Agnes Moorehead

Did You Know?

• Moorehead met Orson Welles when he was seven years old at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City in 1922.
• Moorehead bequeathed her collection of Bibles and biblical scholarship materials to Bob Jones University.

Early life

Agnes Robertson Moorehead was born on December 6, 1900, in Clinton, Massachusetts, to Mary McCauley, a former singer who was 17 at the time, and Presbyterian clergyman John Henderson Moorehead. She later claimed a birth year of 1906 to appear younger for roles. At age three, she made her first public performance reciting the Lord's Prayer in her father's church. The family moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where her mother encouraged her imagination by asking, 'Who are you today, Agnes?' while she and her sister Peggy imitated their father's parishioners.

Moorehead joined the chorus of the St. Louis Municipal Opera Company and developed a lifelong interest in religion. She earned a bachelor's degree in biology in 1923 at Muskingum College, where she also appeared in stage plays, and later received an honorary doctorate from the same institution. She taught public school for five years in Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, while earning a master's degree in English and public speaking at the University of Wisconsin. She then graduated with honors from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1929.

Career

Moorehead's early acting career was unsteady, with periods of unemployment, but she found steady work in radio, often performing on several programs in a single day. In 1937, she joined Orson Welles's Mercury Players as a principal performer alongside Joseph Cotten. She had a regular role opposite Welles in the serial The Shadow as Margo Lane. She received the New York Film Critics Award and an Academy Award nomination for The Magnificent Ambersons (1942).

She earned another Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for Mrs. Parkington (1944). Moorehead also appeared in The Big Street (1942), Government Girl (1943), and The Youngest Profession (1944). She gained acclaim for her role as Endora on the ABC sitcom Bewitched from 1964 to 1972, earning six Primetime Emmy Award nominations. She won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her role on The Wild Wild West.

Personal life

Moorehead married actor John Griffith Lee in 1930; they divorced in 1952, a year after fostering a boy named Sean Lee. She married actor Robert Gist in 1954 and divorced in 1958. Her sexuality has been the subject of speculation and dispute. Paul Lynde, her Bewitched co-star, stated she was a lesbian, while close friend Debbie Reynolds categorically denied it, attributing the rumor to one of Moorehead's husbands during their divorce. Producer Paul Gregory and longtime employee Quint Benedetti also stated she was not a lesbian. Moorehead rarely spoke publicly about her political beliefs but supported Franklin Delano Roosevelt and close friend Ronald Reagan for his 1966 gubernatorial run.

Death

Moorehead was among many who developed cancer after exposure to radioactive fallout from atomic bomb tests while making The Conqueror (1956) in Iron City, Utah. By the end of 1980, 91 of the 220 cast and crew members had developed cancer, and 46 had died. Moorehead died of uterine cancer at Mayo Clinic Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota, on April 30, 1974, at age 73. She is entombed at Dayton Memorial Park in Dayton, Ohio, and was posthumously inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame in 1994. Her will bequeathed $25,000 to Muskingum College for scholarships, left half her manuscripts to Muskingum and half to the University of Wisconsin, and gave her family's Ohio farm and Bible collection to Bob Jones University. Her mother received all clothing and jewelry, and the Beverly Hills home went to her attorney. She made no provision for her foster son Sean Lee, stating she had no children.