(My Travels with) Agnes Moorehead – The Lavender Lady (6 page)

“I’m an idealist. I’ve always felt that the audience should not leave the theatre more depressed than they came in or have learned so common a thing that it wasn’t worth learning. You have to have great things to do in order to be a great actor and they’re not writing great things anymore. I’ve read hundreds of plays in the last four years and I’ve only found one that was worthwhile and well written. I don’t happen to think there is a great trauma and great release when a person goes from the curb to the gutter, or vice versa.”

As a matter of fact, Agnes always had the same complaint that most stars have, that they weren’t writing great plays anymore. I must admit she searched and searched and searched and never was satisfied. But I do believe, when something great came along, she recognized it. She said, “Theatre should involve an audience, not shock them. It should provide a release or an enriching experience which makes people more tolerant or merciful. Theatre is a constant circle of empathy, a meeting of hearts and minds and s endlessly exciting and enriching. This is what keeps one at it. I believe that partaking of the spirit, the inner spring of truth, the clarity of thought, the hunger for self-approval, courage and integrity, are vital to the artist in his ability to reach man’s heart. As all arts have a bearing on our time and will live beyond it, so a creative artist must say notes of human passion which are common to all mankind. And you have this responsibility as an actor.”

She loved her profession and she loved anything that helped it and hated anything that disturbed it. She said the following, and I know she meant it, “Some actors want only the money and the fame. I don’t. I believe that an actor has a responsibility to his audience. I would rather starve than get up on a stage to do something which embarrassed me. I was sure of this. She said it and she meant it. Oh, such wonderful, non-materialistic idealism. I thought, unaware, that she had stumbled into “Bewitched” by doing the pilot partially for the money, thinking it would never sell and that she wouldn’t get stuck in a series. Nor had I yet experienced her collecting of fabulously wealthy friends, or her nose that could spot money a mile away. She adored money, perhaps more than anyone I ever knew. I had yet to discover these apparently opposing fragments of her that made the whole such a fascinating enigma.

“As a viewer”, she continued, “I try to keep away from ugly, sordid, blasphemous theatre and I find the current trend toward this in our profession, which is lacking in both taste and judgment. Audiences should never leave the theatre feeling depressed, but that they’ve learned something, been elevated. Send your audiences away feeling elevated. When you are an entertainer, you are constantly studying and learning human nature in order to do this. You must have limitless imagination, judgment, taste and a sense of psychology.”

What she didn’t point out is that the actor actually is at the mercy of the writer and, to reach these high aims, the property, the script, must attain them, too. She also said, “I’m so tired of sitting in the theatre and having a curtain rise and there you have a garbage pail—more dirty words, more unkempt conditions, more chaos. We have enough of that in the world outside. Why can’t we have a little more beauty, some gentility, something that appeals to one’s spirit and not below the waist? You come to the theatre depressed from all the morals, the rapes and murders you see in the papers. You’re going to pay $7.50 to come in and still fight with yourself.” (It was $7.50 in those days; now $25.00.)

She went on, “Now you come to get something for your heart and mind, some beauty, and then when you go out, you say, ‘Maybe things aren’t so bad.’ This should be the function of the theatre, and it is our responsibility as entertainers. I love tragedy and I’ve played a lot of terrible people, but at least one felt the heart was touched, at least it’s dignified. I’m so sick and tired of all that’s tawdry. For the life of me, I can’t get a tear in my eye over sordid drama. It’s destructive and I’m against any kind of violence or destruction. And it’s ineffectual theatre as well. It purports to say something but the tendency toward repetition weakens interest in the problem and then the objective is lost. On the other hand, it may lead to more understanding by some people when it occurs, but a rampage of this kind of thing is not effective. It leaves the audience in shock and it doesn’t learn anything in that state. So, you see, it’s really ineffective,” she reiterated. “Furthermore,” she droned in exasperation, “it’s boring, this hardcore-pornography X-rated films. If there’s anything more boring than yards and yards of bad flesh,” she told us, “it’s expansively mining, running through and tossing away yards and yards of cheap, tacky material. I don’t know what it is.

