(My Travels with) Agnes Moorehead – The Lavender Lady (5 page)

Agnes Moorehead’s father was a Presbyterian minister and she was, as I’ve mentioned, a fundamentalist; very hot on prayer and the Bible into which she would plunge at a moment’s notice. It was her crutch. It was important to her. A strong woman, she too needed support. She said, “My life has been ruled by my belief. Religion was always part of my childhood and it was this very education and training which made it possible for me to cope with these many problems without getting ulcers or rushing to consult an analyst.” She really didn’t think much of them. I really should have taken a clue. “I believe in the efficacy of prayer. I am a self-disciplined person and the Bible is my security, guiding me in that discipline.”

This was a woman who had complete confidence in herself. She lived right, followed the Golden Rule and, though her weakness was money, she was a decent, fine human being. “You know she can fight it. I’ve had my share of disappointments. I grew up in the depression, but I was prepared to stand up to adversity and to face any situation, not escape from it. You hear so much talk about freedom today, but there can be no freedom without discipline. If you do not learn how to control your emotions, you are a slave to them in your every move. Permissiveness in society springs from the lack of standards. There must be a rule of behavior, an appreciation for basic values.” She intimated it. She believed in following the concepts of the Bible. You see, Agnes Moorehead was a complicated woman, yet she played her cards from strength. She said, “A child is born with a degree of primitive savagery and somebody must discipline it out of him. A child likes this discipline. He likes to know somebody cares. Discipline gives standards and values to live by, a basis for morality. Most young people don’t realize that.” I could have added that most adults don’t realize it, either. “It’s best to live by rules, especially if you believe in them.” Agnes Moorehead pointed that out and I agreed.

DRUDGE, DRUDGE, DRUDGE

At this time, the hippy movement was just beginning and she didn’t like it at all. It really was the opposite of what she had been preaching and living by. She said, “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 know where to turn because they have lost respect for those closest to them. Education in the school must merge with education in the home. I am sad for the rebellious youth who seek sensations in happenings that leave them unfulfilled. Where are the happy faces and laughter of the pure heart today? Such happiness can come only through hard work and prayer and discipline.” Always she put emphasis on that word “discipline.” As it turned out, she was right in almost everything she said. She’d go on for hours, I was to discover, about the lack of discipline of today’s young people. “I am proud to mention in our household there are still manners, she huffed. “If a lady comes into a room, my son has been trained to stand and remain standing until that lady is seated. People used to object. ‘He’s so little’, they’d say.’ Her eyes opened wider as she played those shocked individuals who objected. “He’s so young,” she mimicked.

I thought, feeling so privileged to hear these things from her personal life, so honored and in awe. Little did I know that her son Sean, a foster son, had run away from home. In other words, it all sounded good, but it hadn’t worked. More reason for her to concentrate further on her strict rules for life. Then she became herself, facing that interference righteously. “My son has been trained that way, I tell them, and I’ll thank you not to break his training. Now he does it and people like it. They do. They do,” she asserted, as if trying to convince herself. “It beats a man not holding a door for a girl and then telling her, ‘What’s the matter with your arm?’” she nudged sleazily, “‘can’t ya’ open a door?’” She took a breath and thought again. “I am an idealist, “she stated. “I believe that, in the course of living a life of embarking on a goal and the certain truths that go with honest living, after these precepts have been formulated, then one must set out alone, single-handedly, uncompromisingly in these tenets. No one else can do it for you.”

Her intensity was an inner fire that flowed out to us through her incredible animation. Her school was not to teach acting, but to teach living. I was aware of that from the very beginning. She wanted to teach us how to be good, successful human beings and to enjoy life and, yet, to live by strict rules. “I try to transmit this to others. Truth and faith are the cardinal rules for life and for the theatre, and one achieves them only through discipline. Because of this discipline and its guiding light—prayer—I am not afraid of anything.’ That wasn’t exactly true. She was absolutely terrified of flying. I didn’t find that out for a long time.

‘The religious upbringing I got from my parents gave me dimensions and direction, a heritage more meaningful than a legacy measured in dollars. And this is something I’ve carried into my professional life. The theatre and the stage is a church or a religion to many fine actors, “she told us, “and we must regard it with a certain reverence.”

