The World Is Upside Down 1939
"I'm not in acting to make money. I reap the benefits from it, but I do it because I love it!"
Agnes Moorehead
Molly New York and New Orleans
In January 1939, Mother became a resident of New York City. She moved in with us after Father’s passing and her extended hotel stay in Columbus. Peg and I had a massive blowout, and she moved out just in time for Mother to move in. Mother certainly hit the ground running, spending two weeks with Grace in New Orleans, returning to Reedsburg on January 28. Mama did the same thing she had done when Peggy died; she threw herself into experiences. But the reaper wasn’t done with either of us yet. Ten months after Papa’s death, we lost Aunt Cam to the same thing: a heart attack. Camilla Urso Moorehead was buried on March 16, 1939. When my beloved aunt passed away, I was doing “Dr. Rockwell’s Braintrust” on the radio. I went to Ohio to attend the funeral and was back in New York by March 21 for another Dr. Rockwell show. I handled my grief just like my father; I threw myself into my work.
“Cavalcade of America.”
It paid off when I was rated as a top radio actress in April. I thrived on “Cavalcade of America” and continued with “Dr. Rockwell’s Braintrust. I added “Brenda Curtis” and “The Aldrich Family.” I returned to her comedic roots with Phil Baker in January and worked with him until October 4. It was in 1939 that I became extremely well-known for my ability to impersonate anyone. On "Cavalcade and “The March of Time,” I voiced Eleanor Roosevelt, who, by the way, wholeheartedly approved of my imitation of her, Queen Elizabeth, Katherine Hepburn, The Duchess of Windsor, Marie Dressler, Greta Garbo, Dorothy Thompson, Frau Goering, and many others. I was so precise in copying people that nobody could tell the difference. I finally gave an enormous voice to Marie Dressler, considered one of the best performers ever. Producers said my skill was uncanny. During my time on the radio, I voiced over 1000 feminine roles. In a short article in the April 21 Ventura Weekly Post and Democrat, I was praised for this ability and fluffed the family tree by adding Eugene O’Neill. Mother always said I rearranged facts, as most people rearranged their furniture for comfort or if I felt it would enhance my prestige. I even said Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was my cousin as well. I always believed that the entertainment business demanded that you tie yourself to everyone and everything so that all the listeners could relate to you without having to think about it.
July 6, 1939
A Divorce & A World’s Fair
I don’t remember what started it, but it had to do with Jack coming home drunk. I said the wrong thing, and he landed on me like a ton of drunken bricks. I was punched, kicked, slapped, screamed at, and my life was threatened. When he got around to threatening to kill me, one of our neighbors had come and started pounding on the door. We were all in the business in this building, so they knew not to involve the police. When Jack opened the door, my neighbor saw me sprawling on the floor in the living room. He pushed past Jack, who lost his balance and fell. My neighbor scooped me off the floor, took me out the door, and jumped on an elevator. He took me out the back way with the doorman's help, and we got into a taxi and then said, “Hospital, please!”
I was in the hospital for at least ten days. I decided that I also needed my husband surgically removed from my life. My friends were horrified. I was terrified. Jack was remanded to a hotel once I got home. Oh, he tried to see me, but the staff had strict orders not to let him into the room at the hospital or my apartment when I got home. I was black, blue, broken, stitched, and eternally grateful for morphine. When I got home, I was relieved to find Jack had removed his things, and I had the locks changed to make sure he had no way to get to me. I could return to work officially in September, but I managed to do a few things as I healed physically and emotionally.
July 24, 1939
Monday
The Dayton Herald
Actress Agnes Moorehead, who went to the hospital last week, is well again and has resumed work on her network serials.
Oddly, once I got home, I discovered that only one paper had gotten the information that I was hospitalized, and it was in Dayton; go figure. Mother was on vacation, so I know she didn’t call the paper, and you know, to this day, I still don’t know who let that cat out of the bag. The answer was in the form of a tiny white card placed in flowers sent to me. It said this:
July 6, 1939
A divorce & a World’s Fair are pretty wearing, Aggie dear! We’re all terribly shocked and want you to get well quickly.
The T.D.I.O Cast & Company
Why did I keep putting myself in that situation? I did it in 1939 and again in 1945, failing to follow through on the divorce. There is one common denominator in both those circumstances: my mother. Mother talked me out of divorcing Jack both times I turned to her. It wasn’t Mother’s fault she was raised in a chaotic environment punctuated with overzealous Catholicism and drenched in Presbyterianism. Mother was afraid of how it would look and told me so both times. Then, I made two emotional U-turns and returned to Jack. Mother had steered my life for years. She was a master at manipulating me into doing what Mother thought was best. She honestly tried to do the right thing according to scripture as she understood it. I was just trying not to let Jack beat me to death with his fists!
A carrot called “Citizen Kane.”
In November, an article appeared in the papers regarding Orson and his upcoming journey to Hollywood, where he would make a little film called “Citizen Kane.” I was mentioned in the article, as were the other members of “The Mercury Theatre.” Orson was about to hand me the keys to Hollywood with the role of Charles Foster Kane’s mother. I was on the screen for four minutes, and Hollywood got its first look at me. Jack didn't accompany me to Hollywood because he had just beat the dickens out of me, but by this point, we had a gorgeous apartment at 37 West 53rd Street and a home in Long Island. Jack was doing whatever he did, but he wasn’t footing the bills for any of it. I was relieved to not be doing it with him.
Molly and Jack Home Alone
Mother traveled with Grace in July 1939 but still lived in New York with Jack and me. The tension in the house was off the charts when I went to California to film “Citizen Kane.” Mother knew full well that I was the breadwinner, not Jack, and given Mama's propensity for bluntness, I have no doubt she reminded him daily. That July, Mother went to Reedsburg and then to Chicago with Grace, where they enjoyed a two-week cruise on the Great Lakes. That December, Mother spent her holiday season with Grace, and together, they attended a Christmas party in Baraboo, Wisconsin.
Salt in the Wound Christmas with the Lees
While Mother spent her holiday with Grace, they attended a Christmas party together in Baraboo, Wisconsin. While managing to stay drunk most of the time, Jack did whatever it was that Jack did. I founded a bountiful Christmas I went all out with a tree and holly and mistletoe, pouring salt into our marriage's open wound. I just dealt with it, knowing that Hollywood would break my fall when the marriage finally exploded. I have always said an unbalanced marriage is not good because someone is constantly unhappy. I was learning the reality of every day I had to spend with Jack.
Agnes asserted at the proceedings that Jack, drunk at the time, held a gun to her head and forced his way into her bed. He held the gun to her head, she iterated and made her sleep in the same bed with him. She did not say he raped her, but I think it can be assumed that he forced himself on her sexually. Her life was a nightmare, a waking nightmare that she had no control of. I believe that is why it took her four years and an affair with a younger man she thought she could safely manage to file for divorce. It couldn’t have been easy because she had to know that her whole life would be laid out before a judge. Her legal team managed to control the media to an extent. She did receive some bad press at the hands of Lee’s legal eagles, but nothing that did roll right back on him.
The book by Charles Tranberg states that Lee was a nice guy who got way over his head when he married Agnes and took to drinking because he was emasculated. I also recall that it was stated that Lee told Agnes point-blank that she was nothing but a meal ticket for him. Yeah, nice guy. Jack Lee used Agnes as much, if not more, than Robert Gist ever thought about using her. She supported him for twenty years. The amount he worked would barely have kept him off welfare if he had attempted to survive independently. I don’t know what happened to him, and I’m inclined not to give a dam. However, my idea of telling the whole story keeps me searching for him to determine his outcome.
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