(My Travels with) Agnes Moorehead – The Lavender Lady (11 page)

“Oh, you were a male secretary at one time?” she was really grilling me. Then she asked me what I was doing now and I told her. I had left the sales place and was between jobs. The movie was being made, but I was not being paid regularly. The producer had run out of money. That’s the way it is in Hollywood. So many producers run out of money before the picture is finished.

“Are you looking for work?” she wanted to know. “How would you like to work for me?”

“Uh-huh. I’d like to.” Of course, I was in ecstasy, but I was also a little bit more down to earth now. I was the awed boy, yet also the businessman. That’s what she focused on, because she told me, “I’ve some important letters that I can’t entrust to anyone else. I need them written, typed and so forth. We’ll start with that and see how we do.” By the time we got to her house, I felt like we were old friends. Going into her driveway, Agnes smiled at me.

“Won’t you come in for some tea and cookies, Joseph? We can talk about this some more.”

“Yes, thank you.”

How things had changed. At her direction, I pulled up to the black, wrought-iron, grilled gate at the end of the driveway. It was still closed. I opened it and I drove on through to the garage beyond the back yard. I parked. After helping Agnes out of the car, I followed her back through the black grilled gate and closed it again behind us. Then I went with Agnes to the side entrance to her house and entered with her. It was the entrance I used from then on. It was the family entrance.

After that day, I never had time to go back to the acting school. And, though I did keep in contact with it in some capacity and thereby cleared up the questions I had about why certain people were students, how close the various students were to her and so forth. But the school did not occupy much of the time. It was only one part of the kaleidoscope of activities Agnes directed and to which I was gradually initiated.

Though I became her employee, it was something of a partnership. She leaned on me and she never ceased to be a star to me, an important, intelligent lady, a strange, eccentric lady—but a big star. I went to her house two to three times a week, starting as a secretary. You couldn’t be around Agnes, though, without her constantly finding jobs for you to do. She soon had me keeping her lavender

T-Bird in repair. Then I was chauffeuring her around, marketing with her—or, should I say, for her. I was doing things around the house. I was more or less—well, a husband but in name only. She relied on me for everything.

She brought it up often, and it was true, that she had to say a thing to me just once and it was done. And, if I must say so myself, done well.

She always said, “Know what you are, think on your feet.” That was exactly what I was doing.

My next big assignment from her was to help her organize a huge, celebrity-studded Christmas party. She was good with everyone in recognizing what their talents were and slotting them perfectly. She recognized my talent for pulling things together and got me involved with her accountant and public relations man. And, of course, in my secretarial capacity I was already corresponding with her cousin/attorney in St. Louis and her booking agents around the country, who handled her one woman show. That was close to her heart. What she seemed to be doing was exposing me to as much of her life as she could. She needed to test me, because she knew I could handle it, which I did.

Then her mother Molly came to visit. We hit it off very well and that made Agnes like me all the more. Meanwhile, I was getting to know Agnes, too. That woman you saw on the screen was not Agnes Moorehead. She fought for the underdog constantly. She ran her household flawlessly. She doted on her eighty year old mother. She had a fabulous sense of humor and she had a scale of different phone voices for various situations. She had a fantastic love for animals. She could talk on any subject. We discussed religion, her foster son, Sean, her father, the farm in Ohio that she grew up on. I saw her working constantly. The drudge she talked about in school, she did herself.

As our relationship evolved, she realized that I drudged like she did. When her next one-woman contract came to her, she said to me, “Joseph, how would you like to travel with me and be my road manager?” What a fantastic offer for me. I loved the idea. The show was called “An Intimate With The Fabulous Redhead.” As her secretary, I had typed the show, putting in the commas and the periods. Now I was going to help her do it. It was thrilling and something to look forward to.

I collected her four lavender suitcases and took her to the plane; while all the way there she doubted the plane’s airborne possibilities. She also travelled with all those dog-eared books of all shapes and sizes, which—except for her Dante chair and table, where the books were arranged—were her sole props. They were kept in a black satchel that never left my person. Agnes taught me to arrange those books, the stage, curtains and lighting. Everything had to be just so and she was a glutton for detail. No matter the size of the stage or the auditorium, the feeling conveyed had to be as intimate as if you were in Agnes Moorehead’s living room and she was telling you stories. She read from a collection of poetry and prose that she wove together with stories from her own life. She spontaneously presented thousands of words that were, in reality, memorized—but it all sounded off-the-cuff. That was its charm.

She laboriously had read and researched over four hundred books to find approximately twenty pieces that would play well on stage, before she and Charles Laughton staged her original show format, and about whom she shared with me lovely, respectful stories, was satisfied. In her mind, there was really an audience of just a few—Laughton, Orson Wells, perhaps Debbie Reynolds and a few others. She didn’t see the real people. Those were the ones she wanted respect from. Those were the ones she wanted to satisfy.

