I Love the Illusion: The Life and Career of Agnes Moorehead (6 page)

She was to observe what took place, every movement, pantomime it,
then write about the type of character traits the person processed, giving
specific details by taking notes. Here are a few of her notes on what she
observed from the Plaza observation: “Three women come in — look
out of place. One woman seems very relaxed. One woman throws coat
around her, proceeds to take gloves off. Looks at watch. Crosses legs — gets
pocket book, looks for powder and proceeds to powder — looks around
her — puts powder back in pocket book — hands folded in lap — very
glamorous . . . One woman smoking — puffs long.” Of course this was
familiar territory for a girl who used to observe parishioners at her father’s
church and then mimic their various styles of praying.

One day as she was walking to her next class at the AADA, she heard a
male voice behind her say, “There goes the straightest back I’ve ever seen on
a girl.” She spun around to face the man whom within three years would
become her first husband, a fellow classmate who she had noticed once or
twice before, primarily due to his dark good looks — John Griffith Lee,
called Jack. Jack Lee was from a prominent northern California family. His
father, John Lee, Sr., was a headliner in Vaudeville as a ventriloquist and his
aunt, Harriet S. Lee, was apparently one of the originators of “Mother’s
Day.” One newspaper, which did a profile on Lee, described his early career
before the AADA: “He trouped with a ‘humpty dumpy’ stock company on
the West Coast, played in the Little Theatres of San Francisco, his native
city, and is a graduate of the Seargent’s school of New York and numerous
road companies.” Lee was one of the top male students attending the
Academy that term. Actor Elliott Reid, who befriended Agnes years later,
would recall that Lee “was a handsome man who dressed well in pinstripe
suits and was very charming — the perfect escort.”

Jack Lee had auditioned before the AADA some time after Agnes’
audition on March 27, 1928. His audition report describes him as 25 years
of age, 6’ and 168 pounds with dark hair. His proportions, physical condition,
personality and stage presence are all described as “good.” His voice is
described as nasal but his pronunciation is good. He gave an “intelligent”
reading with “enough” characterization. His temperament was described as
“vital-sensitive” and his imagination is “good.” Jehlinger summed up Jack’s
audition by writing: “should develop well — acceptable.”

Jack Lee later recalled that the AADA “didn’t favor young love.
Whenever they noticed any twos-ing among the embryonic thespians, it
was promptly nipped in the bud. Just what led them to encourage Aggie
and me, we don’t know. They really got behind the idea.” Agnes recalls that
the instructors at AADA seemed to believe that the pairing of her with Lee
was ‘inevitable.’ There was one teacher who used to make a low bow and
say, ‘I’ve saved a seat for you, Sister Moorehead, right next to Brother Lee.’
I used to get furious. It sounded like I was bribing the man.”

In her second year at the AADA, the students presented a series of plays
which were directed by prominent Broadway directors and presented at the
Lyceum Theatre on West 45th Street near Broadway — actually a part of
Carnegie Hall. On February 1, 1929, two plays were presented — a oneact play, in which Agnes played a character named Ah Mee,
Chinese Love
,
and the other play was the three-acter,
Innocent Anne
, which featured
Rosalind Russell and Jack Lee in prominent roles.
Billboard
wrote up these
presentations, stating, “Of the two plays given Friday afternoon by the
American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the short curtain raiser
Chinese Love
by Clare Kummer, was of far more importance from the standpoint of
individual performances than the three-acter,
Innocent Love
.” Of Agnes, the
reviewer wrote: “Agnes Moorehead is another who seems born for the stage
and she made much of a small role, as was to be expected.” Jack Lee, who
was in the less well-received full-length play, was praised for his performance:
“Jack Lee did some clever work and has enough personality to get him by
in any part.”

Two weeks later on Friday, February 15, 1929, Agnes appeared in
Gloria
Mundi
, described as a macabre one-act play in which the characters are
inmates of an insane asylum. It got good reviews and Agnes was one of
several actors complimented as “competent in their small parts.”

The biggest production presented by the senior AADA students was on
March 1, 1929 of Frederick Lonsdale’s comedy,
The Last of Mrs. Cheney
. As
it turned out, it would be the role which helped launch Rosalind Russell,
who was discovered by an agent who attended this performance. Russell
played the lead role of Mrs. Cheney. Also in the cast was both Agnes, as
Mrs. Wynton, and Jack Lee, as Charles.
Billboard
called this, the sixth
production of the AADA season, “easily the best work of the season and
showed just what these students can do once they get into their stride.”
Russell was lauded as “perfectly cast for the part and played brilliantly,
creating as exquisite and appealing a Mrs. Cheney as ever graced the boards.
Her work alone put the production well above the average.” Jack, in a
relatively big part as Charles, the gentlemanly crook, was also applauded for
“a very good performance.” Agnes along with two other young ingénues
were singled out as “very good in the minor feminine roles.”

Agnes’ big AADA production occurred in January with the play
Captain
Applejack
, which was the first production by the senior class of 1929. Agnes
had the leading female role of Anna Valeska in the popular comedy of that era.
Billboard’s
review maintains: “There was little fault to be found with the
performances of any of the cast. It was played smoothly throughout, and in
the boisterous second act the players manhandled each other with an almost
dangerous enthusiasm.” Agnes was applauded as “outstanding . . . She had a
fine intuition and gave a polished, almost flawless performance.” Like the
other plays presented by the AADA students during the next week,
Captain
Applejack
was given a week-long run at the Columbia University Theater.

