I Love the Illusion: The Life and Career of Agnes Moorehead (20 page)

Interestingly, in 1949 both Stanwyck and Agnes were nominated for
Academy Awards; Barbara, for
Sorry, Wrong Number
, and Agnes, for
Johnny
Belinda
— though in different categories. Both lost, but some wags in
Hollywood believed that Stanwyck’s loss (her fourth and final Oscar
nomination without a win) was due to comparisons made between her
interpretation of Mrs. Elbert Stevenson (she is given the first name Lenora
in the film version) and Agnes’ . . . and that Agnes came out on top.

When World War II broke out, the Hollywood community got firmly
behind the war effort, and Agnes was no exception. During the war years
Agnes participated in war bond rallies and helped promote the Red Cross.
She also volunteered at the Hollywood Canteen, a club jointly opened by
Bette Davis and John Garfield, where servicemen visiting Hollywood could
enjoy being waited on, served, and entertained by celebrities. Agnes waited
tables, washed dishes, chatted and danced with servicemen. Bette Davis let
Agnes know how much her efforts were appreciated in an October 24, 1944
letter: “We thought you should know how very happy you made the service
men, when you visited with them at the Canteen recently. We are doubly
indebted to you for the spirit of cooperation you have shown towards this
organization.”

Agnes also joined with Orson Welles and Joe Cotten in an enterprise
to raise money for the USO called
The Mercury Wonder Show.
Welles
later described the “Wonder Show” to Peter Bogdanovich. “It was like a
circus . . . All the servicemen got in free, and they were 90 percent of the
public. We had twenty-five or thirty seats which was called the Sucker
Section and cost $30 each; they were for the Hollywood celebrities who
wanted to come and see it — this small, highly paying public that got hell
from us every night. We broke eggs over their heads and gave them blocks
of ice to hold and demeaned and humiliated them in front of the servicemen. There was one seat that cost $70, and that was behind a pole so you
couldn’t see anything. Everybody’d want to get that good seat, and they
always ended up straddling the pole — they had to look around from
either side.” This “luxury” seat usually went to such powerful Hollywood
producers as Louis B. Mayer or Sam Goldwyn, who turned out to be good
sports about it.

Welles spent about $40,000 of his own money on
The Mercury
Wonder Show
, which. according to Welles biographer Joseph McBride,
included “red circus wagons, sawdusted floors, a live lion, tiger, and
leopard, a group of barnyard types, and an assortment of clowns, acrobats,
and other circus-touched performers.” For seventeen weeks, mostly during
the period when he and Agnes were working together on
Jane Eyre,
Welles rehearsed “stooges” to make the magic seem effortless. Welles
would recall The Mercury Wonder Show as “fun” and proudly say, “It’s
one of our great works, as any and all who were concerned will say. We’re
as proud of that as anything we ever did. Ask Aggie Moorehead or Jo
Cotten.”

The Mercury Wonder Show
was held in a tent at 9000 Cahuenga
Boulevard in Hollywood. Welles, an amateur magician, called himself
“Orson the Great” and did feats of magic with his assistant and soon-to-be
wife, Rita Hayworth, until her studio boss, Harry Cohn of Columbia, put
a stop to her participation. Then Orson recruited his great friend, Marlene
Dietrich to assist him. Cotten also did feats of magic and billed himself as
“Jo-Jo the Great,” while Agnes was known as “Calliope Aggie” due to her
playing the calliope out front to draw customers. The Wonder Show was
staged in August of 1943 and ran for over a month with each performance
lasting over two hours. The shows were highly successful and usually sold
out, with nightly audiences totaling more than 2,000 people. Later, Welles
and company would take the Wonder Show around the country in a
successful tour of army camps.

Agnes frequently appeared on radio during the war years to raise money
for war bonds. For instance, shortly after
The Mercury Wonder Show
closed
its tents, she appeared in the guise of Mrs. Dithers, from the
Blondie
radio
show, in a
Treasury Star Parade
show which was syndicated across the country.
And only six days after D-Day on June 12, 1944, Agnes joined Orson
Welles, Walter Huston, Keenan Wynn and President Roosevelt for an hour
long War Loan Drive which was written by Welles and presented over the
CBS radio network. She was also vocal and highly visible in giving her voice
and time toward supporting a state for Israel. For movie houses, she and
Margaret O’ Brien shot a short film at MGM (five 1/2 minutes long) which
was played in theaters around the country,
Victory in Europe
. Agnes plays a
woman who learns that her husband has been killed in the war, and
Margaret was cast as her young daughter. The intention of the short was to
provoke audiences to support war relief charities.

During the Second World War Agnes, like most actors working in
Hollywood during this time, made several “patriotic” motion pictures. The
studios went out of their way to keep morale up and support our troops as
their contribution to the war effort. The first of these films was a frothy
comedy,
Government Girl,
which was released in 1943 by RKO and starred
Olivia de Havilland and Sonny Tufts. The story concerned an automobile
executive who is recruited by the government to oversee airplane bomber
production during the war. De Havilland plays a government secretary he
ultimately falls in love with. Agnes plays a Washington socialite. The film
was not very good, but it kept wartime audiences entertained.

On the other end of the
spectrum was David O. Selznick’s
all-star
Since You Went Away,
released in 1944. This film was
meant to stir up audiences. Set
on the homefront during World
War II, it tells the story of a
middle-aged mother (Claudette
Colbert) whose middle-aged
husband decides to enlist into the
service, leaving her home to support
their two teenage daughters
(Jennifer Jones, Shirley Temple).
To make ends meet the mother
has to take in a border, exasperating
her “friend,” gossipy Emily Hawkins,
glamorously and unsympathetically
played by Agnes, who utters, “All
these irresponsible 40-year-old
fathers dashing off into uniforms.”