It doesn’t take talent to say dirty words and take your clothes off. Sensuousness of that type—latent—isn’t hard. It’s just calculated to produce shock which will lead to lesser shock and lesser shock ending up in inertia. It’s leading to a breakdown in morality. But people who do such plays and movies want to break down the physical and moral fiber of the society. I couldn’t say or do what they do. Oh, I know, “she ridiculed, piqued, “they want reality, but the theatre isn’t reality.” She had total disgust. “The theatre isn’t reality. If you want reality, go to the morgue. There are dead bodies in the morgue. Is that the type of reality you want to see on the stage?”

“Be assured because you are dedicated, constantly learning. You cannot think that you know everything there is to know ‘cause you don’t. You never will. Instead, you must constantly expand yourself. Watch all forms of theatre: opera, burlesque, T.V., stage, movies. Go to the circus. Watch life.” She always urged us to people—watch. “Observe life through the little children, old people. Go where there are old people. Go down to MacArthur Park and watch the old men play chess down there. Go where there are characters. Go to Barney’s Beanery. Go to the Farmer’s Market.” She told us how she’d go to the Farmer’s Market and she’d sit there during the tourist season last summer, observing. She took her notebook and jotted down all the little nuances, the quirks, the eccentricities and things that people would have. The lady used them for her one-woman show (and even with “The Fabulous Redhead”, first staged in 1951 by Charles Laughton). “Everything I have ever experienced in life I have used in the theatre,” she droned. “Be dedicated, drudge. Research your parts.”

Later when I talked to other stars, I found she was dedicated, more than most and she really knew the trick to becoming a great actress, to be an observer. And she really did go wherever she thought she’d find interesting people, that is, interesting to her. An old man hobbling down the street was interesting to her. A boy on a bicycle, a little girl with an ice cream cone, two neighbors having an argument, a man praying, all these things fascinated her and sometime, somewhere she’d make use of them in front of the camera.

Actually, Agnes Moorehead was a genius, a genius because she was dedicated and she was a glutton for details. She’d look into a forest and see the insects, the grass, the burned-out, useless twigs. She saw all the details of the forest, not just the trees and the branches and the leaves. She had a keen eye of observation. She saw what lots of us didn’t see.

Once she had to play the part of a prison matron. She went up to Tehachapi Prison and stayed for a weekend. Another time she had to play the part of a professor of one of the sciences, chemistry or algebra, and went to one of the colleges and had a professor show her how to work some actual formulas and equations that could be used when she performed it on the screen. She wanted everything to be believable. “You can’t just say ‘I’m going to be a teacher.’ You must have tried it out, really done it some way before you get up on a stage.” She was a stickler for that, so that when you’re doing it you believe in yourself. “You have to know what’s really happening. How are you going to make other people believe it if you don’t believe it yourself. You know what you are about if you do.”

Agnes was an actress, through and through, and I think it was because she was so dedicated and drudging that she asked us to be. “Actors must care about what goes on on the stage. And she cared. She never stopped caring and she disliked anyone who didn’t care. She wanted to feel with her whole being and she did. “Watch life, watch the theatre, be skeptical, analyze successes, failures, all this sordid contemporary theatre, writers trying so hard to be realistic. They’re really not saying anything, giving any hope. Reality, she stopped, and then broadened, “if you want to do something, you take the reality and you color it.” She explained that a camera can get the likeness but it takes a true artist to get a good impressionable idea. “Do something interesting with it. There’s nothing more dull on stage than reality. Dull, dull,” her voice scraping the paper like a garbage truck or a cement mixer. “Most actors are dull as dishwater.” When she said that, you could almost see the dirty dishwater. “You look around. What could be duller?”

