Agnes Moorehead

Agnes Robertson Moorehead was born on December 6, 1900, in Clinton, Massachusetts, the daughter of Presbyterian clergyman John Henderson Moorehead and Mary McCauley Moorehead, a former singer who was 17 at the time of Agnes's birth. The family later relocated to St. Louis, Missouri, and subsequently to Reedsburg, Wisconsin. Moorehead later claimed her birth year was 1906 in order to appear younger for acting roles. She recalled making her first public appearance at age three, reciting the Lord's Prayer in her father's church. As a young woman, she joined the chorus of the St. Louis Municipal Opera Company, known as The Muny.

Moorehead earned a bachelor's degree in biology from Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio, in 1923, having also appeared in college stage productions during her time there. She later received an honorary doctorate in literature from Muskingum in 1947 and served a year on its board of trustees. After her family moved to Reedsburg, Wisconsin, she taught public school for five years in Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, while simultaneously earning a master's degree in English and public speaking at the University of Wisconsin. She subsequently completed postgraduate studies at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, graduating with honors in 1929. Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, also awarded her an honorary doctoral degree.

Her early acting career was marked by periods of unemployment, and she later recalled going four days without food during lean stretches. She found steadier work in radio, where she was soon in high demand, sometimes appearing on multiple programs in a single day. By 1937, she had joined Orson Welles' Mercury Players as one of his principal performers alongside Joseph Cotten. She appeared in Welles' Mercury Theatre on the Air radio adaptations and held a regular role as Margo Lane opposite Welles in the serial The Shadow. When Welles moved the Mercury Theatre to Hollywood in 1939 to work with RKO Pictures, Moorehead followed, making her film debut as the mother of Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane (1941). She appeared in Welles' second film, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), earning both the New York Film Critics Award and her first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She also appeared in the Mercury production Journey Into Fear (1943).

Over the course of her screen career, Moorehead received four Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress, for her performances in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Mrs. Parkington (1944), Johnny Belinda (1948), and Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). Her work in Mrs. Parkington also brought her a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. By the mid-1940s she had become a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player, negotiating a $6,000-a-week deal that included an unusual clause permitting her to continue working in radio. Additional film credits included Dark Passage (1947), Show Boat (1951), and All That Heaven Allows (1955).

In radio, Moorehead became one of the most sought-after performers of the 1940s and 1950s, particularly on the CBS program Suspense, in which she appeared more times than any other actor or actress across the show's 946-episode run and was regularly introduced as its first lady. Her most celebrated radio performance was in Lucille Fletcher's Sorry, Wrong Number, first broadcast on May 25, 1943, in which she played a neurotic woman who overhears a murder plot through crossed phone wires and gradually realizes she is the intended victim. She recreated the role six additional times for Suspense and performed it on other programs as well, always working from her original script. The May 25, 1943 broadcast was later added to the National Sound Registry by the Library of Congress in 2014.

On Broadway, Moorehead performed between 1951 and 1973. She starred in Don Juan in Hell during the 1951–1952 season and in Gigi, and also appeared in Lord Pengo during the 1962–1963 season.

In television, Moorehead is widely recognized for her role as Endora on the ABC sitcom Bewitched, which she played from 1964 to 1972. The performance earned her six nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. She won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her work on the western series The Wild Wild West. In total, her accolades included a Primetime Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards, in addition to her four Academy Award nominations. Moorehead died on April 30, 1974.