The film also co-stars Agnes’ old friend Joseph Cotten, playing a Navy
officer who also happens to be an old boyfriend of the Colbert character.
There is still sexual tension between the two, but it is never acted
upon; Colbert represents the perfect wife and mother during the war
years — longing for her husband to return, safe and sound. The film
was very successful.

Agnes’ next patriotic film featured her for the first and only time with
Spencer Tracy.
The Seventh Cross
is the story of seven prisoners of war who
escape from a German concentration camp in 1936. The commandant
of the camp orders seven crosses constructed so that they will be used to
display the bodies of the seven escapees. Agnes has a sympathetic part as a
costume shop owner who provides clothing for one of the escapees (Tracy).
While she displays a “Heil Hitler” salutation to Tracy as he leaves her
shop, he discovers that she put money in the clothes she gave him to help
him escape.

Agnes next appeared in a little known film released through United
Artists in 1944 called
Tomorrow, the World!,
which was based on a play,
adapted by Ring Lardner, Jr. The film tells the story of a 12-year-old war
orphan, whose father was put to death in a German concentration camp.
The boy is brought to the United States by his uncle (Fredric March), a
professor. The boy has been brainwashed by the Nazis and tries to break
up the marriage of his uncle to his part-Jewish girlfriend (played by
Betty Field). The boy is presented as thoroughly wicked: he lies, causes
disturbances in school and even tries to kill a cousin. Agnes plays March’s
spinster sister who is verbally abused by the boy. Ultimately, the boy is
redeemed in a typical Hollywood happy ending. The film did get its share
of good reviews.
Newsweek
called it “engrossing.”
Time
lauded the actors:
“Nearly all the supporting performances, especially those of Fredric March,
Betty Field and Agnes Moorehead as a confused spinster, are warm and
sympathetic; and young Skippy Homeier captures as remarkably as ever the
pathetic, frightening overtones of the poisoned, pernicious little hero he
created on the stage.”

Her final “war effort” film is another frothy comedy,
Keep Your Powder
Dry,
released by MGM in 1945. The film focuses on the efforts of three
female enlistees played by Lana Turner, Laraine Day and Susan Peters. They
are assigned to Fort Oglethrope where the women make it into Officers
Training School. Their commanding officer is played by Agnes. The film is
not much more than passing entertainment, but during the filming Agnes
became close to young Susan Peters. Peters, shortly after
Keep Your Powder
Dry
wrapped, suffered a serious spinal injury in a hunting accident which
would ultimately end her career and eventually lead to her untimely death
in 1952. When she heard about Peters’ accident, Agnes sent flowers and her
best wishes, to which Peters responded, “Your flowers were truly beautiful
and I enjoyed them more than I can tell you. Knowing that you were thinking
of me has added so much to my recovery. Love, Susan.” Agnes visited often
during this period. This is not an isolated incident either. Joe Cotten would
later write that Agnes, in an effort to lift his spirits, was a frequent visitor
in the period after his first wife died.

Agnes and Jack were now living in
a beautiful home in the picturesque
Cheviot Hills area of Los Angeles.
The house was described in a
magazine profile of Agnes: “Room
by room, it is one of the most
unforgettably lovely homes in
California, where beautiful homes
grow ticker’n orange trees. What
makes the house exceptional is that
rather than a mere background, it is
an actual part of the woman who
did every inch of it. The part you
don’t see on the screen — the gay,
imaginative, rebellious side of the
actress best known for her frustrated,
bitterly drab females.”

In addition to the California home, she and Jack, particularly Jack, spent
time on the farm in Ohio. Jack, frustrated at not finding work as an actor
and jealous over the attention given to Agnes, oversaw the farm as the
couple increasingly spent time apart from one another. The farm was not
for show, but was a profit making enterprise since the Lees raised alfalfa,
wheat, and soybeans, and they would also journey to Argentina to buy
Hereford cattle stock.

Occasionally they would travel. “We wanted very much to see the Grand
Canyon,“Jack said. “We planned it for quite a while before we actually got
there. After traveling all that distance, Aggie took one quick look into the
gorge and turned away. S’help me, she was eavesdropping on some other
women who were seeing it for the first time — more interested in watching
and listening to their reactions, than in the biggest ditch in the world!”

On another occasion, the Lees were invited to observe military maneuvers
off of Santa Barbara. “The sky and the sea were incredibly beautiful,”
recalled Agnes. “I thought how beautiful they must look to a real landing
expedition when many of the
boys are taking their last look,
and know it. The landing
barges were loaded with men,
and even though it was just a
practice landing, the ships
were throwing out a protective
barrage that split the air all
around us. It was beautiful
and exciting.”

In a radio interview Agnes
spoke of she and Jack wanting
to adopt children. “. . . we
expect to adopt three children.
Two boys and a girl. You see I
want a really big family.”
When she was asked what Jack
thought of that idea Agnes
replied, “It’s as much his idea
as mine. He’s back in Ohio
now, getting our farm in shape,
and as soon as everything is
ready, we’ll see what we can do
about a family. We both feel
that it wouldn’t be fair to one
child, to say nothing of three,
not to prepare the proper home
and background in advance.
We don’t expect to do anything elaborate, of course, but we do want to have
the farm fixed up comfortably, and make sure that we will be able to give
our children a simple and wholesome background.” By this time Agnes and
Jack were already becoming estranged and indeed had separated a couple of
times only to reconcile. Jack was drinking increasingly as his career was being
eclipsed by Agnes’. Yet, it appears that he and Agnes were still working at
trying to make the marriage work. Certainly with Agnes’ religious views she
didn’t welcome a divorce, so at an age when most parents are seeing their
children off to college (both Agnes and Jack were well into their 40’s), they
were talking of adopting three children.