I Love the Illusion: The Life and Career of Agnes Moorehead (4 page)

The Mooreheads spent seven years living in Hamilton, six for Agnes since
she developed whooping cough and the family doctor advised John and
Mollie to send Agnes to a dry climate. She ended up spending a year with
an aunt in Denver. Hamilton was perfect for the family since it was close
to the Moorehead family farm and John’s parents. Agnes became
especially close to her Grandmother Moorehead. Agnes recalled that
Grandma Hannah “taught me everything about the house — how to cook,
make beds, everything — my sister and I used to make up all kinds of
things in the kitchen.” But Grandma Hannah also tried to steer Agnes
away from her ambition to be an actress. She felt that such dreams were
impractical and better for Agnes to concentrate on learning how to sew and
keep house and find a husband to take care of her.

Agnes was also close to her maternal grandfather. He was a very religious
man and used to speak to Agnes about God and the gospel. One Sunday
afternoon it appeared he was asleep in the big comfortable easychair he
often sat in when telling Agnes stories from the Bible. Agnes went up, as
she sometimes did when he fell asleep in the chair, and tapped him on the
shoulder. However, this time he didn’t wake up. He was dead. Agnes would
recall that she cried for days. Years later, as a struggling actress in New York
City, she wasn’t working and one night she was very lonely when a friend
invited her to a party. “It will be a real wild party, why don’t you come.”
Not having anything else to do, and to quench her loneliness, Agnes decided
to accept the invitation. At the party she was shocked to find people drinking,
in an age of prohibition, couples making out, and people so drunk they
were passed out under tables. Agnes didn’t consider herself a prude, but the
scene was upsetting to her in large part due to her religious upbringing and
beliefs. But she wanted to make friends and feel like she was one of the
crowd, so she was about to begin to mingle when she heard a voice
whispering in her ear, “Get up and leave, girl. Don’t be afraid of offending
anyone. They’re not worth your friendship.” She looked around and saw
nobody. But the voice was as clear and distinct as could be. She decided to
leave and, once outdoors, it occurred to her — the voice she heard so
distinctly telling her to leave was that of her beloved grandfather. He was
still looking out for her, she felt, from beyond the grave.

In 1912 John relocated to the First Presbyterian Church in St. Louis. To
move from the security of friends and family in Ohio to the big city of St.
Louis was not an easy one for Agnes. She later recalled crying herself to sleep
the first two weeks after the family arrived. By 1912 St. Louis was one of the
largest cities in the country with a metro area in excess of 500,000 and, due
to its proximity to the Mississippi River, was a major port city. St. Louis
had hosted the World’s Fair only a few years earlier and, the same
year the Mooreheads arrived, hosted the 1912 National Democratic
Convention, which nominated Woodrow Wilson, himself a son of a
Scottish Presbyterian minister. The Mooreheads moved into a modest
house located at 4531 McPherson Avenue.

The summer after her arrival, when she was twelve, Agnes tried out for
the St. Louis Municipal Ballet. With her long legs and red hair tied tightly
in a bun, Agnes tried to make it appear that she was older than she actually
was, already assuming a role she would often essay on screen. She was
chosen to perform in the ballet and, due to her fine soprano voice, in the
choir. But she needed her father’s permission, and was apprehensive about
approaching him. To her great relief, he seemed genuinely pleased. “Well,
isn’t that wonderful? My little girl is good enough to make the ballet — why
certainly you have my permission.” But it came with the condition that she
not neglect her education. Why was Dr. Moorehead such an easy touch in
allowing Agnes to perform in a business many in that period thought was
full of sin? Agnes believed her father was a frustrated showman in his own
right and that it was “only a step from the pulpit to the stage.”

Agnes later related that she was “always interested in theatre . . . it was
always a goal, an ambition, a desire, to enter the theatre; I never had to find
myself, the way so many people do. I always knew what I wanted and where
I wanted to go. I had to go to school in the wintertime, of course, but even
there I always managed to get involved in producing or directing or appearing
in drama — not only drama, but anything being offered that involved a
stage. Public speaking, oratory — all of it. I never had anything else in
mind. So I can’t say that there was a time when I made up my mind to be
an actress; the determination was there from the very start.”

Over the next four summers she performed with the Opera Company, as
well as handling props and running errands for the other actors in exchange
for acting advice. “I think my first professional appearance was in St.
Louis as a Nubian slave in
Aida
. And I appeared in all the musical
comedies —
Rio Rita
, the whole run of operettas so popular then, including
Gilbert and Sullivan. We did a new show every week for years — Herbert,
Friml, Lehar, etc.” The experience with the Municipal Ballet only increased
her determination of making a career out of acting, but she also had
promised her father she would get a quality education to fall back on.
When Agnes graduated from Central High School in 1919 she was ready
to keep her end of the bargain by attending Muskingum College, a
denominational (Presbyterian) school which one of her uncles had helped
found, located in New Concord, Ohio; her major was Biology.