How happy I am today that I took a tape recorder to class and captured all those words. It was an indication of the kind of a person she was. It was all good advice. Maybe she didn’t follow it completely herself, but it worked for those who did follow it. She was a fine, strict, stern woman. A perfect woman to serve as an example for the young. “For me, the stage was like a church’, she said. “It is the responsibility of the theatre to widen the sympathies and broaden the intellect and sweeten the heart. As actors, you must surround yourselves with beautiful people, music, art, and you will become beautiful. Elevate your minds and beings. Remember that we are ladies and gentlemen.” I thought, “Yes, Agnes, I’m with you.” Oh, she sang those grand words. I haven’t kept track of her students and what has happened to them. I’m sure that every one of them had a richer, better life for taking those classes with her. That is whether they made stardom or not. It certainly helped them through life.

“The easiest thing in the world’s to drop down into bad manners and sloppy speech. You must learn the manners of ladies and gentlemen and how to speak well. An unpleasant voice has probably been an underlying cause for many marriage break-ups as well as lost opportunities and careers. It does bad things to you to have to listen to a voice which splinters the ear. Speech is not as obvious a type of beauty as that which reaches the eyes, but its impact is powerful. Then you put speech together with appearance.” Mauve glaring above her eyes, she fixed us with a heavy-lidded stare like a snake hypnotizing its prey, rendering us impotent. “The theatre is like a church and I don’t have actors in this class who need haircuts, and the girls dress like ladies. I cannot bear a slovenly, careless person. Careless people think they’re free. They’re really slaves to themselves. The only free person is a disciplined person. Only the disciplined person can become beautiful.”

It was all so lovely, so rich, so endearing, so hypnotic. Any man worth his salt would have fallen in love with her. It had nothing to do with looks, appearance. It had to do with soul. She said, ‘The undisciplined person can be semi-starved for truth which is, I believe, his inner spring of vision and action. What is more honorable than having clear sight and the courage and strength to maintain it? I believe such clarity is very rare”, she judged, ‘but it is this alone which elevates one.” I could only think what a fabulous move it was for me to become involved in this school. What an education to understand both acting and people and the world, and she was so willing to give of herself.

I was in heaven. All these things I’d already learned from the Catholic Church: to be nice and good and clean and, of course, not evil. Never evil. And loud and clear as that came through from her, it tied me to her tighter than ever. “She’s got it. She’s saying all the things I want to hear.”

“Great joy comes when one hungers after self-improvement”, she went on. She had some marvelous things she left with me that I’ll always carry with love. “But creativity depends on an open mind. I strive to keep expanding my capacity and my understanding. An actor should never constrict himself. I never stop learning, never stop working. Drudge.” She went on again about drudge. Drudge, drudge, drudge, drudge. Agnes could ramble on like a magpie and this is where she could get a little boring except that, with her theatricality, she could carry it off. (A lot of the other students who didn’t have the same thing for her I had were very bored. In fact, a lot just didn’t like her at all. A lot dropped out. I thought it was awful. They were desecrating Miss Moorehead. They were deserting her.)

Finally she got into acting. She wasn’t really well organized. I think she was torn between teaching acting and teaching students to be human beings. “The actor establishes the moods, but don’t put all your cards on the table. Establish the mood, then let the audience carry the scene for you. Let them participate.” This was something she repeated over and over. “Audiences are better actors than most of us. For instance, when you cry did you ever see any of these young actors and actresses?” she scoffed, scolding. “They have a crying scene and they cry and they just go ‘woooo’,” and her voice thrashed mercilessly at a skyscraper-high wail while her hands were flailing through the air in every direction. Then she stopped and fixed her eyes on us. “That’s not the way you do it. You start crying and, when the audience picks it up and starts crying, then you stop. And the same way with laughing or a drunk, you play a drunk. A lot of actors fall all over the stage. No. You play against being a drunk. You should have imagination and judgment. You don’t overdo. A man out of breath, you just elude to it. You don’t go ‘ohhhh’ and show your tonsils and vomit on the stage.” She was very annoyed about that. “No. Control.”

I was very aware that she was teaching us all how to be human as well as how to be actors, how to handle life and people, and she could do it herself. She didn’t only preach it. She did it. Some of her suggestions were exaggerations. Some went awry. But generally speaking, her words were full of truth. “Control. The actor always has to have control of the character he’s playing. Never let the character control you. I would hate to play with any of you who got so caught up in the action that you forget the audience or the other actors. Never. Know what you are about,” she demanded, her eyes ablaze, her back erect, her orange hair burning our eyes, her hand waving emphatically, that large ring glittering. “Know what you are about every time you’re on stage.”