In addition to these plays,
Agnes also appeared in
The First
Year, The Best People,
and
The
Springboard
during her time at
the AADA. As a result of her
performances in these productions
Agnes was offered an opportunity
to join a stock company in
New Orleans, which she declined
because she believed that it
would be of more value to finish
up with the AADA, and the added
opportunity of appearing on
Broadway in the AADA productions
was too great to pass up.

Agnes graduated from the
AADA on March 18, 1929, in
a ceremony which featured Edward
G. Robinson as commencement
speaker. Of some 350 students in
her class only two would really
make it — Agnes and Rosalind
Russell. At first many thought that
Jack would also be among those
who had an excellent opportunity to make the grade given his fine work at
the Academy. In fact, he would soon be cast in a Broadway show in a role
which would generate a great deal of publicity despite his only uttering at
most three lines and being killed off early in the first act.

Shortly after graduation Agnes visited Columbus, Ohio, where her
parents and sister moved to in 1925 as Dr. Moorehead took over yet
another pastorate. She stayed for about a month and then it was back to
New York and hitting the pavement in hopes of finding an agent. She
was given a list of theatrical managers in New York City — some 66 of
them including Jed Harris and George M. Cohen. It was shortly after she
was back in New York that she received word from her mother that her
sister, Margaret, had suffered a heart seizure. Margaret was taken to the
Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, one of the best heart hospitals in
the country.

Shortly after learning the news, Agnes was told that the emergency had
passed and that there was no reason for her to come at once. Mollie wrote
to Agnes on Miami Valley Hospital stationery:

My Dear Agnes,
I didn’t intend to . . . frighten you so last night . . . for I didn’t want that
word to go over the telephone but as you know what happened why you are
prepared for the worst if things don’t go on well. I came down early and
Margaret is sleeping — had a fair night. They kept her doped and we have
two good nurses . . . we will send for you if we think things are going
against us. Mother came and is at the house, we dad and I can take turns
being here. I in the morning and he in the afternoon. Peg realizes now what
a mistake she made and says she was to blame and wants me to forget all
the trouble which I told her I would and ask her to forgive me for being
crass and unreasonable. I told her, she and you were the only things we had
in the world and we couldn’t lose her. She said she would fight and has
been. She says she took care of a girl who was worse than she is and she
pulled through. Agnes, I think Frank was cruel to her, for out of a clear sky
he said they would quit and she fainted and he never called me. And if he
had I could have watched her. I’ll try to keep calm and keep your dad
cheered up. Please think of us . . . He (her father) has been a peach and he
directed things when we needed a cool head around. Let us hear from you.
We all send love.
Lovingly yours,
Mother
This letter raises some questions. For one, who is Frank? It doesn’t
appear from obituaries that Margaret was married, so Frank could have
been a suitor. Mollie writes that Frank was “cruel” to Margaret and said
they would “quit” — does that mean that he told her they would break up?
It appears that after Margaret got this rejection, she fainted — or perhaps
had her seizure — but there had been a delay in getting her help. Mollie
also mentions that Margaret said she had “took care” of a girl “worse than
she,” which indicates that perhaps Margaret had been a nurse. Finally, what
was Margaret asking forgiveness from Mollie for? Was there a family
disagreement, along with a romantic rejection, which might have led to
Margaret’s attack?
According to the
Reedsburg Wisconsin Times
issue of July 19, 1929,
Margaret died on Monday, July 15, from a severe heart attack which had
struck on Wednesday, July 10. She was only 26. Agnes had been summoned
by telegram to come to Dayton the day before her death and, leaving
immediately, she arrived just before Margaret died.
Margaret’s passing hit Agnes hard. She wrote of her feelings in her
AADA notebook shortly after the funeral: “A week later — so many things
have happened and my own dear sister — where are you? Where can you
be? . . . How brave and courageous you are — to face death so young — how
you know our maker — the secret of life and death — you know . . . How
I wanted to see you — and yet the thought of seeing you . . . was beyond my
strength . . . I loved you — I love you now — you asleep in a little cold bed
in a tomb like the good father who created you. And you were beautiful . . . I
only wish you could talk to me sometimes . . . I know you are alive and well
and even so much better off than we. If you could only have come to us . . . Men
are so heartless — so cruel . . . Poor dear little girl, how your words of last
year ring in my ears, “you never loved a man like I have” — now you know
I have . . . your spirit will know -now you know how I feel toward Jack . . . My
little sister — I love you so — I have always loved you and prayed for your
happiness . . . I dreamed of you last night . . . I love you.” It is a sad and
anguished letter — hard at times to decipher. But many of the
sentences are clear as a drum, and the agony that Agnes feels engulfs the
reader. In the years which followed, she rarely spoke of her sister. (Since the
first edition of this book came out many sources have contacted me to say
that the reason there was so much mystery behind Margaret’s death, and the
reason Agnes rarely spoke of it, was because Margaret did not suffer a heart
attack but instead died from complications from a suicide attempt —
something rarely discussed back then.)