I Love the Illusion: The Life and Career of Agnes Moorehead (35 page)

In April Agnes accepted one of her rare leads in a motion picture, a
12-day-shoot on a low-budget horror film for Allied Artists of Mary Robert
Rinehart’s
The Bat.
In it she plays mystery writer Cornelia Van Gorder who
comes to stay at a mansion in the country called the Oaks to write her
latest whodunit. Vincent Price kills the owner of the Oaks while they are
on a camping trip after the owner, in confidence, tells Price that he embezzled
$31 million from the bank he is president of. Price is convinced that the
money is hidden somewhere at the Oaks. Meanwhile, a murderer by the
name of The Bat is on the loose, terrifying local women. The film had plenty
of atmosphere and the usual murder mystery ingredients including dark
passages, hidden rooms, and thunderstorms on dark nights. Agnes is also
carefully lit and looks good in this film. In one scene she even wears a
low-cut nightgown. This little thriller more than made a profit at the box
office when released.

Initially, Paul Gregory was quite high
on having Ginger Rogers in
The Pink
Jungle.
He based it on her past history as a
star of several musical-comedy films, so he
was surprised when he got feedback from
director Joe Anthony that Rogers just
wasn’t making the cut during rehearsals.
He was told that she rarely arrived on time
for rehearsals, often being a half-hour,
hour, or even hour and a half late which
left the other cast members fuming. Most
surprising of all was that Ginger just
couldn’t master the songs which Vernon
Duke had composed. Certainly, she had
sung well enough in many of her films, so
why was she having such problems now?
Then there were the dance numbers,
which she also couldn’t memorize; one
such routine had to be simplified for her
and she still was having problems with it.
One half of the greatest dance team in
motion picture history having trouble with
a relatively simple dance routine? Perhaps
Paul should have had a forewarning when,
shortly after he had signed Ginger, he ran
into Fred Astaire. Astaire mentioned that
he had read that “Gin” had been signed and asked if she had asked for a
dance-in yet, and Gregory, puzzled, said, “No.” “She will,” claimed Astaire.

Astaire was correct and Ginger did ask for a dance-in. Ginger would
observe her dance-in doing the number and then try to copy her, but it was
clear that by taking this approach that Ginger was not mastering the
routine. She also wasn’t memorizing her lines and would often need to be
cued. As usual, Agnes was the complete professional and not only knew her
lines but just about everybody else’s as well. As the ghost of Eleanor West,
to gain admission to heaven, she has to perform one good deed. In her
efforts to accomplish this appears in several guises including an Irish New
York policewoman, a secretary and a telephone operator.

Given the shaky performance of lead Rogers, Paul Gregory was understandably apprehensive when the show made its debut on October 15 at the Alcazar
Theatre in San Francisco. But he had seen a star before, weak in rehearsals, turn
it around when the curtain went up, delivering a smashing performance — and
was hoping this would be the case with Ginger. Unfortunately, it was not.
Ginger’s name helped at the box office, though it still wasn’t a complete
sellout, but the reviews were not good — except for Agnes.

Variety
pinpointed one of the major faults: a book that was too long
(each of the two acts ran 90 minutes), a confusing plot, and the music and
lyrics suffered because “none of the leading players can sing.” On the plus
side, according to
Variety,
was “a marvelously funny performance by Agnes
Moorehead who walked off with individual honors.” Also on the plus side
were the costumes and “elaborate staging.” Ginger got kudos for her still
“amazing youth and luscious figure.” But overall, “Miss Rogers fumbled
considerable dialog, probably as the result of too little rehearsal.”

While Ginger was a major source of the problems, due to her lack of
preparation, the other problem was the length of the show. A three-hour
light comedy was at least an hour too long. It was clear that the show would
need retooling. Adding to Paul’s problem was that Ginger’s mother Lela,
still the ultimate stage mother for her nearly fifty-year-old daughter, was
making demands on Ginger’s behalf and also making it well known in
public that she and Ginger were unhappy with the show. After the San
Francisco premiere, Lela took Paul aside, telling him, “this was not the play
we (her and Ginger) bought.” Furthermore, she told him that the “one way
to strengthen Ginger’s part” was to practically cut Agnes out of the play.
Paul asked Lela if the Agnes Moorehead part should be eliminated all
together, to which Lela replied, “No, but that Agnes was overpowering
Ginger and she (Ginger) couldn’t match it.” So, if Agnes would just tone
down her performance Ginger would, somehow, miraculously improve. In
no uncertain terms Paul set the record straight with Lela and through her,
Ginger, when he told her, “Agnes was the one keeping the show afloat.” He
would not tell Agnes to tone down her performance or make any unnecessary
cuts just to please Ginger. From then on Paul would keep Lela monitored
because he could hear her “denounce what the management was doing to
her little girl” to anybody within listening distance. It was a bad situation
which didn’t get any better; at the end of the San Francisco run, director
Joe Anthony quit primarily due to being unable to “evaluate clearly”
because he was unable to get a quality performance out of Ginger.

