AGNES MOOREHEAD ~ What is her mystery?

I recently watched her in Our Vines Have Tender Grapes. She was very good.

A very nice story, OP, thanks for sharing. Agnes has always been one of my favorites.

That she was a CARPET MUNCHER

”Well, the whole world knows Agnes was a lesbian – I mean classy as hell, but one of the all-time Hollywood dykes,” actor Paul Lynde, Agnes’ co-star on Bewitched, once said.

She could do glamour when required...

She was old-school ELEGANZA!!

Does anyone...still wear...

She was enormously beautiful when she was young, but she was such a dyed-in-the-wool character actress you never would have known it since she rarely went glam. But she had stunning features.

etherial?

She was marvelous in this totally silent role.

ICONIC

The sheer definition of ‘it’, even a seven or eight year-old boy could tell. A true star who didn’t just inhabit roles but defined archetypes.

Magnificent Ambersons. Aggie is tops.

Who could forget her Golden Globe Award winning role?

Wash she a lipshtick leshbian?

I don't remember what show these are from.

Amazing success story, impressive career. She was just a schoolteacher in Podunk, Ohio- and she decided to change her life.

r15 That really is a great question. I was about to say Desdemona until I clicked the photo and saw the character was holding a flashlight.

[quote]She was enormously beautiful when she was young

I will need evidence of that!

It was perhaps from a One Step Beyond, r17.

“That she was a CARPET MUNCHER”

ABNER!! Her mother will eat our carpet!

That photo at r7 shows her at her most beautiful.

“Agnes Moorehead, actress of Bewitched fame, willed her Ohio estate to [Bob Jones University]. Moorehead's father was a Presbyterian minister, and in 1921, when Agnes Moorehead was an undergraduate at Muskingum College, New Concord, Ohio—a Presbyterian school founded by her uncle—the college presented an honorary degree to Bob Jones, Sr.”

I don’t care. But this will send some to the fainting couches.

Agnes in the 1920s, as a vamp.

Agnes again looking lovely.

She served more clam than a raw bar on the Jersey shore on Fourth of July weekend.

She was perfection in Bewitched and in just about every other role. Unfortunately, when it came to the role of motherhood she was a flop. I can't remember which book it was but one of the sources quoted was Debbie Reynolds. I always wondered what the real story was between them. Has it ever, uh, come out?

Here is Agnes on a day off from being Eleganza!

"Film Historian Robert Osborne was among the Hollywood insiders who claimed that Debbie Reynolds had a lesbian love affair with Agnes Moorehead. He said the two first met when shooting the 1962 epic "How the West Was Won" and carried on a secret romance Moorehead died in 1974." Others have alleged that Eddie Fisher was gay. Debbie really didn't care when Liz Taylor "stole" him.

She was amazing in just about everything she appeared in. Even Dear Dead Delilah which was her final film and happened to be low budget 70's horror schlock. And she was in a wheelchair throughout 99% of the whole film.

I absolutely loved her as Cornelia Van Gorder in the 1959 remake of The Bat.

My mother is not a lesbian. She's just a really, really bad heterosexual.

The book about her was called "I Love the Illusion."

Well, she had the perfect last name for being of that persuasion.

The first thing I ever saw her in is Pollyanna.

Someone dug up the story on Agnes's adopted son.

She's great in ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS.

[quote] I can't remember which book it was but one of the sources quoted was Debbie Reynolds. I always wondered what the real story was between them. Has it ever, uh, come out?

Debbie wrote in her book that Agnes wasn't gay and was deeply religious. The rumor was thought to be from an ex husband during a divorce and Paul Lynde was a closet case to the day he dropped dead and no business trying to out anyone else.

Her accent made her sounds so glamorous.

She was also great in a simple commercial for coffee creamer.

She was Lebanese, Blanche.

[Quote]I remember going to see Agnes in her one-woman show.

OP, here's a sample from that show. Perhaps it'll bring back memories for you.

She’s a total scene-stealer in the noir DARK PASSAGE (1947). That final scene!

Agnes was wonderfully hammy in her role in Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte. I enjoyed it especially in remembering her stoic turn in Citizen Kane and other early movies.

[quote]Paul Lynde was a closet case to the day he dropped dead

Oh Kween. Martians could tell he was a screamer!

Her final performance was in a pilot for a Rex Harrison TV show that aired May 1, 1974, the day after her death.

Here's a double helping, Robert Conrad and Moorehad in a campy romp as she polishes off the ultra-wealthy. The last minute is missing but not important.

Aggie was a major radio star in the 40s. She did many of the old-time Suspense shows and was excellent in all of them, most famously in Sorry, Wrong Number (which was later made into a Barbara Stanwyck movie).

[quote] What is her mystery?

What did Orson Welles do to Agnes Moorehead back in '38?

R40 Thank you, thank you, thank you! I cannot believe you found that clip. I cannot believe I remembered that line after 50 years. She was every bit as glorious and glamorous as I remember her to be.

Perhaps more head.

