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Radio Actress Agnes Moorehead



The Miami – May, 1974
Actress Agnes Moorehead, 67
RADIO AND SCREEN star Agnes Moorehead was nominated for an Oscar five times. In the 1950s she starred in the CBS radio program “Suspense.”
Associated Press
ROCHESTER, Minn,_ Agnes Moorehead,, an outstanding and highly versatile character actress of stage and screen for half a century, died yesterday at the age of 67. Cause of her death was not revealed.
The red-haired Miss Moorehead made her movie debut with Orson Welles in “Citizen Kane,” in 1941. She won the New York Film Critics award for best actress of the year in 1942 for “The Magnificent Ambersons.”
Miss Moorehead five times was nominated for an Oscar—in “The Magnificent Ambersons,” “Mrs. Parkington .” “Johnny Blinda.” “All That Heaven Allows,” and “Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte.”
One of Miss Moorehead’s most memorable roles was that of a woman past 100 years of age in “The Lost Moment,” in 1947.
The actress had been a patient at the Mayo Clinic here periodically over the past two years. She died in Methodist Hospital, an affiliate of the clinic.
Miss Moorehead appeared in a succession of Broadway hits in the 1920s, among them “All the Knig’s Horses,” “Marco’s Millions,” “Soldiers and Women,” and “Candlelight,” the latter with Gertrude Lawrence.
The Depression hit Broadway hard and Miss Moorehead drifted into radio. She appeared on the “March of Time,” “Cavalcade of America,” “Sorry, Wrong Number,” and “Mayor of the Town.”
Miss Moorehead also was the heroine of a daytime radio soap opera, “Joyce Jordan, Girl Interne.”
Coming to Welles’ attention, she acted in “Citizen Kane,” and he recalled her in 1942 for the role in “The Magnificent Ambersons.” Other pictures in which she appeared included “Dragon Seed,” “Jane Eyre,” “Since You Went Away,” “Caged,” “Fourteen Hours,” “The Woman in White,” and “Summer Holiday.”
Miss Moorehead wasn’t a pretty woman and played “old hag” roles. It never bothered her.
“I never was pretty enough to play a heroine,” she told an interviewer. “As a little girl I was the long, gangly type, almost as tall as I am now 5-feet-6, sad and pathetic. I have no vanity at all.”
Miss Moorehead’s popular role on TV was as a witch. She played Elizabeth Montgomery’s mother in the series “Bewitched.”
AGNES MOORHEAD wasn’t pretty woman and played many “old hag” roles. Here she plays in TV “The Twilight Zone” thriller in 1961.

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