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Authors: Quint Benedetti
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love of life and her beauty.
And that’s why, though she’d hammer away at the same things, brainwash you, I always felt that she was feeding me, the quick and the dead, and some others with the fire of life, the spirit of life that I had never had. Agnes was strong in her objective, but so positive. I was used to that hammering and that authoritarian stuff because my mother did the same kind of thing, but in a cruel, cold way while Agnes was doing it because she cared and you could tell. There was no compromise with her. The theatre was one way and you were either in it or you were out of it and that was it. And that passion she felt she instilled in me. She was feeding that creative side of me that had just been born or just let loose. I wanted to be heard, I wanted to be noticed, but I really didn’t know how. It was through her that I finally learned to trust. She mirrored so much of what I wanted to be. I absorbed everything she did and she was, and then I went beyond that.
Looking back now I can appreciate her even more. I can see now how dedicated she was, that she meant what she was trying to accomplish, even though it didn’t always work out the way she expected and fantasized. The passion she had for her school was genuine even though, on a whole, the school itself was a fraud. It was a fraud because Agnes had flaws like the rest of us.
I think, in a way, I even went beyond her. I don’t think she ever went beyond her fantasy, not really. That’s why, when her school closed a few years later, without a living soul in attendance, she became absolutely livid. Her face contorted maniacally. She raged and stormed and shrilled like a demon because she had never accepted the reality of the way the school was run anymore than she understood the public or private myth of her son. Of course, that’s just my opinion, not gospel. I only feel certain of my own growth. I transcended the Agnes within me by accepting the void in myself as my own to be filled by my life actions and not phantoms of someone else. But that transcendence occurred gradually with Agnes, through her and her school. Then I kissed off the acting school.
Why did the school fail? One, because the business side of it was poorly run; two, because Agnes was not a realist. She didn’t know the proper price to charge or what to give her students. She did not put up any kind of a front, even a phony front, which was necessary. She knew little about how other schools were run. She was friends of many important stars. She could have invited them down; producers, directors also. Also, there was no curriculum. It was helter skelter. Students didn’t feel they were working toward a goal. She didn’t help students who graduated get jobs. Or if she did, she did not make a point of it. There were certain reasons why the school failed and yet it was probably among the most worthy of all schools. If one accepted it in its proper light, its proper direction, as I did, it was worth a fortune because it not only taught acting, it taught life. It taught you how to live and it taught you how to enjoy life and to make the most out of yourself. And, as a matter of fact, how to accept others to compromise, to exchange ideas, not to be too critical or too less critical. The Agnes Moorehead School of Acting should have been number one in the nation. It wasn’t.
CHAPTER FIVE
DRUDGE AND MORE DRUDGE
After just a few sessions I believed I had my money’s worth and plus. And Agnes Moorehead thought the same way—about me and all the others.
She said, “I’m doing this, because I care about the theatre and I want to help those who have the gumption to help themselves.” She reminded us of this all the time. “The twenty-five dollars you pay me for your tuition, which is used to pay your instructors and the rental of the school, you are investing in yourselves. I want to help make the theatre better. I want to help give it some good actors.”
She wanted to
And that’s why, though she’d hammer away at the same things, brainwash you, I always felt that she was feeding me, the quick and the dead, and some others with the fire of life, the spirit of life that I had never had. Agnes was strong in her objective, but so positive. I was used to that hammering and that authoritarian stuff because my mother did the same kind of thing, but in a cruel, cold way while Agnes was doing it because she cared and you could tell. There was no compromise with her. The theatre was one way and you were either in it or you were out of it and that was it. And that passion she felt she instilled in me. She was feeding that creative side of me that had just been born or just let loose. I wanted to be heard, I wanted to be noticed, but I really didn’t know how. It was through her that I finally learned to trust. She mirrored so much of what I wanted to be. I absorbed everything she did and she was, and then I went beyond that.
Looking back now I can appreciate her even more. I can see now how dedicated she was, that she meant what she was trying to accomplish, even though it didn’t always work out the way she expected and fantasized. The passion she had for her school was genuine even though, on a whole, the school itself was a fraud. It was a fraud because Agnes had flaws like the rest of us.
I think, in a way, I even went beyond her. I don’t think she ever went beyond her fantasy, not really. That’s why, when her school closed a few years later, without a living soul in attendance, she became absolutely livid. Her face contorted maniacally. She raged and stormed and shrilled like a demon because she had never accepted the reality of the way the school was run anymore than she understood the public or private myth of her son. Of course, that’s just my opinion, not gospel. I only feel certain of my own growth. I transcended the Agnes within me by accepting the void in myself as my own to be filled by my life actions and not phantoms of someone else. But that transcendence occurred gradually with Agnes, through her and her school. Then I kissed off the acting school.
Why did the school fail? One, because the business side of it was poorly run; two, because Agnes was not a realist. She didn’t know the proper price to charge or what to give her students. She did not put up any kind of a front, even a phony front, which was necessary. She knew little about how other schools were run. She was friends of many important stars. She could have invited them down; producers, directors also. Also, there was no curriculum. It was helter skelter. Students didn’t feel they were working toward a goal. She didn’t help students who graduated get jobs. Or if she did, she did not make a point of it. There were certain reasons why the school failed and yet it was probably among the most worthy of all schools. If one accepted it in its proper light, its proper direction, as I did, it was worth a fortune because it not only taught acting, it taught life. It taught you how to live and it taught you how to enjoy life and to make the most out of yourself. And, as a matter of fact, how to accept others to compromise, to exchange ideas, not to be too critical or too less critical. The Agnes Moorehead School of Acting should have been number one in the nation. It wasn’t.
CHAPTER FIVE
DRUDGE AND MORE DRUDGE
After just a few sessions I believed I had my money’s worth and plus. And Agnes Moorehead thought the same way—about me and all the others.
She said, “I’m doing this, because I care about the theatre and I want to help those who have the gumption to help themselves.” She reminded us of this all the time. “The twenty-five dollars you pay me for your tuition, which is used to pay your instructors and the rental of the school, you are investing in yourselves. I want to help make the theatre better. I want to help give it some good actors.”
She wanted to
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