I Love the Illusion: The Life and Career of Agnes Moorehead (7 page)

In the months after graduation both Agnes and Jack hit the pavement in
search of work. Jack found employment in a Broadway play called
Subway
Express
. It was not a big part, but he was on stage throughout and the focus
of the story. It was a murder mystery, taking place in a subway car, with Jack
portraying the murder victim. He wore a hat throughout and had only a
few lines of dialogue before he sits down for a subway ride home. There is
a shot which rings out and it isn’t noticeably apparent that the victim is Jack
because he is still seated in an upright position. Broadway columnist Walter
Winchell was so intrigued by how Jack accomplished such a dead-eyed look
that he investigated and found that Jack’s dead-eye stare was accomplished
by make-up. The make-up artist painted dark dead eyes on his upper
eyelids, so as he is seated, he actually closed his eyes, but to the audience it
is as if he has them open, with huge dead-eyes, unblinking. Jack is in this
position for the first two acts of the play as the murder investigation
progresses around him. In that time he had to remain motionless and, since
he was still in full view of the audience, he could not so much as sneeze.
The part got him some good notices.
Commonweal
wrote: “Jack Lee as the
murdered man does some of the most sensational bit of acting seen in a
long time — and for a reason you can appreciate only after seeing the play
and knowing its strange secret.” The
New York Post
wrote: “Without a
single line to speak, Mr. Lee could hardly have found a part more important
to the play. He is the pivot upon which the whole plot turns . . . Yet Mr.
Lee is no more human and he may be seized some evening around 10
o’clock with a desire to sneeze, or yawn, or slap a mosquito, someone may
step upon his toe causing him to shout, ‘
OW
!’ ”

Jack received a good deal of publicity in the New York City press for his
part and wrote of his experience in several of them. In the
New York
Telegram
(October 27, 1929) he says: “They call me in and they hire me as
an actor and they tell me I’m to play the part of a dignified stock broker
and I’m all excited about the only Broadway role I’ve played outside of
Chinese O’Neill last year and then what does it turn out to be . . . I look at
my part and it has exactly three lines and all during the rest of the show I
just sit and sit and sit.” He told another paper: “That any wax figure
replaces me on the stage I want to deny. When I’m dead, I’m dead and it’s
my job to stay good and dead until I am carried off stage. Then I come to
life and after I stretch and get the kinks out of myself I am alive again. As
a corpse I am just as inactive as any other corpse. That I am on view for a
matter of two hours every time ‘Subway express’ is played, proves that I am
a pretty good corpse. Audiences think so anyway for they always give me a
hand. That applause always brings me back to life and makes me feel like a
real live human being again.” The show was a hit, but unfortunately for
Jack it would prove to be the highpoint of his career. He did some other
parts in the theatre, mainly in summer stock or on the road, and he did go
to Hollywood briefly where he did some bits for Paramount — but Jack Lee
would never again generate the kind of excitement and notices he did in his
first production after leaving the AADA — playing a corpse on stage for
two hours.

The profiles of Jack do give some background: “Lee is in his twenties, is
engaged to be married (that is all the mention Agnes gets), and is an
unassuming and likeable chap. His favorite sport is football . . . to watch
baseball . . . he is ‘a good
hand’ with a knife and
fork . . . likes chicken
fricassee . . . believes that
the stage has unlimited possibilities . . . hopes to
become a fine actor . . . has
played dead for over a hundred
performances . . . hopes to
play a hundred more. Was he
choosing his own part he
would like to play a role
similar to that of Hannibal’s
brother Margo in
The Road to
Rome.
”

For her part, Agnes was
not generating as much
publicity, but she did find
work. Agnes recalled years
later: “After I was graduated
from the Academy I started
working on Broadway. I

understudied in
Courage
and
All the King’s Horses
and actually got on stage
in
The Scarlet Pages
with Elsie Feguson. I did
Soldiers and Women
with
an all-English cast (she was again an understudy but did get on stage
to replace an actress named Sarat Lahiri and the play, set in an obscure
military outpost in Northern, India, allowed Agnes to play a local), and
Candlelight
with Gertrude Lawrence (as well as Leslie Howard and
Reginald Owen — the play was an adaptation of a P.G. Wodehouse story,
about a maid and valet who pretend to be rich royalty).” In most of these
productions Agnes worked as either an understudy or a bit player. These bit
roles gave her experience but did little to create an impression for her in the
industry. It would take another medium to do that.