Things didn’t improve when the show moved on to the new Fisher
Theatre in Detroit. By this time Leslie Stevens had taken on the directing
chores as well as doing rewrites which the cast was supposed to learn by day
while still delivering the old dialogue at the evening performances.
Attendance continued to be good, not great, and the reviews continued to
be mediocre at best.

Ginger went public with her
disdain for the show, telling the
New York Post
that
The Pink
Jungle,
“needs more than a facelift. They better bury it.” Leslie
Stevens sent Paul a telegram on
11/5/59 from Boston which
starkly presented the problems:
“Not one good review during
the entire run . . . The more
improvements we give Ginger
the more visible her acting,
comedy and singing shortcomings
become.” He, too, submitted his
resignation and wished Paul luck
in finding a director who could
work under these circumstances.

This was the last straw. Paul
decided to close the show to
“retool,” but the expenses already
incurred and the difficulty at this late stage to recast Ginger’s part would be
too much.
The Pink Jungle
never did reopen. But Paul decided to set the
record straight with Ginger. In a “private and confidential” three-page
letter dated January 19, 1960, Paul told Ginger he felt she was “laboring
under a delusion” as to why the show closed. “The unfortunate fact of the
matter is you did not deliver the standards we expected.” He went out of
his way to stand up for Agnes: “. . . if you were to play Agnes’s part and
Agnes was to play your part the situation would be just reversed. Instead of
Lela crying and complaining about the part of Tess Jackson she would be
complaining about the part of Eleanor West. For the fact of the matter is,
Ginger, the load in T
HE
P
INK
J
UNGLE
was just too much for you . . . if your
performance had been sufficiently up to standard I believe you would have
gotten far better reviews, comparable to those of Agnes . . .”

After more than 30 years in the business, that must have been a blistering
letter for a star of Ginger’s magnitude to receive. In her autobiography Ginger
has little to say about
The Pink Jungle
except that the playwright, Leslie
Stevens, was not as “responsive” as he might have been due to the illness of
his wife. She also alleges that she was not being paid in the timely fashion her
contract specified and that Paul was not as hands-on as he should have been
because he was producing a film in Hollywood: “How could a producer
desert his own show at this early stage?” This was enough to cause her to give
her notice. “The writer wasn’t writing, the producer wasn’t producing and the
show was standing still.” But no mention of her own lack of preparation or
generally poor reviews, and certainly nothing about feeling upstaged by
Agnes Moorehead. Yet the records of correspondence from those in the show
from Paul Gregory to Leslie Stevens to composer Vernon Duke (Duke wrote
to Agnes saying that Paul intended to reopen the show, minus Ginger), and
the reviews of the time certainly point to one major culprit — and that was
Ginger. The question is why was she so unprofessional and unpolished as a
comedian and singer/dancer in this show when she had proved to be so
talented in other shows, before and after, including stints in
Hello, Dolly!
and
Mame
? Could it have been as Paul Gregory suggested that, “Ginger was very
jealous of Agnes — no doubt Agnes stole the show, so Ginger acted very
childish and refused to rehearse or dance”? It is clear that in the story of
The
Pink Jungle
there was only one winner — Agnes, who won the reviews and
the respect of her co-workers and producer. The losers were Paul, who lost a
fortune, and, at least temporarily, Ginger Rogers.

As the old decade turned into the new Agnes was putting herself back on
the market. She had fully expected that she would be spending most of
1960 in New York working in
The Pink Jungle
on Broadway. But with the
show closing in Boston and not likely to open again she needed to take
what she could to garner the income she needed. In 1960 alone, she would
appear in nine television dramas or series. One which she enjoyed was an
appearance on the anthology series,
Ford Startime
in a piece titled “Closed
Set”; the writer was Gavin Lambert, who had worked with Agnes on the
film
The True Story of Jesse James,
and they had formed a friendship. Also
cast was Joan Fontaine, who Agnes had not worked with since the chilly
atmosphere of
Jane Eyre
nearly twenty years earlier. But they had seen each
other over the years at various social and entertainment events and had
gotten closer — not really friends, but friendly acquaintances.

In February, Agnes would appear on her final episode on
Suspense,
a
series she had made well over thirty appearances on, doing yet another
adaptation of “Sorry, Wrong Number.” She was still referred to as “The
First Lady of Suspense.” It seemed fitting that as radio drama was coming
to an end that Agnes would make one final appearance on this show, one
of the last survivors of Radio’s classic era, in a part which meant so much
not only to the show but to Agnes. With the possible exception of doing a
small portion of it in her one-woman show, this would be Agnes’ final, fulllength, fully realized performance as Mrs. Elbert Stevenson.