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

person. Only the disciplined person can become beautiful.”
    It was all so lovely, so rich, so endearing, so hypnotic. Any man worth his salt would have fallen in love with her. It had nothing to do with looks, appearance. It had to do with soul. She said, ‘The undisciplined person can be semi-starved for truth which is, I believe, his inner spring of vision and action. What is more honorable than having clear sight and the courage and strength to maintain it? I believe such clarity is very rare”, she judged, ‘but it is this alone which elevates one.” I could only think what a fabulous move it was for me to become involved in this school. What an education to understand both acting and people and the world, and she was so willing to give of herself.
    I was in heaven. All these things I’d already learned from the Catholic Church: to be nice and good and clean and, of course, not evil. Never evil. And loud and clear as that came through from her, it tied me to her tighter than ever. “She’s got it. She’s saying all the things I want to hear.”
    “Great joy comes when one hungers after self-improvement”, she went on. She had some marvelous things she left with me that I’ll always carry with love. “But creativity depends on an open mind. I strive to keep expanding my capacity and my understanding. An actor should never constrict himself. I never stop learning, never stop working. Drudge.” She went on again about drudge. Drudge, drudge, drudge, drudge. Agnes could ramble on like a magpie and this is where she could get a little boring except that, with her theatricality, she could carry it off. (A lot of the other students who didn’t have the same thing for her I had were very bored. In fact, a lot just didn’t like her at all. A lot dropped out. I thought it was awful. They were desecrating Miss Moorehead. They were deserting her.)
    Finally she got into acting. She wasn’t really well organized. I think she was torn between teaching acting and teaching students to be human beings. “The actor establishes the moods, but don’t put all your cards on the table. Establish the mood, then let the audience carry the scene for you. Let them participate.” This was something she repeated over and over. “Audiences are better actors than most of us. For instance, when you cry did you ever see any of these young actors and actresses?” she scoffed, scolding. “They have a crying scene and they cry and they just go ‘woooo’,” and her voice thrashed mercilessly at a skyscraper-high wail while her hands were flailing through the air in every direction. Then she stopped and fixed her eyes on us. “That’s not the way you do it. You start crying and, when the audience picks it up and starts crying, then you stop. And the same way with laughing or a drunk, you play a drunk. A lot of actors fall all over the stage. No. You play against being a drunk. You should have imagination and judgment. You don’t overdo. A man out of breath, you just elude to it. You don’t go ‘ohhhh’ and show your tonsils and vomit on the stage.” She was very annoyed about that. “No. Control.”
    I was very aware that she was teaching us all how to be human as well as how to be actors, how to handle life and people, and she could do it herself. She didn’t only preach it. She did it. Some of her suggestions were exaggerations. Some went awry. But generally speaking, her words were full of truth. “Control. The actor always has to have control of the character he’s playing. Never let the character control you. I would hate to play with any of you who got so caught up in the action that you forget the audience or the other actors. Never. Know what you are about,” she demanded, her eyes ablaze, her back erect, her orange hair burning our eyes, her hand waving emphatically, that large ring glittering. “Know what you are about every time you’re on stage.”
    Oh, did she harp on that. It was really the essence of her