(My Travels with) Agnes Moorehead – The Lavender Lady (17 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE HOUSE THAT AGNES BUILT

With the Christmas holidays over, and poor Albert in pig heaven, and having the original farmhouse restored and the original farm functioning once again with caretakers and students from Muskingum—that we arranged between trips back and forth during the past months—Agnes, still not fully recuperated from the summer stock ordeal, began an obsessive type behavior to get, what she was to call, a little “English cottage” built about a mile from the original farmhouse on the 300 acre farm right in the middle of a clearing in the woods. The place she would often go when a child to fantisize. This clearing in the woods was like something out of “Hansel and Gretel” or a similar fairy tale.

When I first saw the area, I couldn’t believe that anyone would want to live in such a remote place, especially Agnes, since she couldn’t drive and I felt it would be difficult to get help to travel from Zanesville or surrounding areas to work and live there.

We had gone to Columbus, Ohio on a previous trip, and contacted a man by the name of Joe Moro, who was a friend of Mollie Moorehead . . . Agnes thought it might be a good thing to have Joe Moro be the contractor for her cottage. We would drive to Reedsburg, Wisconsin, pick up Mollie, then drive down to Columbus . . . Agnes and her mother would stay with the Moros, and I would stay down the street with in-laws. The Moros were Italian and lived in the same area I had lived before my divorce. It was like going home again for me, and I knew the area. While Agnes was doing “Bewitched,” I would be coordinating things over the phone with Joe Moro.

Agnes had architects from Los Angeles draw up the plans for her cottage, but didn’t want to pay them to come to Ohio, which would have been astronomical, I am sure). I suggested my brother-in-law, Orville Varosso, in Newark, Ohio. I offered to have Agnes meet him. She didn’t trust anyone, as a rule, with her personal things except Freddie, Polly and me, as far as I could see when I worked for her. So, she was a bit reluctant at first to meet Orville. However, trusting me, I finally got her to meet him at his home.

When she saw that Orville and his wife, Violet (my sister) lived in rather a lovely, beautiful home that he had designed himself, and saw several of the churches that were his masterpieces in the area, Agnes was thrilled.

Everything was set in motion to start her cottage and she knew that Orville was a very reliable person and would be working for HER and not just for the money. Orville is a big pussycat and loved by all . . . a warm Italian humanitarian and, to this day, I feel badly that I ever involved him when you hear the end of the story.

At any rate, Agnes started to drive herself, me, and everyone around her to get that damn cottage built. Every spare moment in Los Angeles, she was using me and all my contacts to get her furnishing for the new farmhouse. I know a lot of people in business in Los Angeles and back in Ohio, and between my friends, and all the companies Jay Lurye held conventions for that Agnes was involved in, Agnes kept me busy. I was conning them all for ingredients for her cottage. The plaster and drywall convention people were asked for drywall for the house and she got it with some fancy finagling. The air-conditioning people, the same thing. I had a good friend in Los Angeles on Decorator Row, who sold her all the carpeting for the entire house at cost, while another friend of mine gave her, at cost, the beautiful parquet flooring that would end up in the beautiful entrance hall and cathedral-like living room.

I was constantly on the phone from L.A. with all these suppliers, or writing letters, while Agnes was doing “Bewitched.” My days were filled to capacity while in Los Angeles; doing all the things that Agnes didn’t have time to do. I liked it, but we would go out on the road weekends, always back East near the farm to do a one-woman show or whatever. As long as I was on the road with Agnes, I would be paid. But when in Los Angeles, I wouldn’t be. Of course, looking back on it all, it was my own fault. I never thought she wouldn’t pay me at the time and the schedule was so frantic that the money I made on the weekends was getting me by. So, I really didn’t think too much of it at the time.

I just was deeply involved with Agnes as she was, trying to get the Lavender Lady this marvelous home/cottage that seemed to mean so much to her.

Conventions in Vegas to reach more suppliers . . . one woman shows in Ohio and surrounding areas . . . A.I.D. mini-show in Santa Barbara, always running here, there and everywhere, and Agnes would say, “Joseph, this is for the farm.”

