I Love the Illusion: The Life and Career of Agnes Moorehead (30 page)

Agnes Dear,
I will not come to Salt Lake. I am not feeling well and will spend two
days in bed and fly to Minneapolis. It is probably just as well as Paul and
you might fuss about me a bit when there should be no concern in Salt
Lake but you. You are splendid and thrilling and beautiful and it is all much
better than ever . . . but of course I can’t resist a last poke or two. Brooke
and Proust and Shaw are poetry and the inspiration of the poet should flow
through you unsimplified by your mind or any performance of thinking . . .
Keep your chin down
. . . In
Sorry, Wrong Number
don’t get hysterical too
soon — it makes it hard for you at the end.
Mind your projection when you’re
on the bench . . .
The only script doubt I have is that maybe the entrance to
Thurber is milder than you would have done it naturally — alter it if you
want. Keep your chin down. What a lucky audience its going to be . . .
Mind your projection when you’re on the bench.
Charles
XXXXXX

Paul Gregory says that despite Laughton’s written advice, Charles didn’t
really do much directing. “All Agnes wanted him to do was view the show
and say, ‘you were wonderful, darling,’” Gregory maintains, “She didn’t
take direction, she would speak too quickly and editorialize between pieces
— charmingly so, but it prolonged the evening. It could have been a
stimulating night of theater in a third less time. Charles warned her of this,
but she did it her own way. But it did turn out to be very profitable.”

The New York opening at the Academy of Music on March 13 was a
huge success and the reviews were gratifying: “Displaying an assured,
attractive personality and a sense of humor which you could never guess
from her many neurotic roles in films, as well as a distinguished titianhaired beauty . . . she doesn’t actually read her program, for she has almost
all of it committed to heart, glancing only occasionally at her book.”
(
Brooklyn Daily Eagle,
3/14/54).

The Fabulous Redhead,
or simply “the one woman show,” became an
endeavor she would enjoy more than any other and which, over the next
decade, would be a major source of revenue and bring her closer to many
new fans. In her personal library at home, inside the book
The Thurber
Album,
which includes “Lavender with a Difference,” she made notes for
speed and emphasis. She also wrote: “Learning now to do a thing is the
doing of it, and as my father used to say, ‘I am buying some sandpaper to
sandpaper my soul,’ for the tour that is looming ahead (Fabulous Redhead)
hoping that I can in some way follow in Charles’ (Laughton) wake trying
to reach man’s heart.” The overwhelming verdict, based on the record of
reviews, profitability and the thousands of fan letters she received over the
years, was that she more than succeeded.

Gist had begun touring with Agnes for the first few weeks, primarily
participating in the
Sorry, Wrong Number
selection but also handling some
of the tour manager’s duties. When Paul offered him a part in the play
The
Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,
he jumped at it. He wanted to be more than
Mr. Agnes Moorehead. Paul maintains that Agnes “threw a fit” when he
offered Gist the part. She may have been insecure at what temptations a
man more than twenty years her junior could find when hundreds of miles
away from his wife. In July Gist informed Agnes that he was leaving her and
he was “interested in another woman,” and urged her to get “a 24-hour
divorce.” The news devastated Agnes, who later said she had to withdraw
from a film due to the emotional wallop she had received. For whatever the
reasons, Agnes didn’t follow through on a divorce for another four years. In
that time, they were separated and living apart but still legally married.
Larry Russell, who lived as a child with his grandmother near Agnes in
Beverly Hills and befriended Agnes, would recall that he felt that Gist “felt
like a guest in that house,” and that young Sean “was like a little lord at
times; so Gist felt left out.” Others have maintained, and Agnes herself
would later state, that they felt that Gist had used Agnes to get ahead in his
own career and once he secured a foothold he dumped her.

To occupy her time after the separation she pushed herself into more
work. She appeared in six major films between 1953 and 1955:
Scandal at
Scourie, Those Redheads from Seattle, Main Street to Broadway, Magnificent
Obsession, Untamed,
and
The Left Hand of God.
Of these films, it would be
Magnificent Obsession
which would be far and away the most popular. This
was a remake of an equally popular 1935 film which starred Irene Dunne
and Robert Taylor. The story was based on a novel by Lloyd C. Douglas,
of a devil-may-care playboy, Bob Merrick (Rock Hudson), who, while
recklessly driving his speedboat, has an accident. The town apparently has
only one resuscitator, and the good Dr. Phillips, who has helped countless

