I Love the Illusion: The Life and Career of Agnes Moorehead (54 page)

But Agnes wasn’t keeping her opinion of contemporary morals only
between herself and Georgia, she used her status in the industry and access
to the media to speak out. The
Detroit Free Press
asked the question, “Will
there be Brotherhood in the 70’s?,” to which Agnes was selected to give a
response. “Unless the country and the people in it go back to some
Christian principles, there will be no peace. We must really care for each
other. Just being polite is caring for your fellow man, but these times call
for a great deal more than that. There is nothing more inspiring or so
infectious as a good example. I am a religious person and I think that the
hope of the world is in the Prince of Peace whose principles, if they were
followed, would bring a greater understanding between human beings.”

She told the
LA Times
that the youth of 1970 needed more discipline.
“Materialism has brought about confusion and decadence. The youth of
today have their eyes open to what harm has been done by measuring a man
by the size of his bank account, and I feel sorry that so few of them know
where to turn because they have lost respect for those closest to them.”
And, “Permissiveness in society springs from a lack of standards. There
must be a rule of behavior, an appreciation of basic values.” Perhaps she was
thinking of Sean when she said that.

When asked about
Oh, Calcutta,
the play where most of the cast sheds
its clothes and appears nude on stage, Agnes said, “Nudity begins at home.
After all who wants to see everybody flying around in their birthday suit?
It takes all the magic and illusion out of the theatre.”

Photoplay
magazine asked “Should prostitution be legalized?” Actress
Barbara McNair wrote in the affirmative. Agnes argued differently.
“Legalizing prostitution wouldn’t make any difference these days anyway.
The whole country is loose, so what’s the difference . . . I don’t care what
everybody else is doing. I just look at whether it’s right or wrong.”

This Lioness found plenty to roar about in this turbulent era of open sex,
drugs, and rock n roll, protests in the streets over civil rights, women’s
rights, gay rights and the war in Vietnam. If only the young people would
go to church and their parents would stop pampering them. Agnes had
become the ultimate establishment figure. After years of publicly staying
neutral in political campaigns, she embraced the conservative movement
and openly supported her old friend Ronald Reagan the both times he ran
for Governor. She felt that the State had to get tough with the universities
and colleges where decadence was “running rampant.” In 1972, when the
Democrats nominated George McGovern, the antiwar candidate who was
painted as pro-abortion and pro-acid, she openly came out for Richard
Nixon.

In April 1970, Agnes received a great honor from Rep. Phillip Philbin
(R-MA) when she was recognized as one of the “Great Living Bay Staters”
from her home state of Massachusetts. Rep. Philbins’ words of commendation
were read into the Congressional Record: “I deemed it a special honor as
well as a pleasure to present the award to the famous Miss Moorehead, a
distinguished and delightful lady . . . Her entire professional career comprises
one success after another in virtually every field of the performing, dramatic
arts . . . She won fame as a founder, an organizer, an innovator, a charter
member, and player with many of the most famous people in the theater . . .
Her great talents stand out like the Washington Monument, and have won
her credits and honors too numerous to mention.” It was truly a great
honor on behalf of her birth state and genuinely deserved.

In the fall of 1970, while she was filming
Bewitched
, Agnes accepted one of
her few lead roles in a motion picture, an offer by producer Jack Clement
to appear in the film,
Dear, Dead Delilah
. “The seven weeks we spent filming
. . . had Agnes darting back and forth to the West Coast and moonlighting
between
Bewitched
segments in order to be with us,” production manager
Fred Carmichael would recall. “She would phone me one day and say she
could be on such and such a flight and would be able to stay three or four
days. And she would add that if I met her at the plane, allowed a half hour
to the mansion where we were shooting, she could be in makeup immediately
and work through the night if necessary. What a trouper she was! Words
can never capture her almost desperate desire for perfection and total
dedication to her craftsmanship.”

Delilah
is a gothic horror film shot on the cheap in Nashville by a
company called Southern Star Pictures. It tells the story of a woman who as
a young girl is accused of killing her mother with an ax. All the evidence
points to her. After many years in a correctional center for women she is
released, now middle-aged (the character “Luddy” is played by Patricia
Carmichael, wife of the production manager of the picture, Fred). While in
a park sketching, she is accidentally knocked unconscious and taken to the
mansion of a wheelchair-bound woman named Delilah (Agnes) who takes
a liking to her and invites her to stay on as her housekeeper. While Luddy
is in Delilah’s home, many strange things begin to happen to her, including
waking to find a bloody hatchet in bed with her. Delilah is surrounded by
greedy relatives who may wish to speed up her death. They use the strange
circumstances of Luddy’s mother’s death, and her incarceration for the
crime, in their own efforts to do away with Delilah — or do they?

During production, one of the younger players came on the set wearing
a cast on his broken arm. Agnes, always the professional, took the actor
aside and lectured him on his unprofessional behavior in allowing such a
thing to happen. Fred Carmichael would recall, “Agnes told him how silly
he was to risk himself when he had signed to do a film and (that he)
‘belonged to the producer and owed it to the producer to take care of himself.’
Then she launched into a long speech on the meaning of craftsmanship in
our business and what the actor ought to do about it and what he should
bring to it.” Carmichael would recall that he often wished that lecture
Agnes gave the young actor had been recorded so he could “play it for each
young actor whenever they came for an audition or interview. It was
glorious. She had such a respect and love for the business.”