By this time, she was becoming obsessed and seemed to be changing. She wasn’t as consistent in her disposition, and had more times when I would find her angry about something that hadn’t gone right. I feel the acting school started to deteriorate at this time—or, at least, this was the beginning of it.

Tanya was trying to pull an “All About Eve” and replace me with her, but Agnes used to tell her that she could never do the work for Agnes that I had been doing, since it was all so diversified and mostly a “man’s job” as Agnes put it to Tanya.

A long-time friend of mine, Giuseppe Balestrieri, who was one of the world’s finest voice builders and teachers in Los Angeles, also was involved with a formica plant in Milwaukee which is about sixty miles from Mollie Moorehead’s home in Reedsburg, Wisconsin. I introduced Giuseppe to Agnes and he and his brothers contracted to build the special kitchen in Agnes’ cottage on the farm and install it in formica.

Agnes was pleased with all the connections that I introduced her to and since the acting school needed a good shot in the arm, I talked her into hiring Giuseppe. I knew he would be a tremendous addition and give the school the boost it so desparately needed. She consented when she overcame her usual paranoia about strangers and was really happy with his work when she saw what a disciplinarian Giuseppe was, but he always did it with love and had the pupils in the palm of his hand. The students loved every minute of his class.

On occasions, even Tanya who used to just sit in the back of the theatre knitting, would get excited with what Giuseppe was doing and she would run up to the stage with the students, to be involved with working with this very capable man.

Agnes was pleased and the school began faring pretty well. However, with Agnes being away so much, it was not bound to last too long. Tanya was more interested in being with Agnes than running the school when Agnes would not be there. Tanya also wanted, in the worst way, to get more involved with the running of Agnes’ home on Roxbury, and would go up when Agnes and I would be on the road and suggest to Freddie and Polly that they should take the day off. She, Tanya, would run the place. Freddie, a very dignified and conscientious lady and very loyal, told Tanya that she had been running the house for a good number of years and didn’t need Tanya to tell her when she could have a day off.

Mollie Moorehead was visiting in Los Angeles and Tanya presented herself at the house. As I said earlier, it didn’t take Mollie Moorehead long to learn what Tanya was trying to do. Mollie took an instant dislike to Tanya, so that Agnes and Mollie really began to have the starting of a feud, which was to increase. It was all over Tanya’s meddling and trying to “get in.”

Agnes was using Tanya to haul her around, run the school and do lots of odds and ends . . . and also as a nurse. Agnes was having Tanya give her B-complex shots which fed Agnes’ need to be pampered when her mother was around getting all the attention.

It is my humble opinion that all of the pressures of the filming of “Bewitched”, Agnes’ obsession with the farm, and her health . . . which was manifested by her inability to snap back after the grueling summer before . . . and all the other ventures and projects she had gotten herself into was bad for her. She had overextended herself and it was taking her toll on her. Tanya, being a nurse, was sort of a security for Agnes and Tanya, sensing this need, took the opportunity to get into Agnes’ world that up to this time had been impossible.

Agnes’ vulnerability opened the door for Tanya and, at times, Agnes’ loyalty became caught in the middle of her mother, Tanya and me. She needed us all . . . but in a horse race there is only one winner.

Agnes kept badgering and gently nudging all the convention people that she had worked for at their conventions, conning them out of anything and everything you could for the farm. There was no reasoning and talking with her. She would just be very calculating and it became obvious that the FARM was first and foremost in her life, especially the new house.

One quick trip, we made over a weekend, she found out that Joe Moro had burned down a shack, that jokingly she and I said would be my little guest house that I would fix up and stay in when we went to the farm. The building used to be a two or three little room servants’ quarters adjacent to the original farmhouse. I liked the way it was placed on the lot. I was not remotely interested in the new house, although she had designated a room upstairs for me if I chose to use it.

More and more difficulties began to arise between Joe Moro and Agnes and she felt that Joe was getting “too big for his britches,” as she told me, and was taking too much upon himself without clearing it with her first. She knew exactly what she wanted done, how it was to be done, and would not settle for less. Joe felt the same way, so that it became a nightmare.