people in the community, suffers a heart attack and dies while Merrick
is being saved. This causes resentment, particularly from the wife of the
doctor, played by Jane Wyman. When Merrick finds out what happened, he
thinks that writing a check for $25,000 to Mrs. Phillips will square things,
but he offends the doctor’s widow. Otto Kruger has a supporting role as a
friend of Dr. Phillips’ who introduces Merrick to the doctor’s philosophy
of life — that he should do good deeds for people anonymously without
seeking reward or recognition. Merrick decides to take up this philosophy,
but still thinks that it is only by giving money away that one finds true
happiness. He tries to make up with Mrs. Phillips, but offends her again
when she feels that he has vulgarized her late husband’s philosophy. She
tries to escape from him by jumping into a cab, only to have Merrick

follow her; as she tries to get
away from him, after exiting
the cab, she gets struck by a car
and is blinded. Guilt-ridden,
Merrick tries to make it up by
secretly depositing money into
Mrs. Phillips’ bank account so
she can maintain a life of comfort. He also goes to medical
school and ultimately he
performs the surgery which
restores Mrs. Phillips’ eyesight.

Agnes plays Dr. Phillips’
level-headed nurse and family
friend, Nancy, and has little of
substance to do in the film
except be sympathetic to the
Wyman character. The film
was directed by Douglas Sirk
and produced at Universal by

Ross Hunter, whose films of this period included such “women’s pictures”
as
One Desire, Imitation of Life,
and
All That Heaven Allows,
which would
reunite the team of Wyman, Hudson, and Moorehead. Wyman would recall
Sirk as “a wonderful director who was open to anything — any suggestion.”
She also enjoyed working with the more inexperienced Hudson, whose first
major dramatic film this would be. “He was a very warm individual,”
Wyman would say of her co-star. As for Agnes, Wyman was “always hugely
pleased when I found out that Aggie would be in one of my pictures. She
was simply one of the best.” Hudson would recall for the rest of his career
the kindness showed by Wyman to a new actor by being patient and
encouraging to him. For her part, Agnes also worked with the young
Hudson going over lines with him and offering the inexperienced actor tips
on how he should play scenes.

While quite popular in its day,
Magnificent Obsession
does seem a bit
over the top in story and production when viewed today. The character
played by Otto Kruger seems almost “Christ-like,” seemingly with a glow
over his head when he speaks, not to mention the “gooey music.” Kruger
would later tell author Lawrence Quirk that he felt “ill at ease” with his
mystical role, feeling that the way actor Ralph Morgan had played the same
part in the 1935 version was the better approach. Kruger felt that some of
the lines didn’t hit the mark. “I recall that naming Jesus Christ as having
died on the cross for secret do-gooding was wrong, as Christ made no secret
of any of his good works or miracles during his three-year ministry. I felt
this was just one of the examples of bad research on this film.”

Agnes felt that “there was something starry-eyed, something out of
balance, about
Magnificent Obsession,
and I don’t think Sirk really believed
in it while he was doing it. The coincidences were stretched, the situations
unbelievable, and I for one, felt it was very hard to play. I didn’t feel I was
at my best in it.” The reviews seemed to pick up on this.
Newsweek
would
write, “it is reverence before an altar of schmaltz,” but
Time
would say, “the
new picture easily rates four handkerchiefs.” Female moviegoers ate it up in
droves.

In late 1954 Agnes undertook something she had not done before
professionally — directing. She directed a new tour of
Don Juan in Hell,
one not connected with Paul Gregory. Cast as the Devil was Kurt Kasznar
(originally Edward Arnold was cast, but had to withdraw due to poor
health), Ricardo Montalban as Don Juan, Reginald Denny as the
Commander and Mary Astor as Donna Anna.

Apparently, Agnes did this behind Paul Gregory’s back and he later called
her “a shit” for doing it. He had produced by this time several successful
tours with his own stable of actors doing this show and was appalled that
Agnes would agree without consulting him to direct a version independent
of him, yet using the same ingredients that the Gregory-Laughton production
had: sparse sets, actors seemingly reading from scripts on music stands
while seated on stools wearing evening clothes. Mary Astor, in her
autobiography, recalls Agnes as “a fine director and was most generous with
her own experience in the show.” She also said Agnes gave “her lots of
little goodies,” so it wasn’t the case of one actress following “the personal
success by another actress.” They rehearsed for several weeks at a small playhouse above Santa Monica Boulevard. They opened for three weeks in San
Francisco and then played twenty-eight one night stands in a row, in the
Northwest and Canada.