At age three Agnes Moorehead first appeared onstage, and at 11 she made her professional debut in the ballet and chorus of the St. Louis Opera. As a teenager she regularly sang on local radio. She earned a Ph.D. in literature and studied theater at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She began playing small roles on Broadway in 1928; shortly thereafter she shifted her focus to radio acting, becoming a regular on the radio shows March of Time, Cavalcade of America, and a soap opera series.
She toured in vaudeville from 1933-36 with Phil Baker. In 1940 she joined Orson Welles's Mercury Theater Company, giving a great boost to her career. Moorehead debuted onscreen as Kane's mother in Welles' film Citizen Kane (1941). Her second film was Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), for which she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination; ultimately she was nominated for an Oscars five times, never winning. In films, she tended to play authoritarian, neurotic, puritanical, or soured women, but also played a wide range of other roles, and was last onscreen in 1972. In the '50s she toured the U.S. with a stellar cast giving dramatic readings of Shaw's {-Don Juan in Hell}. In 1954 she began touring in {~The Fabulous Redhead}, a one-woman show she eventually took to over 200 cities across the world. She was also active on TV; later audiences remember her best as the witch Endora, Elizabeth Montgomery's mother, in the '60s TV sitcom Bewitched. Moorehead's last professional engagement was in the Broadway musical {~Gigi}. She died of lung cancer in 1974. She was married to actors John Griffith Lee (1930-52) and Robert Gist (1953-58). ~ All Movie Guide. 