I Love the Illusion: The Life and Career of Agnes Moorehead (37 page)

During the summer of 1961,
Agnes accepted a part in a
mammoth motion picture,
How the West Was Won,
which
would utilize three directors
including George Marshall and
John Ford. Agnes’ section of
the picture would be directed
by her old friend Henry
Hathaway. The film would
feature an all-star cast: James
Stewart, Carroll Baker, Debbie
Reynolds, George Peppard,
Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck,
Richard Widmark and John
Wayne. The nearly three-hour
epic would tell the story of the
expansion of the American

West through the eyes of the Prescott Family on their move west. Agnes was
cast as the mother of Baker and Reynolds, with Karl Malden cast as the
father. The family travels both by wagon train and then by raft, and meets
up with a mountain man (Stewart), whom one of the daughters, Baker, falls
in love with. Along the way the family also tangles with river pirates and
gets caught up in deadly rapids. It was not to be an easy shoot.

Location shooting would take place about two hours outside of Paducah,
Kentucky. That meant that every morning the cast had to rise at five a.m.
to get made up and make the long car ride to the location, then finish up
by five thirty or six at night and another long drive back to the hotel that
the cast and crew were staying at in Paducah. As usual, when working under
such conditions, the cast and crew bonded. The long rides to and from
location allowed Agnes to reacquaint herself with Karl Malden and director
Hathaway. Hathaway was called “Screaming Henry” by Malden because of
his reputation for yelling at actors. “He was a good director, a wonderful
director from the old school. He knew how to put a film out and didn’t use
a bunch of tricks like Hitchcock did, but he screamed at everybody — it
was his way to heighten dramatic tension — but I loved him.” So did
Agnes, who would always regard Hathaway as one of her favorite directors.

Jimmy Stewart also added to the camaraderie on the set. “Jim was a
professional,” recalled Malden. “Nothing highfalutin’ about him — he ate
a sandwich with the rest of the cast and crew. There was no temper with
Jim. I remember one day on the picture. I was five years younger than he
was, yet I was playing this old man, the father of one of the girls he was
romancing. I said to him, ‘How is it that you are five years older than me
and like me you wear a hair piece and yet you still play romantic leads?’ He
told me he would gladly switch with me if he could have my teeth!”

Carroll Baker would recall one dangerous day when a controlled fire on
location went out of control. “In one scene in our movie the family was
required to witness a trading post burn to the ground. Karl and Agnes were
in the background, Debbie and I were in the foreground nearest the fire,
and in between were our two brothers, one of whom was stretched out on
the ground with his leg in a splint in order to match an earlier sequence. A
Life
magazine photographer was up a tree ready to capture the action in
stills. Henry found the first four attempted fires both unspectacular and
unsatisfactory. He lost his temper and began to heckle the special effects
men into giving him a fire worthy of Cinerama. Too much oil was used on
the fifth take. The fire instantly became a roaring blaze which swept rapidly
over the rest of the set and all nearby trees. Debbie and I instinctively
grabbed hands, turned and jumped straight into the river. Then Karl and
Agnes and the one brother followed suit. The other boy couldn’t move
because of the splint, and was screaming to be rescued. The
Life
photographer
was yelling ‘help!,’ as he was caught in the middle branches of a tree, which
was rapidly burning toward him from the top and the bottom. But Henry
was yelling, ‘Save the camera! Save the camera!’ All eventually were saved,
but needless to say the camera was the first out.”

But the long location shoot also brought together Agnes and Debbie.
They had known each other at MGM and met at parties throughout the
years but their friendship really formed on
How the West Was Won
. One of
Debbie’s first impressions is that Agnes was a serious person, “. . . but I also
discovered that she had a very dry ‘inside’ type of humor and she loved to
laugh. At first she could frighten anyone off but after she got to know you,
the gate came down.” Agnes later said, “You know, it’s rare to form a lasting
friendship from making a picture together. But Debbie and I have formed
a friendship that has lasted.” One day, during the long location shoot,
Debbie approached Aggie and said, “I admire you so much and I want to
be your friend.” Agnes, somewhat dramatically, replied, “Then you shall
be.” One of the things that brought the two together was a similar sense of
humor. “Debbie has an incredible sense of humor,” said Agnes. “Both
Debbie and I manage to see the funny side of things . . . we both have this
zany sense of humor. That may surprise a lot of people, I’m sure because I
always seem to appear so austere and seem to play those types of roles mostly.
We both, Debbie and I have a deep faith in God, too.” The relationship
blossomed as Agnes and Debbie made the long back and forth car ride to
the location set together and often sat together gabbing between scenes and
set-ups on the set.

As Debbie got to know Agnes, her admiration grew. “I thought she was
quite brilliant. She carried herself with great poise and dignity.”
Occasionally Debbie, like many actors, would go to Agnes for acting
advice. She never came away disappointed, often more hopeful with a
better understanding of what the part or scene in question was calling for.
Their bond was close and in the eyes of both Debbie and Agnes it was akin
to a mother and daughter relationship, especially since Debbie was more
than thirty years younger than Agnes. Debbie’s then-husband, Harry Karl,
also became close to Agnes and, according to Debbie, Harry on more than
one occasion tried to play matchmaker and fix Agnes up with one of his
friends or acquaintances. “Harry was always trying to find a man who
would protect her and love her,” according to Debbie. He never succeeded.
Nor did Debbie, who, on occasion, would be on the lookout for a possible
romantic interest for Agnes. “I tried setting her up a few times, but it always
turned out to be quite ordinary men — Agnes needed someone unique.
Perhaps someone from a University setting who had intelligence and taste,
someone who could stimulate her intellectually. She never found that man.
She would tell me, ‘you know, Debbie, the way it is going, it is going to be
you and I to the end.’” The Karls and Agnes lived a block-and-a-half away
from one another in Beverly Hills and, after the picture wrapped, the
friendship continued with Agnes often invited to the Karls’ for dinner,
“sometimes two or three times per week.” It was a friendship which would
mean more to Agnes than any other in the last decade of her life, as Debbie
became one of the few people she would be comfortable in confiding in
about her personal life and about her increasingly difficult time with her
son, Sean, when the boy hit his teenage years.

After about a month of location work interrupted by storms, illnesses
(both Malden and Baker came down with serious illnesses during the filming)
and fire, the company moved back to MGM in Culver City to complete
shooting. If they thought that things would be easier at the studio they were
in for a rude awakening. According to Carroll Baker, the studio utilized a
large tank with back projection from the Kentucky location, with “high
powered” fans to whip up wind, and wave machines to simulate the
currents. They put herself, Debbie, Agnes and Karl on a raft going down a
river with technicians rocking it back and forth. “The logs of the raft were
slippery,” recalls Baker. “There was nothing to brace your feet against, and
very little to hang on to for support. Physically, it was hardest for Karl who
had not fully recovered from his operation . . . Debbie, Agnes and I were
most frightened of being dragged under and getting our long skirts caught
up in the mechanism, where we might have been trapped and possibly
drowned before we could have been released. Once the camera rolled, they
began making the raft leap, blasting us with forty-mph winds and hitting

us with walls of freezing cold water.
No acting was necessary. They simply
filmed what our real struggles and
our expressions of genuine terror.”

The picture soon wrapped and
while the shoot was uncomfortable
and full of bugs (literally) and
dangerous situations on location and
off, Agnes came back with a new
friend and an excitement for the
picture. She anticipated it would be a
huge box office hit and would give
her film career a needed boost.