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re: Agnes Moorehead honored.

Posted by: BruceinIthaca 01:15 am EST 11/15/14
In reply to: Agnes Moorehead honored. - kieran 12:25 am EST 11/15/14
I still think her performance as Aunt Fanny Minafer in the boiler room scene in "The Magnificent Ambersons" is the single greatest piece of acting on film. That she had to pitch her voice out of her optimum register to capture the hysteria and helplessness, and yet she retained an utterly human, heart-breaking reality, buffeted by superb physicalization (and Welles' deft use of the camera to withhold our ability to access her until necessary)--I show this clip to my students every semester.

She won the NY Film Critics Award for Actress for it (they didn't divide the acting awards into Lead and Supporting then), but lost the Oscar to Teresa Wright, a fine actress in an ingenue, if lovely role. Wright deserved the award for "Shadow of a Doubt" (for which she didn't even receive a nomination), and so goes the history of the Academy.

Both were fine stage actresses, as well. I worked with a man in Northwestern's library thirty years ago who grew up in rural Wisconsin, and said Aggie boarded with his family when she was student teaching in his town. She also had a masters degree in Oral Interpretation from Wisconsin and did superb readings on the college circuit. She raises the quality of any film or television show she appears in--even she hasn't a word to say, as in the famous Twilight Zone episode.


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Previous: re: Sorry, Wrong Number on radio starring Agnes - Holland 02:23 pm EST 11/15/14
Next: re: Agnes Moorehead honored. - nsguy45 05:41 am EST 11/15/14

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