#kitsch icon
Died on this day 48 years ago: consummate character actress (and scene stealer par excellence) - Agnes Moorehead (6 December 1900 – 30 April 1974)! Moorehead significantly improves every film she appears in simply by virtue of her presence. Off the top of my head, some of my favourite Moorehead performances would include: the 1947 film noir Dark Passage – ostensibly a vehicle for Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, but it’s Moorehead in a secondary role (a vision in leopard print!) who makes the indelible impression; as the compassionate superintendent of a women’s prison in Caged (1950); as Jane Wyman’s bitchy socialite friend and neighbour in Douglas Sirk’s masterpiece All That Heaven Allows (1955); and as the tough-as-nails bleached blonde brothel madam (and Jane Russell’s employer) in The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956). But even in her ignominious final feature film – the low-budget hagsploitation horror flick Dear Dead Delilah (1971) – Moorehead is majestic. And her status as a beloved camp icon is forever assured from her stint as the drag queen-like Endora in the TV series Bewitched!
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