Molly was in Los Angeles and the English Cottage was supposed to be ready to move into by April 15th, if I remember correctly. We loaded the station wagon and Molly, Rochell (Freddie’s husband), Agnes and I set out for the farm in Ohio, expecting to arrive at the farm to live in the cottage, and get everything ready for the movers. We trekked across the country, and drove in some snowy! Stormy weather in Arizona, and something told Agnes she should call Joe Moro from the Ohio/Indiana border to confirm that we would be arriving late that afternoon. Agnes wanted to know if all was in order, that she was bringing her mother, Rochell and me to live there and get things humming.

Now she had phoned Joe Moro a week before and told him we would be coming in the following week and he said everything was in order, but he didn’t realize that Agnes meant every word she said and would actually arrive as scheduled. When she phoned from the pay station in Indiana, Joe Moro said to her, “You can’t come here, there’s no water, heat, or lights,” to which Agnes reminded him that she had phoned and Joe had told her everything would be done.

Agnes was mad as a wet hen and her determination was absolutely incredible. She came to us in the car and told us what was happening. She told her mother, Mollie, that she would put her up in a motel, but Agnes said, “I AM STAYING AT MY HOUSE AS I HAD PLANNED.” And, of course, Rochell and I said she could count on us.

Mollie said, “You’re not sticking me in no motel, I am going, too.”

So the four of us drove off in the spitting spring snowstorm toward the farm. But before we did, we stopped at a surplus store and bought up all the blankets, coil oil stoves, and camping equipment we could load into the inside of the station wagon and what we could put on top. Down Route 40 we headed toward the farm, and arrived there just before dark, about four P.M.

Joe Moro and his workmen were all standing around in disbelief that the four of us were actually going to live that night in the house. What greeted us is that the floors were not in, nor the carpeting, no electricity or gas and we had to pump water by hand to eat, cook and wash with.

Rochell and I, under Agnes’ direction, got things to where we really could survive out in that wilderness. We built fires in all of the fireplaces, and lit the coal oil portable stoves, and placed them in the kitchen, Molly’s and Agnes’ bedrooms and bundled up in lots of sweaters, coats, etc. It was about twenty above zero and the thing I remember most was the stamina and courage and good humor of Mollie, who really reminded me of what I have read of those courageous early pioneer women.

We were really pioneers and I have empathy for what they must have gone through. For even though the shell of the house was over our heads, the wind came blowing through, and we might as well have been sleeping in the woods.

After we got ourselves settled and Agnes kept jawing at Joe Moro, asking him what he thought he was doing by lying to her, telling her that everything was okay when it wasn’t anywhere near ready to occupy. They went round and round between all the other commotion and there were so many things done incorrectly in the house that I can’t remember them all. The one glaring mistake that really hurt was the beautiful beamed cathedral ceiling which towered about thirty feet over the living room floor and foyer. The beams had been gouged out with an ax so crudely and they were painted a watered down white, which almost sent Agnes into orbit. It was a horrible sight and looked as though children had taken each beam and were playing woodsman, taking chunks out of these huge beams.

Joe Moro told Agnes he thought it looked good. His taste was in his mouth for he had no sensitivity at all about him. He was a crude, earthy laborer type of individual that wouldn’t know class if it had hit him in the face. Agnes was devastated by the whole scene.

On finding such chaos, I had arranged for Agnes to do her one-woman show a week later at The Ohio State University’s Zanesville Campus . . . and it was a difficult time, trying to find the time to do all the publicity, radio spots, etc. that the university had been promised by us.

The four of us worked like a real team and at least got things going to a point where we were eating, sleeping and working with the workmen getting the water, electricity and important things done. In about a week, we started feeling good about our accomplishments, and so I took Agnes to her bedroom to tape radio promotional spots—as the only furniture that was in the house were the mattress and box springs and the rest of the furniture was en route to be delivered in about ten days or so. You can imagine the flurry that went on to get ready for the movers, but we did the insurmountable. By the time the furniture arrived, there was some semblance of order in the house.