I Love the Illusion: The Life and Career of Agnes Moorehead (10 page)

Reid would become a lifelong friend to Agnes and besides working with
her on
The March of Time,
they also did a short-lived series called
The Mighty
Show,
about life in a circus. But most significantly they made many appearances
together on another landmark radio show of this time,
The Cavalcade of
America.
Reid recalls
Cavalcade
as specializing in “Americana”; they did many
shows on historic events and people. Agnes appeared on more than 70
episodes and was considered a member of its ensemble cast from 1939–1940
(she would return for an occasional appearance in later years). Reid was
another ensemble player on the show, often doing juvenile roles, and he
appeared with Agnes more than 30 times — often performing two or more
parts in the same episode! On
Cavalcade
as a part of an ensemble, Agnes
would one week be the star of the program (such as “The Story of Nancy
Hanks,” where she played Abraham Lincoln’s mother, the focus of that week’s
episode) and then play a supporting or bit part the following week.

Reid has fond memories of many of the people he and Agnes worked
with on
Cavalcade of America
. John McIntyre was a particular favorite; he
became known years later to television audiences as the wagon master on
Wagon Train.
“He was one of the great people. Wonderful actor, superb
voice — one of the most delightful hosts. He and his wife (the equally
talented radio performer Jeanette Nolan) were very warm and expansive.
Jeanette was a wonderful cook and she would cook these huge meals. Very
loving.” He recalls that many radio people, including Agnes and Jack,
would often go out to Malibu where the McIntyres’ lived for wonderful
get-togethers and huge meals.

Reid was close to Agnes and he got to know her husband. “Jack was a
very unsuccessful actor, I never knew him to have a job. I never knew him
to do a lick of work, not that he didn’t want to. A marriage would be in
trouble if the wife is doing well and the husband isn’t. It led to some
serious drinking. He was a handsome man and a perfect escort. Agnes liked
that. She loved to sit in the first row, center aisle, of any theatre she came
into. She and Jack were always in the same seats. I don’t know how she
managed it. Agnes was a good friend to people if she was your friend. Jack
seemed well-mannered, gracious and charming. The inner truth of that
marriage — inbalance — Agnes being so successful and Jack so notably
unsuccessful, were the seeds to the trouble.”

Reid also recalls that another lifelong friendship Agnes formed was with
a fellow juvenile actor, Jackie Kelk, who played her son in
The Gumps
as
well as appearing with her on other radio programs. “Jack was very close to
Agnes. In later years, Jack lived with Agnes and she even invited me to live
with her, something I later regretted not doing. It was always platonic. They
were good friends. Agnes liked having people she knew from the old days
around her and she was loyal to them. Part of it was loneliness, she was a
woman alone, only with these two women servants living with her, and she
felt more secure if there was a man around the house.” Reid decided not to
live with Agnes despite her invitation because he thought that such an
arrangement would change the dynamic of their friendship. “Agnes didn’t
drive and I thought I would become a chauffeur — it would take over my
life. I’m not proud of that thought, but I had always been used to having
my own apartment; but, in retrospect, I kind of wish I had taken her up on
it when I came out here (Hollywood) for short visits to do a film or TV program.”

The Shadow
was one of the most successful radio programs of all-time and
one of the most remembered of “old time radio.” The series was well
known, and still today, by its famous signature phrase:
Who knows . . . what
evil . . . lllurks in the hearts of men . . . The Shadow Knows!
The show debuted
in 1930 and had gone through several incarnations — originally known as
The Detective Story Hour
with James La Curto and then Frank Readick. In
the early years the character of “The Shadow” was only the narrator of the
suspense-filled episodes, but by 1937 the Blue Coal Company, which
sponsored the series, decided that “The Shadow“ should have an identity
other than just the shadowy figure who narrated the proceedings. The
creator of the series, Walter B. Gibson, had, in a series of pulp novels, given
the character a name, Lamont Cranston. He was described as “a man of
wealth, a student of science, and a master of other people’s minds, devotes
his life to righting wrongs, protecting the innocent, and punishing the
guilty . . .” One Welles biographer likened Orson’s interpretation of
Cranston as a Noel Coward character, “a suggestion of silk dressing gown
and cigarette holder.”

