Agnes Moorehead

Agnes Moorehead, under a portrait of herself, in her home at 1023 North Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills, just across the street from Lucille Ball’s and James Stewart’s houses. She lived here from the 1950’s to the 1970’s, and the house, built in 1926, was previously owned by Spencer Tracy. On Hallowe’en, Agnes Moorehead would thrill trick-or-treaters by dressing up as her “Endora” character on ‘Bewitched’ to hand out candy. Before appearing on the sitcom television programme ‘Bewitched’ (1964-1972), along with Elizabeth Montgomery, she was one of the most acclaimed character actresses during the Golden Age of Hollywood. She appeared in Orson welles’ ‘Citizen Kane’ (1941), also starring Orson Welles, Dorothy Comingore, Joseph Cotten, George Coulouris, and Ruth Warrick, as “Mrs. Reed”, my favourite performance of hers, in Robert Stevenson’s adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel, ‘Jane Eyre’ (1943), also starring Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine in the title role, Elizabeth Taylor, Margaret O’Brien, Peggy Ann Garner, Hillary Brooke, Henry Daniell, and Ethel Griffies, in Delmer Daves’ mystery thriller ‘Dark Passage’ (1947), also starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, in George Sidney’s Kern & Hammerstein musical ‘Showboat’ (1951), also starring Kathryn Grayson, Ava Gardner, and Howard Keel, and in Douglas Dirk’s ‘All That Heaven Allows’ (1955), also starring Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress four times, for Orson Welles’ ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’ (1942), also starring Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, and Tim Holt, in Tay Garnett’s ‘Mrs. Parkington’, also starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, in Jean Negulesco’s ‘Johnny Belinda’ (1948), also starring Jane Wyman, Lew Ayres, and Charles Bickford, and in Robert Aldrich’s ‘Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte’ (1964), also starring Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotten, Mary Astor, Cecil Kellaway, Victor Buono, Bruce Dern, and George Kennedy.