What are you watching now? - (This is my brain on TV!)

[Store Hadji]

If you feel the need to bawl me out personally, please use the PM facility. Debate what I say all you want, but there's way too much personal vendetta going on.

[Glenn Anders]

Gentlemen: It would be wise for us to remember that beauty is in the eye -- but talent is palpable. Agnes Moorehead was not a great beauty, but she was younger and more attractive than most of her roles allowed her to appear, and though she worked steadilly, she probably never had a role as good as her first two (in . . . KANE and . . . AMBERSONS).

Barbara Stanwyck had a dancer's body and classic features, but she also made her mark as a tough babe, in Pre-Code pictures, by the age of 20. BUT Check her out in BALL OF FIRE or THE LADY EVE (both from 1941); she is willowy and gorgeous. She was a star for 45 years.

John Barrymore made his reputation on the stage, but was able to extend it to motion pictures. Even if his accomplishments were hyped, he, too, remained a star to the end, though latterly a parody of himself. Both Welles and Errol Flynn, in their darker, self-insightful moments, probably saw their careers following the arc of Barrymore's

All were talented artists; all had a measure of success.

They deserve our respect.

We have been seeing some good movies, have we not?

Glenn

[Store Hadji]

Another link between Gilliam and Kurtzman is Terry's storyboards. They look very much like Kurtzman's pencil outlines for his comics, before someone like Bill Elder came along and inked and finished the artwork.

I'm watching LOST IN LA MANCHA, which includes a clip from the Franco DQ.

[Tony]

Actually, I thought Aggie Moorehead got better looking as she got older- in Bewitched she looked really great...but I'm thinking when she calls "Charles!" in Citizen Kane, she is very beautiful... I have a photo, on the back of an Lp of the Mercury summer theatre production of King Lear, of Moorehead and Welles, and have often thought: "What a striking couple they would have made" but of course Welles was stuck on Riyta types, dancers, etc. Moorehead would have probably been the ultimate Lady Macbeth for Welles; think of what they could have done together!

Beauty IS in the eyes of the beholder: for me, as cute as Rita was, Aggie was much more beautiful...I'm talking, of course, of true beauty...

[Glenn Anders]

Tony: You remind me that perhaps I should revise my take on Agnes Moorehead to "striking." My only memory of her, more-or-less in person, was in a road production of The First Drama Quartet, which played in Akron, Ohio, sometime in the 1950's: "Don Juan in Hell" from Man and Superman by G.B.S., with Cedric Hardwick, Charles Boyer, and Vincent Price. (You can sort of figure who played what.)

Of course, she was in stage make-up, perhaps wearing a wig, but my memory is of a tall, beautiful redhead, with flashing earrings, in a long green gown. So you may indeed be right, Tony. The camera and her roles may have emphasized her angular qualities.

She and Welles would have made quite a couple, but -- correct me if I'm wrong -- though she was married twice, I believe she was quietly of another persuasion.

In any event, a magnificent actress.

Glenn

[Store Hadji]

Oh, I bet she was of another persuasion. Nudge nudge wink wink grin grin say no more.

[Tashman]

Moorehead's recent biographer, Charles Tranberg (see wellesnet post), had this to say in a Bewitched fanpage interview:

Q: Two of Agnes's Bewitched co-stars questioned her sexuality in the press. Yet, you found nothing to support that she was a lesbian later in life. What do you make of that?

Tranberg: She was very discreet in everything she did and I would think especially in regards to her sexuality. Even if she was totally heterosexual I don't think she would have been the type to brag about her conquests. Paul Lynde's claims according to Quint [Benedecci] were the utterings of a "mean drunk" wanting to get even with [close Moorehead friend] Debbie Reynolds. I think if Agnes had been indiscreet that two people for sure would have been forthright with me about it--Quint Benedecci and Paul Gregory, because they had no problem speaking about Agnes as a real person. I don't dismiss that she may have been a lesbian or even bisexual but I do point out that there is scanty evidence to support it. Even the books which claim it to be true really don't have any proof to back it up.