The same year Agnes enrolled at Muskingum, John, Mollie and
Margaret packed up and moved to a new parish located in beautiful
Reedsburg, Wisconsin. Its population only numbered a couple of thousand
and was located about an hour east of the state capitol in Madison. The
move from such a large city to a small town took some adjusting. But
Mollie, in particular, took to Reedsburg and made many friends there,
including Miss Grace Conkling, who became a lifelong friend; when the
widowed Mollie returned to Reedsburg years later, the two friends moved
in together to keep each other company. Agnes enjoyed visiting during her
vacations from Muskingum, and off and on for the rest of her life, Agnes
would often visit Reedsburg.

Agnes took to college life with gusto. She became involved with the Glee
Club and the Girls Athletic Association — where she excelled at horseback
riding, tennis and archery. She performed in such school plays as
The
Aristocrat
in her junior year and the historical drama, Friend Hannah in her
senior year. But the most fun she had was helping to write and perform in
a revue titled
Kolossal Kampus Kapers
or, regrettably, KKK for short. She
would later recall that she both shocked and delighted the audience by
doing a spoof of a bump-and-grind routine which was routinely “banned in
Boston.” The dance won her a visit to the Dean’s office. One of her
professors, Charles R. Layton, would recall Agnes as a “popular campus
personality . . . who could get away with things others couldn’t,” apparently
due to her vivacious personality. While she enjoyed the campus social activities
she didn’t allow fun to interfere with her education and neglect her studies.

Up until she attended Muskingum, Agnes never went on a date without
a chaperon, but this didn’t bother her. She would later remember that this
was a simpler time and that young people appreciated their elders more
than the young people of the 60’s and 70’s did. “I never had a date by
myself until I was in college. I was always chaperoned. There were parties,
dances, and great sleigh rides but always there were older people with us,
but not hampering us. Oh, we had a great time.”

While at Muskingum, Agnes read many brochures on acting schools and
decided that she most wanted to attend the prestigious American Academy
of Dramatic Arts (AADA) located in New York City. She wanted to attend
this school not only for its fine reputation, many top stage actors came out
of the AADA, but because they used actual Broadway directors to stage
their shows, something she felt was a great way to make contacts in the theatre.
But to attend such a prestigious institution took a good deal of money for
those days — money she didn’t have and that her parents couldn’t afford on
a pastor’s salary. She knew she would have to earn the money herself.

Upon graduating from Muskingum in 1923, Agnes joined her family in
Wisconsin. She attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison, working
on her Masters in English and Speech. To earn the money she would need,
not only for her living expenses but to put toward her goal of attending the
AADA, she took on the job of school teacher at Centralized High School
in tiny Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, where she taught English, Speech and
Ancient History. Agnes would look back on her years in Soldiers Grove
with great affection and in many respects always considered herself a
teacher as well as an actress. After she was established in Hollywood, she
would become popular in the acting community for tutoring actors for
roles; an example of this would be her stint as unofficial dialogue coach for
Jeffrey Hunter, playing Christ, in the film
King of Kings
in 1961. She would
also spend many years operating an acting school.

Agnes spent the next five years in Soldiers Grove and became very
popular with the students and community. One student, Orland Helgeson,
recalls Agnes as “nice and nice looking, but I didn’t fully appreciate her
because I was interested in other subjects at the time.” He also recalled
Agnes as having “a smile for her students — she was a good teacher and
could be strict at times especially regarding manners.” Agnes also coached
the debate team to many championships, as well as directing school plays.
One such play was
Peter Pan
which, according to local historian John Sime,
had begun as the senior class play, but, by the time Agnes had finished, she
had involved practically the entire school, but “it was very well-done and
received.”

Agnes maintained fond memories of her teaching days throughout her
life. “That was a heart-warming experience,” she would recall, “being
among those kindly Scandinavian people in that little Kickapoo valley
community. Everyone was so kind to me, and I had great luck preparing my
youngsters for the oratorical contests with other schools. We won time after
time, and Soldiers Grove went right to the top.”

As a teacher Agnes considered herself a role model for her young
students and tried to instill in them the values of good citizenship and hard
work. “I feel strong about them that to compromise any one of them would
be, for me, an act of hypocrisy. As a teacher, who is not true to his or her
own values, is not a teacher at all.” In the turbulent 60’s and 70’s, Agnes
would become quite outspoken about what she perceived as a lack of
manners and respect among the young people of the day. She often longed
for these earlier days.