I Love the Illusion: The Life and Career of Agnes Moorehead (51 page)

But, while Sean may have lacked the maternal love he needed, he,
nevertheless, did live the privileged life of a celebrity’s child. Larry Russell
knew Sean off and on over the years when he and his brother came to live
with their very wealthy grandmother in Beverly Hills. His brother became
especially close to Sean — who liked to call himself Eric. “He told my
brother once that he called himself Eric because he didn’t want to be Sean.”
Occasionally, Agnes would also call him “Eric” to humor him but, “it was
usually in her
Agnes Moorehead voice
.” Russell recalls that he and his brother
were always welcome at Agnes’ home. “She never talked down to me. She
wasn’t too fond of my grandmother, though, as she thought that gran was
a ‘libertine.’ And if I was in Chez Agnese, I’d say that I was visiting because
with all those houses (his grandmother owned several homes), my
grandmother was cleaning. But she (Agnes) would laugh and say, ‘She’s
never cleaned anything in her life, dearie, not even her own jewelry!’ and
then she’d give me an ‘Endora’ look and we’d both laugh.” He says that
Agnes taught him how to pour and serve tea and that they both used to joke
that they were so good at it they could serve Queen Mary. “That harridan
bitch on the screen bears no resemblance to the real person,” Russell says
of Agnes.

Russell speculates that Sean was possessive, that he wanted Agnes to
belong only to him. He also believes that, like many adopted children or
foster children, Sean grappled with abandonment issues. Agnes was often
away from him, either on the road or when he was away at school, and that
may have made him feel more abandoned and insecure. He says that when
Agnes was gone, Sean could be very “bossy” and possessive of toys or even
food when other children were over. Russell recalls that he occasionally
helped Agnes in her garden, but when he came over once and Agnes wasn’t
there, Sean became very “snitty” with him, “but I just ignored him.” Agnes
once asked Russell if he liked Sean. “No,” Russell honestly admitted, to
which Agnes sighed, “Neither does anyone else.”

Debbie Reynolds recalls Agnes as a “strict disciplinarian. She expected
that from everyone around her — including her little boy.” When Sean
came home from Europe, where he was attending school, to live with Agnes
in Beverly Hills in 1963, Reynolds recalled that like other teenagers of that
era he wanted to grow his hair long but Agnes forbid it saying, “As long as
you’re in my home you’ll behave as I say.” She says that eventually Sean ran
away for about three weeks (it has been speculated that he went to San
Francisco) and that when he came back, his hair was long and Agnes told
him, “I’ll take you back as long as you cut your hair — but otherwise, no.”
He cut his hair but wasn’t happy about it and, according to Debbie, an
“ongoing duel of wills” erupted between the two and he wasn’t about to
bend and neither was she. Occasionally Reynolds did attempt to speak with
Agnes regarding her inflexibility. “I told her that she didn’t allow him any
breathing space and if you really loved him to let him be a young person
and she would say, ‘No, my way is the right way.’ I would agree with her
but added, ‘He has to learn and accept that on his own.’”

It was Debbie who Agnes called upon when Sean, at age 17, wanted to
quit school and enlist in the military and go to Vietnam. Agnes was
dead-set against it, wanting Sean to finish school. Debbie took Sean to a
Veterans Hospital, where many Vietnam War vets were being treated so that
he could both talk to the men and get a first-hand understanding of the
realities of war. It seemed to work and Sean abandoned his efforts to enlist.
Debbie felt she was able to accomplish more as a friend “talking straight”
to Sean than Agnes often could as a demanding mother. Debbie felt
sympathetic toward Sean. “I didn’t find Sean to be unusual. Some people
really think he was difficult. I found him to be well-spoken and nice with
me and my kids and very sweet. He went to the best of schools. He learned
to play piano and spoke French beautifully, but, when he rebelled, Agnes
wouldn’t allow it. She was inflexible.”