Agnes was the classic struggling actress during this period and later wrote
in
Guidepost
magazine of her sparse existence during these salad days during
the early months of the Great Depression: “I’d gone there (New York City)
with the goal of every young actor: to make my way in the theater. To make
my money last, I ate almost nothing: hot water for breakfast, a roll for
lunch, rice for dinner. It was hungry work, making the rounds of casting
agents, mile after mile on the unyielding sidewalk, and I used to wonder
fervently just how God was going to provide manna in this man-made
wilderness. At last came the day when I was literally down to my last dime.
I stood in front of an automat gazing hungrily at the plates of food behind
their little glass doors. The trouble was that one of the agents had given me
clear instructions, ‘Phone, don’t come in,’ which meant that five of my 10
cents would have to go into a telephone box instead of opening one of those
little doors. With dragging feet I went into the drugstore next door and
changed my worldly wealth into two nickels. I shut myself in the phone
booth at the rear of the store, inserted one of the precious nickels — and
then waited in growing alarm for the operator’s voice. Half my fortune was
in that phone, and nothing happened — the coin was not even returned to
me! I jiggled the hook. I pounded the box, but it held tight to the coin that
would have bought me a big white roll — and a pat of butter on the plate
beside it. As always when I let myself think about food, a kind of desperation
seized me. I thrust two fingers into the coin return, clawing the cold metal
sides of the tube. They closed on a piece of paper. Though I didn’t know it
then, I had stumbled onto a familiar racket of those days. Pay phones were
built in such a way that a piece of paper inserted from the bottom would
trap the money in the chute. All I knew was that as I drew out the paper, a
little river of money streamed into my lap: dimes and quarters as well as
nickels. In all when I had finished my incredulous count, I had $4.25 . . . The
oatmeal and rice it bought lasted until I got my first part.”

She does go on to say that she paid back the telephone company with interest
and believed that it was God, himself, who provided this bounty to her. “Does
God drop manna through phone boxes? Of course. Anyone who spends much
time with the Bible recognizes humor as one of the surest signs of his presence.”

Agnes and Jack were married on June 5, 1930 — which also happened
to be Jack’s 27th birthday (Agnes joked that they chose that day so Jack
wouldn’t forget their anniversary). They were married at the Little Church
Around the Corner on East 29th Street in New York — close to the theatre
district. The church, which had been part of the underground railroad in
the 19th century, got its reputation for being “the actor’s church“ when in
1870 a man named Joseph Jefferson sought to make funeral arrangements
for a friend of his, an actor, who died. Jefferson was rebuffed by several
churches because of the profession his friend was in. Finally he was told,
“there is a little church around the corner that does that sort of thing.” The
story was spread in show business circles and the church attained its
reputation as “the actor’s church.” Agnes would recall that on her wedding
day, Jack arrived late to the chapel because he was appearing in a matinee.
Mollie and Dr. Moorehead came in from Ohio for the wedding as did Jack’s
family from California. Because they were both working, they didn’t take
a honeymoon.

Agnes, in the months and years after the AADA, kept busy as a bit player
and/or understudy on Broadway. She also began to get some work on
radio — landing a contract with NBC where she played small or featured
roles in such weekly series as
Sherlock Holmes, Bertie Sees the World
and
The
Silver Flute
. But the break she was waiting for didn’t really come until the
summer of 1931. Phillips H. Lords created a weekly half-hour network
(NBC) radio show called
Seth Parker
. In his definitive book on old-time
radio, John Dunning describes the show as a “weekly hymn-sing.“ It had a
cast of regulars who became like friends to the radio audience; as the
Forum
described it,
Parker
was built around “the pleasant little conceit that they
are all gathered every Sunday after supper in the rural New England home
of an old gentleman, Seth Parker. These quaint creatures sing old-fashioned
hymns with many dear and charming halts and interruptions while they

josh each other in their very nice
and restrained manner. They do
their best to conjure up days of
long ago, when applejack and
bundling were in vogue.” The
show premiered in March 1929
and became an immediate hit,
and at its peak the show had
more than 300 clubs formed
within the United States and
Canada. Lords himself played
Seth Parker — the kindly old
gentleman, but in reality Lords
was only in his mid-20’s.

To capitalize on the show’s
enormous popularity a nationwide tour was arranged in the fall
of 1931 for the
Seth Parker
show
cast, who would appear on stage

in costume (meaning the 20-something Lords would appear in old age
makeup wearing white chin whiskers). Lords’ wife, Sophia Lords,
appeared on the radio show as Lizzie Peters, an old maid who often
provided the comedy relief. Sophia Lords decided that she didn’t want
to participate in the national tour, so her character was recast (for the
tour — not the radio show), with Agnes getting this pivotal role.

On August 15, 1931, the NBC semimonthly,
Feature Service
, published
this little tidbit: “Agnes Moorehead, NBC dramatic actress, will be a
member of the Seth Parker cast to tour the United States in the fall. Miss
Moorehead holds a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin, and
has had an extended stage and operatic experience. She is the daughter of a
Presbyterian minister and her girlhood ambition was to be a missionary.” In
short, a perfect biography for somebody who was joining the cast of a show
which had strong religious overtones.

The tour began in October in the Midwest. According to one review,
“Miss Moorehead’s make-up as Lizzie Peters is a work of art in this play.
Severe and old-maidish and constantly exercising supervision over her
slow-witted brother Cefus, Miss Moorehead frequently caused the audience
to howl.” One of the “pieces of business” which Agnes performed as
Lizzie Peters, with the actor Bennett Kilpack as her brother, Cefus, involves
Lizzie forcing Cefus to “recitate a pome“ he is learning under the direction
of Lizzie. Cefus stumbles through a third of it, with Lizzie transfixing him
with a disgusted stare as she tries to prompt him through it. When the tour
came to Dayton, Ohio, the
Dayton Journal
would write, “Agnes Moorehead
. . . was the real star of the piece, we thought.” A week later in Detroit, the
Evening Times
said, “Agnes Moorehead or Lizzy Peters . . . also played a big
part in making the comic side of the playlet a success.”