Her gorgeous Beverly Hills home.

I wonder who did the painting behind her, it's probably her in a early role she played.

^ It could be 'The Aspern Papers'.

That isn't Agnes, r35, it's Patricia Clarkson.

^ Yes, Patricia in a Dior dress and 12 inch high platform shoes

Do learn to read, r54.

[quote]That photo at [R7] shows her at her most beautiful.

Nice looking, yes. Beautiful, not in one hundred million years.

R24 That air-brushing is very competent.

Beware of entertainers who have 4'x 6' portraits of themselves hanging in their homes.

Depended on angles.

You have a vivid imagination, R59.

[quote] Paul Lynde was a closet case to the day he dropped dead... Oh Kween. Martians could tell he was a screamer!

Uh huh and he never spoke about it publicly just like Liberace died straight from congestive heart failure.

I'm not wrong. Cloris was the same way. She could go from glam to slatternly with her mug.

R15, those look like stills from the 1959 horror film she made, in the scene where she was trapped and suffocating in the room with the locked door, banging on it for help.

[quote]Uh huh and he never spoke about it publicly just like Liberace died straight from congestive heart failure.

He wasn't necessarily closeted on Hollywood Squares. He got some of his biggest laughs from gay one-liners.

Dear OP, there is no mystery to this woman.

She lived, she died. She did all she could do with the abilities given to her.

She lived, she licked Debbie Reynolds' cooch, she died.

RIP

She lapped a lotta ladyham

R15, those are from The Bat

Homosexuals like her because she's a moderately-successful slightly-ugly woman.

I prefer Flora—

^^ Lily Tomlin lookalike

From Enty:

The OG Redhead - Old Hollywood: A few years back, we applauded the effort of this Housewife to put forth a story about a child with red hair who just happened to be available for adoption and just happened to make a perfect little story come true. It was all crap of course, but we appreciated the effort. Back in the day, there was a similar situation in Hollywood. An actress (Agnes Moorehead) who starred on television and in the movies and also on stage (Filmography). An actress who once hosted the Academy Awards ("20th Academy Awards"). She too was a redhead. She too had a wholly implausible story about a child who suddenly fell into her lap who also was a redhead. The way it actually worked was our actress gave birth and then a couple of years after birth, concocted a story which allowed her to "adopt" her own child (Sean). The thing is though, she was so worried about her cover story, that she was constantly changing it and eventually the child became a foster child she raised for a few years and then he went on his own way. The one thing that always tripped her up though was the custody battle between herself and her husband over the child which would never be the case if the child was indeed, just a foster child. Agnes Moorehead/"20th Academy Awards"/son Sean (Being But Men, We Walked Into the Trees)

So, R71, is that the mystery?

I get sick to my stomach when I think of the kind of poster who post’s this kind of thread.

She was a homophobe who hated the second Darrin because he was gay.

[quote]I get sick to my stomach when I think of the kind of poster who post’s this kind of thread.

Oh dear.

She didn't get cancer in the desert with Marion Morrison and Edythe Marrenner.

[quote] She floated onstage with flaming red hair and an etherial mauve caftan. She twirled around the entire stage to a seemingly endless standing ovation. When the applause died, she looked at her gown and then to the audience she said, "I love the color mauve. It's like pink trying to be blue. Just like me." The she smiled, laughed and winked to the audience. Of course, everyone roared to another ovation!

You've basically summarized the private fantasy of every Datalounger (although of course we would be Agnes in it).

She kept good company before trashing herself in TV rubbish.

What are ya R73?....12????

Why don’t you start some threads on BTS?

[quote] She kept good company before trashing herself in TV rubbish.

"Bewitched" was a huge hit and Aggie was nominated for 4 Emmys. It was a great gig for a broad her age.

R80 That TV stuff may have paid some bills but it was waste of her thespianic abilities and depleted what the OP refers to as 'her mystery'.

Forty million laughed at her antics every week.

Moorehead and Margaret Hamilton. Both teachers before becoming actresses. Both played iconic witches. Both very pious in their private lives. Both labisian but likely not practicing (due to piety). Both married and divorced with a single son. Fascinating!

Which one of you bitches saw The Pink Jungle?

R40 That was pretty great.

R53 Yes it was. You’re thinking of Far from Heaven, which was an homage to ATHA and the Douglas Sirk style of filmmaking. Clarkson played the Moorhead role.

[quote] Moorehead and Margaret Hamilton. Both teachers before becoming actresses. Both played iconic witches. Both very pious in their private lives. Both labisian but likely not practicing (due to piety). Both married and divorced with a single son. Fascinating!

I hope they got together at least and had a chance to manipulate each other's tender buttons.

They deserved some joy given how much they gave the rest of the world.

[quote]I hope they got together at least and had a chance to manipulate each other's tender buttons.

That's a sweet idea, although the thought of Maggie in green makeup with her head under Aggie's ample caftan gives one pause.

What did Aggie bring to Bea's party?

[quote] What is her mystery?

She brought the rosebud.