Cranston’s superpowers were not as advanced as say, Superman’s, but
they did come in handy. He had the ability to use hypnosis to “cloud men’s
minds so that they cannot see him.” The new program called for a new
voice and according to
The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio
, 22-year-old
Orson Welles, “a regular toiling in anonymity on
The March of Time
,”
auditioned and won the role. Orson’s contract with Blue Coal “allowed him
to go on without as much as a prior peek at his script: thus, as he told film
director Peter Bogdanovich, when he was thrown into a snake pit, he
didn’t know how he’d get out till the show ended.” Initially the identity of
the new “Shadow” was to be unknown, but, as always with Orson, his ego
couldn’t permit him to perform such a plum role anonymously — it soon
“leaked” out. Without a doubt,
The Shadow
is what firmly established
Orson on radio.

To give the show some feminine appeal, another character was created,
Lamont Cranston’s “friend and companion, the lovely Margot Lane . . . the
only person who knows to whom the voice of the invisible Shadow
belongs.” Margot was no “damsel in distress”-type, but joined Cranston in
his many adventures, showing admirable courage and ingenuity along the
way. Cranston and Margot weren’t a “couple” though some fans wished
they were. But in listening to the episodes, it seems to me there was a
certain amount of sexual tension below the surface. Agnes was signed for
this plum role — one created solely for the radio show, and not included in
the novels.

The first episode of the Welles/Moorehead version of
The Shadow
premiered
on September 26, 1937 and told the story of how the Shadow uses his mental
telepathy to exonerate a man scheduled to be executed. Besides Orson and
Agnes the supporting cast included three other actors who would become
part of the Mercury Theatre — Ray Collins, Paul Stewart, and Everett
Sloane. In addition, future stage and screen director Elia Kazan appeared
more than once on
The Shadow,
in the premier episode playing the character
of “Lefty Collins.” William Johnstone, who would succeed Welles as the
Shadow the following season, also appears on this first broadcast.

Perhaps Mutual Radio chose Orson and Agnes because they had just
completed a project which had generated great buzz in the industry, a
seven-part radio adaptation of Victor Hugo’s classic novel,
Les Miserables
.
Welles proved himself to be an innovator on this project, per his biographer
Simon Callow: “No one in the history of the medium has ever unleashed
such tidal waves of adrenalin as Welles.
Les Miserables
is electric from start
to finish, his own gruff and very credibly aged Valjean leading the excellent
group of actors (Agnes Moorehead, Ray Collins, Martin Gabel, Everett
Sloane, Chubby Sherman).” Callow goes on to point out that for the
incredible scenes which take place in the sewers, Orson “dragged his crew
into the men’s room, where Ray Collins and Everett Sloane played their
scene over a urinal,” to simulate the echoing sound and running water of a
sewer. Agnes could have been auditioning for the role of the mother in
Citizen Kane
with her role in
Les Miserables.
She expertly played the shop
owner who tries to sell her own daughter to Valjean.

Due to the success and innovation of this show, Mutual approached
Welles to write, produce and direct a weekly series of hour-long dramas; the
program, initially titled
First Person Singular,
would feature actors who had
worked with him in Mercury Theatre stage productions as well as on other
radio projects. With his association over the last couple of years with Agnes
on
March of Time, The Shadow
and
Les Miserables
and his admiration of her
talent, there is no doubt that Orson wanted Agnes to be part of this new
and exciting program. Arthur Anderson, who at 14, was cast by Orson in
an opera titled
Second Hurricane,
and went on to work in Welles’ classic
modern dress version of
Julius Ceasar
on Broadway, was the youngest member
of the Mercury Theatre. He states that Orson and Agnes got along well
because “Orson recognized great talent and great voices. Agnes had both.”

