Died on this day: consummate character actress (and scene stealer par excellence) - Agnes Moorehead (6 December 1900 – 30 April 1974)! Moorehead significantly improves every film she appears in simply by virtue of her presence. Off the top of my head, some of my favourite Moorehead performances would include: Citizen Kane (1941) of course; the 1947 film noir Dark Passage – ostensibly a vehicle for Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, but it’s Moorehead in a secondary role who makes the indelible impression; as the sympathetic and progressive prison superintendent in Caged (1950); as Jane Wyman’s bitchy socialite friend and neighbour in Douglas Sirk’s masterpiece All That Heaven Allows (1955); as Countess de Brion in The Opposite Sex (1956) and as the tough-as-nails bleached blonde brothel madam (and Jane Russell’s employer) in The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956). But even in her ignominious final feature film – the no-budget hagsploitation horror flick Dear Dead Delilah (1971) – Moorehead is majestic. (We screened Delilah as our Lobotomy Room film club “Halloween presentation" a few years ago to a packed house!). And her status as a beloved gay icon is forever assured from her stint as Elizabeth Montgomery's flame-haired mother, the ultra-campy, drag queen-like Endora (pictured) in the TV series Bewitched.