P.S. "Monty Python's Personal Best" starts up on the 22nd.

[Store Hadji]

I haven't seen any of the Personal Best Python shows - it's cool they'll be on PBS.

I assume they'll be "best of" packages with some new linking material.

I watched Python on PBS when I was a little kid. I'm sure I never recovered!

[Glenn Anders]

Thank you, tashman, for that interview bit.

I had an "evil microsoft moment" with the review of the book, but I appreciate the information.

The fact remains that, no matter what Miss Moorehead's personal life may have been, she was a wonderful performer, particularly for Welles, and always loyal to him as a friend and colleague. I remember a TV interview, not to long before she died, in which she said that the greatest joys of her professional career came when she was "working with Orson."

That was Radio, Theatrical and Movie History talking.

She was certainly one of those people who could justify calling him by his first name (which is what many people who have not the foggiest idea of what he was about do today).

Thank you, again.

Glenn

[Tony]

Glenn and Tashman: thanks for the nice writing and info. I'm reminded that a few years ago I suddenly realized that Aggie and Orson never appeared together in a film; not in Kane or Ambersons, Journey or in Stranger where he wanted her for the Robinson part. But they did appear, and often, in radio, in particular I'm thinking of The Shadow, where they were always together: two of the greatest acting voices in American drama; Orson actually hadn't fully developed his "basso profundo" at that time, but Aggie had one of the sexiest voices in radio- ever. VERY expressive...

What A Lady Macbeth..."...unsex me..." A great lost opportunity, although I think Jeannette Nolan is very underated in that film.

I wonder why Orson and Aggie never worked together again: she probably could have done anything: Shakespeare, modern comedy or drama, costume drama, tv: anything.

[Store Hadji]

Gilliam's Tideland was shown a few weeks ago at the Rotterdam Film Festival and is showing this month at the Festival Internacional de Cine Contemporaneo in Mexico City.

I guess it's not completely dead.

[Store Hadji]

Various online sources are stating that Christopher Lee wishes to play the Don when filming resumes on The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Johnny Depp has said in the past he would return as well.

[Store Hadji]

The aforemention Python Person Best compilations, which run one-hour each and are already available on DVD, premiere on PBS Tuesday evening, with the Eric Idle and Graham Chapman collections to kick things off.

Gilliam's collection is on next week and will consist completely of his old animations...

[Store Hadji]

Actually, the animations used to link two completely mismatched live-action sketches...Gilliam would get the show from Point A to Point B when the other guys had no idea how to bridge the gap, and Terry would let his right brain run amok and non-sequitor stream-of-consciousness was the order of business - yet it flowed...

It will be interesting to see if any flow could be made from simply dumping the cartoons all together in one program. I don't know if the guys themselves edited their collections or not. They've all been directors, producers, playwrites (in one medium or another,) novelists and/or editors, so it seems reasonable they'd want some degree of creative input on a collection bearing their own name...

[Glenn Anders]

Tony: Your observation that Agnes Moorehead and Orson Welles never appeared in the same scene in a movie is a keen one. She did appear with Welles, though I'm not sure they were on stage at the same time, in his 1937 production of Julius Caesar. Your remark about what a great Lady Macbeth she might have made reminds me that she performed that role with Welles in his Salt Lake City staging of Macbeth, which he used as a rehearsal for his motion picture adaptation, employing some of the same cast members. It is said, in fact, that he offered her the part in his movie, but that she was under contractual obligations for other movie work.

At least, they were on stage together.

Perhaps, two such flamboyant egos, one public and the other private, may have been a little too close for comfort, out in Salt Lake City. Their career paths seem to have split after that.

In the 1930's, Welles, Moorehead, Walter Huston, and John Huston took voice lessons from Walter Huston's sister, a former opera singer, in New York City. They were taught to lower their voices, at will, by half or even a full octave, a quality much favored in the growing mediium of Radio, which had tended to have tinny, treble speakers then.

I don't know if that class of has ever been fully explored in its implications for the performing arts of the next forty years.

Glenn