I Love the Illusion: The Life and Career of Agnes Moorehead (22 page)

It was a difficult shoot for Agnes, who wore a mask which made her
utterly unrecognizable as the 105-year-old Juliana. The procedure she had
to endure every day became one of the key selling points of the film and
generated a great deal of publicity.
Life
magazine did an article on the fivehour daily procedure she endured: “In preparation for the camera, Miss
Moorehead arrives at 5 each morning in her dressing room where Make-up
man Buddy Westmore spends five busy hours remodeling her. To begin
with, a rubber mask is attached to her face with spirit gum. Then liquid
adhesive and urbber grease are spread on, wrinkles are etched in and the
whole business is heavily powdered. This operation takes almost three
hours. The remaining time is used to prepare the Moorehead hands, with
small rolls of cotton as veins. By 10, she is all ready to act and by 3 p.m.
she is ready to go mad inside the mask. When it is finally removed at 6, the
spirit gum which has been burning her face all day tears out all the downy
hairs on her cheeks. This daily ordeal has already taken seven pounds off
Miss Moorehead.”

picture was in production from March 10–May 19, 1947. A preview of the
picture was held in Studio City on September 9, and the results were pretty
good. Of 34 preview cards, 9 rated the film “Excellent”; 11 rated the film
“Very Good”; 10 rated it “Good”; 3 rated it “Fair”; only 1 rated the film as
“Poor.” An analysis of the preview stated, “Enjoyment of preview audience
exceeded its anticipation.” The words selected by the audience as descriptive
of the picture were: “dramatic,” “held interest,” “well acted,” and “emotional.”
Interestingly, the preview summary pointed out that “Persons under 18
years of age, however, had a higher level of enjoyment than those who were
older”; enjoyment was highest among people who were 12 to 30 years of
age, and females.

Agnes received quite a few compliments from the preview audience —
especially among women. Her name was also a draw. Robert Cummings
and Agnes received a greater percentage of mentions from those who
“especially wanted” to see the picture than from those who were not
particularly interested. Among the comments regarding Agnes on preview
cards, a 16-year-old female listed Agnes as the person she most enjoyed in
the film. A male, 22, also listed Agnes first as the player he especially
enjoyed and wrote, “Any scene with Agnes Moorehead” in the section
which asked the audience for their “favorite scene.” Another male, age 21,
wrote: “The reason I pick Moorehead is because at her age I think she did
very well even if it was only acting.” A 17-year-old female wrote, “I liked
the cast and especially Agnes Moorehead. I think she is a fine actress, and
the make up job was excellent.”

Wanger could have expected good word-of-mouth to lead to strong box
office based on the preview comments, but when the film was released in
October 1947, the reviews were, on the whole, quite savage.
Newsweek
wrote, “Frankly, the admirers of Henry James have cause for complaint, and
the average moviegoer will probably complain of boredom.”
The New
Republic
was devastating: “Robert Cummings . . . gives a performance that
is probably meant to be sensitive but turns out to be unctuous; Agnes
Moorehead . . . is called on to do no more than shiver slightly from time to
time.” The
New York World Telegram
wrote, “
The Lost Moment
is a ponderous,
majestic and thoroughly dull picture.” The Box Office slant of the
Showmen’s trade review wrote, “Extremely off the beaten track,
The Lost
Moment
will puzzle the average audience . . . Give an A for effort, anyway,
to Wanger for his production.” The word of mouth that Wanger thought
would be favorable sank his picture, which went on to lose money at the
box office.

Agnes was shooting a western in Arizona,
Stations West,
when, on
September 17, 1947, she dubbed her final lines for
The Lost Moment
by
phone: “I killed him. He was going to leave me so I killed him,” and
“Father buried him in the garden by the bower.” Agnes liked the picture;
perhaps for enduring five-plus hours of make up and physical discomfort,
she felt she had better like the picture!! The film is not as bad as the
contemporary reviewers said, but it is patchy. Robert Cummings is miscast.
It is a shame they didn’t get Boyer or Harrison for the lead, but both
Hayward and Agnes give good performances. Agnes would later say of
The
Lost Moment,
“ . . . It was . . . a class of movie they don’t make anymore, with
romance and beauty, culture — wonderful music, piano — and fantasy.
What is wrong with fantasy?” Miss Hayward was less enthused with the
finished product. “Their name for it should have been
The Lost Moment
but after I saw it I called it ‘The Lost Hour and a Half.’”

It was while filming the western,
Stations West,
that Agnes had a rare
run-in with a director, Sidney Lansfield. Usually Agnes was considered a
director’s dream. Always prepared and always cooperative. Lansfield,
though, had a reputation for being acerbic and belittling actors — perhaps
it was his way of getting a performance out of them? The film starred Dick
Powell and Jane Greer; Greer was not his first choice, Marlene Dietrich was,
and he never let Greer forget it. Greer endured it, but when Lansfield
turned his fire on Agnes, he was up against a more formidable force. Greer
would recall that one day, after shooting a scene, Lansfield told Agnes, “Do
you ever think before you say a line, hatchet face?” Without responding,
Agnes simply walked off the set. She phoned Dore Schary, who was at the
time RKO’s executive vice president in charge of production, and got
another director to supervise her scenes from that point on.

