Read Online (My Travels with) Agnes Moorehead – The Lavender Lady by Quint Benedetti - Free Book Online Page B

counteract all that was going on around her that she didn’t like. “Know what you are about. I can’t teach you acting but I can give you “the basics,” and handing out any books or Xeroxed lectures or notes or whatever was necessary. She was the business end. On the other hand, Agnes carried on with great flare on the small stage. Agnes, in an imperious manner, without explanation, took the stage and announced as number one item on the agenda, “I won’t be here next week.” Then, instead of explaining why, she told us who she was going to have substitute for her. There were several muffled moans of disappointment. In fact, one was mine. She was aware of it. I thought, “Oh gee, she has this school that she talked about everywhere. Why would she not show up?’ Somebody had nerve enough to get up and say, “Why won’t you be here, Miss Moorehead?” It didn’t get them anywhere. She merely said, “I have to be away.” She said it airily and it brought no argument. Before I could really question it, which I didn’t want to do anyway, I found myself caught up in what she was saying next.
    Agnes never talked in anything but a stentorian tongue and she announced, “Mr. Lane will be coming next week. For anyone of you who doesn’t know, he is the head of the make-up department at Columbia Pictures. Now, “she instructed us, fastidious but forceful, “I want you here on time and don’t be unprepared. Be prepared. Don’t be silly. Don’t ask silly, idiotic, ridiculous questions. You’re older and you should know a lot better. Be prepared and, by all means, be enthusiastic.” She suggested, “Think about it for a few days foundation, so you know what’s required. I can teach you an assurance and a confidence on stage, if you are willing to work. I can teach you to think on your feet. This is the polish of an actor and this I can teach you.”
    And she did. I think I remember this above anything else in the world—“the polish of an actor.” This was the acting thing she did really truly teach us. Whether she was non-profit designed, I question. She loved money. Yet, why did she spend all of this time and effort for so little here at the school? It will always be a mystery. Certainly, she was a divided personality—one who adored money and one who sacrificed herself without a great deal of money to help others.
    At this point, for some reason that escapes me, I had one thing in mind. One ambition—to have Miss Moorehead notice me. To know who I was. To understand me. I had been there for three or four weeks and I began to feel that part of my life was dramatically missing. I was always clean and neat, and I kept thinking she probably liked having me around because of it. But I hadn’t done any pantomime or scenes for her yet. This created an emptiness. I saw the others in scenes and some of them were very good. I felt lost.
    With all of the adoration of her, I still was afraid of her. A lot of the students who had been there a long time seemed to ask the right questions. And when they did, WOW! How she would just go and I would sit by very quietly, listening and learning. On several occasions I would raise my hand, but it seemed to me she was so into what she was doing that she wasn’t aware of me. When she saw my hand, she demanded, “Yes? Yes?” impatiently, brusquely and that would frighten me again. So I would ask my question and she would just kind of slough it off with, “Oh, you know . . . It made me feel small and unimportant. I couldn’t understand why with all the feeling I had for her, it wasn’t returned. Her reaction to me made me feel as though my questions were dumb, the way she would disparage it or argue. And it was getting me down.
    To complicate matters at that time, I was having a hard time in therapy, going through some very tough incidents. I was very vulnerable and Agnes was very strong and I wanted to reach out to her as if to a mother. I wanted my Mommy is what I