This was another area she went on and on about, rehashing it a number of different ways. “Good acting is based on reality that is colored, then its light, but it’s a perfect light.” A sparkle of fascination animated her voice. “It’s interesting, life, colors, brilliance. Do something brilliant, think. You see something in the theatre that you just adored. You’re excited, you’re interested. What makes it so good? What makes it so interesting? Something that he’s done! Maybe it’s something in his eyes. But what? Why is he exciting? What does he do? An actor must make himself so interesting that people will want to see him over and over and over. Now, how does he do this? So you study others, not that you should copy anyone else, or you go to the theatre to learn, but you must do it your own way. You watch theatre, you will see something. Keep a notebook with you. This is very good, “she said to herself, for us ingenuously. “I will write this down and someday I can use it. Take it and use it in your own individual way. You take it down and do it the way you do it, but you take it and know how good it looks. You learn from others but you have to do it your way. Every actor’s an individual who must expand his individuality. You cannot put yourself in a mold or you’ll die.”

She paused and her essence filled the silence. She checked her watch. She was supposed to do pantomime after her lecture but she couldn’t now because she talked too long. Straight through the pantomime now and well into the scenes. Since then I’ve known of many acting schools. Mostly they do scenes. Occasionally, a discussion with questions and answers. Sometimes pantomime and other nuances of the art. But with Agnes Moorehead, she talked and could she talk. And if one could let it sink in and learn, one could become a good actor or actress just by that.

“Now, who has a scene for me? I want everyone to be prepared and have a scene. Don’t let that stage be bare. Who has a scene?” The better ones jumped up right away, two people. They did some scene from one of the classic plays and they were good. They were, I would learn, the two best actors in the class and I was spellbound. The scene played and I got goose bumps watching it. I loved the theatre as much as Agnes did. I adore good acting. Agnes said, “It’s all right, but . . .” Then she started picking it apart. I was stunned. If it had been me up there, I wouldn’t have minded. I’d have thought that I deserved it. That’s where I was then. But I was just devastated for these actors. They were clean cut, giving, brilliant. All the things that she said actors should do and be. But she didn’t break down their scene, she just went into more free—flowing talk and got off their scene and rehashed about the drudge and researching parts and brilliance as though these actors hadn’t done all these things.

Finally, she finished that and conducted a short session on breathing and the diaphragm. Then that was the end of the class, the end of my first day. I realized then, correctly, that Agnes Moorehead didn’t give out praise lightly, and rightly so. She was a perfectionist. She wanted everything to be done perfectly. Whatever qualms I felt were utterly minor the first day and for months afterward. I was with Agnes Moorehead and I was enamored. I couldn’t wait for the next Saturday and the next and the next. I lived for Saturdays. The other classes on Monday and Wednesday nights were all right. I’ll get to them. But it was Saturdays with Agnes that kept me going, watching her, hoping and waiting for her to notice me. I was only alive on Saturdays except, of course, when the part of me that was Agnes crept into my life. I began to absorb some of her flamboyance and oh, I loved that. It’s what I wanted to do as a kid, but people had said, “Oh, shut up.” But now I could emote and move like the priests in their ciipes, emulating all the grand gestures. I picked up so many things. I watched every nuance of her movements. I hung on her every gesture, every breath. Her presence was electrifying. Such energy emanated from her and, oh God, I wanted to be like that. I could feel myself, day by day, adapting some of her personality, her character, her love of life and her beauty.

And that’s why, though she’d hammer away at the same things, brainwash you, I always felt that she was feeding me, the quick and the dead, and some others with the fire of life, the spirit of life that I had never had. Agnes was strong in her objective, but so positive. I was used to that hammering and that authoritarian stuff because my mother did the same kind of thing, but in a cruel, cold way while Agnes was doing it because she cared and you could tell. There was no compromise with her. The theatre was one way and you were either in it or you were out of it and that was it. And that passion she felt she instilled in me. She was feeding that creative side of me that had just been born or just let loose. I wanted to be heard, I wanted to be noticed, but I really didn’t know how. It was through her that I finally learned to trust. She mirrored so much of what I wanted to be. I absorbed everything she did and she was, and then I went beyond that.