(My Travels with) Agnes Moorehead – The Lavender Lady by Quint Benedetti Page B

don’t know how difficult it is. I’ve cajoled, begged, pleaded with producers I know—directors—and they all said they would try to find me a theatre for this school. None of them could do it. So, we’ll just have to wait and see.”
    She alternately lamented and raged about it for fifteen minutes. After class—I don’t know where I got the nerve, but I had it—I walked up to her. Though we’d rarely spoken outside of class, and the only thing she saw me do was the park pantomime, still I was a little more comfortable with her now. I had a little more guts and I was being more and more of a man. But it was more than that. It was as if something came over me. It was a pleasant, warm day. Somewhere in the background, they were banging away, as usual, and I thought, By God, I’ll reach Agnes. I’ll show her I can do it. That I can do something important.
    I said, “Miss Moorehead, I will get you a theatre for your school.”
    She peered at me through narrow, thick, black lashes and skeptical blue eyes. “Oooh,” she intoned emphatically, as if to say, “Better men than you have tried it.” She then repeated, “Did you hear what I said for the last fifteen minutes?”
    After all, here was this little nothing milk dud, me, that had been sitting in her class all year and never opened his mouth and had never done anything. This little boy, with his tail between his legs, comes up and says that he was going to do what no one else could.
    “Well, my dear, If you can do it, fine,” she humored me. “That would be nice, but it’s really impossible to get a school. I’ve done everything but turn the world upside down.”
    And she told me in detail once again all her plans and how they’d fail to come through.
    I repeated, “I will do it.” I was as emphatic as she was. I was driven as that first day the thought of acting with her entered my life. “I’m a salesman in Los Angeles County (at that time, I was selling office machines) and I will do it.”
    I remember well that she looked at me very strangely, as if to reappraise me and it registered in my mind that this was the first time that this woman ever saw me there, except the day of my audition. Because all that time in the school I had never shown that strong side of my personality, but I had been a very successful salesman. A P.R. man, who’s twelve years with R.C.A. was successful and I was very strong. It was just that in that school, I felt like a child, a lost puppy dog, a duck out of water. Acting was new and Agnes was like my mother and the church, and I guess around her I just fell into a passive, frightened, dependent role.
    But I’d worked through some of that during the year and now I was a man saying, “I will do it!” and she loved that in people. And then getting it together with something that meant something to her and she looked at me like she knew who she was talking to. So I made her a promise and I left the school when it closed for vacation.
    I thought, “Ha!” Feeling my acting oats, I auditioned for a part in “Little Mary Sunshine” at the Morgan Theatre in Santa Monica and God, how I fought for that part. It was the first real fighting thing I did and I won. I got a gem of a part. I played the juvenile and I knew I was good. I could sing and even dance it.
    I called Agnes and I told her. She used to go to see some of her students and I thought, “Ah, she’ll come and see me.” She’d finally see me in something where I shone and the reviews were good. You know the answer. Of course, she didn’t come. That was a very big blow. The show played for six weeks and each week I hoped. Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. She never came and again I felt very paranoid. Again not good enough and she’ll never know I am good enough, because she’s never seen me do anything. And now that I’ve got some balls and I’m starting to arrive—I had a show-stopping number that stopped the show every performance and I was damned