The last scene that Agnes shot was her own death scene, which occurs at
the end of the film. In the scene, Agnes has collapsed and is on the ground
and several different takes were to be done of her position on the ground.
It was a long shoot and between shots, Carmichael asked Agnes if she wanted
to rest in a trailer. “No,” Agnes answered. “It would waste time to have to
get me back into the same position.” So she spent her time, between takes,
lying on the cold ground. Carmichael recalls that when on the set Agnes
commanded respect, “she seemed to demand it by her very presence more
than anything else.” He said the grips would stop swearing when she
showed up on the set. “Once when I brought her onto the set, they were
ripping off four letter words, she gave a quiet ‘shhh’ and that was it.”

Carmichael recalls Agnes’ “delicious sense of humor.” He remembered
that they once went to a local diner for lunch and the manager, apparently
not knowing who she was, asked her if anyone had ever mistaken her for
Endora in
Bewitched
. To which Agnes replied, “Yes, I was, and would you
like to be turned into a frog?” The manager “literally” backed out of the
room “and was not seen again.” He says that she would often do impressions
and one which really “astounded” them was her “excellent” imitation of
Hermione Gingold from the play,
A Little Night Music
.

Carmichael recalls Agnes’ tender side and her love of animals. On one
occasion he drove her from Nashville to her farm in Ohio, a ten-hour trip,
and the entire time Agnes had a kitten on her lap — a stray she had found
and would give a home to on her farm.

Though the film was shot in 1970, but was not released until 1972, and
then mostly in southern and Midwestern markets. In a letter to Agnes dated
January 17, 1971, Fred Carmichael wrote that he had just seen a rough-cut
of the picture and wanted to let her know how things were progressing.
“The film was most interesting and brought back so many memories. Had
seen some of the cutting, and I must say we do have an excellent editor, and
was great to see the whole thing more or less in order . . . I think you will
be very pleased with the picture.” He ends the chatty letter by mentioning
that he “trusts the movie with Shelley went well. She is a — well, volatile
person. Pat (who had recently directed her in a stage show) had her
troubles but they ended up respecting each other in their respective areas
which is always a good thing.” Carmichael is referring to a movie which
Agnes had actually shot after
Dear, Dead Delilah,
but would be released
before it, another horror film,
What’s the Matter With Helen?
, and Shelley
was the wonderful but temperamental actress, Shelley Winters. The film
was co-produced by Debbie Reynolds, who asked Agnes to appear in a
cameo role as Sister Alma, an Aimee Semple McPherson-like Evangelist.
Reynolds, herself, had her run-ins with Winters. “We had some of the
biggest battles of my life. I loved the picture and hated the work (Thanks
to Shelley).”

In February 1971, Agnes was sent a script for the film
Dutch Treat
, written
by Marc Zagoren and David Meranze, whose accompanying note said that
they were “most eager to show you (the script) because we think you would
be so marvelous in the leading role.” The film is described as a “love story
about an energetic sixty-eight-year-old married woman from Philadelphia
who goes to visit her daughter in Amsterdam, and while there meets a
striking Portuguese gentleman a few years her senior. Much of the movie is
comedy, but any emotional involvement late in life is by nature poignant,
and so we have tried to make the movie’s resolution touching as well as
charming.” The script is included in the Moorehead collection at the
Wisconsin State Historical Society and it is indeed a charming project and
makes one wonder why she turned down such an opportunity to do this
film — certainly it gave her more to do than
Delilah
or
Helen,
but the film
was never produced at all.

She was staying busy
appearing in features and
made-for-television movies
between
Bewitched
. In the
spring of 1971 she did the
first of the two movies she
would appear in for ABC
during the 71–72 season,
Marriage: Year One
. It was
actually a pilot for a TV
series and starred Sally
Field and Robert Pratt as a
young married couple, and
it explores the difficulties
they encounter in their
first year of marriage —
the period of adjustment.
Veteran actor William
Windom played Sally
Field’s father, with Agnes
appearing as her grand
mother. Windom doesn’t
remember much of this
film, but does recall his
first encounter with Agnes.
“My only memory of

Marriage: Year One
was the sight of a dubious Miss Moorehead barging into
my dressing room to see if I ‘looked young enough to play her son.’”
Windom adds, “Naturally I have enjoyed her work as has most of the
civilized world, but that moment was mine alone.”

Conrad Binyon stayed in touch with Agnes through the years. He had left
acting and, due to his interest in aviation, he began a career in the United
States Air Force. In the early 1970’s he had befriended a fellow pilot, David
Guerra, his wife Dora and their two young children, Judith Ann and David
Andrew, known as “Tiger.” Both children suffered from a rare form of
paralysis called Verdnig-Hoffman Amyotonia, today known as Spinal
Muscular Atrophy, a terminal form of Muscular Dystrophy. “Tiger” died a
few days after his 4th birthday.