like a little girl . . . a meticulous old maid . . .
I didn’t know what he was doing. Hours later he said, ‘Now, Agnes, go play
it in one take!’ I didn’t realize until then that what he really wanted was a
little bit of all four. When it was over someone said, ‘Agnes, you must be
worn out.’ Worn out, ha! I was so excited I couldn’t sleep for a week.”

Peter Bogdanovich once asked Welles about this scene. “Is it true that
you rehearsed Agnes Moorehead so often in her scene by the boiler that she
really did become hysterical?” Welles replied, “Well, she became more and
more real. I didn’t put her into a state of hysterics; I don’t work that way
with actors . . . Aggie was just that good. Why she didn’t get an Academy
Award for that performance, I’ll never know.”

Another extraordinary scene which thankfully wasn’t cut from the
completed film — though many at RKO wanted it to be — is the one
where Aunt Fanny is feeding strawberry shortcake to Georgie and taking
pride in the fact that he enjoys it so much. Agnes, in her lecture at the
Actors Lab, said this was her favorite scene in the movie. “You probably
noticed that time was taken and there was no pressure, you had time to
think what you were doing and to move when it was exactly the right time.
That scene was ad-libbed and we did it ten times until poor Tim Holt was
green. Orson Welles came to me and said this is good, but it really needs
something else — until finally I got the idea from those little things that
you do when you are sitting at dinner with your family: she had time to
watch him even though her main action was to try and find out something.
Those things were my own adlibs and Tim said, ‘For God’s sake, don’t
forget and let me keep on eating!’ We did it for the eleventh time and
Orson loved it, but he said, ‘let’s do it once more.’ So we stretched a scene
that really took two or three minutes to eight minutes. The twelfth time we
did it was a take.” This scene is a wonderful character study as it becomes
clear to Georgie that Fanny is clearly interested in Eugene Morgan and so,
naturally, he has to tease her about her attraction:

G
EORGE
:
I shouldn’t be a bit surprised to have him request an
interview and declare his intentions are honorable . . . and
ask my permission to pay his addresses to you. What had
I better tell him? (
Fanny starts sobbing, knowing that
Georgie doesn’t really mean a word of what he is saying. She
rushes from the room, crying.
) It’s getting so you can’t joke
with her about anything anymore . . .

U
NCLE
J
ACK
:
(
gently admonishing him
) . . . I think maybe we’ve been teasing
her about the wrong things. Fanny hasn’t got much in her
life. You know, Georgie, just being an aunt isn’t
really the great career it may sometimes seem to be. I
really don’t know of anything much Fanny has got except
her feelings about Eugene.

But according to Orson Welles, the finest piece of acting Agnes did in
the film was never seen by audiences except at the initial preview. It was his
original ending. Fanny Minafer is residing with a bunch of similarly beaten
down women in a rooming house. Georgie has been taken to the hospital
after suffering his car accident. Lucy has rushed to him as does Eugene
Morgan. Eugene stops by the rooming house to see Fanny, who is in the
parlor playing cards with the other women. All her hopes have long
evaporated. She has lost all — her money, her family — and is now living
with a bunch of other maiden ladies. The man she once hoped would love
her comes to call. She takes him into the sitting room. She is stiff and
formal. She barely looks at him. Eugene barely notices. Eugene asks her
how she is, she murmurs, “Fine . . . fine.” Fanny sits down in a rocking chair
and as Eugene does most of the talking, she rocks back and forth. Eugene;
never understanding nor realizing that Fanny had at one time cared for
him. He tells her of his making up with Georgie at the hospital, and
Georgie telling him, “You must have known my mother wanted you to
come here today so that I could ask you to forgive me.” He tells her that
Georgie and Lucy will in all likelihood marry. Eugene is now a wealthy car
manufacturer; Georgie and Lucy are back together and will marry, but what
of poor Fanny? In the final fade out, as Eugene exits after wishing her a
“good night,” the mirror reflects Fanny watching him leave as the women
at the table in the parlor playing cards watch her. Fanny turns and slowly
walks back to them. She will end her days alone and living with women just
like her. The narrator (Welles) says, “Ladies and Gentlemen, that’s the end
of the story.”

Orson Welles later said, “. . . If only you’d seen how she wrapped up the
whole story at the end . . . Jo Cotten goes to see her after all those years in
a cheap boarding house and there’s just nothing left between them at all.
Everything is over — her feelings and her world and his . . . the end of
communication between people, as well as the end of an era . . . Without
question it was much the best scene in the picture.” But after a disastrous
preview, the scene was eliminated because the powers-that-be at RKO felt
it was too much of a downer for audiences.

In the midst of filming, but on a day off for the actors, Sunday,
December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The film wasn’t
delayed as the United States prepared to enter the Second World War. On
December 8, the actors, including Agnes, shot the scene where they tour
Eugene’s automobile factory — another splendid scene. Eugene’s attentions
are squarely on Isabel as he escorts Isabel, Fanny, Lucy and Georgie on this
tour of his factory. Yet look at Agnes’ face at the very edge of the screen, as
if all the life is sucked out of her when Eugene tells Isabel he is thinking of
taking up writing verse again. “I’m almost thinking I could do it again, to
thank you for making a factory visit into such a kind celebration.”