Shortly after she had filmed
The Lost Moment,
Agnes was cast in a
picture at Warner Brothers, one that became one of her favorite and most
popular.
Johnny Belinda
was set on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia in
the fictional village of Carcadio, a little community on a small bay which
depends on income from fish and lobster from the sea for survival. Belinda
McDonald is a deaf mute. She is cut off from contact with others except her
father, Black, and her stern Aunt Aggie. Into this community moves Dr.
Robert Richardson, a man of great intellect, who is devoted to his profession.
He meets Belinda, when on a rainy night Aunt Aggie comes to fetch him
due to a medical emergency, which turns out to be the birth of a calf. He
takes an interest in Belinda and begins to teach her sign language so that
she will be able to communicate with the outside world and end her life of
isolation. Dr. Richardson goes to Belinda’s father and urges him to allow
Belinda to be sent away to school, that she is a bright girl. The father
explains that he needs Belinda to help tend to the farm, and, besides, everybody including him and Aunt Aggie refer to Belinda as “the dummy.” Aggie
is called away to tend to her sick sister; when Black takes her to the train,
a drunken townsman, Locky, goes to the farm where he viciously rapes
Belinda. Dr. Richardson later discovers that she is pregnant. Aunt Aggie
returns and the news brings out another side of her personality; she now
becomes protective of Belinda. Because of his interest in Belinda, many
people come to believe that Dr. Richardson is the father. When the baby is
delivered, Belinda names him Johnny. Belinda’s father soon discovers that
Locky raped his daughter and the two have a fight, which ends with
McDonald falling to his death. The town, which has always had a snobbish
attitude toward the McDonalds, believes that Belinda is an unfit mother
and they want to give the baby to Locky and his new wife, who is Dr.
Richardson’s assistant. Locky comes and tries to forcefully take the baby
from Belinda. Belinda kills Locky and is then arrested and tried for his
murder. Locky’s wife eventually admits that Locky told her he was the
father of the baby. Belinda is acquitted and is granted custody of the baby.
Belinda, Dr. Richardson (who discovers he loves Belinda), Aggie and the
baby leave the courtroom together at the conclusion.

For the part of Belinda, Warner Brothers cast Jane Wyman, who had
since the thirties endured frivolous comedy roles at the studio. Wyman had
scored big in the past two years with strong performances in
The Lost
Weekend,
for Paramount, and
The Yearling
at MGM. This was to be the first
real role of substance that her home studio would give her. For the part of
Dr. Richardson, Lew Ayres was cast. Ayres was best known as “Dr. Kildare”
in a series of films he did for MGM. He had spent the duration of the war
as a contentious objector, which at first seemed to hurt his career. But he
turned public opinion around by bravely serving in the ambulance corps.
As Black McDonald, the venerable character actor Charles Bickford was
cast. True to his word of wanting to work with Agnes again after her stellar
performance in
Dark Passage,
producer Jerry Wald cast Agnes as Aunt
Aggie. In the script Aunt Aggie is described as a “gruff, austere spinster
living with her brother. Bleak as her existence, nevertheless there’s a kind
streak, a sympathetic heart buried beneath her forbidding exterior.” In
short, it was perfect for Agnes.

The filming went smoothly under the direction of Jean Negulesco. The
actors got along well. Wyman and Agnes formed a strong friendship and
admired each other as actresses and individuals. Miss Wyman would recall
that Agnes had a “marvelous sense of humor.” Wyman also recalled that
between scenes, and in the evenings when filming on location in
Mendocino, California came to an end, the cast would “get together to joke
around — just laugh. It was such a fun set.” She also found Agnes to be a
“warm individual,” yet possessing a “very dramatic” personality. As an
actress Wyman believed that Agnes could act “any kind of part.” She
believed that Agnes had a “very difficult part and studied it hard. Aggie was
so versatile — each (part) was different. Each character was different from
each other.” Agnes also got to know Wyman’s then-husband, Ronald
Reagan, whom she served with on the Screen Actors Guild — and attended
parties at the Reagan’s just as they would attend parties at the Lee’s. Wyman
recalled Agnes as “a wonderful hostess. A party at Aggie’s was the event of
the season.” Wyman had warm words for the others connected with the
picture as well, calling Negulesco “an artist” who allowed his actors to work
out scenes themselves, giving them leeway. This would be the first of five
films that Agnes would work in with Wyman. “I was always happy when
Aggie was cast in one of my pictures.”

Agnes recalled the experience on
Johnny Belinda
as a happy one as well.
“We all had such a wonderful time. Jane Wyman, of course, had the
principal part . . . but Lew Ayres, Charles Bickford and I had good parts too.
We loved them. We loved the whole picture. And we each honestly admired
each of the others as a good actor. We each became so interested in the
picture as a whole that we used to discuss it and our work in it all the time.
I don’t suppose there’s ever been another picture where one actor could stop
another and say, ‘Look, Aggie, don’t you think maybe you could make it a
little clearer by doing it this way?’ or ‘Charlie, I don’t understand what you
mean. How about your saying it like this?’ . . . We were always suggesting
things to others about their parts. And no one took offense . . . the director,
Jean Negulesco, was so delighted he just let us go ahead with the criticisms
and suggestions. Now we’re all eager, the five of us, to do a second film.”

The studio realized they had a marvelous film on their hands but they
didn’t rush to release it. While the film had completed principal photography
by late 1947, the film wouldn’t be released until September 1948, By then
it was getting considerable hype as one of the biggest films that would be
released in 1948.