After that first show, a routine developed for us. We’d fly mostly to colleges, arrive always a day early and go to our hotel. Then, while she remained at the hotel resting and unpacking, I would be preparing the stage and lighting for her show. Again, she learned to trust me increasingly. Before her performance, I kept everyone away from her. She needed that privacy to maintain her enormous energy. During the performance, I stood in the wings, managing the show and acting as her moral support. Afterwards, I kept the tons of people away from her until they melted down to the dozen hard-core fans. For them, Agnes gave another small show and signed autographs. Sometimes, we’d then go to a party given for her. The next day I would pick up the reviews, which were always excellent, and then we’d be on our way.

One thing more. She always got a standing ovation. I was delighted because, believe me, she deserved one.

Agnes’ one-woman show was her first love, but she had to sandwich it between her appearances on “Bewitched” a television series, into which she accidentally stumbled. She had signed the contract to do the pilot, because it was a nice little teleplay. She liked it and she liked the money. But she had no idea that it would ever sell. In fact, she was sure it wouldn’t. She told people it wouldn’t. She thought it was much too clean and too simple for the new sophisticated public. So, after shooting the pilot, she blithely left town to tour her one—woman show and then “Bewitched” did sell. What a surprise! I don’t know whether she was happy or not. She loved the money, hated the work.

After that—that is, after the sale of “Bewitched”—Agnes kept a grueling schedule, working Monday through Friday on “Bewitched,” from five A.M. until well into the night, shooting, studying the script—and she always had lines and cues down to a T. Further, she often rewrote the script, inventing brilliant bits of shtick, special effects, etc. It became a hit show, much to her surprise, and she felt a tremendous responsibility to keep up the quality, week after week. She gave it her all. But did she have to fight to get everything in the studio she wanted! From a box of Kleenex to her own dressing room to all her own costumes.

Once during one sequence they were filming, dry ice was used for a special effects and it infected her eyes. She grew seriously ill and could not show up on the set for several days. The studio suspended her and it hurt her terribly.

“TV is a treadmill,” she said. “This is not an era of convictions.”

“Bewitched” was the area of her life in which I was least involved, but I applauded with all my heart when she was nominated for an Emmy Award four years in succession for her role as the mischievous witch-mother-in-law, Endora, on that show.

As far as “Bewitched” was concerned, money poured in. Yet, it didn’t give her the satisfaction that her one-woman show gave her. With several successful one-woman shows behind her, Agnes now introduced me to the other out-of-town engagement she kept. She read excerpts from Shakespeare at symphonic concerts, performed a poetry hour at women’s clubs, went out to receive awards and gave “spontaneous” thank you speeches that she had been working on all the previous day, or weeks, or months. She was always prepared and hated anything impromptu. In a genuine spontaneous situation, she invariably fell into her comfortable morality or slovenly diatribes, thus alienating the reporters, who would then sometimes satirize her in their reviews.

As we travelled together around the country, I also found myself travelling deeper into the terrain of Agnes’s personality. Another example: she gave lectures at conventions around the country. These, her friend Jay Lurye, often conned her into doing, which he liked because he could obtain her services at a lousy fee, knowing that Agnes liked cash money when she could get it, so she would not have to report it for tax purposes.

Actually, money was Agnes’ downfall. She adored it. She lived by it. She was very tight. She knew its value and then multiplied it by ten.

Soon she got me involved with Jay and drove me crazy, working me day and night with total undisciplined mania. Agnes convinced herself she was doing me a favor, but actually, it was another way she wouldn’t have to pay me for all the little extras I did. Money, money, money. She could smell affluence a mile away. At one particular extravagant banquet, she nudged me and whispered, “Everyone here is a millionaire.”

But another side lay juxtaposed to that one: In our travels, we often transported her mother to or from her home, Reedsburg, Wisconsin, and Agnes behaved almost like a little girl with her mother. One time Agnes and her mother were having a disagreement about something. Molly Moorehead said, “Hush, Agnes!” and Agnes, then aged sixty, like a helpless child, hushed.

Another face that Agnes wore was that of the fabulous and festive hostess. And hot-damn, she did it up royally! She was a great hostess. She knew what people wanted and she gave it to them and with éclat. I had only helped her coordinate the previous Christmas party, but now I also was invited. I really felt like I was in the mix. Here was usually the first party and the most elegant of each Yuletide Season. Her house was decorated professionally with evergreen and holly hanging everywhere. Students, garbed in red vested uniforms, parked the seemingly hundreds of Rolls Royce’s and Mercedes-Benz. A live Santa Claus was standing at the entrance foyer with Agnes and all of us greeting the guests. And the guests! You-name-it, they came. Rita Hayworth, George Cukor, Steve Allen, Edward G. Robinson and on and on and on. You name the stars, and they were there. Not to mention the many notable directors, producers and TV people. Now matter how big the star, if they were invited, they came. Every nook and cranny of the house was filled with these exciting people—from the patio, to the dining room, to the studio basement. Everyone had a wonderful time. Agnes saw to that. They didn’t dare not have a wonderful time! Everything was perfectly arranged.

