#endora

Elizabeth Montgomery and Agnes Moorehead - Bewitched (1965)

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.

Maurice Evans as Samantha's father Maurice, Agnes Moorehead as Samantha's mother Endora, and Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha in the Bewitched episode entitled Adam, Warlock or Washout, originally broadcast by ABC on December 29th, 1971.

Inside front cover from the manga adaptation of Bewitched, or Okusama wa Majo (My Wife is a Witch). Nakayoshi magazine, publishers - 1968.

Art by Trung Le Nguyen

Agnes Moorehead