The new program would, as the title signified, tell the story in first
singular with Welles narrating in the first person. Like the program which
had inspired the show,
Les Miserables,
the stories would exclusively
be from literary works, many of them favorites of Welles’ from his
childhood — among them
Dracula
and
Treasure Island.
Orson said the
purpose of
First Person Singular
was not to bring the theatre to radio but
“our own individual interpretation of radio to the listeners. The idea is only
experimental. It may prove a failure but it is only by trying new methods
that radio drama will ever achieve any independence and eventually
discover a satisfactory art form of its own.”

While her career was on
the upswing with the
Mercury Theatre, Agnes
received devastating news in
the late spring of 1938. Her
beloved father died on
Sunday, May 22, while he
was presiding over a service
at his latest pastorate at the
Kohr Memorial Presbyterian
Church in Columbus, Ohio.
The
Reedsburg, Wisconsin
Free Press
(5/27/38) reported
that Dr. Moorehead was
sitting in his chair near the
pulpit, shortly before he was
to begin his sermon. The
choir was singing “Safe in
the Arms of Jesus” when
John slumped forward.
According to a Columbus
paper, Mollie, who was
singing in the choir, went

over to him and, finding him unconscious, she “begged him to speak.” At
Mollie’s request, the congregation quietly and quickly left the church. A
physician who was in the congregation examined him and pronounced him
dead of a sudden heart attack. The man Agnes revered more than any other
was gone. She was deeply saddened but as always when faced with tragedy
or heartache, Agnes threw herself into her work

First Person Singular
premiered on July 11, 1938 with a classic theme to
complement its choice of material, Tchaikovsky’s piano Concerto No. 1 in
B-flat minor. The music was conducted by Bernard Herrmann, who would
go on to a rich career in Hollywood; in addition to working with Welles on
Citizen Kane
, he also did the music for several Hitchcock films (including
North by Northwest
and
Psycho
). The first presentation was an hour-long
version of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” Welles was very proud of this adaptation
because of his fidelity to the novel; such as telling the story with three
narrators, as the novel does. Orson, naturally, was Dracula (as well as
Jonathan Harker), Martin Gabel was cast as Van Helsing, with Agnes given
the plum role of Mina. The show won good reviews from
Newsweek,
which
called it “adventurous,” and the
New York Times,
who described the episode
as “realistically broadcast: the characters living electronically.”

This adaptation of
Dracula
is astonishing, and in many ways it’s more
eerie and terrifying than the classic Bela Lugosi film version. Frank Brady,
in his biography
Citizen Welles,
writes: “All of the performances were
beautifully and realistically underplayed. Each actor added to the visual
details of the tombs, produced action on the ship, change the locale to Dr.
Seward’s living room, shifted to the stark terror of a confrontation with
Dracula, all with the salutary exercise and control of his voice.” Brady
called Welles’ performance as Harker “convincing,” but his Count Dracula,
“masterful.” As for Agnes, her Mina is described as “superb,” and one scene
in particular captures the erotic undertones that
Dracula
always oozed.
Orson as the Count is about to give the bite to Mina, turning her into his
bride, and whispers seductively to her: “Flesh of my flesh, blood of my
blood, blood of my blood.” He then bites her and Agnes gives a deep and
almost orgasmic sigh. Orson’s sign-off on the first broadcast highlighted his
genius at showmanship. “Just in case Count Dracula’s left you a little
apprehensive, one word of comfort: when you go to bed tonight, don’t
worry. Put out the lights and go to sleep. (
A wolf howl.
) It’s all right, you
can rest peacefully, and that’s just a sound effect. There! Over there, in the
shadow, see? It’s nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing at all — I think it’s nothing.
But always remember (
Now as Van Helsing
) Ladies and gentlemen, there are
wolves. There are vampires. (
As himself again
) Such things do exist.” This
was Welles’ way of saying “Boo” months before Halloween — but by that
Halloween of 1938, he had an even more elaborate prank to pull on the
American listening public.