From time to time, Agnes would have me leave my post beside her to check each area to make certain everything was running smoothly. Everything Agnes did was well-planned and rehearsed, and this was the main secret of success in all her endeavors. And she was appreciated. Her friends and guests appreciated her. For instance, everyone had all that they wanted to drink, yet I never saw anyone at a single one of Agnes’s parties, get out of line. It was if the guests all knew that they could have fun, but could not desecrate the Lavender Lady’s sanctuary.

I sighed blissfully. I was a very important part of all this splendor, chosen by Agnes to see that all went well. I was smug, as I wondered what my friends in Ohio would think if they could see the ugly ducking now. What a victory, what a victory!

Molly Moorehead, Agnes’ mother
visiting from Reedsburg, Wisconsin

CHAPTER EIGHT

AN INTIMATE EVENING WITH
THE FABULOUS REDHEAD

The excitement in me was mounting more and more as the days went by as we were preparing to go to Chicago for Agnes’ one-woman show, my very first one. Molly had been with Agnes all this time since Christmas and it was now early spring, so Agnes decided that we would drive back leisurely and asked me if I minded that. I told her that I loved to drive and having driven over 15 years as a salesman traveling four states; it would be good to be on the road again, so we started planning our trip using the Chevrolet station wagon that Agnes had received from her Cormier commercial. Besides all of Molly’s luggage, Agnes had Freddie pack her show gown, her shoes for the stage, her street clothes, and cosmetics which were all contained in (yes you guessed it) three lavender handsome suitcases. A small black satchel containing the 20 or more so books that were used for props in her show, were carried by me, and Agnes made it a very special point, that those books and that satchel were never to leave my person at any time for any reason. It almost sounded like the nuns and their dogmatic directions, however, I understood the reasoning with Agnes, and accepted it graciously and believe me; I guarded those books with my life. She explained that she had many experiences in the past whereby her luggage was lost, so she used to always carry one small cosmetic kit aboard, and one small suitcase with a gown, so she could always go on with her show regardless of whether her other luggage arrived or not. I marveled at her thoroughness and her ability to project into the future, for it always paid off for us.

Agnes’ one-woman show was one of her dearest passions and loves and now I understand why. First of all, it was Charles Laughton who had encouraged her in 1954 to put such a show together for he had done the same type thing, and he urged and helped her put it together to make her “independent” as she used to tell me. She told me how the two of them must have read over 400 pieces of prose and poetry to find about twenty-five that would work on the stage. She memorized every word of these pieces but gave them on stage as though they were spontaneous and using the books merely for props rather than actually reading from them. She had given the show many times all over the world for foreign audiences whom she claimed enjoyed it equally as much as the American audiences. She would NOT change a word of her show for anyone. She said, “It took me all those years to perfect it, I know it plays, and works,” and she defied anyone to challenge that.

The day we left for the Midwest, Freddie and Polly were there as our farewell committee and after Agnes had given Freddie all the instructions for the house ritual and anything else that might come up, off we drove down Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills, the three of us. Agnes and Molly were both good travelers, and it was fun to be with them on these trips. Agnes seemed to become an entirely different person. No pushing and wheels spinning in her head like when in L.A. She enjoyed the scenery, the mountains and her mother had to stop at every Howard Johnsons we passed (there must be at least two dozen between L.A. & Chicago) for Howard Johnsons’ fried clams. This was Molly’s favorite of all foods and I soon learned to alert her to the fact that a Howard Johnsons Restaurant was just a few miles away. We always lodged at Howard Johnsons too, and since Molly was eager to get back to Reedsburg to her own little home, we headed directly to Wisconsin. Arriving there in about three days, in Reedsburg, I found the most charming little frame house and chintz curtains, very colorfully painted inside and out, seeming to reflect Molly’s vibrancy and flamboyancy. Gifts from Agnes from all over the world were in the charming, humble but neat and clean-as-a-pin home. A lovely ceramic dining room chandelier from Venice, a gift to Molly from Agnes, stood out like a sore thumb. This was Molly’s home, and she was proud of it. She took me up to one of the upstairs bedrooms and made me very comfortable, and turned herself inside out to make my short stay there memorable. Agnes lounged around, relaxed more than I had ever seen her, reading, talking about things, oohing and aahing over all of Molly’s projects. The yard was very neatly manicured, all the work done by Molly herself, she was proud to say. All the beautiful feelings that go with such a peaceful rural home were there. I began even more to realize why Agnes had so much going for her. Molly really was the leader of the pack, in spite of Agnes’ touting of her father. Older pictures of Agnes and her sister and Agnes’ father were around on the beautiful immaculately starched doilies that adorned the tables and furniture.

We stayed with Molly overnight and then, two days later, refreshed from our cross-country trip, Agnes and I drove on the remaining hundred miles or so to Chicago or to a suburb near O’Hare Field to a motel which was near the high school auditorium where Agnes was to appear.

As soon as we checked into the motel, Agnes and I went over to case the auditorium in which she was to appear. The first thing she checked was the lighting, the sound or acoustics (as she never used amplification regardless of how large the auditorium was). She used to say “people get lazy with electronics and have forgotten how a real voice sounds.” She could project to the last row even in large theaters. She used to have me sit in the