Agnes blamed “outside influences” mainly from the type of people Sean
wanted to associate with for causing a breech between them. Agnes would
try to steer him away from them but the more she did this the more he
would rebel and run away from home. He was influenced by the culture of
the times. Young men wore long hair and wild clothes and Agnes forbade
both. She didn’t approve of the type of music which he wanted to listen to.
“He wanted to be on his own, with his own friends,” Agnes would recall.
“We drifted apart.” He wanted to experiment with alcohol and drugs,
obviously something Agnes wouldn’t condone, so like many teenagers he
began to sneak it in. Debbie Reynolds wrote of Agnes finding empty beer
cans in his room. When he graduated from high school in 1966, Agnes
expected that he would go to college, but Sean didn’t want to. He wanted
to experience life a bit. Agnes tried to dissuade him. “He wouldn’t listen . . .
It was a shame, too. Because he is so bright so very bright.”

After graduation, Sean left home. “Sean is nowhere to be found,” Agnes
wrote to Georgia Johnstone. “The police have a warrant out for his arrest
as he evidently was cited for a traffic violation and didn’t show up. As far as
I know, he hadn’t a license to drive. It’s quite a heartbreak — he is absolutely
out of his mind — but I’ve done all I can. I’m only grateful I didn’t adopt
him. My lawyers say I am not liable for anything he might do. It’s tragic —
life deals some difficult blows. It’s depressing, Georgia.” Johnstone
sympathetically responded, “Barron (Polon, AM’s New York theatrical
agent) called me when he returned from L.A. and told me about the latest
difficulty with Sean. It is so hard for me to believe this young man could
turn out this way after having had so many wonderful opportunities. He
has had the best; you’ve given him everything money could buy. What in
the world is the matter with him? Perhaps he was given too much Agnes.
This so often causes a person to make no effort of their own.” Johnstone
goes on to add that Agnes must be “depressed” with this “disappointment”
and summed it up, “You have done your best. If Sean is so stupid as to
throw away all the advantages he’s been given one can only hope that one
day, when this reliably old world has given him the knocks you and I know
he will get, he’ll look back and realize what a wonderful life he had with
you.” This letter was sent to Agnes in September; a month later, Agnes was
still worried about Sean and Johnstone wrote back, “Please try not to worry
about Sean. I hope and pray everything will turn out well. You never can
tell about children. Sometimes they suddenly become responsible people.”

According to Debbie Reynolds the break finally came when Agnes found
a dismantled gun in Sean’s room. “She knew he was very angry at her, and
finding a gun made her afraid of something drastic. She confronted him
about it and he denied it.” She took Sean up to his room and opened the
drawer where she had found it, and “with that, she told him to leave.”
Asked what she thought happened to Sean, Miss Reynolds, silent for a
moment, softly said, “I don’t know for sure, but I think he became one of
the children of the street.” He did leave and he never came back. For the
last six years of Agnes’ life she never saw him again, though she would
occasionally hear from friends about him and once or twice he may have
tried to contact Agnes for money, but she had washed her hands of him.

Agnes later told a reporter, “All I can do is pray that he’ll follow the
principles I’ve taught him and make his way independently and successfully.”
What became of Sean? Nobody really knows. It is one of the mysteries
of Agnes’ life. Once he left, it was as if all traces of him vanished. There was
speculation that he finally went to Vietnam. But Larry Russell says that
Sean and Russell’s brother, Mark, went to Switzerland and for a while lived
off the good graces of actress Paulette Goddard. Eventually Russell’s brother
returned, but not with Sean, and he too lost contact with him. Quint
Benedetti says that Agnes would occasionally, while they were alone together
driving across country to yet another one-woman show, let her guard down.
She would mention Sean, wondering what became of him and questioning,
though not really wanting an answer, what she had done wrong.