Oh, did she harp on that. It was really the essence of her school. “Think on your feet. You cannot get involved.” I thought to myself, “So many of her students won’t appreciate this. They’ll wonder when will she tell us how to read words, how to walk from one side of the stage to another, how to interact with another actor, but what she’s talking about are really the basics.” I loved it. I appreciated it. She was really slamming the method actor because that’s all emotion and she said, “No. The audience gets involved but the actor never gets involved. If you become involved on the stage, you’re a mad man. What would you do if someone fell dead here on stage and during the play a man dies in your arms? What would you do? That happened to me once, you know.” Now everyone sat up and took notice. We wondered. It was like a detective story. What would you do? “But since I was involved in a play, I was able to cope. I began turning the play around, ad-libbing, writing a new story, holding the dead man. ‘What’s happened to Agnes?’ the stage manager thought” We felt him thinking it as she frowned, distraught. “This is a tragedy.” Something softer crept into her voice holding us spellbound. “Then someone looked through the wings and saw that the man was dead and rang down the curtain. Then came the slap of reality. You never hurt your audience, she preached. “Know what you are about.” What she said lasted forever with me and I know so many others also. And now I never see a movie or a play that I don’t think of Agnes. Many of the actors get involved and lose their character. Everything she said was right on and she was an example of all the things she preached.

“Bewitched” was her greatest triumph. She didn’t like it. It wasn’t enough of a challenge for her. It’s sad that the series that made her the most money should not have fulfilled her promotional needs. But how many marvelous movies she did and that she was certainly appreciated.

She related stories, laughed with us, had exchanges. What a show it was. She should have charged us admission just to watch her and listen to her. Never mind the learning how to be an actor. There was the learning of how to go through life. There was a certain closeness in that school, some lowered walls, but there always remained between herself and us the glamour of Agnes Moorehead, the mystique of the great performer. She had a million nuances and gestures for each separate story that made her always an exciting performer. She never got so involved in her stories or philosophies that she forgot that the purpose of her performance was to teach us something. The moral always came through at the end and that was the thing that impressed me and some of the others, and I started to see what she was all about and I thought, “God, she really knows what she’s doing.”

“Know what you are about. You have to know the purpose of every scene you’re doing. This is the polish of an actor. If you have one page of dialogue in the play, read the whole play. You have to know what every character in that play is about. I always read a play five times straight, all the way through, so I know the whole psychology of the play and where everyone comes in. Then you start working on your own lines because you have to know what went on before and is coming next so your attitude can be right for that scene, or else it does not work. And don’t let them tell you that it does, you’re just repeating lines. Even the smallest walk—on part of a play is important. You carry a sword on. Do it with dignity like a sword bearer because that is very important or they wouldn’t have written it in the script. You have to be disciplined. You must work. Drudge! And she went on again about drudge. I was writing drudge in my notes months later. People who had been to her school for four years were still taking the same notes: drudge, drudge.

“Know what you are about. You must know what you are about down to your hands and feet. Most actors don’t know what to do with their hands and feet on stage. Hands and feet are often the ugliest part of an actor’s performance. Next week we’re going to discuss the attitudes of the feet, that is, the nine physical attitudes of the feet and hands which express the psychological attitudes of the characters, such as slovenliness, self-possession and so forth.”

She was a consummate actress. What she said rang with truth and rang loud. She knew what made a good actor or actress. She had experienced it. She was intellectual and intelligent. I don’t say she ran her personal life properly, but her career life could never be criticized. She had a way of impressing her class by repeating and repeating. The feet and hands thing she repeated four weeks in a row. Finally, she gave us two or three positions. A month later she gave us two or three more. It took her four months to give us the nine attitudes of the feet. They were a thing from the notes she’d taken at the Academy and they were valuable. Even a purely intuitive actor must have technique to fall back on should intuition fail, as it sometimes must. Or if an actor gets ahead and must play the same character every day for years, you have to have something to fall back on, some technique to keep the performance fresh. You must know how to stand to get your character across the rows, just as you must know the technique of laughing and crying because there will be times when you just won’t feel it and you must be able to produce results nonetheless. The thing is, though, she could have covered all nine attitudes of the feet and hands in three hours if she hadn’t expounded on everything about discipline and the morality and the dirt and the drudge and all, and the contemporary theatre. Her disenchantment with the theatre and the mediocrity of actors today was really what most of her sessions were about. I don’t recall exactly what set her off at this point, but she was good for at least another hour.