The Films of Agnes Moorehead by Axel Nissen (review)

The title is accurate. The Films of Agnes Moorehead offers an overview of the actress’s sixty-three feature films, each of which receives its own chapter consisting of a concisely written essay that includes a plot synopsis, a critical evaluation, production information, credits, release dates, and awards. For Moorehead’s most important film, Citizen Kane (1941), in which her minor role created a major sensation in the extraordinary long take in which she revealed her readiness to sell her son to a bank so he could have the dream life that the owner of a boarding house could not give him, Nissen offers new information to readers who know about all the technnical innovations: the high and low angle shots, the faux newsreel, the deep focus photography. She present fascinatings material about the production itself, the shooting schedule (including Moorehead’s alleged four days of work), and cast members that are usually ignored (George Coulouris as Thatcher, Buddy Swann as the eight-year-old Kane).

Nissen is an indefatigable researcher, and The Films of Agnes Moorehead is the result of interviews with various eyewitnesses: for example, producer Paul Gregory, who was instrumental in arranging her first venture into theatre when she became part the First Drama Quartet in Shaw’s Don Juan in Hell, in which she played Doña Ana, opposite Charles Laughton, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, and Charles Boyer; and Olivia de Havilland, who was quite informative about the filming of Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Nissen has also made extensive use of archival sources, including Moorehead’s papers at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research and the Billy Rose Theater Division of the New York Library of the Performing Arts.

The Films of Agnes Moorehead is a tribute to the actress’s repertoire of characterizations, each of which is painstakingly created and devoid of stereotyping. She could play mothers (Citizen Kane, Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, The Stratton Story, Fourteen Hours), aunts (Jane Eyre, Tomorrow the World, Johnny Belinda), queens (The Swan, The Story of Mankind), nuns (Scandal at Scourie, The Singing Nun), a Chinese peasant (Dragon Seed), a murderer (Dark Passage), a mistress (Mrs. Parkington), a madam (The Revolt of Mamie Stover), a WAC (Keep Your Power Dry), a prison warden (Caged), a nurse (Magnificent Obsession), a best friend-confidante (All That Heaven Allows), a domestic (Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte) and an evangelist (What’s the Matter with Helen?). If Lon Chaney was “the man of a thousand faces,” Agnes Moorehead was a woman whose range may not have been infinite but came pretty close.

Nissen intersperses facts about Moorehead’s life throughout the book. It might have been better if he had include a complete biographical sketch at the beginning, although he does acknowledge other works (for example, Lynn Kear’s Agnes Moorehead: A Bio-bibliography [London: Greenwood, 1992]) in the bibliography for those who prefer a “Life of” as opposed to a “Films of” approach.

The life is in the details, which are revealing. She was better educated than most of her contemporaries: a bachelor’s degree in biology from Muskingum, a master’s in English and Public Speaking from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and a doctorate in English from Baylor. She was also a 1929 graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in the same class as Rosalind Russell. Unfortunately, they never worked together.

Her career began in radio, where she appeared on a variety of programs, the best known being Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre on the Air. That led to a career in a new medium when Welles cast her in Citizen Kane, in which she brought Mary Kane to life with a minimum of dialogue.

I had the good fortune to see Agnes Moorehead in person on three occasions. In 1954, she appeared at the Jewish Community Center in Scranton, Pennsylvania in her one-person show, the climax of which was a recreation of Sorry, Wrong Number, which was first aired on Suspense in 1943. She portrayed a...