By the late 60’s Quint Benedetti was accompanying Agnes across country
by automobile in his role as stage manager and promoter of her one-woman
shows. Benedetti maintains that his business know-how in negotiating the
deal to locate her acting school at the Santa Monica Playhouse had
impressed Agnes so much that he was made correspondence secretary and
eventually her road manager, and in doing so greatly increased the fee she
charged for her one-woman show from $1,500 per show to approximately
$5,000. Quint says that when they drove across country Agnes would open
up to him in a way she would never do otherwise. Often they would travel
by automobile because of Agnes’ dislike of airplanes with Quint driving or
her chauffeur, Rochelle. What bonded her to Quint was religion; two of
Quint’s brothers were Catholic priests. They could spend hours speaking
about theology — not that Quint was an especially religious man by this
time, but he grew up in a very strict Catholic household. “She was pious
but she could also be outrageous,” Quint recalls. They also enjoyed playing
standard car traveling games such as “what does that cloud look like” or
who could identify the most license plates from different states. Agnes
enjoyed stopping in small cafes just to have a hamburger “drenched with
catsup.” Fans recognized her and approached her, but if it got to be too
much, Quint would “politely, but in a firm way, tell them that ’Miss
Moorehead is trying to enjoy her meal.’ ” While Agnes usually made time
for her fans, she didn’t like being disturbed when she dined. Besides
religion, Agnes would open up on other personal subjects which she rarely
spoke of to anyone else — such as her failed marriages. To Quint, she
described Jack Lee as “an abusive alcoholic” and said that Robert Gist “just
used her to get ahead.” She also let him in on her feelings about never
winning the Oscar. “She said that it isn’t everything, but she would have
liked to have won.”

When it came to paying her help, Quint maintains that Agnes was very
tight and would “forget” to pay them or try to underpay them.
Occasionally, Freddie and Polly would come to Benedetti and ask him to
remind Agnes that they hadn’t been paid. “Sometimes you had to press her
about what was owed, saying you owe me X amount of dollars and be firm
about it.” It wasn’t only her housekeepers who got shortchanged, but also
himself. “I would tell her we need to sit down and discuss it and go over
the figures. I had everything down, the bookings and the expenses,
everything that was owed, and she would get mad because it was a business
thing and I would tell her, ‘you owe me this,’ and she was very tight.”
Eventually she would pay them what was owed. But Agnes, herself, “wasn’t
a good business woman.” She was continually, despite the large income she
got from
Bewitched
, in debt
— primarily because she
was “pouring thousands
and thousands of dollars
into building her dream
house” on her farm in
Ohio, where Quint maintains that Agnes intended
to go into semi-retirement
by 1975. Yet if she saw an
expensive antique, “she
wouldn’t pass it up.” While
Agnes could be very tight
when it came to wages, she
was generous in other ways with gifts or including her employees in her lavish
parties. Quint has come to the conclusion that Agnes was a “very complicated
lady,” someone who could tell one person one story and another person a
different story — whichever best suited her purposes at the time.

But, despite this, Quint was “very fond” of Agnes because “she gave me
back my self-respect.” When he came to work for her he had just gone
through a difficult divorce and was estranged from his two daughters. He
had been a gay man living a lie. When at home he was a family man, but
when he was out on the road he would have one-night stands with other
men. Due to his strict Catholic upbringing he often felt guilt. By the time
he began working with Agnes he was an “emotional wreck.” “I felt I was the
worst person in the world,” Quint recalls of that time, “but Agnes gave me
a chance.” He was able to rebuild his life. While he says, “I came out (of
the closet) a little bit to myself. But not to anyone else,” he accepted his
sexuality and began to take part in the Hollywood gay social scene. He says
that despite Agnes’ strong fundamentalist beliefs she was very accepting of
homosexuals. He says that a choreographer, who was gay, lived in an
apartment on her property, and that at one point Agnes even asked Quint
if he wanted to move in, but because he was involved with somebody at the
time he declined. Many of her close friends were known to be gay in the
industry, including her frequent escort and friend, Cesar Romero. Still,
Quint didn’t feel that he could speak freely with Agnes regarding his own
homosexuality. He once told her that he was in therapy and she scoffed,
“All you need is God and the Bible.”