Happy Days actress Marion Ross warmly paid tribute to Moorehead, who died 40 years ago at the age of 73. She called the late Oscar and Emmy nominee the medium’s greatest actress.
Ross noted that a younger generation knows Moorehead only as Endora, the meddling witchy mother on television’s Bewitched – a role the Clinton, Massachusetts native was not overly fond of, despite the six Emmy nominations it brought her.
“Agnes Moorehead was more than Endora,” Ross told those in attendance. “She was one of Orson Welles’ most trusted actors.”
Ross outlined Moorehead’s professional relationship with Welles on radio’s The Mercury Theatre On The Air and The Shadow, as well her roles in his first two Hollywood films: Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons.
Moorehead appeared on CBS’ popular radio anthology Suspense more than two dozen times in the 1940s, ’50 and ’60s and was referred to as the “First Lady of Suspense.” She returned to radio shortly before her death in 1974 for two episodes of CBS Radio Mystery Theater.
“Let me put this simply, Agnes Moorehead was the greatest radio actress who ever lived,” Ross said.
The other 2014 Radio Hall of Fame inductees are: Charlie & Harrigan, Barry Farber, Jon Miller, Dick Orkin, This American Life with Ira Glass, and Stanley E. Hubbard.
Radio personality Delilah was the host of the induction with appearances by Larry King and Melissa Etheridge.
The Radio Hall of Fame began honoring radio greats in 1988. Welles and The Mercury Theatre On the Air were among the first to to be inducted that year.
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