I would like to take this moment to give major props to one of my all-time favorite actresses, Agnes Moorehead, and I'm tired of these two immediate follow-ups to her name: 1)
Bewitched--I barely saw it, just please forget it for the moment and 2) the phrase "character actress." Forget both. The fabulous war weepie
Since You Went Away is on, but the bit that still stands out? Moorehead as the deliciously horrid (during the
war! even) Emily Hawkins. She just pierces every movie she's in with her human, sometimes horrible, off-kilter, sometimes downright seditious performances. I wish I had found a photo of her in
Dark Passage with all the leopard skin, I love her in that. Among all the other appeal there is something deliciously modern about her--I don't know if it's because she was free of Hollywood affect from the time, so her cadence and rhythm stands out from all the breathless studio-trained delivery or if she was just so good it was all moot. Somehow she was free from some of the constraints that others seemed bound by. She also managed to portray
sexual desire in a way women didn't then: she looked people right in the eye. And has anybody ever made a more amazing film debut (
CK), in a more amazingly famous long shot? Although: I love her more in
Magnificent Ambersons--that vulnerable performance is almost too painful to watch. She was willing to go too far--not in a campy way--and it's hard not to love her for that. She portrayed people that were just awful with total commitment. It's not that simple, she wasn't that simple, but she went there. TCM's bio says: "...although Moorehead never starred, she often outshone the box office 'names' with her sly, intelligent performances." There probably is mollyhaskell stuff (haven't read; or have forgotten) to say about how she fit into what Hollywood women were allowed to be then and the machine around her, her collective film identity, but for the moment I'm just talking about
her. Her eyebrows say it all.
I would like to take this moment to give major props to one of my all-time favorite actresses, Agnes Moorehead, and I'm tired of these two immediate follow-ups to her name: 1) Bewitched--I barely saw it, just please forget it for the moment and 2) the phrase "character actress." Forget both. The fabulous war weepie Since You Went Away is on, but the bit that still stands out? Moorehead as the deliciously horrid (during the war! even) Emily Hawkins. She just pierces every movie she's in with her human, sometimes horrible, off-kilter, sometimes downright seditious performances. I wish I had found a photo of her in Dark Passage with all the leopard skin, I love her in that. Among all the other appeal there is something deliciously modern about her--I don't know if it's because she was free of Hollywood affect from the time, so her cadence and rhythm stands out from all the breathless studio-trained delivery or if she was just so good it was all moot. Somehow she was free from some of the constraints that others seemed bound by. She also managed to portray
sexual desire in a way women didn't then: she looked people right in the eye. And has anybody ever made a more amazing film debut (CK), in a more amazingly famous long shot? Although: I love her more in Magnificent Ambersons--that vulnerable performance is almost too painful to watch. She was willing to go too far--not in a campy way--and it's hard not to love her for that. She portrayed people that were just awful with total commitment. It's not that simple, she wasn't that simple, but she went there. TCM's bio says: "...although Moorehead never starred, she often outshone the box office 'names' with her sly, intelligent performances." There probably is mollyhaskell stuff (haven't read; or have forgotten) to say about how she fit into what Hollywood women were allowed to be then and the machine around her, her collective film identity, but for the moment I'm just talking about her. Her eyebrows say it all.
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