I Love the Illusion: The Life and Career of Agnes Moorehead Read Online Free PDF Page A

But she needed her father’s permission, and was apprehensive about
approaching him. To her great relief, he seemed genuinely pleased. “Well,
isn’t that wonderful? My little girl is good enough to make the ballet — why
certainly you have my permission.” But it came with the condition that she
not neglect her education. Why was Dr. Moorehead such an easy touch in
allowing Agnes to perform in a business many in that period thought was
full of sin? Agnes believed her father was a frustrated showman in his own
right and that it was “only a step from the pulpit to the stage.”
    Agnes later related that she was “always interested in theatre . . . it was
always a goal, an ambition, a desire, to enter the theatre; I never had to find
myself, the way so many people do. I always knew what I wanted and where
I wanted to go. I had to go to school in the wintertime, of course, but even
there I always managed to get involved in producing or directing or appearing
in drama — not only drama, but anything being offered that involved a
stage. Public speaking, oratory — all of it. I never had anything else in
mind. So I can’t say that there was a time when I made up my mind to be
an actress; the determination was there from the very start.”
    Over the next four summers she performed with the Opera Company, as
well as handling props and running errands for the other actors in exchange
for acting advice. “I think my first professional appearance was in St.
Louis as a Nubian slave in Aida . And I appeared in all the musical
comedies — Rio Rita , the whole run of operettas so popular then, including
Gilbert and Sullivan. We did a new show every week for years — Herbert,
Friml, Lehar, etc.” The experience with the Municipal Ballet only increased
her determination of making a career out of acting, but she also had
promised her father she would get a quality education to fall back on.
When Agnes graduated from Central High School in 1919 she was ready
to keep her end of the bargain by attending Muskingum College, a
denominational (Presbyterian) school which one of her uncles had helped
found, located in New Concord, Ohio; her major was Biology.
The church in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, where Agnes’ father officiated from 1919–1924.
    The same year Agnes enrolled at Muskingum, John, Mollie and
Margaret packed up and moved to a new parish located in beautiful
Reedsburg, Wisconsin. Its population only numbered a couple of thousand
and was located about an hour east of the state capitol in Madison. The
move from such a large city to a small town took some adjusting. But
Mollie, in particular, took to Reedsburg and made many friends there,
including Miss Grace Conkling, who became a lifelong friend; when the
widowed Mollie returned to Reedsburg years later, the two friends moved
in together to keep each other company. Agnes enjoyed visiting during her
vacations from Muskingum, and off and on for the rest of her life, Agnes
would often visit Reedsburg.
    Agnes took to college life with gusto. She became involved with the Glee
Club and the Girls Athletic Association — where she excelled at horseback
riding, tennis and archery. She performed in such school plays as The
Aristocrat in her junior year and the historical drama, Friend Hannah in her
senior year. But the most fun she had was helping to write and perform in
a revue titled Kolossal Kampus Kapers or, regrettably, KKK for short. She
would later recall that she both shocked and delighted the audience by
doing a spoof of a bump-and-grind routine which was routinely “banned in
Boston.” The dance won her a visit to the Dean’s office. One of her
professors, Charles R. Layton, would recall Agnes as a “popular campus
personality . . . who could get away with things others couldn’t,” apparently
due to her vivacious personality. While she enjoyed the campus social activities
she didn’t allow fun to interfere with her education and neglect her studies.
    Up until she